Mika McKinnon, Quartz

Mika McKinnon

Quartz

United States

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Recent:
  • Unknown
Past:
  • Quartz
  • Gizmodo
  • The Daily Beast
  • ABC.net.au
  • Gizmodo India
  • Gizmodo UK

Past articles by Mika:

Astronauts will bake cookies in space to see how they cook in zero gravity

What happens when cookies are baked in space? Will they puff into fluffballs, or be dense fudgy spheres? Will they have crispy caramelized edges, or gooey middles? → Read More

Scientists Aren’t Sure What Triggered Indonesia’s Deadly Tsunami

Late on Friday, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck near Sulawesi, Indonesia, quickly followed by a highly localized, intense, and devastating tsunami. Waves up to 18 feet high inundated Palu Bay, drowning a beach festival, destroying buildings, and claiming over 800 lives. → Read More

Infuriating Fog and Exhilarating Geophysics: Behind the Scenes of NASA's InSight Launch to Mars

On Saturday, for the first time, a rocket blasted off from the US West Coast to fling its payload on an interplanetary trajectory. Despite being at Vandenberg Air Force Base for Mars InSight’s historic launch atop an Atlas V rocket, I never saw the spacecraft before it tore free from Earth’s greedy grasp. → Read More

How Engineers Tested the Super-Sensitive Seismometer That Will Detect Quakes on Mars

If all goes according to plan, NASA’s Mars InSight mission will launch this weekend from California. Onboard the Atlas V-401 rocket is the InSight lander, a nearly 800-pound machine loaded up with cameras, a robotic arm, a heat probe, and a seismometer that, for the first time, will allow us to examine the inner structure of the Red Planet. → Read More

A Swarm of Shoebox Satellites In the Sky Will Predict the Next Natural Disaster

These tiny cameras snap photos from above Earth's atmosphere, chronicling every movement of land and sea—and more. → Read More

Cassini Took One Last Look at a Mysterious Glitch in Saturn's Rings Before It Died

Peggy is something along the edge of Saturn’s ring, a glitch whose source we’ve never seen. Cassini took a last peek at Peggy during its Grand Finale destructive plunge, adding a final piece to the puzzle for future researchers to pour over when trying to understand this mysterious disturbance. → Read More

Cassini Took One Last Look at a Mysterious Glitch in Saturn's Rings Before It Died

Peggy is something along the edge of Saturn’s ring, a glitch whose source we’ve never seen. Cassini took a last peek at Peggy during its Grand Finale destructive plunge, adding a final piece to the puzzle for future researchers to pore over when trying to understand this mysterious disturbance. → Read More

The Cassini Team Reflects on How it Feels to Say Goodbye to Their Spacecraft

Yesterday morning, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft slammed into the day side of Saturn, the brief flash of its vaporization marking the end of a 13-year mission. But it took people to turn this hunk of aluminum and silicon into an extension of our curiosity. → Read More

The Cassini Team Reflects on How it Feels to Say Goodbye to Their Spacecraft

Yesterday morning, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft slammed into the day side of Saturn, the brief flash of its vaporization marking the end of a 13-year mission. But it took people to turn this hunk of aluminum and silicon into an extension of our curiosity. → Read More

How to make people angry: write about science

Thinking of becoming a science communicator? It's a terrific job, but be aware that you could find yourself being attacked for not believing the Earth is flat, or even just being a woman. → Read More

This Startup Is Creating Stories That Adapt, Learn, Evolve, and Breed

Why do stories need to be linear and repeatable? What if instead of finishing a movie, you could keep exploring it? What if your favorite side-character could become central to the plot? Why can’t we harness technology to explore our creativity in a new hybrid of full-interactive, immersive animation? A new startup is determined to do just that. MashUp Machine seeks to bring the creativity and… → Read More

The Sun's Magnetic Field Is a Beautifully Complicated Riddle

It’s taken half a century, but we’re finally getting a handle on our Sun’s complex magnetic field. A new model from NASA captures the strange surface interactions that create dramatic swirls of plasma and corneal mass ejections .If we can better understand the Sun’s magnetic field, we might one day be able to predict when it will have an eruption triggering a solar storm. → Read More

This Two-in-One Satellite Will Bring Us One Step Closer to Asteroid Mining

Astronauts fired this small, rectangular hunk from the International Space Station today. The payload will separate into two autonomous satellites as part of a research program to take us one tiny step closer towards making asteroid mining a reality. → Read More

Savor the Snow from Far, Far Away

It’s hard to remember the beauty of winter when constantly shovelling walkways, scraping ice off cars, and tromping through freezing slush. That’s why it’s nice to get a view from above, far away from the chilly realities of the season. → Read More

Wanted: Reusable Rockets for NASA Research

Reusable rockets just went from a party trick to a research necessity. Have a rocket you can launch, land safely, and launch again? NASA wants you, now. → Read More

A Timeline of the Tragic Shuttle Launch That Changed NASA Forever

Thirty years ago, the space shuttle Challenger exploded. The tragedy shocked a nation caught in launch fever, and reshaped how NASA thought about risk. → Read More

Cygnus Is the Cutest of the Space Station Cargo Craft

The new Cygnus spacecraft is the cheeriest of the cargo tugs hauling gear to the International Space Station. Those new round solar panels are effective, efficient, and adorable! → Read More

This Robotic Arm Slips James Webb's Mirrors Exactly Where They Need to Be

We’re openly obsessed with the assembly of the segmented origami mirror for the James Webb Space Telescope. A gorgeous photo released today reveals the secret of an enormous robotic arm used to place the mirror segments to within a paper’s width of perfection. → Read More

This Might Be the Prettiest Mine We've Ever Seen

All these rich greens usually mean vegetation, but this is an arid, salty land almost totally inhospitable to plants. Instead, those are the markers of a brine rich in minerals, concentrated as the water evaporates. → Read More

The Tragedy of Apollo 1 Reshaped the Future of NASA

Today was supposed to mark the first day of human flights for the Apollo program. Instead, flames exploded inside the capsule during a pre-flight test. The fatal accident changed the nature of America’s space program. → Read More