Space Quote: Gambling with the NASA Administrator Nominee

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

“In my early 20s, I was fortunate to experience business success at a young age, and I spent time in casinos as an immature hobby…The legal matters referenced were, in fact, forms of negotiation and were all resolved promptly. The incident at the border, following my return from the Olympics, stemmed from a payment issue that had already been resolved, which is why I was detained for only a few hours.”

-Statement by NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman in a Reuters news article discussing his past arrest on fraud charges as well as lawsuits in two states for writing $2 million in bad checks to casinos. One of the casinos cited in the article is Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, now out of business. The early ties to Trump are interesting, particularly given Mr. Trump’s problem with his finances as well. So this is what we have coming into NASA – a man who likes to gamble large amounts and not pay his bills. Now he wants to gamble with the taxpayers’ money. This is not an auspicious start.

Tatooine-like Exoplanet Spotted by Astronomers

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): A binary sunset on Tatooine. (Disney/Lucasfilm)

With the Star Wars series Andor back for a second season, it is only appropriate that astronomers believe they found a Tatooine-like exoplanet. You may remember Tatooine as the planet where Luke Skywalker spent his youth.

The exoplanet is located about 120 light-years away and orbits two brown dwarfs (also called failed stars because they failed to ignite like a regular star and therefore have low luminosity). As noted below, binary star exoplanets have been found in the past, so this is not unprecedented.

Here is the abstract from the study, Evidence for a Polar Circumbinary Exoplanet Orbiting a Pair of Eclipsing Brown Dwarfs, if you want to read more:

One notable example of exoplanet diversity is the population of circumbinary planets, which orbit around both stars of a binary star system. There are, so far, only 16 known circumbinary exoplanets, all of which lie in the same orbital plane as the host binary. Suggestions indicate that circumbinary planets could also exist on orbits highly inclined to the binary, close to 90°, polar orbits. No such planets have been found yet, but polar circumbinary gas and debris discs have been observed, and if these were to form planets, then those would be left on a polar orbit. We report strong evidence for a polar circumbinary exoplanet, which orbits a close pair of brown dwarfs that are on an eccentric orbit. We use radial velocities to measure a retrograde apsidal precession for the binary and show that this can only be attributed to the presence of a polar planet.

Of course, the Tatooine in Star Wars was in a galaxy far, far away. Hence, this are not the exoplanet you are looking for.

Musk Gives Up His Day Job

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay.

Elon Musk has decided to step away from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after watching his reputation crater, his car company falter, and his rockets litter the Caribbean. Plus he damaged NASA, the space agency that funds his company SpaceX. Maybe he finally realized that a plumber has no business pretending to be brain surgeon.

The most disturbing part of Musk’s short time with the government is his lies about fraud, attacks on government employees, and horrible math regarding savings. For example, regarding the US Agency for International Development, he called it a “criminal organization” and then said it is “Time for it to die.” He never took the time to even understand the organization or verify his “findings”, most of which were wrong. I cannot believe a single Fortune 500 company would want this guy anywhere near its operations. So why would you trust any organization headed by this man?

We can only hope this means he will start to take the development of Starship seriously, since his company is still contracted to assist NASA with its Artemis mission to the Moon. So far in 2025, SpaceX has lost both of its Starship rockets (#7 and #8) over the Caribbean, though it was scheduled to conduct 25 tests in 2025, or twice a month.

Mr. Musk may know nothing about government programs, but he is supposed to know something about rockets. He cannot bully or lie his way out of this one. As with Tesla, performance and promises is everything, and he seems to be struggling.

And now before he can come close to meeting his NASA commitments, he is promising to send Starship to Mars next year, tweeting ““Starship will hopefully depart for Mars at the end of next year with Optimus explorer robots!”.

Maybe it is time to stop listening to this man.

Pic of the Week: Happy Birthday Hubble!

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Hubble Space Telescope in low-Earth orbit. (NASA)

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. It was launched on April 24, 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. The telescope was expected to have a service life of 35 years, though it is still going strong with various proposals to update the telescope and keep it operating for years to come.

To mark the occasion, NASA put together a video highlighting missions and related images. The celebration will continue throughout the year with new images and other selected items.

Here are a few interesting facts related to the Hubble:

  • Hubble is currently located 326 miles (525 km) above Earth’s surface. If you could drive straight up, you could reach it in about the same time it would take you to drive from Baltimore, Maryland to Boston, Massachusetts. 
  • Hubble races through its orbit at about 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kph), completing an orbit about every 95 minutes. That means it sees 15 sunrises every day.
  • While Hubble is speeding around Earth, it can lock onto a target without deviating more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond, or about the width of a human hair seen at a distance of one mile.
Image (Credit): Hubble 35th Anniversary Graphic. (NASA)