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Joel Achenbach
For Joel Achenbach's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 26, 2013
Budget limits trim NASA's plans for big projects
The Cassini spacecraft is in splendid shape as it circles Saturn. Conceived in the 1980s and launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at the gas-giant planet in 2004 and has continued to deliver stunning images of the jewel of the solar system.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2013
Space industry faces choice for next direction
The air is so clear the mountains in the distance look almost fake, as if added digitally. The desert floor is runway-flat, with a few Joshua trees popping up randomly, like lost cowboys. The dominant feature is the sky, preposterously vast, beckoning test pilots, rocketeers and would-be space travelers.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 23, 2013
Dealey Plaza: birthplace of a mystery that still reverberates
Dealey Plaza is a depression. It is a shallow basin on the western edge of downtown, framed by concrete structures called pergolas and peristyles that were built in the late 1930s by the Works Progress Administration. Designed as a gateway to the city, the plaza is more of an ode to the automobile because the broad lawn is sliced by three converging streets: Elm, Main and Commerce. They slope from east to west and meet beneath a rail line in what is known as the triple underpass.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Oct 11, 2013
Social polarization dated back to Stone Age
Social polarization wasn't invented yesterday. Ask the scientists studying the bones of prehistoric Europeans. Hundreds of skeletal remains, many from a newly discovered cave in Germany, have produced a startling reminder of the power of social boundaries.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 23, 2013
Search for Mars life to continue despite rover's findings
Martian life is awfully cryptic — that is a scientific term; it means life that is out of sight, below the surface, burrowed into ecological niches not easily scrutinized by robotic sentinels from the planet Earth.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 15, 2013
2013: A space conundrum
Long ago, in a dreamier era, space stations were imagined as portals to the heavens. In the 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the huge structure twirled in orbit, aesthetically sublime, a relaxing way station for astronauts heading to the moon. It featured a Hilton and a Howard Johnson's.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 25, 2013
NASA's mission improbable: corral an asteroid
NASA is looking for a rock. It has to be out there somewhere — a small asteroid circling the sun and passing close to Earth. It can't be too big or too small. Something 6 to 9 meters in diameter would work. It can't be spinning too rapidly, or tumbling knees over elbows. It can't be a speed demon. And it shouldn't be a heap of loose material, like a rubble pile.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 18, 2013
Origin of gold found in neutron star bursts
Gold — atomic number 79, element symbol Au and the most widely beloved of the precious metals — might have its origin in extremely rare and violent explosions in the far reaches of outer space.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 16, 2013
Houston, we have a superstar: Crooning astronaut Hadfield's enthusiasm goes viral down on Earth
Chris Hadfield, who crawled out of a space capsule on the plains of Kazakhstan early Tuesday, is dealing with gravity for the first time in five months and sudden global celebrity after singing a gone-viral made-in-space music video.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 6, 2013
Remembering the awe that is Gettysburg
It was the biggest battle of the war, unequaled in scale and violence by anything seen before or since in North America. Two immense armies collided in the fields and orchards and woods around Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1863, and fought for three days with no quarter given, in arguably the pivotal moment of the great conflict that sits at the heart of American history.

Longform

High-end tourism is becoming more about the kinds of experiences that Japan's lesser-known places can provide.
Can Japan lure the jet-set class off the beaten path?