drew@drewexmachina.com
Having enthusiastically followed NASA’s Viking mission to Mars as a teenager during the late-1970s, the lack of any new NASA missions to Mars during the 1980s […]
For young space enthusiasts like myself growing up in the 1970s, NASA’s Viking mission to Mars was one of the more exciting and memorable. The Viking […]
During the morning hours of July 4, 1997, I experienced a strange sense of déjà vu as I sat glued to the television set watching live […]
Without a doubt, the most memorable live event I had witnessed as a teenage space enthusiast was the landing of Viking 1 on the surface of […]
During my teens, I became a voracious reader of books on spaceflight, astronomy and (eventually) science in general. For whatever reason, there are certain stories I […]
About twenty years ago while I was still teaching classes in astronomy for a local adult and continuing education program, an elderly student of mine gave […]
One of the most exciting moments in a landing mission is when the first images from the surface of another world are returned back to Earth. […]
On January 25, 2004, NASA’s MER B (Mars Exploration Rover B) named Opportunity successfully landed at 1.95° S, 354.47° W on Meridiani Planum. After moving out […]
One of the most crucial phases of many interplanetary missions is orbit insertion. Everything must go right the first time, or the spacecraft fails to enter […]
By the beginning of 1963 as the crippled Mars 1 was making its way towards the Red Planet, Chief Designer Sergei Korolev and his team at […]
Mention NASA’s Viking mission to Mars in 1976 and its first-of-its-kind in situ search for life on another planet immediately comes to mind. While astrobiological experiments […]
As anyone with even a passing knowledge of spaceflight can tell you, space is an unforgiving place. While the majority of space missions launched today are […]
