Space
Miranda: The Weirdest Moon
MIRANDA – discovery: 1948-02-16 Miranda is one of the weirdest moons in the solar system. It is a medium-sized moon of Uranus, 130,000 kilometers (81,000 miles) from the planet and 484 kilometers (300 miles) in diameter. What makes Miranda strange is that it’s a hodge-podge of different shapes and features. It’s as if Miranda were [...]
A Formula For SETI
1960 AD GREEN BANK, WEST VIRGINIA Frank Drake, the man who conducted the first modern search for radio signals from other civilizations, developed a way of thinking about how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy. It’s now known as the Drake Equation: N = R x Fs x Fp x Ne x Fl [...]
"We've Had a Problem Here"
April 11, 1970 AD LUNAR ORBIT "Houston, we’ve had a problem here," astronaut John Swigert radioed Mission Control. Indeed Apollo 13 did have a problem. Two days after the April 11, 1970 liftoff the mission was 300,000 kilometers (about 200,000 miles) from home and hurtling towards the Moon. Suddenly there was a bang.
Comets: Beyond the Atmosphere
1572 AD HVEN ISLAND, DENMARK Just how far away are comets? The Greek philosopher Aristotle said they were disturbances in the atmosphere, but the great Danish astronomer Tycho (pronounced "TY-koh") Brahe proved him wrong. Copernicus had recently begun the revolution that would let us understand the universe, by showing that the Earth was not the [...]