Military Technology
May 2026
Every article published in May 2026. 685 articles · Back to full archive
Aerospace
The first all-female spacewalk in history did not happen until October 2019, fifty-eight years after Yuri Gagarin orbited Earth — and an earlier all-female attempt seven months before was reassigned because only one medium spacesuit torso was ready on the station
Psychology
There is a moment, in most adults' lives, when intuition turns out to have been right about something important, and another moment, often in the same lives, when intuition turns out to have been catastrophically wrong, and the neuroscience that has begun to explain the difference is one of the more useful things the cognitive sciences have done in the last two decades.
Constellations
The Voyager Golden Record carries greetings in 55 languages — a deliberate attempt to send a small sample of human voices into deep space long after the spacecraft fell silent.
Constellations
Before he climbed the ladder for the last time, the final astronaut to walk on the Moon knelt and traced his daughter's initials into the lunar dust with one finger — three letters that, with no wind or rain to disturb them, may sit there undisturbed for fifty thousand years.
Constellations
A NASA satellite launched in 1976 carries a Carl Sagan–designed plaque sealed inside its core, mapping Earth's continents 268 million years ago, at launch, and 8.4 million years from now — and that last date is no accident, because it's roughly when the satellite is expected to fall back to Earth and finally be opened.
Science
The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs struck what is now Mexico with such force that it blasted molten ejecta high above the atmosphere before it rained back down across the planet, and many of the survivors were small, sheltered creatures — including early mammals on the line that would eventually lead to us.
Science
A tiny jellyfish can reverse its own life cycle when injured or starving, turning back into its younger self instead of dying of old age like everything else
Constellations
Atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit slowly eats spacecraft surfaces, and the ISS survives because engineers learned to coat, test, and replace the materials most vulnerable to it
Constellations
The Vela satellites were built to catch secret nuclear tests, but they accidentally recorded flashes from deep space that opened a new branch of astrophysics
Space Industry
Webb just clocked nearly 9,000 young star clusters and found the biggest ones break from their birth clouds in 5 million years, a timing clue that could reshape how astronomers model galaxies growing up
Constellations
The Hubble Deep Field began as a gamble on a tiny patch of sky that had been chosen because it looked almost empty, and it ended by revealing nearly 3,000 galaxies hiding in what seemed like nothing.
Constellations
Titan’s atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s, its rivers and lakes are made of methane and ethane, and NASA is sending a nuclear-powered drone there because on Saturn’s largest moon, flying may be easier than driving.
Constellations
Enceladus is a tiny moon of Saturn that sprays water vapor and ice grains into space from an ocean hidden beneath its icy crust — meaning a spacecraft can sample material from an alien sea without ever landing.
Human Behaviour
I spent years assuming my personality was fixed — then I learned what neuroplasticity actually means and realised I had been maintaining myself like a finished product instead of a living system
Science