Read article: How to build your own rocket
When I was first asked to review A Tribble’s Guide To Space, I thought – wrongly as it turned out – that the book was a send-up. Star Trek enthusiasts may recall that in one episode,...
Read article: Star high-school students find pulsar
Using data from the Chandra satellite, the young scientists pinpointed an X-ray source in the supernova remnant known as IC443 and asked the National Radio Astronomy Laboratory for data from the VLA t...
Read article: Martian sedimentary rocks suggest a watery past
One of the key questions in planetary science is whether the early climate of Mars was warm enough for liquid water – and hence extraterrestrial life – to exist. The layered rocks, thought...
Read article: Space to play a starring role in Europe’s future
ESA’s director general Antonio Rodotà appointed the committee in March 2000. Carl Bildt, former Swedish Prime Minister and UN Envoy to the Balkans, Jean Peyrelevade, President of Crédi...
Read article: Not the right stuff
Almost 40 years later, as the International Space Station takes shape, history is repeating itself. Of course, the space station has never been a scientific mission – its main purpose has always...
Read article: No space like home
Space station commander Bill Shepherd (US), Soyuz commander Yuri Gidzenko and flight engineer Sergei Krikalev have trained for four years in both Russia and the US in preparation for the expedition, w...
Southwood received his PhD from Imperial College, London, in 1966 and was appointed as lecturer in the physics department in 1971, where he rose to become head of department in 1984. He studied the pr...
Read article: ESA space missions: the next generation
The Bepi-Colombo mission will begin its trip to Mercury, the solar system’s innermost planet, in 2009. The spacecraft is expected to solve some long-standing puzzles about Mercury and provide in...
Read article: ‘Floating planets’ challenge theorists
Many planets have been discovered outside our solar system, but they are usually detected by observing the wobble of the parent star induced by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet. Zapatero ...
The Hubble constant, which is the rate at which the velocity of a galaxy increases with distance, is one of the most fundamental constants in cosmology. Astronomers can only obtain an accurate value f...
