Space Travel
Space Travel
1,044 articles in this category.
Space Travel
Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice within a minute of launch and survived because one flight controller recognized an obscure electrical pattern almost nobody else in Mission Control understood
Space Travel
In 1957, the Soviet Union launched a metal sphere the size of a beach ball into orbit — and the panic it triggered across the country was so severe that within a year Congress poured federal money into science, maths, and foreign-language education
Space Travel
About 50 kilometres above Venus’ surface, the crushing heat and pressure below give way to temperatures and air pressure surprisingly close to Earth’s, a region NASA has described as the most Earth-surface-like environment in the solar system — at least by those measures, more forgiving than the surface of Mars.
Space Travel
Within hours of reaching microgravity, astronauts’ body fluids shift toward the head, dulling smell and taste — one reason NASA monitors daily nutrition so closely as crews fight the muscle loss space exercise alone cannot fully prevent
Space Travel
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station witness 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every 24 hours, orbiting Earth once every 90 minutes while traveling 5 miles a second
Space Travel
A Russian module called Zvezda has been venting the space station's air through cracks since 2019 — losing nearly 2 kilograms a day before NASA auditors flagged it the highest safety risk aboard
Space Travel
The International Space Station weighs 420 tons and stretches the length of an American football field — making it the most expensive object humanity has ever built at roughly $150 billion
Mind & Meaning
On 12 April 1961, a 27-year-old Russian fighter pilot named Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in history to leave the Earth — sealed inside a metal sphere just over two metres wide, with the spacecraft's controls locked because nobody knew what the human brain would do in weightlessness, and instructions to open a sealed envelope only if he lost his mind during the 108 minutes he spent orbiting the planet alone
Space Travel
In November 2011, NASA launched a car-sized rover called Curiosity toward Mars on a planned two-year mission to look for evidence of ancient lakes and rivers — and almost 15 years later, the rover is still moving across the Martian surface, still drilling into rocks, and still transmitting data back to Earth
Space Travel
In April 1970, three American astronauts aboard Apollo 13 were 320,000 kilometres from Earth — closer to the Moon than to home — when one of their oxygen tanks exploded, and engineers on the ground had 96 hours to solve a problem so complex the solution was eventually worked out using slide rules and read back to the astronauts to keep them alive
Space Travel
In June 2024, a small Chinese spacecraft called Chang'e-6 became the first machine in human history to return samples from the far side of the Moon — drilling and scooping roughly 2 kilograms of lunar soil from a region no spacecraft had ever sampled, and delivering it back to Earth, giving humanity its first physical material from the half of the Moon that has been permanently turned away from our planet since it became tidally locked billions of years ago
Space Travel
A small European spacecraft called Philae became the first machine in human history to soft-land on a comet — bouncing twice in near-zero gravity before settling in a shadowed crevice on Comet 67P — after a 10-year, 6.4-billion-kilometre journey across deep space, where it transmitted scientific readings home for roughly 60 hours before its batteries finally died
Space Travel
In 2028, China plans to launch the Tianwen-3 mission to the surface of Mars, drill two metres into Martian rock, collect at least 500 grams of soil and stone, and return those samples to Earth by 2031 — meaning if the mission succeeds on schedule, China will become the first nation in human history to bring back physical material from another planet, potentially years ahead of NASA and ESA's own delayed Mars Sample Return effort
Space Travel
Astronauts returning from six-month missions describe a persistent 'observer' sensation — the feeling of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame, weeks after they're back on the ground
Space Travel