• Sci-Fi Stories: A New Murderbot Book Arrives, Captive’s War Planned for Prime, and Somewhere Our There Coming to Netflix

    Here are a few sci-fi stories of interest. —Winter is Coming: “Book review: Platform Decay is Exactly What We Wanted from Martha Wells’s Murderbot Next“ Platform Decay is the eighth book in Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series, and it gives fans exactly what they love while taking the story in some new directions. If you’ve been…

  • Pic of the Week: The Crescent Earth

    This week’s image is one of more than 12,000 from the Artemis II mission recently released by NASA. This particular shot of the crescent Earth is a whole new way to look at our world from afar. These images are currently available via the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website, but they are not…

  • Study Findings: Detection of an Atmosphere on a Trans-Neptunian Object Beyond Pluto

    Nature Astronomy abstract of study findings: The only trans-Neptunioan object (TNO) with a detected atmosphere so far is Pluto, which has an average surface pressure of 10 μbar. Investigations of other large (>500 km) TNOs have only been able to establish upper limits of 1–100 nbar. A recent near-infrared study reported methane gas emission from Makemake, although its origin…

  • Space Stories: New Artemis II Photos, JWST Studies Exoplanet Surface, and Japanese Space Sake for Sale

    Here are some recent space-related stories. —ABC News: “NASA Releases More Than 12,000 Images from Historic Artemis II Moon Mission“ Over the weekend, NASA made public more than 12,000 photos from the historic Artemis II lunar mission…Over the course of the mission, NASA released dozens of images of the astronauts, Earth, the moon and even a…

  • May the Fourth Be With You!

    And speaking of Yoda, don’t forget to get your tickets for The Mandalorian and Grogu movie premiering on May 22nd.

  • Astronauts Unite!

    Uniting to support a good cause makes a lot of sense, and a number of astronauts would agree. That is why more than 100 former astronauts have joined to create a nonpartisan organization called Astronauts for America. What do they believe? They support democracy here in America, and have links on their site to the…

  • Space Quote: NASA Budget Hearing and Artemis

    “But for all the Artemis II mission accomplished, how we arrived at it was far from perfect, and the decisions of previous administrations that led to these deficiencies deserves careful reflection. Almost the entirety of [the Space Launch System is repurposed decades-old Space Shuttle hardware. I understand why, the Shuttle program was ending, and it…

  • Astronomy Question: Do You Know Your Spaceships?

    Multiple Choice: What was the name of the main spaceship in the 1979 movie Alien? A. AthenaB. MaginotC. NostromoD. Prometheus Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the “Astronomy Question Answer Sheet” page.

  • Pic of the Week: Spiral Galaxy NGC 3137

    This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows spiral galaxy NGC 3137 in all its glory. We are getting a nice inclined view of the galaxy, allowing us to see multiple arms of stars. The European Space Agency (ESA) describes what we are seeing in this way: A spiral galaxy seen close…

  • Television: Star City

    We are only one month away from the premiere of Apple TV’s Star City. Premiering on May 29th, the series is a spin-off from For All Mankind, which is an alternative history showing the race to the Moon and then Mars among the Americans, Soviet, and North Koreans. Star City will focus on the Soviet…