Duncan Steel • Sep 09, 2019 •
The Indian lunar lander and the rover it was carrying appear to have been destroyed when they plummeted to the surface after contact with them was lost when about 2 km up and a few minutes from the planned soft touchdown. Here I examine what one can deduce about what happened, and when, from the TV coverage of the situation … Read More
Duncan Steel • Sep 06, 2019 •
All being well, the Indian space probe Chandrayaan-2 now in orbit around the Moon will drop its lander safely and softly onto the surface on Saturday morning. The lander (named Vikram) will then roll out its rover (Pragyan), which it is hoped will prowl around for the next two weeks before the cold of the lunar night closes it down. Read More
Robert Hickson • Jul 17, 2019 •
There is a lot now being talked and written about the success of Apollo 11, and the Apollo space programme, half a century ago. The BBC podcast 13 minutes to the moon is fantastic. It tells well the story leading up to and during the 13 minutes that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to … Read More
Duncan Steel • Jul 16, 2019 •
The TV pictures of Neil Armstrong clambering down the ladder of the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module and taking the first steps by a human on the Moon’s surface are rightly iconic, though rather fuzzy. Most people seem to think that those images were received by the radio telescope at Parkes in New South Wales, largely because that was what … Read More
Duncan Steel • Jun 16, 2019 •
The name of Michael Faraday is well-known in science, for his pioneering work in both chemistry and physics (in particular electricity and magnetism; hence the name of the SI unit of capacitance, the farad). As a postgraduate student at the University of Canterbury I spent many hours working on experimental radio receivers sat inside a large metallic box … Read More
Duncan Steel • Jun 05, 2019 •
The Islamic fast of Ramadan has come to an end, marking the beginning of the tenth month of the religion’s twelve-lunation year and therefore Eid al-Fidr, the ‘Festival of Breaking the Fast’. How the decision is made when each of those months begins and ends depends upon the actual sighting of the crescent new moon in the sky, a highly-complicated … Read More
Duncan Steel • May 21, 2019 •
The scar on the lunar surface produced when the Israeli space probe ‘Beresheet’ slammed into the Moon on April 11 has just been spotted using an orbiting NASA satellite. Three nations have so far landed spacecraft on the Moon: the USA, the Soviet Union/Russia, and China. A fourth nation, Israel, has attempted to join this club, but its probe (named Beresheet) … Read More
Guest Author • Jan 18, 2018 •
Gary Li, University of California, Los Angeles; Danielle DeLatte, University of Tokyo; Jerome Gilleron, Georgia Institute of Technology; Samuel Wald, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Therese Jones, Pardee RAND Graduate School This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Forty-five years have passed since … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 27, 2017 •
Ian Crawford, UCL The search for life elsewhere in the universe is one of the most compelling aspects of modern science. Given its scientific importance, significant resources are devoted to this young science of astrobiology, ranging from rovers on Mars to telescopic observations of planets orbiting other stars. The holy grail of all this activity would be … Read More
Guest Author • Jun 07, 2016 •
By Professor Richard Easther This week, the University of Auckland (where I work) announced it is joining the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope collaboration. So what is the LSST, what will it do, and why are we so excited about it? Firstly, the LSST is, as the name suggests, a telescope. Currently under construction in the Chilean Andes, it is scheduled to see “first light” in … Read More