APOLOGIES for being a day late. Your correspondent was stuck somewhere without internet access for most of yesterday.

The audacious mission that could have saved Columbia (Ars Technica) A fascinating look at a last-minute plan that might just have been able to rescue the astronauts who perished aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

'Family Guy' as Astrobiology Guy (New York Times) Seth MacFarlane, better known as the creator of the cartoon comedy "Family Guy", on his job as the executive producer for the reboot of "Cosmos", Carl Sagan's watershed science documentary from the 1980s. “Long accepted scientific truths have been brought into question largely...by one side of the aisle, solely for the purpose of generating passion that could be shaped into various agendas.” A (regrettably truncated) review of the first episode, by me, is here

The man who destroyed America's ego (Matter). Will Storr on how the psychologist Carl Rogers developed a theory with the revolutionary assumption that people are not monsters tamed by a thin veneer of civilisation, but are instead fundamentally decent.

The future of sex (Mosaic). The Wellcome Trust's new long-form science writing websites launches with a piece on attempts to rehabilitate the female condom. Pair with our article on the future of the male version from a couple of weeks ago.

The society of mutual autopsy (Mind Hacks). Advancing science and spreading atheism by cutting up each other's brains.