Man Enters Space
12.04.1996

Thirty five years ago today, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. On April 12, 1961, his remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth.

Working in Space
23.05.2004

High above planet Earth, a human helps an ailing machine. The machine, in this potentially touching story, is the Hubble Space Telescope, which is not in the picture. The human is Astronaut Steven L.

Hubble Floats Free
24.11.2002

Why put observatories in space? Most telescopes are on the ground. On the ground, you can deploy a heavier telescope and fix it more easily. The trouble is that Earth-bound telescopes must look through the Earth's atmosphere.

Fullerenes as Miniature Cosmic Time Capsules
29.03.2000

Scientists have found, unexpectedly, tiny time capsules from billions of years in the past. The discovery involves small molecules that can apparently become trapped during the formation of large enclosed molecules known as fullerenes, or buckyballs. Luann Becker (U.

Construction of International Space Station Begins
23.02.1999

Move over Mir, here comes the International Space Station. In December 1998, the crew of Space Shuttle Endeavour started construction by joining the U.S.-built Unity node with the Russian-built Zarya module. A close look at the above IMAX(r) photograph will reveal two astronauts working on Unity.

Albert Einstein Describes Space and Time
8.01.2000

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is considered by many the greatest astrophysicist and single most significant Person of the 20th Century. He is pictured here in the Swiss Patent Office where he did much of his defining work.

A Higher Dimensional Universe
18.03.2007

Does our universe have higher but unusual spatial dimensions? This idea has been gaining popularity to help explain why vastly separated parts of our universe appear so similar, and why the geometry of our universe does not seem to result naturally from the amounts of matter it seems to contain.

The USNO Millennium Time Ball
29.10.1999

In the nineteenth century, dropping a time ball from a prominent location was a practical way of communicating the time to the surrounding country side and ships at sea. Initiating a fledgling time service for the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory dropped a time ball at precisely noon every day begining in 1845.

Walking in Space
1.08.1999

Pictured above is the first american astronaut to walk in space: Edward White. White is seen floating outside the Gemini 4 capsule in 1965. The term spacewalk is deceiving since astronauts do not actually walk - they float - usually without their feet touching anything solid. White was connected to the spaceship only by a thick tether.

A Tether in Space
28.03.2005

One of the greatest unrequited legends of outer space is the tether. Tethers, long strands of material, hold the promise of stabilizing satellites, generating electricity, and allowing easy transportation. Possibly the most extreme vision of the space tether is the space elevator popularized by Arthur C.