Marianne Dyson, April 2019
On Apollo 14, Alan Shepard famously hit the first golf ball on the Moon. Because of the stiff space suit, he had to hit one-handed. After several tries, he sent it off camera and claimed it went
If Apollo Happened Today
Marianne Dyson, December 2018
Considering that we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo, and that NASA has contracted with Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines to provide new lander vehicles, I thought you all might enjoy this article I wrote that was originally published in Ad Astra in 2013.
Every year at space conference parties, enthusiasts have pondered the question: If we flew an Apollo mission to the Moon with today
China: First to the Far Side
Marianne Dyson, November 2018
No spacecraft has ever landed on the lunar far side. The only human-made object on the far side currently is NASA
The Right Stuff to be a Flight Director
Marianne Dyson, October 2018
Recently NASA announced the first woman, Holly Ridings, to be selected as Chief of the Flight Director
Stars of Different Colors
Marianne Dyson, September 2018
Visible in the evening starting this month, the two brightest stars of Orion are showing off their colors. But red Betelgeuse (Orion
Clean (Spacecraft) Air
Marianne Dyson, August 2018
With no air in space, lungs empty like popped balloons. Blood boils, turning people into giant bruises. Eyes pop and eardrums burst. Yuck!
People must have air. We need it to breathe, and we need its pressure on us so air and liquids inside us don’t escape. We also need the right mix of gases to stay healthy and avoid fires in space.
Providing clean spacecraft air for a three-year round trip to Mars is quite a challenge, but one we are learning how to meet thanks to the experience gained on the International Space Station. To help others (especially you science fiction writers out there!) understand and appreciate that there is more to the life support system than worrying about the Klingons causing a hull breach, I
Triangles to Mars
Marianne Dyson, July 2018
At the end of July, Mars will be its brightest in 15 years because it will be only 35.8 million miles (57.6 million kilometers) away. Since no one has ever been to Mars, how do we know this distance so precisely?
Triangles! If the length of one side and two angles of a triangle are known, the length of the other sides can be calculated. Way back in 1673, Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712) used this knowledge of triangles to estimate the distance to Mars. This method is called parallax. [Ref: A Teacher
Alan Bean: First Artist on the Moon
Marianne Dyson, June 2018
Apollo 12 Astronaut and Artist Alan Bean who died on May 26, 2018, kindly granted an interview to
Slowing Down from Space
Marianne Dyson May, 2018
Many people mistakenly think that there is no gravity in space, and thus all that
Wait! I
April 2018
My husband almost hung up on a call from the International Space Station. Because no one immediately responded to his hello, he assumed it was just another junk call with a built-in delay before some recorded sales pitch kicked in. Just as he was about to hang up, astronaut TJ Creamer said,