If you are looking for some images for the upcoming Fourth of July celebrations, then this week’s pic will give you everything you need. The red, white, and blue of these images from the Chandra X-ray Observatory should put you in the right spirit.
The images from the top clockwise are Cassiopeia A, the ZwCl 0024+1652 galaxy cluster, spiral galaxy NGC 4736, and nebula NGC 3603. You can learn more about each of these images at this NASA site.
Happy Fourth of July!
It seems NASA is looking for some shortcuts to get back on the Moon, including repurposing an earlier rover designed for Mars. The rover in question is called the Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping and In-Situ Exploration, or simply PROMISE. It is the test model for the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers currently exploring Mars.
One of the advantages of the Mars rover is its power source. Instead of relying on solar panels, the rover is powered by a nuclear battery. This will give it greater range on the Moon’s surface without having to wait for lunar daylight. Another advantage is that it is proven technology, as the two Martian rovers have demonstrated for years.
It sounds like a smart way to take something off the shelf, but one can only wonder why this is only being considered now after NASA spent more than $450 million on the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) project. Was a nuclear battery ever considered for VIPER? These Martian rovers have been around for quite some time, and a nuclear reactor has been discussed as part of the Moon Base itself, so this is not a new idea.
Given this change in plans, one might expect that the contract with Blue Origin to bring the VIPER to the Moon in 2027 is no longer needed. Maybe VIPER will put on a shelf for years like PROMISE until someone comes up with a new purpose for it.
Stay tuned.
First, let’s note the good news. NASA has more and more launches on its current launch pads (see figure above). Now, the bad news. NASA is running out of functioning launch pads.
That’s the story from NASA’s Office of Inspector General in its latest audit report, NASA’s Launch Infrastructure. The June 22nd audit report concludes that:
NASA’s launch infrastructure is dated and lacks the capacity to meet the growing demands of the Agency and government and commercial partners. The number of launches supported by Kennedy and Wallops has increased dramatically since 2020 and is projected to grow even further by 2030 due to a surge in commercial launches. The growing number of projected launches from Kennedy and Wallops could eventually outpace each site’s capacity to support the launches. Based on current launch projections, Kennedy and Wallops are expected to operate near capacity in the 2028 to 2029 time frame.
The report also notes that the Kennedy Space Center is in tough shape (see figure below). For example, the auditors stated:
Kennedy’s roadway and bridge infrastructure was largely constructed in the 1960s and was not designed to accommodate the volume, frequency, and weight of modern heavy transport operations. Roadways and bridges are in marginal to poor condition and are expected to receive further strain as launch rates increase and generate approximately 19,000 additional truck trips annually to transport flight hardware, propellants, and related materials.
Why is this the situation in a nation that seems to want a strong space program? The report highlights a number of causes, including budget cuts and NASA’s inability to seek sufficient reimbursement from commercial users. It seems we want the private sector to be involved, but we are subsidizing all of the infrastructure, thereby not showing the true cost of these missions. The auditors noted that Congress is aware of this problem, but still unable to pass legislation to correct this reimbursement issue.
The report has a number of recommendations addressed to NASA, which is the auditee. Yet a few recommendations are also needed for Congress. My first recommendation would be for Congress to get off its butt and put legislation in place to ensure the commercial sector is reimbursing the government for the services it is using. That seems easy enough with a serious Congress, and NASA certainly has enough bipartisan support to make this happen.
Note: Figure 4 shows that the vast majority of the launches from Florida are for commercial purposes and not government launches. For instance, 101 of the 109 launches in 2025 related to SpaceX, and most of those launches pertained to Starlink, a commercial enterprise. Maybe it is time to ask the world’s only trillionaire to kick in a litte more for space infrastructure.
Here are some recent space-related stories.
—Techcrunch: “NASA Picks Eric Schmidt’s Rocket Company for Mars Mission, Setting Up a Race with SpaceX“
Relativity Space — a rocket maker acquired by former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt last year after stumbling on the path to orbit — might just beat SpaceX to Mars. On Tuesday, NASA said it hired the company to build a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments, launch it into space, and fly it to Mars. The structure of the contract is akin to the deals that NASA made with SpaceX to fly cargo to the International Space Station, or Firefly Aerospace to put a lander on the moon. The government agency handles the science, while the private company provides low-cost infrastructure.
—Universe Today: “Astronomers Want to Build a Swarm of Telescopes to Find LIFE“
Current plans for flagship telescopes in the 2040s are focused on answering a simple question – are we alone? Our best telescopes to date, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have only given us tantalizing glimpses into the atmospheres or other worlds, but not enough to truly determine whether or not life as we know it exists there. Astronomers have been waiting for technology to catch up to their dreams of what is possible in terms of new types of telescopes, and recently the W.M. Keck Institute for Space Studies released a report detailing the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) mission, which they hope will help provide a definitive answer to that simple question.
—BBC Sky at Night: “The Pink Planet is So Weird, Astronomers Struggle to Define It. And They’ve Just Found It’s Covered in Salty Clouds“
There’s a pink planet, just a stone’s throw from Earth, that astronomers have been trying to decipher for over a decade. Known as the Pink Planet or, officially, GJ504b, this strange world orbits a Sun-like star 57 lightyears from Earth. Astronomers aren’t even sure if it’s a planet at all. About 25 times the mass of Jupiter, it’s so massive it’s on the boundary between giant planets and brown dwarfs (a type of failed star). But observations with the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed direct evidence for something rather strange at the Pink Planet: salty clouds.
Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.
This week’s image is from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It shows galaxy Messier 83 (M83), which is located approximately 15 million light-years from Earth. It is part of a study analyzing Chandra data from 2000 to 2014.
NASA provides more information on a recent study involving supernova remnants being studied by astronomers:
In the composite image, Messier 83, or M83, is shown to have a spiral structure, viewed straight on. At the center is a brilliant white and yellow pool of light. From that light, spiral arms of hot pink cloud corkscrew out in wide, sweeping arches. The galaxy is covered in a faint grey haze, and flecked with red, green, blue, white, and yellow dots.
Over a 14-year period from 2000 to 2014, astronomers pointed NASA’s X-ray observatory at the M83 galaxy. They discovered that about half of the X-ray sources believed to be supernova remnants, the aftermath of stellar explosions, were exhibiting dramatic changes in brightness. This result was entirely unexpected.
Those changes in brightness are highlighted in the timelapse videos. In each video, a series of static images flashes by, focused on one of the two X-ray sources once believed to be supernova remnants. In the videos, the X-ray sources appear as bright blue blobs with glowing cores. But in each image, taken months or years apart, the shapes change, as does the intensity of the blue color, and the brightness of the core. By presenting the substantively different images of the same objects one after another in quick succession, short timelapse videos are created.
The most likely explanation for the changes in brightness is that the team has uncovered a population of stellar survivors, stars that lived through an orbiting partner’s destruction in a supernova explosion. Material is being pulled from the surviving star onto the black hole or neutron star that formed in the supernova, a process known to cause rapid changes in X-ray brightness.
Go to the NASA link for images of two supernova remnants within galaxy M83.
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