Blog

Can you solve this grid-based logic puzzle about NASA? You are doing a science project about four of NASA’s spacecraft: Clipper, DAVINCI, Dragonfly and MAVEN. Each spacecraft will visit another planet in the solar system: Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They also have different launch dates: 2013, 2024, 2028 and 2030.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can create incredible images just from short, text-based prompts. AI’s ability to create imaginative pictures is perfect for the fiction story in each issue of Double Helix. So, we are carefully using an AI called Midjourney to generate these illustrations.

Finding one meteorite usually requires researchers to walk at least a few million square metres. Seamus Anderson from Curtin University has a way to speed up his meteorite hunts.

This quiz has a spacey flavour! So will you soar towards the stars and get full marks, or are you about to come crashing back to Earth?

Stars, telescopes, action! Can you catch the shooting star and get a 5/5 on this space quiz?

Imagine bacteria, clinging to a rock, floating deep in space. The rock was once blasted off its planet by a cataclysmic explosion. Hundreds of years in the future, the rock encounters a new planet, bringing these lonely bacteria with it. The question is, could the bacteria survive?

What’s 180 metres long, 30 metres wide, and travels between distant solar systems? No, it’s not a new NASA spacecraft. It’s a space rock known as ‘Oumuamua, and it’s the first known object from outside our solar system that has come to visit!

It’s been a wild ride through space for the Philae lander. Two years ago, Philae hitched a ride aboard the European Space Agency spacecraft Rosetta. Together they took a one-way trip to a comet known as 67P. This little lander became the first spacecraft to touchdown on a comet.

In some ways, Venus is Earth’s twin – it’s the closest planet to Earth, and it’s almost exactly the same size. But poor Venus flies too close to the Sun. Brighter sunlight and a runaway greenhouse effect makes Venus unbearably hot, with temperatures averaging more than 450 degrees Celsius.

Make some rocky road, and discover that there’s still heaps of space in a ‘full’ dish.