The four hour and fifty-six minute flight around the world inside a tiny Mercury capsule named Friendship 7 was anything but routine for the brave American astronaut. Historic Flight On February 20th, 1962 a highly decorated captain in the United States Marine Corps named John Glenn became the [Continue]
There are a few ways to determine the altitude of your rocket. In a previous article we discussed using inclinometers and trigonometry. In this article we will discuss using electronics to measure the altitude of your rocket flight or more specifically using electronic altimeters for model rockets. [Continue]
One of the hottest news stories this week involves two 17-year-old high school students from the Greater Toronto Area launching a Canadian flag carrying Lego man into near space using a weather balloon. Their story has been picked up by many major news networks and broadcasts around the world. It [Continue]
To some, big rockets and small rockets, or better yet, high-power rockets and model rockets seem like pretty much the same product. However for those that spend a little bit of time in this field you may discover that the two pursuits can be quite different. Thus we have decided to create a new [Continue]
The ability to design and test your rocket before actually building it is quite the asset for the rocket designer. Many programs exist for this. One of these programs is the Java-based open source software named OpenRocket. About OpenRocket OpenRocket features realistic wind modeling, clustering [Continue]
Wouldn’t it be nice to fly around the world with such grace and speed as Santa Claus? Through the use of old magical technology Santa is able to cover the globe with a speed greater than any rocket or airplane. In this article we will discuss tracking Santa on his journey tonight. For those [Continue]
Just after 10 am local time, the Curiosity spacecraft lifted off from the Kennedy Space Centre aboard an Atlas V rocket carrying with it the biggest rover to travel to Mars. The rover, named Curiosity, stands about 3 metres or 9.8 feet tall and has an arm that extends 2 metres. A small nuclear [Continue]
Rockets are a useful tool for many pursuits ranging from educational tools to placing communications satellites into orbit. However, there is one use that has been brought up time again over the years and that is for the delivery of mail. That’s right, delivering mail through the use of [Continue]
The unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft was sent into orbit aboard a Long March-2F rocket this week. This is another step in China’s goal of setting up a manned Chinese space station. China had been unsuccessful in attempts to join the collection of countries involved with the International Space [Continue]
YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing website, has launched a contest challenging students to come up with new space experiments. YouTube’s Space Lab channel, in cooperation with NASA, JAXA and ESA, allows students to upload videos describing an experiment they would like to see [Continue]