There’s probably nothing much more exciting for a space artist than to have an entirely new world to play with! I’ve been busy ever since the New Horizons flyby creating new landscapes of Pluto based on the data that has been arriving-ever so slowly—-from the distant spacecraft. It seems that every square inch of each…
The history of the modern exploration of the solar system has been a catalog of surprises. No matter what astronomers and planetary scientists expected to find, the moons and planets have managed to say “Gotcha!” more than once. From the discovery that Mercury does not keep one side always facing the sun and that the…
As much as we love The Muppets, in 1963 a pair of NASA engineers entertained the idea of sending real pigs into space. This is their story.
NASA's 2016 budget was approved by President Obama last week, and it contained some exciting goals: "A robust planetary science program includes data analysis of ongoing missions, and development of the next Mars rover. NASA will also continue formulating a mission to Europa, Jupiter's icy moon that, data suggests,…
Science fiction has long been looked to as a source of prophecy...but why? Perhaps because, out of necessity, its futures work: spaceships fly and inventions are successful because they need to be—there'd be no story without them. And because more often than not (to paraphrase Jules Verne) whatever one man can imagine…
These parlor tricks were published by Hugo Gernsback back in the 1920s, but they've been around forever.
In the heyday of America's love affair with space travel, there were few products that weren't tied in somehow to rockets and astronauts. One of these was Inapak, an unfortunately named Ovaltine wannabe.
The prospect of future tourists gawking at the ice fountains of Enceladus, the volcanoes of Io and the grand canyons of Mars has many people forgetting what's in their own backyard.
A report from the Jet Propulsion laboratory today reveals that in May 2012, while Titan's southern hemisphere was experiencing autumn, images from NASA's Cassini orbiter revealed a huge swirling cloud, several hundred miles across, taking shape above Titan's south pole.
This is just too adorable.
Once upon a time it was quite popular to depict the human body in terms of machinery. The idea was that all of the functions and organs of the body could be equated on a one-to-one basis with machinery and technology: the eyes were cameras, the lungs bellows, the arms derricks, etc. The result was scores of books…
In 1951 Collier's magazine devoted an entire issue to reporting an imagined version of World War III. The magazine followed every detail of the conflict from the first attack to the eventual occupation of Russia by the United Nations.
People like to make lists of things, especially lists of superlatives: the best, fastest, oldest, largest, heaviest and so on. There are lists of the ten fastest animals and the ten longest rivers and even of the ten highest-paid rock stars. The Guinness company created a small industry from publishing lists exactly…
Caught up in the let's-attach-a-rocket-to-everything-and-see-what-happens fad in Germany in the late 1920s, one genius came up with a rocket-propelled motorcycle.
In a study published in the latest issue of Science, astronomers led by graduate student Huan Meng, of the University of Arizona in Tucson, announced the discovery of remains of a mammoth planetary collision.
Most histories of that wonderful subgenre of science fiction called "steampunk" list Ronald Clark's 1967 novel,Queen Victoria's Bomb as the first. But was this really the first steampunk novel? Here's another possible contender.
It’s a surprise to many to learn that Andy Griffith was not only the beloved, homespun sheriff of Mayberry, he was also a science fiction space hero.
The American Civil War was probably the first truly modern war in that technology was so important. The military use of balloons, the development of steam-powered ironclads and monitors (as well as the invention of the gun turret), rifled cannons of unprecedented size, submarines, guncotton and telegraphy were all…
If you are sick of all those safely precautions required to set off fireworks these days, then maybe you'd have been happier 500 years in the past. Those were the days when fireworks were truly awe-inspiring.
One of the results of Earth having a tilted axis is, for better or worse, the seasons. On June 21st, we'll be at one extreme point in Earth's seasonality: the summer solstice. Here's what that means.
