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That’s the title of a new book that reopens (for the umpteenth time) the 50-year-old mystery of how, or rather why, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others died in a plane crash on September 18, 1961, during a peacekeeping mission to Congo. Was it really just an accident, as official investigations concluded at the time? Or was the Swedish diplomat murdered by European or American interests scheming to keep control of Congo’s mineral resources or advance some Cold War strategy?

Author Susan Williams goes over all the rumors and inconsistencies that have fueled conspiracy theories for half a century: bullets found in the bodies of two of the Swedish soldiers onboard the crashed Douglas DC-6B; the fact that Hammarskjöld’s body was found at a distance from the charred wreckage, and was the only one of the 16 that wasn’t burned; the mysterious “playing card” reportedly sticking out from his collar in photographs taken on the scene—was it the ace of spades, the “death card?” After weighing the evidence, digging through previously secret files, and interviewing the obligatory Eyewitnesses Only Now Breaking Their Silence, Williams comes to the conclusion, as quoted in The Guardian, that “We don’t have any smoking gun or killer evidence but on the balance of probability on the basis of the evidence I collected, my view would be that the Hammarskjöld plane was attacked in the sky by a second plane.” The Secretary General’s nephew has called for a new inquiry into the accident.

Hammarskjöld's coffin arriving in Geneva. (UN/DPI)

But if others are to be believed, the answer is far more mundane, and there’s no villain in this story. It was The Big Sleep that did it: The DC-6 pilots were simply so tired at the end of their six-and-a-half-hour night flight that they lost their bearings, came in too low, and crashed into the trees. “By using modern fatigue models, we can show that the schedule that this crew flew on the day of the accident would have made them tired to a point of impairment when the accident occurred,” Flight Safety Foundation president William Voss told the Associated Press.

Rather than try to settle the matter definitively, which  may be impossible after all these years, maybe it’s best to fall back on the extremely thorough April 1962 U.N. report on the crash. Was it sabotage? “There is no convincing evidence that any witness heard or saw an explosion before the crash,” concluded the investigators. Although one of the victims, who lived for a few days after the accident, spoke of an explosion, the investigators thought it likely he had heard the sound of the left wing being torn off as it struck the trees, or the fuel tanks exploding on impact.

Was the DC-6 shot down? Except for its too-low altitude, the aircraft was in a normal, level approach at the time it hit the trees, flying at a normal speed. So it wasn’t plummeting. Some technical malfunction, maybe? Again, the approach was perfectly normal except for being too low, and the recovered altimeters showed no obvious defects.

Human error? People have theorized that the pilots were using a chart for the wrong airport, or that they misread 4,600 feet on the altimeter for 6,400 feet, or, yes, that they were fatigued. But the DC-6 had three pilots onboard, and sleeping accommodations. Maybe the entire crew was momentarily distracted. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. And that’s about where the 1962 commission left it.

One matter they did settle, though, at least to their own satisfaction: Those bullets in the soldier’s bodies? They only barely penetrated the skin. When the airplane exploded, so had a cache of ammunition that was onboard. No mysterious gunman required.

NOAA, taking a page from one of the best worst disaster movies, has designed a tiny plane to measure the heartbeat of a hurricane.  The real scientists understandably upgrade from sliced-up Coke cans (and sure, if you want to get picky, the movie is about tornadoes), to a state-of-the-art drone.  According to the Sun-Sentinel, GALE is a three-foot long, eight pound UAV that can be shot into the eye of a hurricane to collect data that should tell us more about how the ocean interacts with the atmosphere within the storms.  Its name doesn’t seem to be an acronym so much as an emphatic prediction of its death cry — after using most of its power traversing the calmer center, operators will send it into the eyewall. With any hope, the data from GALE will help the National Hurricane Center make more accurate predictions about storm strength, an ability proven much more elusive than predicting their paths.

GALE, NOAA's latest UAV to fly into hurricanes

GALE was designed in part with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and cost $30,000; they’ll be tested this year and then sent into two hurricanes next year.  It’s not the first drone to check out a hurricane — NOAA successfully flew the ten-foot Mark 3 Aerosonde UAV into Hurricane Ophelia in 2005. NASA has also been using the much larger, 44-foot unmanned Global Hawk to study hurricanes.

Pretty much all of the 67 Chinese high school students who attended a special five-day Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, last month were exceptional in some way, says Tim Hall of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. “I was impressed — they obviously had a great understanding of math and science.”

But two of the 16-year-olds stood out even in select company: “Mark” Yang and Tianxiong Zhai, who in America finds it easier to go by “Jack.” Both boys’ fathers have been in space. Mark is the son of Yang Liwei,  China’s first astronaut, who flew on the Shenzhou 5 mission in 2003. And three years ago tomorrow, Jack’s father, Zhai Zhigang, performed the country’s first spacewalk on Shenzhou 7.

Jack in one of Space Camp's mission modules. (Photo: Space Camp)

Yang Liwei and son. (Photo: Space Camp)

The two astro-sons visited as China prepares for its next step in space, an unmanned docking with a target vehicle that could launch as early as this week according to Chinese press reports.

It was the second trip to Space Camp for Yang, who like his friend Zhai lives in a neighborhood near the astronaut training center in Beijing and attends a university preparatory school focused on science and technology.

This time Yang’s cousin came along, but no parents. The Space Camp “missions” included a simulated spacewalk and shuttle launch, as well as simulated aerial combat. Despite their famous fathers, Mark and Jack acted like any other teenager interested in space and aviation, says Hall. In fact, at one point Yang made it clear he was done talking about being the son of a national hero. “My father’s my father, and I am I,” he said in response to one question. End of discussion.

Jack (left) and Mark in the U.S. Space and Rocket Center's 3D Theater. (Photo: Space Camp)

Among the things one expects to find while sifting through former President Bill Clinton’s stuff, a lost moon rock might be low on the list.  The half ounce piece, one of the Goodwill Moon Rocks brought back on Apollo 17, was given to Arkansas three decades ago and reported missing sometime last year. Wednesday morning, reports the AP, an archivist who was looking through the former governor’s papers opened a box and discovered it. No one knows how it got in there, but the archivist, Bobby Roberts, who directs the Central Arkansas Library System, seems content to set ‘em up and knock ‘em down, “I guess it’s one more Arkansas mystery solved.”

Apollo 11 moon rocks. Photo credit: NASA

This recently found moon rock is one of about 200 small fragments presented as gifts to foreign nations, U.S. states and territories. All were sliced from a single Apollo 17 sample, number 70017, and many are unaccounted for today. Various investigations have been pursued over the years to track down these and other missing moon rocks, including Operation Lunar Eclipse, the joint sting operation between NASA, the U.S. Postal Service and U.S. Customs that recovered the Goodwill Moon Rock originally given to Honduras.  Another somewhat famous escapade includes the interns at Johnson Space Center who smuggled out a 600 pound safe containing samples from all the Apollo missions (the F.B.I. caught them).

NASA’s Office of the Inspector General keeps tabs on any information surfacing about moon rocks, both to collect missing pieces and to sweep counterfeit rocks off the market. Updates are published in the office’s semi-annual reports — just last year they recovered a Goodwill Moon Rock intended as a gift to Cyprus (pdf), however, “The plaque had been intended for delivery by a U.S. diplomat to the people of Cyprus as a gift when hostilities broke out in that country. The plaque had remained in the custody of the diplomat until his death and was recovered from his son.”

Wikipedia’s moon rocks page collects more stories, such as the ill-fated gift to Ireland: the Apollo 11 rock ended up in a landfill. (Their Apollo 17 rock is safe in a museum, at least.) Clearly, some of these will never be recovered.  But sometimes, every once in a while, you can just open a box.

The staff and large body of volunteers at the Canadian Air & Space Museum were crushed by a slapshot from their landlords at Downsview Park in Toronto last week. On Tuesday, September 20, they arrived to an eviction notice, a team of locksmiths and the news that four ice rinks were to be built in their space. Now confusion remains as to the future of the museum and its prized collection, including a full scale model of the Avro CF-105 Arrow, a supersonic, twin-engine delta wing that was designed as part of Canada’s Ultimate Interceptor program in the 1950s.

Exterior of the de Havilland hangar where the Canadian Air & Space Museum now resides. Courtesy the Canadian Air & Space Museum

Rob Goodwin, the museum’s space curator, said in an interview with Canada’s CBC Radio this week that the museum had some issues with its finances in the past — it receives no federal or provincial funds.  However, in 2009 it kicked off a very public campaign to get back on track (even Harrison Ford sent in his support) and the new museum board was working hard to pay back the approximately $100,000 rent owed to Downsview Park, and were successfully raising visitor traffic. On Monday, September 19, the board sent a check for $20,000, which the park accepted along with assurances the rest would be paid off within a year.  “Then suddenly [the next day] at 11am they said they were sending somebody over to change the locks,” Goodwin told CBC, “It seems like we were ambushed a little bit by the people at Downsview Park.” The check was returned.

David Soknacki, Chair of the Downsview Park Company, pled his case to CBC Radio on Wednesday.  He says the company had been in discussion with the museum for quite some time about the need to restore the historical building they were occupying. “Parts of the building are not to code, not usable,” said Soknacki, and that it was “absolutely critical” for them to be able to restore and retrofit the building. Soknacki wouldn’t divulge his version of the conversation that happened Monday when Downsview accepted the $20,000 check from the museum, only to return it the next day.

He did state, however, that the park had been in discussions to build ice rinks (“I don’t know if it will be for hockey or pleasure skating.”) in the museum’s location for a few years, with more firm plans in place for the past six months; Goodwin maintains no one at the museum was aware of this, and instead thought there was an understanding with  Downsview that they would continue being allowed to catch up on their rent.

Interior of the de Havilland hangar where the Canadian Air & Space Museum now resides. Courtesy the Canadian Air & Space Museum

Soknacki suggested the museum, which currently occupies the de Havilland of Canada aircraft manufacturing building and a former Canadian Forces hangar, could move to one of the other buildings in the park.

Goodwin doesn’t understand why they don’t build the ice rinks in one of those other buildings. The rich aerospace history of the hangar they occupy is part of the museum itself; the Alouette satellite was tested there and the de Havilland Beaver was built there, among many others.

Downsview Park has said the museum could continue to occupy the building temporarily while they figure out their next move. However, quite a few donors, upon hearing the news, have swung by the museum to reclaim their artifacts. According to the museum website, a special meeting will take place at the museum this Saturday at 9 a.m. So, we shall soon see how much Canadians prefer Zamboni over Zenair.