Space Station Threshold

Space biology experiments have just arrived in the classroom. With a focus on hundreds of K-12 students, a University of Colorado, Boulder payload will be launched on board Space Shuttle Endeavour on November 14th carrying spiders and butterfly larvae. The purpose? To provide an educational research tool for youngsters, helping to develop their ...

We already know that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the biggest, most expensive physics experiment ever carried out by mankind. Colliding relativistic particles at energies previously unimaginable (up to the 14 TeV mark by the end of the decade) will generate millions of particles (known and as yet to be discovered), that need [...]

On Wednesday August 27th, at 9 p.m. ET/PT in the US, the famed "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel will take on one of the biggest myths ever: the belief the Apollo Moon landings were faked. Some folks who lived through the 1960's never believed the moon landings actually happened, and some how this [...]

Puzzled about particle physics? Want to know what the inside of the Large Hadron Collider looks like? Like music, fun and science? Want to know for sure the LHC won't create a black hole that will swallow the Earth? Find all of the above in a rap song created by Kate McAlpine, [...]

You seem to like a nice series, so here's a new one Fraser and Pamela have been thinking about. Over the course of the next 4 weeks, they're going to cover each of the basic forces in the Universe. And this week, they're going to start with gravity; the force you're most familiar with. Gravity [...]

Former NASA astronaut and Rocketplane test pilot John Herrington has a new state-of-the-art vehicle of choice: a bike. But it’s a touring bike fully loaded with a GPS, laptop, broadband phone, and digital and video cameras. Herrington is embarking on a cross country bike trek to promote and encourage student participation in science, [...]

The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights are stunningly beautiful. But they can also disrupt radio communications and GPS signals, and even cause power outages. What's behind the ethereal Northern Lights that causes them to shimmer and dance with colorful lights while sometimes wreaking havoc with electrical systems here on Earth? Using a ...

All the best sci-fi films have them, and they may become our future automated space explorers. Currently, one of the biggest drawbacks for using robots in space is that they depend on human input (i.e. commands need to be sent for every robotic arm motion and every rover wheel rotation). This means that, especially with [...]

NASA’s Marshall and Ames Research Centers will team up with the commercial space company SpaceX to launch and deploy a solar sail this summer. A bread-box sized payload called NanoSail-D will travel to space onboard a SpaceX Falcon 1 Rocket and if all goes well, it will be the first fully deployed solar sail [...]

Astronomers and cosmologists endeavor to solve some of the great mysteries of the universe. One mystery scientists here at the AAS meeting in St. Louis are seriously trying to address is how to make science more interesting and accessible to the general public. While this issue has little cosmic implications, having a “science [...]