News Archive / Author: J.D. Taylor

JD Taylor was a long-time space enthusiast who, wanting to become more involved, opened his own space-themed news website: USAinSpace.com. Since the formation of this site, Taylor was introduced to the team at SpaceFlight Insider and opted to partner with SFI so as to be able to better tell the space exploration story.

Articles By J.D. Taylor

• Sen. Mikulski and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden visit Wallops Flight Facility

  May 4th, 2016

  WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, along with Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, visited NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The duo conducted a town hall meeting and a tour on Tuesday, May 3. Stopping off at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's (MARS) Pad 0A, the pair highlighted the importance of the agency's commercial partnerships, such as the one with Orbital ATK. The event was also used to denote the contributions of one of the attendees.

• Preview: Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’

  July 30th, 2015

  It is the movie many space tech enthusiasts have been waiting for: a big-screen adaptation of Andy Weir’s book “The Martian”. Directed by Ridley Scott, the movie, like the book, promises to be a technically-accurate, action-packed story of human ingenuity and endurance on Mars.

• Women in Space: Dr. Anna Fisher, one of the ‘Original Six’

  April 30th, 2015

  SpaceFlight Insider and USA in Space recently had a chance to interview U.S. astronaut Dr. Anna Lee Tingle Fisher. In 1978, Dr. Fisher was in the first group of six women ever selected to be American astronauts. Prior to 1978, women were not allowed into NASA’s Astronaut Training Program. In fact, the only woman to have […]

• Women in Space: Nicole Stott – More than 100 Days on orbit

  April 29th, 2015

  We interviewed Dr. Nicole Marie Passonno Stott, an American engineer and a NASA astronaut with more than 100 days of space experience. Dr. Stott joined NASA in 1988, as an Operations Engineer in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. In July of 2000, she was selected as a mission […]

• Women in Space: Dr. Jeanette Jo Epps and the next generation of NASA astronauts

  April 28th, 2015

  As part of our series about the contribution of Women in Aerospace, SpaceFlight Insider interviewed Dr. Jeanette Jo Epps, a CIA intelligence officer and current NASA astronaut preparing for her first mission into space. Epps is uncertain when that first space mission will occur, but she is excited about it just the same.

• Women in space: In the beginning…

  April 27th, 2015

  On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth. Although most Americans associate women in space with shuttle astronaut Sally Ride, the simple fact of the matter is that the first woman to travel into the blackness of space was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova who roared aloft on her Vostok […]

• Wallops Island to receive $20 million from federal budget to repair damaged the MARS Pad 0A

  December 12th, 2014

  The October explosion of the Orbital Science ORB-3 resupply mission rocket destined to the International Space Station caused an estimated $20 million in damage to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s (MARS) Pad 0A. It was not clear where the funding would come from to repair the damage. The state Virginia had stated that they did not […]

• SpaceShipTwo crashes in Mojave Desert, one pilot reported killed – UPDATE

  October 31st, 2014

  During a 12:19 p.m. EDT (16:19 GMT) powered test flight of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, the spacecraft encountered an in-flight anomaly and crashed into the Mojave Desert, according to a report appearing on Kern Golden Empire.com. The company referred to the loss of the spacecraft as a “serious anomaly” – which resulted in the loss of the spacecraft. […]

• NASA seeking ultra-lightweight materials to enable missions to Mars

  October 28th, 2014

  NASA is seeking proposals to develop and manufacture ultra-lightweight materials for aerospace vehicles and structures of the future. Currently and in the recent past, manufacturers have been using composite “sandwich” materials. Composite sandwich structures are made by attaching two thin skins to a lightweight honeycomb or foam cores. Today this type of composite is used […]