drew@drewexmachina.com
During the first quarter of a century of the Space Age, Venus had been a target of intense interest to Soviet space planners. Being the closest […]
Today we have a veritable fleet of spacecraft from nations around the globe studying Mars from orbit and its surface. But just over half a century […]
In the years following the end of World War II, the possibility of space travel experienced a great surge of interest in Europe and America. This […]
Back when I was growing up in the heyday of the Apollo program, all young space enthusiasts like myself knew about NASA’s trio of unmanned lunar […]
Back when I was growing up during the first “Golden Age” of planetary exploration, one planetary exploration program stood out among the rest: NASA’s Mariner series […]
In recent years it seems that NASA regularly extends the missions of its long-lived planetary spacecraft sometimes far beyond their original primary missions. The armada of […]
While interest in miniaturized satellites for a range of applications has been growing in recent years, as a class these satellites are hardly new. By necessity, […]
The history of planetary exploration is filled with proposals that never flew. While there are some that, at best, had dubious chances at success, there are […]
With the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) routinely spending six or more months in orbit, it is sometimes forgotten that only a few decades […]
At this time there are several new heavy-lift launch vehicles being developed in the United States such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, the recently announced Vulcan being […]
A half century ago, NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft had completed the first successful flyby of Mars on July 15, 1965 (Universal Time) and had already finished […]
Most space exploration enthusiasts are familiar with the story of Mariner 4: On July 15, 1965 (Universal Time), Mariner 4 made the first close encounter of […]
