Mika McKinnon

This Is The Woman Who Replaced Skylab’s Destroyed Sunshield

When the Skylab orbital workshop was damaged on launch, it lost its sunshield and started overheating. This is a story of Alyene Baker saving the station, and a story of never underestimating the importance of being able to improvise with a sewing machine. Top image: Sewing a replacement sunshield for the damaged Skylab. Left to…

In The 1940s, These Ladies Were NASA’s Computer-Power

Before modern computers worked a foothold into science and research, number crunching was accomplished by real, human brains. These tasks were often foisted off onto women as the general opinion was that men were too easily distracted to undertake such a focused, repetitive task. Read on the rest of our tribute to these early human…

Can You Figure Out This Mystery Image?

This is active region 2177. Any guesses what that is? Hint: It’s on the Earth & Space subsite for a reason.

Winter In Los Angeles Comes With A Light Dusting Of Hail

While the east coast is buried in snow, Huntington Beach, California woke up to a scene far less severe certainly dramatic for the coastal desert: a beach coated in a thin layer of hail.

These Massive Machines Move Spacecraft Around Kennedy Space Center

These massive crawlers are still transporting spacecraft 50 years after first debuting at Kennedy Space Center.

Light As A Wave And A Particle In One Image For The First Time

We’ve seen light as a wave, and we’ve seen light as a particle, but for the first time, we now have one image with light playing the role of both wave and particle at the same time.

Coastal Iceland Is Even More Dramatic Under Dancing Aurora

The Reykjanes Peninsula Sea Stacks in Iceland are absolutely lovely; they grow even more lovely under green and purple aurora.

These Are The Beautifully-Illustrated Last Moments Of Long-Dead Creatures

We can get a lot wrong when reconstructing how a creature lived in life from just its bones. Gustave Lavalette got around this problem by drawing the creatures how he found them in death.

This Is A Temperature Map Of The Small Magellanic Cloud

ESA’s Herschel space observatory and NASA’s Spitzer space telescope joined forces to map out the temperatures of the Small Magellanic Cloud from a chilly -260°C to a relatively-warm -150°C. The Small Magellanic Cloud. Image credit:ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI From NASA’s image release: This new image shows the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light from the Herschel Space…

Ice Cracks Outline The Collapse Of A Drained Subglacial Lake

A subglacial lake in Greenland drained out from under the ice in 2011, leading to this mitten-shaped collapsed. Now Operation Icebridge scientists report the lake is slowly refilling. Ice collapsed over a now-empty subglacial lake, photographed on April 26, 2013. Image credit: NASA

The Villarcia Eruption In Chile Is Simply Gorgeous

The Villarica stratovolcano in Chile erupted late on March 3, 2015, producing gorgeous photographs of molten glowing rock against a starry sky. Image credit: AP Photo/ Lautaro Salinas

Rosetta Spots Its Shadow On Comet 67P

The Rosetta spacecraft spotted its shadow. Does that mean Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko is in for 6 more weeks of winter?

This Is The Secret To Clear Observations Through A Chaotic Atmosphere

You know it’s going to be a good night when a telescope fires a laser guide star straight into the heart of the Milky Way. Telescopes like the Yepun Telescope use lasers to create artificial stars in order to guide their adaptive optics to compensate for atmospheric motion. This allows ground-based telescopes to compete with…

Fragile Humans Spacewalk To Upgrade Space Station Communications

A pair of tiny, squishy astronauts braved the harsh vacuum of space to rig a new communications system on to the International Space Station. The new system is part of reconfiguring the station in preparation for the arrival of space taxis from the commercial crew program. Top image: Astronaut Butch Wimore is dwarfed by the…

It’s Been A Busy Year For A Tiny Planet Whirling Through Space

It’s the one-year io9iversary of Earth & Space, the physical sciences subsite for all your astronomy, geology, and planetary science needs. The Space subsite has been around a long time — the first article dates back to January 24, 2013, followed shortly by a stamp-memorial to the Challenger disaster — covering all things astronomy and…

These Tiny Satellites Just Left The International Space Station

A pair of nanosatellites were deployed by the NanoRacks Launcher on the end of the Japanese robotic arm of the International Space Station on Friday. The tiny CubeSats are loaded with tools to observe the planet. Top image: CubeSats released from the International Space Station on February 27, 2015. Credit: NASA/Sam Cristoforetti CubeSats are NASA’s…

The loss of Leonard Nimoy is hitting hard. So many people working in science, particularly in astronomy and space science, were influenced by his early work as Spock on Star Trek. It’s no surprise that the astronauts on the International Space Station have one final tribute to the ultimate science officer. Top image: Astronaut Samantha…

This Custom Shipping Container For Telescope Parts Is Fantastic

The James Webb Space Telescope takes carefully packing parts to new extremes: the packaging for the latest shipment weighted more than fifty times the actual part! This is the Space Telescope Transporter for Air Road and Sea, the shipping container for telescopes. https://gizmodo.com/the-next-generation-of-telescopes-will-take-us-closer-t-1606314839 The Space Telescope Transporter for Air Road and Sea (STTARS) is designed…

As Sea Ice Shrinks, Polar Bears Are Moving Farther North

Every summer, more sea ice melts, leaving polar bears with less territory for hunting. New genetic analysis reveals that recent generations of polar bears are migrating north to the Canadian archipelagos, a region where sea ice more reliably survives the warm summer months. Top image: Young female polar bear on an ice floe in northeaster…

The Colour Of That Dress Poses The Same Problem As Colour on Mars

Human wetware is astonishingly good at pattern recognition and interpreting complex, noisy data, but it’s also painfully buggy. Today, the internet came to a screeching halt debating a dress’s colour, but the same optical illusion is responsible for how uncertain we are about interpreting colours on Mars. When we send robotic explorers to Mars, we…