NASA
Why space is the perfect subject for podcasts
The podcasts I’m recommending to everyone at the moment are Nasa’s Curious Universe and the Royal Astronomical Society’s The Supermassive…
Acceptable for a hangover day: Fly Me to the Moon reviewed
Fly Me to the Moon is a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum set during the 1960s space…
The moon matters to China
China’s Chang’e-6 moon mission was launched on 3 May. It reached lunar orbit a few days later and began waiting…
Fools rush in: Mania, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
In an alternative universe where the Mental Parity Movement holds sway, the ignorant and unqualified are deemed ‘just as good as anyone else’ – with predictable results
Farewell, Voyager 1
Some time soon we will have to say farewell to our most distant emissary – the Voyager 1 spacecraft. After…
What would life on Mars actually look like?
It would need more than 100 million people to make it viable for a start – living in airlocked, subterranean bases, producing food and oxygen in artificially-lit greenhouses
How to talk to astronauts
Television has the pictures but the most spine-tingling moments in the recordings from the Apollo space missions are the bursts…
How to stop the Grenfell Tower disaster from happening again? Ask the air industry
It took a spate of air disasters in the late 1970s, in particular the Portland crash of United Airlines Flight…
The green giant
Environmentalism has gone too far; renewable energy is a disaster; scares about pesticides and chemicals are horribly overdone; no, the…
Stars in their eyes
‘The dominant narrative of space,’ I was told, in that strange language curators employ, ‘is America.’ Quite so. Kennedy stared…
Some watcher of the skies
We live in an age of astronomical marvels. Last year Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft made a daring rendezvous with the comet…
Dangerous characters
The world’s most expensive typing errors, and how they were made
Cosmic sublime
Mark Mason on the images that make grown men cry
