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A woman with light skin tone and dark hair in a NASA tee shirt sits in a isokinetic testing chair in a laboratory.
Beyond the Films
May, 13, 2024

The Mars Mission Tightrope: My Experiences as an Analog Astronaut 

By Heather Archuletta Like most Gen-X children born in the Apollo years, I grew up convinced the Moon was conquered, lunar colonies would become common, and a Mars landing would surely be achieved by the turn of the millennia. When…
A German astronaut aboard a space station looks at the camera while holding CIMON, a robotic companion with a digital smiley face on its monitor.
Beyond the Films
May, 6, 2024

How Science Fiction Confronts the Real Isolation of Space

By Anthony Ha [Note: Some movie spoilers within.] If decades of science fiction have taught me one thing about being an astronaut, it’s that you have to watch out for existential terror and loneliness. Movies like Sunshine and Interstellar are…
German astronaut Alex Gerst looks out of the window of a space station.
Behind the Films
April, 29, 2024

What Extreme Outer Space Isolation Can Teach Humans

Filmmaker Ido Mizrahy was fascinated by space travel isolation from a young age, inspired and awed by science fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and the original Solaris. And he eventually turned that fascination into the documentary Space:…
A woman with light skin tone, brown hair, and a leather jacket photographs a human skull in a forensic lab. Various photographs of human skulls and skeletons hang on the wall behind her.
Beyond the Films
October, 9, 2023

Forensic Anthropology Tools of the Trade 

By Amy Whipple In 1992, forensic anthropologist Mercedes (Mimi) Doretti (pictured above, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1980s) traveled to El Salvador as part of a U.N.-sponsored team to investigate the 1981 El Mozote massacre. Almost 1,000 people had…