Image (Credit): Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. (Carnegie Science)
If you are stuck inside with the winter weather and looking for something to do, you can either head to sunny California to attend the March Carnegie Astronomy Lectures Series at The Huntington in San Marino or watch them on YouTube. This will be a series of four lectures.
On March 2nd, the first lecture of the series is titled “Ultraviolet Suspects: Using Galaxies to Shed Light on the Early Universe.” It is a free event, but you do need to register.
One of the universe’s last phase changes, reionization, took place within the first billion years of its cosmic history. Today, astronomers can use the ultraviolet signals from distant galaxies to investigate the “who,” “when,” and “how” of that critical period. In this talk, Carnegie Science Observatories postdoc Tony Pahl will present his research on the high-energy radiation leaking from galaxies, which leverages data collected with a combination of instruments, including NASA’s JWST, the Keck Observatory telescopes in Hawaii, and Carnegie’s own twin Magellan telescopes at our Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
The other March astronomy lectures are:
March 16: Planetary Habitability: The Origin of Water
March 30: Shining a Light on Dark Matter
April 13: How To Look Inside An Exoplanet
Information on the upcoming March Astronomy Lecture Series will be posted on the Carnegie Science site.
Image (Credit): NASA’s Crew-12 launches toward the ISS via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 13, 2026. (NASA)
The International Space Station’s (ISS) Crew-12 is safely on its way. As NASA Administrator Isaacman noted:
With Crew-12 safely on orbit, America and our international partners once again demonstrated the professionalism, preparation, and teamwork required for human spaceflight.
The launch carried NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The four crew members should climb aboard the ISS tomorrow afternoon.
Image (Credit): Crew-12 sitting in the SpaceX Dragon capsule in preparation for this week’s launch. From left to right you have Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Jack Hathaway and Jessica Mier, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot. (NASA)
Image (Credit): The Milky Way galaxy in radio waves as seen from the Southern Hemisphere. (Silvia Mantovanini and the GLEAM-X Team)
The image above was released late last year. It shows the Milky Way galaxy in radio-color captured by astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). All of this was part of the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (GLEAM) and GLEAM-X (GLEAM eXtended) surveys conducted over 28 nights in 2013 and 2014 as well as 113 nights from 2018 to 2020.
In describing the image, Silvia Mantovanini, one of the astronomers analyzing the survey data, noted:
You can clearly identify remnants of exploded stars, represented by large red circles. The smaller blue regions indicate stellar nurseries where new stars are actively forming.
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of SpaceX’s Starship HLS preparing for a Moon landing. (SpaceX)
Mr. Musk seems to move like a weather vane regarding where SpaceX is going next, but whether SpaceX is heading for the Moon or Mars it still needs a functioning Starship.
First the confusion. For all of Musk’s ongoing criticism of a Moon mission, it appears he is finally focusing on Artemis III. On Sunday, he tweeted:
For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.
The mission of SpaceX remains the same: extend consciousness and life as we know it to the stars.
It is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months (six month trip time), whereas we can launch to the Moon every 10 days (2 day trip time). This means we can iterate much faster to complete a Moon city than a Mars city.
That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to 7 years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civilization and the Moon is faster.
It seems that someone explained planetary alignment to him over the weekend, but that’s a point for another day.
So the target this week will be the Moon. But a crewed landing on the Moon depends on SpaceX’s Human Landing System (HLS) at the moment, which is where the Starship comes in. Or, more to the point, this is where a multitude of Starships come into play between the refueling in orbit as well and the HLS.
Given that SpaceX planned for 25 Starship launches in 2025 yet achieved only 5, we have an issue Houston (or should I say “Starbase”?).
All indications are that the first launch in 2026 will be early next month (based on one sentence from Musk on January 26th stating “Starship launch in six weeks”), following the last launch of October 13th. Five months between launches is not a very robust schedule given that the Starship not only needs to work but also needs to test the idea of fueling in space before landing a crew on the Moon in 2028.
So far the only parts of Artemis that have proven to work are the Space Launch System and Orion capsule, which are also the two most demonized components said to be substandard based on what the private sector can provide. However, waiting on SpaceX for a workable Moon model is becoming about as logical as waiting for Twitter to become profitable.
Remember, Musk was supposed to have a crew on Mars two years ago. As the Planetary Society noted in 2017:
SpaceX’s previous plan called for landing its first transport ship on Mars in 2022. The timeline Musk gave today was similar; two cargo landers would land on Mars in 2022, with four vehicles launching in 2024. Two of those 2024 ships would be crewed, meaning, in Musk’s timeline, humans could walk on Mars in just seven years.
It now seems like 50/50 that SpaceX can get a crew on the Moon before the Chinese. NASA may need the help of Blue Origin before it has a workable plan.
It may be time to ignore SpaceX’s promises and plan for some new players without tossing out the older technology just yet.
Image (Credit): E.M. Antoniadi’s 1930 book La Planete Mars. (Linda Hall Library)
On this day in 1944, Greek-French astronomer Eugène Michel Antoniadi passed away in Paris, France.
Mr. Antoniadi was one of the astronomers that battled the idea of a civilization creating canals on the surface of Mars, putting him at odds with American astronomer Percival Lowell. While he was initially open to the idea, he later believed the canals to be an optical illusion.
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