January 2025 – Page 2 – Our Awesome Universe

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s That Dumb Car

Posted on January 26, 2025 by onespaceman2000

^{Credit: Image by Enrique from Pixabay.}

A near-Earth object (NEO) recently designated as 2018 CN41 ultimately was deleted because it was determined to be the Tesla Roadster launched into space back in 2018. As noted in an Astronomy article, this type of confusion over orbiting objects, including legitimate spacecraft looping past the Earth, need to be better cataloged and shared among astronomers.

And who would collect and monitor this information? The Minor Planet Center, of course, which was set up years back with this very mission. As the Center’s site notes:

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the single worldwide location for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of minor planets, comets and outer irregular natural satellites of the major planets. The MPC is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation for all of these objects. This involves maintaining the master files of observations and orbits, keeping track of the discoverer of each object, and announcing discoveries to the rest of the world via electronic circulars and an extensive website. The MPC operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, under the auspices of Division F of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

It seems like a simple thing to ask given the risk of NEOs damaging spacecraft of plummeting towards the Earth. It would be an even easier monitoring task if we did not throw junk into space just for the fun or it.

One can only hope the Tesla Roadster becomes a shooting star so that we have on less piece of junk to monitor.

Space Quote: Everything Normal Here, Please Get Back to Work (In the Office, Of Course)

Posted on January 25, 2025January 25, 2025 by onespaceman2000

“President Trump recently issued a Presidential Memorandum (PM) titled “Return to In-Person Work,” the text of which is included below. NASA intends to fully comply.

‘Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.‘

…Please continue to remain focused on the mission. Right now, we have dozens of spacecraft studying different aspects of our solar system and the distant universe. We have four American astronauts living and working in space, with several crew members on Earth training for upcoming missions. And we have engineers and researchers working on technology development that will advance the future of flight and space exploration.”

-Information emailed to NASA staff on January 24, 2025 from NASA’s acting Administrator Janet Petro (see below). This follows a message earlier in the week shutting down all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. The earlier email also asked employees to report on one another if DEI appeared anywhere. This latest email orders everyone back to work and then is nice enough to remind them that they left four astronauts in space who still need tending to. Not exactly a good week a NASA workforce that “already exceeds…expectations.”

^{Image (Credit): Email to NASA staff on January 24, 2025 from the acting administrator. (NASAWatch)}

Mark Your Calendar: Kennedy Center Earth to Space Festival

Posted on January 24, 2025January 25, 2025 by onespaceman2000

If you are looking for a different type of event, the Kennedy Center has an idea. Come for its Earth to Space Festival, being held from March 28 to April 20.

What is it, you ask? Here is what the Kennedy Center has shared:

For three weeks, EARTH to SPACE: Arts Breaking the Sky will fill the Center with musicians and astronauts, poets and researchers, visual artists and engineers, actors and environmentalists, architects and astronomers, dancers and scientists, film makers and space designers. It is our conviction that insights into the marvels of the universe can inspire action to protect our own planet, and that the arts can stimulate fresh thinking about the challenges that confront us.

Some of the speakers include astronaut Chris Hadfield, physicist Kip Thorne, and astrophysicist Mario Livio. The full list is available on the Kennedy Center site.

Starmus has been holding such festivals since 2011, with this one in Washington, DC being the eighth. Last year’s festival was held in Bratislava, Slovakia. Astronomy magazine called last year’s event “a smashing success all the way around.”

You may want to add the event to your calendar. It sounds like a fun way to combine astronomy and the arts.

Pic of the Week: The Glow of Cassiopeia A

Posted on January 23, 2025 by onespaceman2000

^{Image (Credit): Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. (NASA/CXC/SAO (x-ray); NASA/ESA/STScI (optical); NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/Caltech (infrared); NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand (image processing))}

This week’s image was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and highlighted in Scientific American magazine. It shows a colorful supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A, which is about 350 light-years away.

The magazine article notes:

The recent photographs are helping scientists answer some of their most pressing questions about supernovae, such as which types of stars explode in which ways and how exactly those outbursts unfold. “There is a lot of complicated but beautiful physics in understanding how this explosion takes place,” says Purdue University astronomer Danny Milisavljevic, who led the team behind the JWST images…

Astronomers will keep studying Cassiopeia A, although their success makes them eager to turn JWST’s eyes toward some of the other roughly 400 identified supernova remnants in our galaxy. Getting a larger sample will help researchers connect differences in how remnants look and evolve to differences among the stars that produced them.

NASA Gets to Work Under the New Administration by Shutting Down DEI

Posted on January 22, 2025January 23, 2025 by onespaceman2000

Almost the first words the NASA employees heard from their acting administrator was the end of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts within the agency.

In an email earlier today, Acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro stated, in part:

Notice the use of “Radical” in the executive order and the Office of Personnel Management email address including “truth,” favorite words of the incoming administration. Are we using federal dollars for this latest “witch hunt” (to use more of the favorite words)? None of this will help to calm the fears of hard-working NASA employees trying to focus on space missions rather than the political silliness in Washington, DC.

It does make you wonder what is coming down the road. For example, the Artemis mission on NASA’s website is pretty clear in terms of what it hopes to accomplish:

Will the goal of landing the first woman, person of color, and international partner be seen as encouraging too much diversity? The Artemis II crew, shown below, already meets the mission profile, but maybe that will change with the Artemis III crew that lands on the Moon. At this point, it would not be too surprising ito find the Artemis III crew consists of four white billionaires using a rover as a golf cart to hit balls across the lunar surface.

We’ll see what happens, as they say.