Boeing’s Starliner OFT-2 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station in this stunning photo by European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. (Image credit: Samantha Cristoforetti / European Space Agency) It’s not every day a brand new spaceship arrives at the International Space Station. So when a Boeing Starliner space capsule made its historic first docking at … Read more
This story has been updated. It was originally published on February 9, 2018. When you’ve got a photo to show off, you do not necessarily want to plaster it all over your Twitter or Instagram accounts for the whole world to see. For example, you might want to display a photo of your adorable tot … Read more
A laser compressing an aluminum crystal provides a clearer view of a material’s plastic deformation, potentially leading to the design of stronger nuclear fusion materials and spacecraft shields. Imagine dropping a tennis ball onto a bedroom mattress. The tennis ball will bend the mattress a bit, but not permanently – pick the ball back up, … Read more
China began researching rocketry before the launch of Sputnik in 1957, but it was not until 1970 that the country launched its first satellite into orbit. Since then, China has launched more than 400 missions, and almost all of them have used the Long March (Changzheng) family of rockets. Read more about the history of … Read more
This article was originally featured on Popular Photography. Last weekend The New Yorker published an essay by Kyle Chayka with a headline guaranteed to pique my interest and raise my hackles: “Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart?” (March 18, 2022). Aside from being a prime example of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, it feeds into the … Read more
The 1956 Bay Area Rapid Transit master plan was full of high hopes and soon-to-be-failed dreams: BART cars crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Whisper-quiet trains arriving every 90 seconds. Stations as far away as Santa Rosa, Napa and Fairfield. But the part of the plan that sounded most like science fiction actually happened. “The heart … Read more
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has hit the southern port city of Mariupol particularly hard, as new satellite photos show. The Russian military has been besieging Mariupol for a week now, pounding the city with barrages of missiles and artillery. These weapons are hitting civilian as well as military targets; For example, one of Mariupol’s … Read more
UCF Knights conduct research around the globe to help understand and conserve wildlife. To celebrate World Wildlife Day, launched on March 3 by the United Nations in 1973 to help raise awareness about how people benefit from “fauna and flora,” we asked our Knights and our faculty to share some pictures from their field work. … Read more
The outcome was expected, but the visuals are still dramatic. On Friday (March 4), Russia removed a Soyuz rocket topped with 36 OneWeb internet satellites from its launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is managed jointly by the Russian Aerospace Forces and RoscosmosRussia’s federal space agency. The Soyuz was originally supposed to lift … Read more
Archaeologists may have just uncovered evidence for the oldest known practice of mummification. Human remains interred 8,000 years ago in the Sado Valley in Portugal, during the Mesolithic, appear to have been deliberately treated for mummification prior to burial. This is the first evidence for Mesolithic mummification in Europe. It also possibly the oldest in … Read more