Bringing bits of an asteroid back to Earth
The kidney-shaped asteroid 25143 Itokawa (shown below) has a length of 535 m and a mass of 3.5 × 1010 kg. Its eccentric 556-day orbit takes it just within Earth’s orbit and just beyond Mars’s orbit. On...
View ArticleA game of stones
This spring Jupiter and Venus shine close together in the evening sky. To naked-eye observers, the two planets appear as they did to our prehistoric ancestors—as bright stars that change slowly in...
View ArticleFive hundred small details
Among aficionados of men’s fashion, Cary Grant is as revered for his meticulous style as for his acting. His most celebrated suit—the lightweight woolen one he wore throughout North by Northwest—was...
View ArticleThe 2013–22 decadal survey in solar and space physics
Last Wednesday the National Academy of Sciences held a press conference in Washington, DC, to introduce its newly completed report on priorities for the coming decade in solar and space physics. Daniel...
View ArticleJames Bond in space
Ian Fleming’s third James Bond novel, Moonraker (1955), centers on a plot by Sir Hugo Drax, a British aerospace tycoon with a secret Nazi past, to bomb London with a missile armed with a Soviet nuclear...
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