David Brown

Verified

Freelance Writer, Freelance

Louisiana, New Orleans

Arts and Entertainment, Environment, Science, Technology, U.S.

As seen in: Medium, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Barnes and Noble, Chicago Tribune, Scientific American, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Indian Express, The New Yorker and

Covers: Wine, space, and literature—ideally, all three at once.

Doesn't Cover: Politics

Author of THE MISSION (Custom House, 2021) and THE OUTSIDE CATS (Mariner, forthcoming). Words for the New Yorker, &c. // INACTIVE ACCOUNT. Text me instead.

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How NASA Launched Its Asteroid Killer

The DART mission, in which a spacecraft knocked an asteroid off course, is a rehearsal for saving the world.

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A Wine Tasting at the End of the World

The RV Araon was one small ship of many docked in Lyttelton Harbor on the morning of January 3, 2022, its sun…

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NASA's Nuclear Option May Be Crucial for Getting Humans to Mars

The pathway to humans on Mars lies through the atom, split. Far from Earth, whether in the void or on another…

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Why NASA Launched a Robotic Archaeologist Named Lucy

In a vast odyssey across the solar system, the mission will study asteroids known as Trojans that may contain…

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How to Plan a Space Mission

Rob Weryk discovered an interstellar object in his hotel room at the Marriott in Provo, Utah. Weryk, an astro…

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This Robot's Journey to an Icy Alien Moon Starts Beneath Antarctica

NASA scientists completed field tests in November of a floating rover they hope will one day travel to Europa…

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NASA Reopens Apollo Mission Control Room That Once Landed Men on Moon

The restored room is a museum piece, and yet it is alive, as though engineers stepped out briefly but would b…

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NASA Announces New Dragonfly Drone Mission to Explore Titan

The quadcopter was selected to study the moon of Saturn after a "Shark Tank"-like competition that lasted two…

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The Odyssey of OSIRIS-REx

The main entrance to Kennedy Space Center materializes at the end of a six-mile stretch of road, the 405, a t…

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When Congress Puts NASA on Hold, Planets Don't Wait

The United States asks NASA to do an extraordinary amount with very little money. Explore Mars, document clim…

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Space Exploration's Dark Future

One by one they flickered to life. Venus, first, in 1962, and two and a half years later, Mars. Our spacecraf…

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The Littlest Boy

The 1950s and '60s were a golden age of nuclear weapons design. Scientists and technicians at the Los Alamos …

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Roddy Doyle, Master of Working-Class Family Drama

There are readers of Roddy Doyle's fiction, and then there are readers, and I confess to falling into the lat…

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