Cav's Place

Recent reports indicate that Jupiter‘s moon Europa may have small lakes much closer to the surface than the immense ocean long thought to exist beneath its thick frozen outer layer. According to the researchers, this not only improves the chances of life developing, due to an exchange of nutrients taking place between the lakes and […]

It was announced yesterday that the little rover that could, Opportunity, finally reached Endeavour crater. The actual event apparently took place the day before when, according to the update that was just posted, a drive of 62 meters took the resilient rover to the rim of the giant crater which it had been driving towards […]

Yesterday, at 16:25 GMT, Juno was successfully launched on its five-year journey to Jupiter. The launch, originally scheduled for 15:34 GMT, was delayed by an anomaly noticed during the final programmed launch timer hold. After several extensions of the hold, what was originally feared to be a helium leak in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage […]

In 1957 we were capable of putting the first artificial satellite in Earth orbit. In 1959 we managed the first lunar flyby and the first lunar landing, though it was not a soft landing. Then came 1961 and the first manned spaceflight. 1965 brought the first EVA. In 1966 we achieved the first soft landing […]

I seem to be writing a fair bit about space exploration lately, but there is good reason for that, as plenty of notable things are happening in that field. Some of them are worrying or even downright terrible, but more about that in the next post on the topic, assuming I’ll manage to stick to […]