Lab Notes

Launching commercial spaceflight

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Imagine boarding a brand new Boeing 747 on your way to Seattle. When you reach your destination a few hours later, after unloading the...

The OSIRIS-REx mission: To Bennu and back

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On Sept. 8, 2016, Dr. Vicky Hamilton watched as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification Security, Regolith Explorer) lifted clear of Cape Canaveral’s...

Blocking out the sun

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As seen from Earth, a solar eclipse takes place when the moon passes between the sun and Earth, partially or totally obscuring the sun....

Cheating extinction

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When a huge space-rock fell from the sky 66 million years ago, it quickly brought an end to the age of the dinosaurs. Rat-like...

Catching the solar eclipse

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More than a century ago, Albert Einstein proposed a new theory of gravity, suggesting that concentrations of matter warp the underlying fabric of space,...

Forecasting nature

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In 1973, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Accurate predictions of the weather several...

Experiencing research

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Imagine if you could test-drive your anticipated career before going through all of the effort and expense of obtaining the necessary education. It’s not...

Hitching a ride to orbit

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On April 23, SpaceX launched another crew of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the third successful mission of the commercial crew transport...

Igniting space weather

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In March 1989, a powerful eruption from the Sun slammed into the Earth’s magnetic field and took down a regional power grid in Canada,...

Engineering the climate

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Last month at a conference in Paris, 195 countries adopted a landmark agreement on how to respond to the Earth’s changing climate. The agreement...

New Horizons at Pluto

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In the 1960s, the Apollo missions to the moon inspired a generation of scientists and engineers to pursue careers in space exploration. On the heels of those successes, the Voyager missions to the outer solar system inspired my generation. I vividly remember the ...

Discovering Ultima Thule

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Four billion miles from the Earth on New Year’s Eve, a spacecraft traveling at 32,000 miles per hour zoomed past a tiny object roughly...