December 2014
Finding NEO
... with an object of one-kilometre diameter or more would release energy comparable to the explosion of all the world’s nuclear weapons and have catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. Such collisions happen about once or twice every...
March 2015
Twinkle, twinkle satellite
... use as purely driven by money, by “moonshots and world title fights.” He also expresses his anxiety over the nuclear standoff as a product of the Cold War, when he sings, “Used to look in on the children at night / In the glow of their...
June 2015
The new space ethics: COSPAR, Planetary Protection and beyond
..., by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” 26: Article IV of the OST prohibits outright the positioning and use of Nuclear weapons and Weapons of Mass destruction in orbit. As with much of the OST, this provision has been criticized...
June 2015
Finding asteroids before they find us
... it off course and not intersect with Earth. Over the years, we studied multiple options, from exploding a nuclear bomb near the asteroid to more recently sending robotic spacecraft on a high-velocity collision course. By 2010, one...
October 2015
Earth independence: new definitions of home on Mars missions and beyond
... speech, the United States had only a few minutes of spaceflight experience, gained by Alan Shepard atop a repurposed nuclear missile. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly eyes a floating bunch of fresh carrots as part of his year-long stay...
March 2016
Mining outer space may be cool but is it legal?
... which were being developed to loft probes into space in the mid-1950s were also designed to lob nuclear weapons at other nations. From this debate emerged the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) [7] which remains...
