Category: Science

The Fourth Eye Opens On March 10, 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main engines for 27 minutes and slowed itself into orbit around the red planet. It had traveled more than 400 million kilometers in five months, launched atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral the previous August. The maneuver was critical;…

A Telescope Looking for Shadows On March 7, 2009, a Delta II rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying a spacecraft that weighed just over a ton. Its mission was deceptively simple: stare at a single patch of sky and measure the brightness of 150,000 stars with a precision never before attempted.…

Arriving at a World Between Worlds On March 6, 2015, a small spacecraft fired its ion engines and slowed itself into orbit around Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The maneuver was quiet, almost imperceptible—ion propulsion produces a thrust measured in ounces, more like a continuous whisper than a…

A Near Miss That Mattered On March 4, 1959, a small conical spacecraft weighing just 6.1 kilograms sailed past the Moon at a distance of roughly 60,000 kilometers. It was not close enough to photograph the surface, not close enough to enter lunar orbit, not close enough to achieve any of the objectives its designers…

A Committee for the Age of Flight On March 3, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation that created a small federal advisory body with a modest mandate and an unwieldy name. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics—NACA—was authorized to “supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their…

The First Step into the Dark On March 2, 1972, an Atlas-Centaur rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying a spacecraft that weighed just 258 kilograms. Its destination was Jupiter, 365 million miles away. But the scientists and engineers who built Pioneer 10 knew that if it survived the journey,…

The First Thing Humans Ever Sent to Another World On March 1, 1966, a spherical object no larger than a beach ball plunged into the atmosphere of Venus at roughly 11 kilometers per second. It was the lander module of Venera 3, a Soviet spacecraft launched sixteen weeks earlier from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The probe had…

A Road That Crosses Itself Without Stopping On February 29, 1916, a leap day in a leap year, the United States Patent Office granted Arthur Hale, a civil engineer from Maryland, patent number 1,176,331. The document described a highway interchange in which two roads crossed at different elevations, with loop ramps allowing traffic to merge…

A Secret in Plain Sight On February 28, 1959, a Thor-Agena rocket lifted off from the newly activated Vandenberg Air Force Base on the California coast. Its payload was called Discoverer 1, described to the public as a scientific research satellite carrying biological and radiation experiments into orbit. The press release was technically true. It…

When Scientists Paused to Ask Permission On February 27, 1975, a group of roughly 140 molecular biologists concluded five days of meetings at a conference center on the California coast and did something unprecedented in the history of science. They agreed to restrict their own research. The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, held at the…