Of all the spacecraft humans have launched, there have been some impressively fast movers. But which holds the record? It’s not an entirely idle question. Apart from the wow factor, it’s an interesting yardstick for gauging our capacity to explore the cosmos, from familiar planets to the icy depths of space. However, as I quickly [...]

As the docking attempt between the Dragon cargo vehicle and the International Space Station gets underway, here are some of the latest images, plus the LIVE stream to the Dragon/ISS docking at the bottom! [Note: recorded video of final moments of capture by ISS arm now added below] …and shortly before this fly-under took place [...]

A funny thing happened recently on the way to Mars. A few days after the successful launch of NASA’s behemoth Curiosity rover with its Mars Science Laboratory instruments on November 26th 2011, a somewhat muted piece of news came out admitting that the strict biological planetary protection rules had not been adhered to quite as [...]

Another quick refurbishment from the archives, this one about the Juno mission to Jupiter. With any luck in a few hours Juno will launch and be on its way, arriving at Jupiter in 2016. This post was written while the spacecraft was still snug in its clean room.     The next post will be [...]