Meet Vanessa, the fastest woman to climb the highest mountain on each continent
Vanessa O’Brien is a British-American mountaineer, explorer, public speaker and former business executive. She’s the fastest woman in the world to have climbed the Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each continent—and has also skied the last degree (60 nautical miles) to both the North and South Poles. We caught up with the ever-enthusiastic ex-banker to hear … Continued
Space explorers discover our nearest known exoplanet, and it's potentially inhabited
Sky scouring scientists have just announced the discovery of an Earth-like exoplanet in orbit around our own sun’s nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. And, not only is this newly noticed world located on our galactic doorstep, it’s also positioned in the right proximity to its host star to make liquid water a possibility…so it could … Continued
10 amazing space missions you never knew about
Few things excite the human imagination like space travel. Missions to walk on the moon, land probes on speeding comets, or drive robots across Mars are undeniably thrilling, and remind us of just how far we’ve come from our humble primate roots. While the most electrifying missions are splashed across the headlines every few years, … Continued
The extraordinary story of the explorer who disappeared in Africa, then sent a 'friend request' 13-years-later
‘With the bicentenary of the death of the British explorer Mungo Park approaching, I thought it would be a fitting tribute to his memory to recreate his travels in post-colonial West Africa. I intend to follow the brief set for him by the African Association in 1795 to discover the River Niger and to follow … Continued
Spatial Awareness—5 years of cosmic exploration and revelation
As a new joint Euro-Russian space mission blasts off on a mission to Mars, to discover whether the planet’s methane is being produced by windy alien microorganisms living just below the red crust, we take a trip through the last five brain-blowing years of space exploration. Over the last half-decade, our understanding of the cosmos … Continued
5 things humans will need in order to start colonising space
Anyone who’s seen a few sci-fi films or TV shows knows that living in space has been a dream for generations of people on Earth. But while fictionalised versions of ourselves might be able to thrive in the unfathomably harsh environment of outer space, real humans have got a whole lot to think about before … Continued
This British explorer shares his experiences alone inside the world's largest forest (and no, it's not the Amazon)
As anyone who’s ever lost a game of Risk will know, Asia’s a big place, and there’s no bigger geographical region on the continent than Siberia. Covering more than five million square miles, this vast expanse of land first claimed by the Russian Tsars around the 17th century is also home to the world’s largest … Continued