Explorer

The Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 that crossed the United States garnered international attention. Here in Canada we were treated to a beautiful partial solar eclipse, and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum attracted thousands of visitors to watch. Here NASA has published some of the ways the eclipse was watched, from the ground and from space. My favourite is the above picture because it has the Sun, which is 150 million kilometres away, the Moon, which is 400,000 kilometres away, and the

When you read a scientific story in a popular blog or magazine, many times you will see the caveat "artist interpretation" next to some of the accompanying images. This as a gross undersell of the time, effort, and most important, accuracy, that goes into developing the renders. While we don't know what a black hole or an exoplanet looks like, it is important to attempt to visualize them, and to do it as accurately as possible. This video is an interview with two people who are responsible for

In early April 2017, the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), a division of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), announced a new robotic explorer to be launched towards Mars in 2024: the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX). The goal is not to observe the red planet, but its two moons: Phobos and Deimos. These two moons (about 25 km wide) are just a fraction the size of Earth's Moon (about 3400 km wide), and their origins are still disputed. Maybe Phobos and Deimos were

Human's have been launching satellites into space since 1957, and now the current number of objects in orbit larger than 10 cm is about 23,000. The growing number poses a real threat to the future of space exploration. Humanity will need to solve this problem moving forward, and ideas are currently being discussed.