Lab Notes
Akatsuki returns from the dead
It is Dec. 7, 2015. We’re in Sagamihara, Japan, a little southwest of Tokyo. On a clear day like today, you can just make...
The thundering launch of GOES-R
As the Atlas V rocket’s inferno lit up the night sky early in the evening of Nov. 19, 2016, it was as if the...
Colonizing Mars the SpaceX way
OK, so who is ready to go live on Mars? I saw a few hands go up there in the Boulder Weekly readership. Now...
The OSIRIS-REx mission: To Bennu and back
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...
Catching the solar eclipse
More than a century ago, Albert Einstein proposed a new theory of gravity, suggesting that concentrations of matter warp the underlying fabric of space,...
Juno reaches Jupiter
In Roman mythology, Jupiter is king of the gods and his wife Juno is the queen. Jupiter was known for his infidelity, so Juno...
Boosting solar physics
Shortly after the financial crash of 2008, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to stimulate the economy with $787 billion in...
Igniting space weather
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,...
Chasing alien megastructures
In 1960, physicist Freeman Dyson suggested that the energy demands of all technological civilizations would eventually exceed the natural resources of their home planet....
Tracking killer asteroids
In December 2004, astronomers in Arizona discovered an asteroid the size of a cruise ship that appeared to be on a collision course with...
Launching commercial spaceflight
Imagine boarding a brand new Boeing 747 on your way to Seattle. When you reach your destination a few hours later, after unloading the...
Engineering the climate
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...
