The United States appeared to lose their way after Viking landed on Mars. It may have been the lack of definitive proof of life that caused the hiatus. With the discounting of the Label Release experiment results biologists were no longer included in the Mars design team. The Viking d

Mars has always been less a mystery to astronomers than Venus. Through Earth-based telescopes the surface of the planet can easily be seen showing seasonal colour changes and  from time to time a shrouded look from dust temporarily suspended in the atmosphere because of storms. In the

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