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10 Best Bets This Weekend: Robert Frank on Film, Jeff Goldblum, and the Moon

10 Best Bets This Weekend: Robert Frank on Film, Jeff Goldblum, and the Moon

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Best Bets This Weekend in Houston: Dog Show, Moor Fest and GONZO247's Jet

By Susie Tommaney
Jul 17, 2019

Imagine this weekend in Houston is a massive interactive scavenger hunt. Before Sunday is over, we'll have seen bar crawlers wearing Santa hats, dogs groomed to look like lions, a Hawker jet tricked out in 1960s colors, the first Moorish American festival in more than a century, and a simultaneous...
50 Years After Apollo 11: Earthrise, A Giant Leap, and Mission Splashdown

By Susie Tommaney
Jul 16, 2019

This week we continue our citywide celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. There's tons to see and do, plus discover more events in the first two stories in our series (shown below). This week we've got massive celebrations at Discovery Green, stormtroopers at the Children's...
50 Years After Apollo 11: Sky Fest, 50th Live and Space on Screen's Armstrong

By Susie Tommaney
Jul 9, 2019

As Houston continues its massive countdown to the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing on July 20, we've been celebrating the historic occasion with all sorts of space-themed activities, including live music and art, a 50th Live celebration at Space Center Houston, a screening of the new documentary...
50 Years After Apollo 11: Mission Tours, Moon Gazing and Conquering Gravity

By Susie Tommaney
Jul 1, 2019

Ten, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Liftoff! As Houston counts down to the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing (July 20), we're ramping up with all sorts of space-themed activities, including art, film, music and virtual reality experiences. Have you ever wondered what it...
Trailblazing Houstonians Who Helped Get Us On the Moon

By Susie Tommaney
Jun 11, 2019

Raise your hand if your boss ever promised a project that was so absurdly ambitious that, knowing what it would take to make it happen, you let out a groan of despair but also found yourself oddly excited at the challenge. And so it went for President John F. Kennedy's...
10 Best Bets This Weekend in Houston: Motown, Broadway and Deep Listening

By Susie Tommaney
May 23, 2019

Music is the common thread that runs through this Memorial Day weekend. We've got Motown's finest at Miller, Broadway's best with Houston Symphony and a couple of tributes to the late, great Pauline Oliveros. Film buffs can choose between a cerebral bicycle flick that follows the great migration and a...
Ray Viator Knows How Houston Earned the Name Space City

By Susie Tommaney
May 20, 2019

Almost 50 years ago, as those glued to television sets were collectively holding their breath while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin completed their lunar module landing tasks, we heard those now famous words: "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." The Apollo 11 lunar landing forever cemented Houston as Space City in...
The Weather Doesn't Stop Houston From Coming Out For Comicpalooza 2019

By DeVaughn Douglas
May 11, 2019

The overnight weather may have shuttered other businesses in the city, but it didn’t stop Houston’s annual Comicpalooza from touching down at the George R Brown Convention Center Friday morning. The event, first started to highlight the works of local creators, has come a long way since its beginnings in...
Visit The Red Planet With SPA's Exploring Mars

By Sam Byrd
May 2, 2019

Society for the Performing Arts will present Kobie Boykins, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory mechanical engineer, for Exploring Mars as part of its National Geographic Live partnership at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Wortham Center's Cullen Theater.
15 Shows to Kick Off Your Podcast Habit in 2019

By Carlos Brandon
Jan 28, 2019

Stop us if you've heard this before — the podcast industry is booming. Sometime around 2014, podcasts went from niche to mainstream overnight thanks in no small part to Sarah Koenig and her unfathomably popular true crime podcast, Serial. While podcasting had, in theory, been around since the 1980s and in...
NASA's Voyager Golden Record Now Available to the Public

By Dianna Wray
Nov 28, 2017

It's been 30 years since NASA scientists launched the famed Golden Records — described by NASA as a mixed tape "intended to communicate the story of our world to extraterrestrials" — on Voyager spacecrafts 1 and 2, and while aliens have had the opportunity to give the records a listen...
NASA Scientist Held in Turkey Denied Bail Yet Again

By Dianna Wray
Nov 20, 2017

At this point it's not exactly a surprise that Serkan Golge, a 37-year-old physicist and U.S.-Turkish dual citizen who has been held in Turkey for more than a year on charges of his alleged involvement in the failed coup last year, was once again denied bail at his latest hearing...
Long Spaceflights Squish the Brains of Astronauts, Study Finds

By Dianna Wray
Nov 6, 2017

It's been understood for a while now that spending time in space can damage the bodies of astronauts. Famed retired Astronaut Capt. Scott Kelly has noted in both his public appearances and in his recently published memoir, "Endurance: A Year in Space," that he knew going into his final mission...
Lamar Smith, the Anti-Climate Change-iest Congressman, Is Retiring in 2018

By Dianna Wray
Nov 3, 2017

Representative Lamar Smith, the chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, says he will not seek re-election in 2018. Smith, a San Antonio Republican, has held his seat since 1987 and there had been rumors knocking around Congress for a while that he might opt to retire after...
Five Reasons "Houston, We Have a Problem" Is So Annoying to Houstonians

By Jeff Balke
Oct 31, 2017

It's as if people, especially writers and editors, sit around looking for a good reason to unearth that phrase.
Astronaut Paul Weitz, Who Helped Save Skylab, Dies at 85

By Dianna Wray
Oct 27, 2017

Astronaut Paul Weitz, whose swearing lit up the Johnson Space Center Mission Control in Houston back in 1973 before he and two other astronauts managed to repair Skylab, has died at the age of 85. Weitz, born in Erie, Pennsylvania, developed a fascination with flight early on, leading him to...
U.S. Consulate Finally Allowed to See NASA Scientist Held in Turkey

By Dianna Wray
Oct 25, 2017

After sitting in a Turkish jail cell for more than year, Serkan Golge, the 37-year-old NASA scientist who holds both Turkish and American citizenship, has finally been allowed to meet with a representative from the U.S. Consulate in Ankara. Golge, a physicist who works as a senior researcher at NASA's...
NASA Could Be Repeating Fatal Columbia Mistakes, Report Warns

By Dianna Wray
Oct 23, 2017

They say those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. A recent report on NASA's Space Launch System, the Orion spacecraft and the Exploration Ground System — the three systems that are supposed to eventually work together to allow NASA to start launching astronauts into space from U.S...
NASA Partners With Russia to Send Crewed Missions to Deep Space

By Dianna Wray
Oct 2, 2017

NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos have announced a new partnership for human exploration of the moon and deep space. The agencies signed a joint statement on cooperation Wednesday at the 68th International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia. In other words, NASA is most likely going back to the...
Don't Worry, NASA Says — Armageddon Will Not Begin on Saturday

By Dianna Wray
Sep 21, 2017

Some people are fairly possibly certain that the world is going to reach the beginning of the end this Saturday. Why? Well, because of a four-minute video by the evangelical Christian publication Unsealed that is making the rounds. In the viral video, "September 23, 2017: You Need to See This,"...