JPL co-founder Jack Parsons was a brilliant rocket scientist who was also a follower of Aleister Crowley. He became a leader in Crowley's religion in the US and was later conned out of a huge sum by L.Ron Hubbard who made off with Parsons' girlfriend in the deal. Blackballed during the Red Scare,...
We still have a couple months of hurricane season left on the east coast and we recently lost GOES-13, the geostationary weather satellite that used to provide high-quality satellite images of the Atlantic. There was only a 21 hour period of no coverage, but it should serve as a wake up call abo...
Today's APOD (Astronomy picture of the day) is of Vesta, a rocky asteroid named after the Roman goddess of home and hearth. Vesta is the second most massive asteroid in our solar system, but the first to be visited by the Dawn spacecraft which finally arrived there in July after launch in 2...
The Mars rovers are now going on 6 years of crawling around the Martian surface looking for evidence of life. Of the two, Spirit has had the toughest time of it, losing the use of one of it's six wheels forcing it to continue its trek backwards since 2006. In April it got stuck again, and scie...
The Mars rover Opportunity will descend into Victoria crater despite the very real risk that it might not be able to get back out of it again. Rolling down into the crater should allow scientists to investigate progressively older rock strata, an opportunity :) whose benefits far outweigh the ris...
If you haven't checked in on the Mars Rovers lately, plan to do so again soon! Opportunity's long (boring?) trek to the rim of Victoria Crater is almost over, and when it gets to the rim, there should be some fantastic views. Check in on the Rovers at their homepage.
