The Soviet Union conducted an ambitious scientific program focused on studying Venus. They called their robotic spacecraft missions Venera and Vega. The launch technology for all these missions was the R-7, the Soviet’s most reliable rocket. There were many technology challenges

How do you tackle the subject of space, a significant contributor to our technological progress in the 20th and 21st century? In my previous blogs on space I have described the development of rocketry, a technology that gave us the means to reach beyond the outer atmosphere and establ

The Space Race was both ideological and technical. Which of the two nations, the United States or the Soviet Union had the means to solve the technical challenges posed by President Kennedy’s goal to send humans to the Moon and return them to Earth before 1970? We are more famil

I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction where humanity travelled as freely through space as we do on Earth. Our venture into space so far does not reflect the science fiction I read as a young man. Where the 20th century launched us for the first time into and beyond our atmosph