Space Stories: A Swift End, ESA Considers New Approach, and a Real 3-Body System

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Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Swift space telescope in orbit. (NASA)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—LiveScience: “NASA’s Swift Observatory Ends 22-year Mission to Study the Most Powerful Explosions Since the Big Bang“

A pioneering NASA space telescope is no more. In sad news for Swifties everywhere, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has officially ended its mission after more than 20 years of tracking the most powerful explosions in the universe since the Big Bang. According to a NASA announcement, the Swift team shut down the telescope’s science operations Tuesday (Oct. 20) after the observatory fell too low in its orbit to continue taking reliable measurements of the cosmos. In the coming weeks, Swift will drop even further, eventually passing a point of no return and taking a fiery plunge through Earth’s atmosphere.

—EuroNews: “Europe Weighs €10bn Plan to Launch Its Own Astronauts Ahead of Rome Space Summit“

Europe wants to stop depending on others to send its own astronauts into space. The next key date for deciding how to do that is 15 December in Rome, when the member countries of the European Space Agency (ESA) will meet to discuss the future of space exploration. On the table are multi-billion-euro investments, new technologies and one strategic issue: ensuring that Europe can reach Earth orbit with its own means, without relying exclusively on services provided by foreign companies. The summit, officially the Intermediate Ministerial Meeting 2026, comes at a time of transformation in the sector. Member states will have to assess proposals to strengthen Europe’s role in low Earth orbit, prepare for the post-International Space Station era and build the continent’s presence on the Moon, while also looking towards Mars. The aim is not to abandon international cooperation, but to take part in it with greater autonomy

—South China Morning Post: “Chinese Astronomers Find Real 3-body System. It Is Not What Liu Cixin Thinks“

In author and computer engineer Liu Cixin’s science fiction hit The Three-Body Problem, three suns throw a doomed world into chaos. Chinese astronomers say they have found a real three-star system that is far better behaved. Using FAST, the world’s biggest single-dish radio telescope in southwestern China, the researchers found two dead stars and a “living” one locked in a steady cosmic dance about 7,000 light years from Earth. One of the dead stars is a pulsar that spins more than 300 times a second, about as fast as the blades of a kitchen blender. It whirls around its partner, a white dwarf – the dim, burnt-out core of a smaller star – every eight days.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Pic of the Week: The Starry Night Story

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. (MoMA)

This week’s image is from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. It shows Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting The Starry Night. Created during his time at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy, it is believed Van Gogh painted the piece in June 1989. But is it a true recreation of the night sky that June?

In a recent study, scientists from South Korea stated they now believe the painting shows the night sky on July 22, 1989 with its portrayal of the Moon, Venus, and the Hyades star cluster in the constellation Taurus. The team of scientists used various pieces of evidence, including letters from the artist, to get a better idea of the night sky and weather during that summer.

You can read more about this new study, The Actual Sky of Van Gogh’s Starry Night: a Multidisciplinary Reconstruction, at this link.

If you are simply interested in the art itself, this link at MoMA will tell you more.

RIP: NASA Software Engineer Margaret Hamilton

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Margaret Hamilton at MIT. (NASA)

Late last month, Margaret Hamilton passed away at the age of 90. She will always be remembered as the software engineer who was instrumental in the development of the flight software for NASA’s Apollo program. As a NASA contractor from the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, she led a team of 100 engineers. Her work in this area helped to establish software engineering as a dedicated discipline

Olivier de Weck, the Apollo Program Professor and interim head of the MIT Department Aeronautics and Astronautics, later stated:

The Apollo program still stands as one of our greatest testaments to the power of collaboration, ingenuity, and engineering, and Margaret Hamilton was a fundamental contributor to that program’s success. And for her that was just the beginning! She went on to become an entrepreneur and remained on the cutting edge of systems software throughout an extraordinary career, while acting as an advocate, mentor, and inspiration to millions.

You can read more on Ms. Hamilton’s life and career at these sites:

MIT
CNN
The New York Times

Rest in peace.

Space Quote: Robots Plan to Visit the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s Valkyrie humanoid robot. (NASA)

“Our team is not trying to replace human explorers with robots but instead make human exploration safer and more sustainable by developing highly capable, reliable, and trustworthy robots to work in extreme environments…If we can send more capable robots, we can reduce the risk and make people more effective in doing the things that people do best.”

-Statement by Shaun Azimi, NASA’s Dexterous Robotics Team lead. The 16-member Dexterous Robotics Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston includes team member who had experience with earlier robot experiments, including Robonaut 2, used on the International Space Station, and Valkyrie, which is NASA’s first bipedal humanoid robot. Future robots are expected to assist with the Moon Base, lunar exploration, and eventually greater work on Mars (beyond the rovers and helicopter already on the Martian surface). This means that artificial intelligence (AI) will be heading to the moon as well while we still try to figure out what to do with AI back here on Earth. AI is already being used on the Martian surface with the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.

Study Findings: New Lunar Crater Reveals Extensive Distal Regolith Modification

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Image (Credit): A zoomed-in view of McGetchin crater, circled on the left, next to a “before” image on the right. (NASA Goddard/Intuitive Machines/Robert Wagner)

Sciences Advances abstract of study findings:

A new ∼222-meter-diameter impact crater formed on the Moon in spring 2024. Discovered in repeat Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images, it provides a unique opportunity to study surface modification by a pristine impact, prior to subsequent fading. Nighttime temperatures measured by the Diviner instrument reveal an ∼7-kilometer-wide cold spot that is 8 to 9 kelvin cooler than its surroundings, consistent with decompaction of the upper centimeters to decimeters of regolith. We investigate all newly formed craters >20 meters identified to date and find that all craters larger than ∼30 meters produce detectable cold spots, indicating that cold spot formation is a common consequence of fresh lunar impacts. Cold spot temperature anomaly increases with crater size, implying deeper regolith modification around larger craters. This scaling suggests that the cumulative effect of cold spot formation may modify the shallow regolith at rates comparable to impact gardening by primary craters, making them a substantial driver of regolith evolution on regolith-covered airless bodies.

Citation: T. M. Powell, B. T. Greenhagen, T. Horvath, et al. New lunar crater reveals extensive distal regolith modification. Science Advances, Vol 12, Issue 38 (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aeh9568

Study-related stories:

Discover Magazine – “Newly Discovered ‘Once-in-a-Century’ Moon Crater Larger Than Two Football Field”

Phys.org – “NASA Spacecraft Discovers a Huge New Crater on the Moon”

CNN – “Lunar Orbiter Spots ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime’ New Crater on the Moon”