Space

The key event in the return of the Artemis II crew was the moment of real drama during what mission controllers call Entry Interface. The capsule is 400,000 feet above the Earth and still traveling at 25,000 miles an hour. They were among the fastest humans even though they did not break the incoming speed of the Apollo 10 mission. It is only fourteen minutes until splashdown in the Pacific, there is no turning back, no second chance, re-entry will happen no matter what. A few hours earlier the crew donned their orange so-called crew survival suits and lowered their visors. In essence these are personal spacecraft providing everything they

Weren’t those images beamed back from the Artemis II mission something to catch the breath in the throat? If something in you wasn’t stirred by the sight of Earth, glimpsed through the window of the space capsule past the silhouetted face of the astronaut Christina Koch, I don’t think you can be fully alive. And what about the thought that for the first time in history, human eyes will look directly on the dark side of the moon; or that the inhabitants of that spacecraft will travel farther from our home than any humans have ever done? That for a few tens of minutes before earthrise, they will be wholly

Operation Epic Fury marks a turning point in the art of war. The key to 20th-century battles was air power. In the past, space and cyber activities have traditionally played supporting roles as so-called force multipliers. But this is no longer the case. In this conflict they have become mainstream, carving out new fronts for the wars of the future. The use of space is no longer something that is just nice to have, because everything from comms to intel to navigation uses space and cyber assets. Along with the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages US spy satellites, the US Space Force uses a global sensor network of ground-based telescopes

In the 1966 novel Colossus by British author D.F. Jones, a supercomputer (which goes by the name of Colossus) is given control and decision-making power over the US’s nuclear arsenal – a logical and unemotional computer being better placed, it is assumed, to make unemotional decisions than a human. Eventually, Colossus discovers the existence of a similar supercomputer in the USSR and begins communicating with its Russian counterpart in mathematical languages about technological advances beyond human comprehension. Frightened by the possibilities this presents, scientists sever the connection – only for Colossus to threaten to launch nuclear weapons if it isn’t reconnected. Colossus and its newfound Russian friend begin monitoring and controlling their

Even Elon Musk has to face a dose of reality every once in a while. Technology and politics have forced him to turn his gaze away from Mars, for the moment at least, to put Americans back on the surface of the Moon before China gets there. But it might already be too late. If America has any chance of beating China, it now seems inevitable that the next American human landing on the Moon will not be by Musk’s Starship but using a craft being developed by his rival Jeff Bezos. Announcing the pivot, Musk wrote on X: “For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a

When the Artemis II mission eventually blasts off, it will take humans back to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will travel further out into space than anyone before when they loop 4,700 miles beyond the Moon, seeing parts of it never before glimpsed by human eyes. The flight is designed to put the powerful Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule, with its European-made Service Module, through their paces. Three hours after launch, the crew will monitor a procedure not performed since 1972, so-called TLI – Trans-Lunar Injection. Only five of the

Donald Trump’s desire for Greenland is not just about access to oil, minerals and control of the new strategic and commercial corridors opening in the region. It’s also about data. Specifically, the most important data in the world. For decades, Pituffik Space Base – formerly Thule – in Greenland has been central to US space defense and Arctic strategy. It’s the US military’s only base above the Arctic Circle and their most northerly deep-water port and airstrip. It’s home to the 12th Space Warning Squadron. Its massive AN/FPS-132 radar has 240 degrees of coverage surveying the Arctic Ocean and Russia’s northern coast, especially the Kola peninsula where it has concentrated

The Amazon reviews for David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity don’t alert you to the fact that this is a book on theoretical physics. They sound more like a weepy divorcé’s YouTube comments below a Mark Knopfler guitar solo. “I didn’t so much read it,’ says one. “It read me.’ ‘I was honestly sad when it was over,’ writes another. “This book changed my way of seeing the world, politics, science and, most importantly, of seeing what I will understand as containing some truth.” When I talk to Deutsch – one of the most sensationally interesting theoretical physicists of our age – on Zoom, I see two beady eyes peering

Comets mark our progress, our sense of wonder and our fears

Internet lunatics and hopped-up podcasters are spinning fantastic tales about an extraterrestrial spacecraft

Space is becoming more dangerous