Space Stories: A Promising Lunar Rover, Pakistani Astronaut on a Chinese Space Station, and Hubble Spots the “Cat’s Tail”

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s PROMISE lunar rover. (NASA)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Scientific America: “NASA Reveals New Lunar Rover, PROMISE, to Launch to Moon in 2028“

NASA officials on Saturday stressed that the agency is working to speed up testing and development of the hardware that will ensure human missions to the moon. The agency plans to have rovers and other infrastructure already waiting on the moon to greet any human crews when they do eventually arrive there. This is critical, according to NASA chief Jared Isaacman: “the missions themselves will help us characterize an environment that we’ve really not visited in a very long time,” he said at Saturday’s press event…One of the biggest updates to that ambition is the decision to fly a rover, PROMISE (Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping and In-Situ Exploration), which is modeled after the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity. Previously only proposed as a possibility by Isaacman, PROMISE will fly to the moon and land using a Blue Origin lander in late 2028 for an 18-month primary mission.

—Business Times: “Pakistani Astronaut to Join China’s Shenzhou-24 Space Mission“

A Pakistani astronaut will join China’s space station as a payload specialist on the upcoming Shenzhou-24 mission as the Chinese state media reported on Saturday. The milestone marks the first foreign visitor to China’s space station and the first joint spaceflight featuring both Chinese and foreign astronauts in the history of China’s manned space program…In February 2025, China and Pakistan signed an agreement covering astronaut selection, training and participation in Chinese space station flights. Following a rigorous three-stage assessment, two Pakistani pilots Zeeshan Ali and Khurram Daud were selected as candidates and have been training at the China Astronaut Research and Training Center in Beijing. While one will carry out the primary flight mission and the second will serve as a backup.

—Vice: “There’s a 93-Billion-Mile Structure in Space, and Astronomers Can’t Fully Explain It“

In a study published last month in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers at the University of Arizona made a major discovery using the Hubble Space Telescope. They caught a visible-light glimpse of a gargantuan, 93-billion-mile-long cosmic dust feature dubbed the “Cat’s Tail,” sitting just 63 light-years away in the Beta Pictoris system. If you’re trying to wrap your brain around that scale, this thing is roughly 1,000 astronomical units long, long enough to wrap between the Earth and the Sun about 500 times. If I put it in the only measurable terms Americans are familiar with, it would be about 1.3 billion American football fields, endzones included.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Do You Want To Be a NASA Astronaut?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

If you were thinking of traveling to the Moon or Mars anytime soon as a NASA astronaut, you have until December 3rd to put in your application.

Here is NASA’s summary of the position:

Astronaut candidates will spend approximately two years training on the basic skills required to be an astronaut – from spacewalking and robotics to leadership and teamwork skills. Upon completing training, they will join the active astronaut corps and become eligible for spaceflight assignment. Until assigned a spaceflight, they will have responsibilities within the astronaut office ranging from supporting their fellow astronauts in space to advising on the development of new spacecraft.

The pay is between $164,395 – $164,395 per year, and some travel may be required, such as a trip to the Moon Base someday, if you are lucky.

One more thing, you will need to meet these conditions first:

  • U.S. Citizenship Required
  • Must meet all qualification/education and experience requirements by the closing date of the announcement. See announcement for more details on Test Pilot School completion
  • Applicants may only select ONE discipline group to apply under (See “Qualifications” section below)
  • Selectees will be designated Astronaut Candidates and will undergo a training and evaluation period lasting approximately two years
  • Applicants must submit ALL STEM related transcripts. See announcement for more details on Basic Education Requirements.
  • Position subject to pre-employment background investigation or higher-level clearance. Investigation/Clearance may differ and be required based on NASA Center requirements.
  • Financial Disclosure, Drug Testing, and/or the Travel Requirements for this position may differ and be required based on NASA Center requirements.

Yes, it is quite a list, so you better get to work now on that application. You can find more details at USA Jobs.

And good luck!

Study Findings: Rare Reoccurring Ionosphere Disturbances Observed During the Artemis-II Lunar Flyby Voyage

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s Space Launch System rocket launching on April 1, 2026 with the Orion spacecraft and four crew members. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Geophysical Research Letters abstract of pre-print study findings:

The total electron content observations during the Artemis-II Lunar mission revealed rare reoccurring ionospheric perturbations at three different occasions. The launch at 2235 UT on 1 April 2026 from Kennedy Space Center, USA, induced shock-acoustic and gravity wave modulations. Subsequent Apogee Raise Burn performed at 0023 UT on 2 April triggered shock waves and unprecedented large-scale disturbances that elongated ~50° longitude across North America. The third orbital maneuver conducted as part of trans-Lunar injection burn at 2349 UT on 2 April, about 25 hours after liftoff, again yielded similar, but weaker large-scale ionospheric perturbations. This is the first time a single space mission produced three instances of ionospheric disturbances over the same region during successive orbit maneuvers. The estimated spacecraft trajectory shows that the two orbit maneuvers were initiated at the perigee altitude of 185 km over the longitudes of 120°W-105°W, directly depositing exhaust burn energy within the ionosphere.

Citation: Choi, J., Lin, C., Chou, M. et al. Rare reoccurring ionosphere disturbances observed during the Artemis-II Lunar flyby voyage. Geophys. Res. Lett..

DOI: https://essopenarchive.org/doi/full/10.22541/essoar.15006449/v1

Study-related stories:

Space.com – “NASA’s Artemis II Moon Launch Tore a Hole in Earth’s Upper Atmosphere So Huge It Disrupted GPS Signals”

USA Today – “Artemis II Moon Launch Was So Powerful It Punched a Hole in Atmosphere”

Sacramento Bee – “Lunar Rocket Launch Tore ‘Hole’ in Earth’s Atmosphere, Disrupted GPS, Study Finds”

Sci-Fi Quote: Was Anakin the Good Guy?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Anakin Skywalker from the Star Wars movies. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

“The point I’m making is obvious when one considers other popular, compelling fictional protagonists who commit unspeakable evils; no serious person really thinks that Breaking Bad’s murderous drug dealer Walter White and The Sopranos’ even more murderous gangster Tony Soprano are great role models. Yet when it comes to Anakin, some large number of right-wing guys on X seem to earnestly think he had the right idea because they imagine that deep down, his politics matches theirs.”

-Quote from a Reason magazine article titled, “Anakin Skywalker Is a Great Character, Not a Great Role Model.” The bottom line is that the actions of a moody teenager with a light saber are not the best model for present-day mortals. I think the youth today would be better following in the steps of Luke Skywalker. If that doesn’t work for you, follow the original Yoda, or even Baby Yoda. We already have enough moody males making deals with the devil.

Pic of the Week: The Dementors of Cepheus

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): “The Dementors of Cepheus,” by Julien De Winter, Landon Boehm, and Brian Diaz. (Astronomy Magazine)

This week’s image is the winning entry from Astronomy magazine’s 2026 Astrophotography Contest. The winning image is titled “The Dementors of Cepheus,” captured by Julien De Winter, Landon Boehm, and Brian Diaz. It was one of about 1,400 entries in the contest.

The magazine defines the image in this way:

A pair of shadowy, wraithlike figures weave their way through a grand tapestry of stellar life and death in our grand-prize-winning image. The imagers refer to them as the “Dementors of Cepheus” — a reference to the wardens of the prison Azkaban in the Harry Potter series. Here, they guard not convicts, but a corpse: The filaments of gas in the center of the frame are the remnants of a supernova, cataloged as SNR G110.3+11.3, that blew apart a massive star.

The supernova is approximately 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus.

You can read more about this winning image as well as the winners in other categories at the magazine’s gallery site.