“At the moment, we are finalizing our agreement with NASA, but it is looking like they are not able to provide the radar…So that is why we are going full steam ahead with the European solution.”
–Statement by Anne Grete Straume-Lindner, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) project scientist for the Venus mission called Envision, regarding expected cuts in NASA support for the planned Venus mapping mission. Proposed NASA cuts may also impact other ESA missions, including the New Athena observatory, which would take over for NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (also continually on the chopping block) and the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) observatory designed to study gravitational waves.
First commissioned in 1957, parts of the telescope came from the World War 1 decommissioned battleships HMS Revenge and HMS Royal Sovereign. In 2019, the telescope was awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
The BBC noted that the Jodrell Bank Lovell Radio Telescope was the only facility in the Western World able to track Sputnik in 1957. Among many other accomplishments, it was also instrumental in confirming the existence of pulsars as well as proving Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Image (Credit): The Artemis II crew with (from left) NASA Astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman, Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Jeremy Hansen. (NASA)
Four astronauts circled the Moon earlier this year, more than 50 years after the final lunar landing, but only one of them will remain an astronaut going forward. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen (age 50), who served as mission specialist on the Moon mission, retired from his position with the Canadian Space Agency in July. And now we learn that NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman (age 50), who served as commander on the mission, and Victor Glover (age 50), who served as pilot, have also announced their plans to depart as well.
Either there is something in the water, or age 50 is a good time to step away from an astronaut gig.
Hansen said he was pursuing new professional opportunities, Glover said he has a new job at California Polytechnic State University, and Wiseman provided no additional information. However, both Glover and Wiseman will transition to emeritus status. It is not clear if that is just a thank you role that gives them a discount at the agency cafe, or will entail some real duties.
NASA defines the emeritus role this way:
In an emeritus role, individuals with a high degree of technical and professional knowledge can continue to support the agency by donating their time to train and mentor the current workforce. This allows the agency to maintain access to top talent in a specialized consultant role, while simultaneously providing the individual with the flexibility to pursue other opportunities.
That leaves one Artemis II astronaut still standing – Christina Koch (age 47).
Back in August, all four were awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. It is just unfortunate the they are leaving at a time that a lunar program is starting to grow.
All we can do is wish them well in their post-astronaut careers. They have plenty of stories that will hopefully encourage a new generation of astronauts.
Note: I want to make it clear that NASA astronauts do not need to retire at a certain age. For example, NASA astronaut Don Pettit was heading back to Earth from his latest space mission on his 70th birthday.
This week we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Star Trek, a simple science fiction story from 1966 that was first broadcast in Canada and barely lasted for three seasons. But from that tepid beginning arose an idea that led to multiple spin-off television series, movies, books, and more.
And it has been a hopeful show that took the dark edge off of science fiction. As creator Gene Roddenberry said back in 1985:
I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child creature, we’re still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We’re growing up, we’re moving into adolescence now. When we grow up – man, we’re going to be something!
Today we still have plenty of people attacking Star Trek for being too liberal or “woke” as they say using the word of the week, but the show was always that way.
Discussing battles with TV executives about women on the USS Enterprise, Mr. Roddenberry noted:
I had insisted on half women on board [the Enterprise]. The network came to me and said, ‘You can’t have half women. Our people say it will make it look like a ship with all sorts of mad sexual things going on — half men and half women.’ So we argued about it like a poker game and they finally said, ‘Okay. We’ll settle for one-third women.’ I figured one-third women could take care of the males anyway.
Star Trek moved forward before the rest of the country, but it saw a future that was slowly realized over time. And even if it seems we are going backwards at times, he understood that as well when he said:
I have nothing but admiration for this silly race of ours. Even with the Hitlers in it and so on. Sometimes it goes into ugliness, but, in all though, it is a beauty. It’s like a rose, which also has thorns. We’re something.
So let’s not get too depressed just because we seem to have a Ferengi in the White House. Think long term like Mr. Roddenberry, and move past the thorns.
Image (Credit): Anzellans and Grogu in The Mandalorian and Grogu. (Lucasfilm)
If you were awaiting last week’s streaming roll out The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+, you may have come away both happy and disappointed. I was happy that I did not pay $18 for a movie ticket to see the Mandalorian mess, but I was disappointed about every other part of the experience.
This film is more evidence, if you needed it, that multi-billion companies are capable of producing lousy products. I am now glad that Star Wars: Andor came to a respectable end and did not go through this big screen process.
Basically, the Mandalorian television series started as an adult show with some extras for the kids, while the movie was basically a kids show with little adult supervision. We started with a sole Mandalorian defeating three ATATs with his bare hands, and ended with a multi-day montage of Grogu feeding a comatose Mandaloria in the woods. How did we get here?
It reminded me of the earlier movie disaster Star Trek: Section 31, where all of the pieces were there, but they were put into a blender with nothing but gray goo coming out of the other end.
If the Star Wars franchise needed a kids show, they should have stuck with the one season and done series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. That was an okay series. But The Mandalorian started as something else – more of a western like the initial Star Wars (IV, not the I crap) – that also spoke to re-establishing earlier traditions and fighting for something in common. I saw none of that in the film. We only had a metallic superman with a stuffed animal fighting large slugs for some nebulous Republic that never seemed worth fighting for. It was like the Ewoks on steroids by the end of the movie.
So is the Mandalorian series dead? It would seem so, and those who saw this movie were given no reason to go back to the original material. Maybe without the movie some people would have stumbled onto the Disney+ series and given it a try, but now they have been scared away by a silly story set in a galaxy far, far away.
It that’s what the universe has in store for all of us, let’s dismantle the rockets now.
Our Awesome Universe 