NASA

The James Webb Telescope

Introduction The James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope specifically designed to conduct infrared astronomy. Its high-resolution and high-sensitivity instrumentation allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope will find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe and peer through dusty clouds to…

Perseverance on Mars

Introduction It seems that every time we land on Mars the search for water and life gets stronger. The well-named Perseverance spacecraft is no exception. The vehicle is a car-sized rover designed to explore the crater Jezero as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. It was made by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on…

Return to the Moon

I thought I would check out what’s happening on the ‘Return to the Moon’ front for this month’s blog. There has obviously been no manned landings on the moon or manned trips around our natural satellite for decades, so what are the future plans? Maybe first up we can have a brief look at the…

Pre-human civilisations

Introduction The subject of technological pre-human civilisations on Earth is a contentious one. Surely we would have found something from a society that existed millions of years before ours. Or would we? Our current climate experiences suggest that things can happen very quickly, including devastating fire events, earthquakes and volcanoes. Maybe traces of an extinct…