Nikolai Semenovich Kardashev is not exactly a household name, unless you live in a house full of astrophysicists and other space watchers. Although he had an august career in science, culminating with a stint as chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences Council on Astronomy, he is best known in the West as the creator…

With the September 3rd launch from Cape Canaveral, SpaceX put 60 more Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). Including the prototypes, the Starlink satellite constellation currently consists of 713 satellites, but it is expected to contain at least 12,000 of the 500-pound satellites by its completion in 2027. Paperwork has also been filed with…

The Mars 2020 mission recently launched, carrying the rover Perseverance to the red planet. It will be the fifth rover operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and if all goes well, it will spend its ten to fourteen-year lifespan searching for signs of past or present life on Mars. But unlike the rovers that…