Browsing: Science & Technology

A Brief History On September 12, 2013, the American space agency, NASA, reported that its spacecraft, Voyager 1, had become the first ever man-made object to leave our solar system. Digging Deeper Known as “interstellar space,” the space beyond our own solar system is also described as the “Heliopause,” a region beyond the reach of the “solar wind” effects of our sun.  Interstellar space is also roughly described as space beyond any of the orbiting planets, planetoids, and other space objects that go around our sun. In numbers you may be able to relate to, interstellar space begins about 11…

A Brief History On September 8, 1930, 3M, the better known name of what was the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, began selling their Scotch brand of household and office pressure sensitive tape, the transparent stuff no self-respecting school kid, office worker, or housewife would do without! (See our articles about inventions.) Digging Deeper Invented by engineer Richard Drew, the transparent cellophane tape product followed the invention of masking tape by the same man.  So prevalent and iconic did the Scotch Tape brand become, that virtually all transparent tape sold in the US today is commonly referred to as “Scotch…

A Brief History On September 4, 1998, a pair of Stanford University students founded what has become the premier internet search engine, Google, although Google is also heavily involved in other areas, such as software, AI, electronics, advertising, and cloud computing. Digging Deeper Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google, a company the BBC has called the “most powerful company in the world,” in the aptly named Menlo Park, California, an allusion to the site of Thomas Edison’s invention laboratory.  The 25 year old students, one from the USA and the other born in Moscow, Russia, were already college graduates…

A Brief History On September 3, 1976, an American Viking 2 spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars.  People have always dreamed of a Mars space expedition, and although this effort did not land any humans on the Red Planet, the fact that the US was able to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars certainly made the prospect of someday landing people on Mars more likely. Digging Deeper Viking 2 landed in an area called Utopia Planitia and was actually the second American spacecraft to land on Mars, the first being Viking 1, on July 20, 1976.  The first Earth…

A Brief History NASA’s planned launch of a new gigantic rocket called Artemis scheduled for August 29, 2022 has been scrubbed due to a problem with an engine, with a new launch date scheduled for September 2, 2022.  The launch vehicle is intended to take Americans to the Moon once again, perhaps in 2025 or 2026.  (See our other space based articles.) Note:  The rescheduled launch for September 2 was changed to September 3, but on September 3 NASA once again rescheduled the launch for September 5.  We’ll See!  Now they say September 27! Digging Deeper So why call this…