Missions, spacecraft and the people who fly and build them: the engineering of going somewhere and sending word back.
7 stories. Section line: Hydrogen-alpha, 656.3 nm.
Sriharikota is well placed for reaching geostationary orbit. For polar orbits, a neighbor is in the way. The arithmetic shows why a small rocket needs a different pad.
No launch date has been announced yet. Here is where India’s human spaceflight programme stands, who the astronauts are, what the first flights will do, and why the date keeps moving.
From the International Space Station, Kashmir and Sri Lanka are on the same horizon. We worked out how much of India fits in one look, what the eye can pick out from orbit, and when the station is visible from your city.
Vikram and Pragyan worked for less than two weeks in 2023. The papers have been arriving since. Here is what each instrument measured, what it means, and how sure scientists are, plus our own check on one surprising number.
On 18 November 2026, a radio signal from Earth needs a full day to reach Voyager 1. The arithmetic of that distance explains why the mission still works, and why it cannot work for much longer.
One spacecraft has visited the seventh planet, for a few hours in 1986. Forty years on, even its basic facts are being revised, and the calendar of Uranus’s long seasons is making the case for a return.
A photograph taken on Christmas Eve 1968 changed how people saw the planet, and it was turned on its side before anyone saw it. What the most famous pictures of Earth show, and what we did to them.