drew@drewexmachina.com
After the launch of the first Soviet Sputnik satellites, the US found itself scrambling to get its first satellites into orbit. But in order to repair […]
The impact of the first human to fly into space can hardly be appreciated today in this age of a continuous human presence in Earth orbit. […]
At the beginning of the Space Age, a number of new technologies were being examined to support increasingly sophisticated missions then being considered. Among these were […]
For just about anyone under the age of fifty, satellite pictures of Earth’s cloud cover have been a staple of weather reports on television and, more […]
About two and a half years ago, the web was filled with stories about the announcement of an Earth-size extrasolar planet discovered orbiting our Sun-like next […]
The development of several new state-of-the-art spacecraft to support crewed operations in Earth orbit and beyond has been in the news much in recent months. As […]
Since entering orbit around Mercury four years ago, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has had to use its propulsion system periodically to compensate for the effects of the […]
Many of us have stories about how we have met famous people in unexpected places and I am no different. Probably one of my more memorable […]
As regular readers of Drew Ex Machina are probably aware, in addition to being a writer, I am also a physicist specializing in the processing and […]
Back in July 2014, the press was filled with stories about the apparent disappearance of two potentially habitable extrasolar planets thought to be orbiting the nearby […]
When I was a teenager, I was a voracious reader of the work of the famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov. But it was not his […]
The recent launch of the Atlas V with its Centaur upper stage was just the latest in a long series of such flights stretching back over […]