challenges of getting to mars: curiosity's seven minutes of terror
team members at NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory share the challenges of Curiosity’s final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars.
the new planetary habitability index
astronomers often estimate the habitability of extrasolar planets and moons based mostly on their temperatures and distance from the nearest star. a team of astrobiologists has now proposed a rubric that includes four groups of variables, each of which is weighted by its importance to sustaining life.
“The original Apollo project was mainly a race to prove the superiority of American capitalism over Soviet communism. Capitalism won—but at the cost of creating, in NASA, one of the largest bureaucracies in American history.”
the economist
