The reality of being able to live and settle on Martian or lunar bases can seem like it is getting close. To do this, we need to be able to grow our own food there. This is a category of space agriculture called in-situ resource utilization, a fancy way of saying “using what is already there instead of bringing…
Altruism, in principle, is selfless action for the well-being of others. Altruism may help us achieve our space exploration goals. Space agencies like NASA, SpaceX, and ESA are funding new projects to commercialize asteroids, the Moon, and Mars. These projects could deliver economic as well as scientific benefits…
Humans are not built for Mars. Or rather, Mars isn't built for us, yet. Understanding the sacrifices such a massive undertaking needs is important to its success.
Since we are currently unable to visit some of the distant places in our solar system, we send probes to visit them for us. Only four spacecraft have visited Saturn, and for roughly 20 years some of the best data we had were images taken during the flybys of Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2. That changed with the…
Experiments on the International Space Station found that lichens, a combination of algae and fungi, survived in space-like, flight, and Mars-like environments.
Space is a dangerous place. Astronauts are wrapped up in layers of protection that regulate pressure, temperature, and oxygen. This protection has been developed through decades of medical research and testing, just to keep astronauts alive. The main space hazards that astronauts need to be protected from are rapid…
Baryon acoustic oscillations, an artifact remaining from the Big Bang, can be used by scientists to measure cosmological distances regardless of how the distances are changing. Soon after the Big Bang, the beginning of our universe, all of the matter of the universe was packed densely into a much smaller space. The…
