Author: Elizabeth Howell
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Should Australia have its own space agency?
Despite its lack of a space agency, Australia has a rich space heritage. Its telescopes, many of which are set up in desert areas, provide excellent views of the nighttime sky. It has dishes that stay in touch with NASA spacecraft (perhaps most famously, broadcasting Apollo 11 as the first lunar landing crew worked on…
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Astronauts And Some Australians Get Lonely. How To Fix? This Robot Could Be A Start.
Living alone can be an isolating experience, whether you’re in a remote area of the Outback, in a condo in downtown Sydney, or floating in the International Space Station. In the latter spot, to be sure, there are other astronauts on board and Mission Control is only a radio call away. Still, however, you’re away…
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The astronaut as an Outback handyman or handywoman
Perhaps the ultimate expression of Australian self-sufficiency is those workers in the remote areas of the Outback, digging for oil or dinosaur treasure or perhaps using a telescope to gaze at the stars, far from light pollution. In much of Australia, if something breaks, you’re going to have to find a way to fix it…
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Spiders on Mars? No, An Australian Radio Telescope!
Those white insect-like things you see in the picture are not spiders on Mars, but the array that they’re a part of could help astronomers understand how the universe and its life came to be. What you see there is the Murchison Widefield Array, a newly ready radio telescope in western Australia in a remote area…
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Australian scramjet test illustrates the importance of suborbital research
Space rocket launches tend to get a lot of attention in the media, particularly when humans are on board. There’s something a little … strange … about watching a human-made object make it into orbit, even as we’re well into our sixth decade of sending stuff into the solar system. While many people think that…
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Could Australian Terrain Help Train Future Mars Explorers?
How do you rehearse for a Martian space trip? Simulations can only bring astronauts so far when they’re figuring out a mission. A typical person training for the International Space Station can expect a combination of classroom work, spacewalk rehearsals in the water, and robotic arm training using articles that are very close to the…
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Is That Satellite Junk? Or An Important Piece of Australian History?
Please don’t go all Chicken Little on us, but do be aware: there’s thousands of pieces of metal orbiting above your head. Many of these satellites are dead (read: out of fuel and uncontrollable.) And if one happens to smash into another, the results could be catastrophic. Humans depend on satellites for everything from the…
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Could The Next Australian In Space Be A Paying Tourist?
A flurry of press articles went out this week after NASA announced its eight new astronaut candidates. The agency touted these people, who range from doctors to fighter pilots, as a generation of astronauts that will at last be trained for missions beyond Earth’s orbit. The agency is eyeing the moon, and Mars, as…
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The Value of Astronaut Photography of Earth
Earthlings were spoiled when Chris Hadfield turned his camera to Earth. The astronaut, just returned in May from a five-month mission to the International Space Station, uploaded dozens of pictures of Australia to his Twitter feed and other social networks. His observations ranged from the whimsical — “Jackson Pollock would have been even further…