Students’ Very Own Space Agency: Space Concordia

Student projects are fun learning experiences. Some focus on dissecting frogs to learn about anatomy. Others germinate dried beans to learn about botany. However, some students prefer founding their own space agency. This is what students decided to do at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The organization, Space Concordia, conducts outreach campaigns in local schools. It also designs its […]

Plants in Space: Seeding Sustainable Exploration

If we are to sustainably explore other worlds, we need to grow plants in space. The importance of space botany to life off Earth was shown fictionally in The Martian – Matt Damon grew potatoes from stored tubers in order to survive his ordeal on the red planet. In fact, growing plants off Earth is no longer […]

Space Science in Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt intrigues general audiences. Its pyramids, Sphinx, and complex supernatural belief system have often attracted the attention of pseudoscience. Erich von Daniken’s popular and controversial book Chariots of Gods, for instance, speculated that extraterrestrials influenced ancient Egypt’s religion and civilization. Entertaining as such conjecture may be, scientists provide us with sounder explanations of […]

Brazil Leads Latin America’s Space Ambitions

The leading space program in Latin America is that of Brazil. The Barreira do Inferno Launch Center, for instance, began launching rockets in 1965. The center has since launched over two thousand sounding rockets, and it furthermore provides satellite tracking services. Another main facility is the Alcantara base, which in 2004 successfully launched its […]

Nations Compete in the Space Club

International politics is a tough game; countries have no one to turn to but themselves. Despite best efforts to create international institutions that promote more cooperative behavior, countries inevitably, it seems, revert to pursuing self-interest first and foremost. Today’s rise in nationalism, in stark contrast to the heady days of post-Cold War globalization, clearly […]

The Planetary Society: Bringing Space to the Ordinary Citizen

What can an individual do to advance space exploration? For a long time, the answer seemed to be: not much. Space exploration requires enormous resources that not even most states can afford. Nearly four decades ago, Carl Sagan, the doyen of space science and an inspiring science communicator, decided to do something to cultivate popular […]

Playing with the Building Blocks of the Universe

The universe is made of fundamental particles that cannot be divided. Despite there being more atoms in a grain of sand than there are stars in the universe, atoms are not the smallest building blocks of the universe. They are in fact composed of smaller, subatomic particles. Particle physics is the scientific field devoted […]

Australia’s Indigenous Astronomy Tradition

There is increasing recognition of non-Western astronomy traditions. Last year, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recognized 86 new star names from around the world. Four of those names come from languages of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is no surprise that these languages were able to contribute star names; Aboriginal Australians […]

Watching Stars Collide in the Heavens

Next time you bask in sunlight, remember our Sun may be an oddity. More than half the specks of light in the night sky are in fact multiple stars orbiting each other. Depending on the type of star, the chances of it being alone in a system range from anywhere between 43% and 85%. […]

Terraforming: Stranger than Science Fiction

Elon Musk and NASA are quarrelling about whether it is possible to terraform Mars. The debate is an old one. Terraforming (sometimes called ecopoiesis in the scientific literature) means to engineer an ecosystem so that it is suitable for human habitation, and the idea has been featured in popular culture for more than a […]