For about 15 minutes on July 21, 1961, American astronaut Gus Grissom[1] felt at the top of the world – and indeed he was.
Grissom crewed the Liberty Bell 7 mission[2], a ballistic test flight that launched him through the atmosphere from a rocket. During the test, he sat inside a small capsule and reached a peak of over 100 miles up...
Conventional wisdom holds that the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, once had a large population that crashed after living beyond its means and stripping the island of resources. A new research study[1] my colleagues and I conducted has struck another blow to this notion by using artificial intelligence to analyze satellite...
The space environment is harsh and full of extreme radiation[1]. Scientists designing spacecraft and satellites need materials that can withstand these conditions.
In a paper published in January 2024[2], my team[3] of materials researchers demonstrated that a next-generation semiconductor material[4] called metal-halide perovskite[5] can actually ...