• Pic of the Week: Shackleton Crater

    This week’s image shows the Shackleton Crater located at the Moon’s South Pole. To create what you see above, an image from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) was combined with another image from ShadowCam, a NASA instrument on board a KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) spacecraft called Danuri, Here is more information from NASA concerning…

  • Space Quote: Venezuela Aims for the Moon

    “…scientific, technological, industrial and aerospace cooperation will sooner rather than later (send) the first Venezuelan man and woman to the moon in a Chinese spacecraft.” –Statement by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in reference to an agreement with China that would train Venezuelan astronauts in China in preparation for a future Moon mission. China has previously…

  • Study Findings: Constraining Cosmological Parameters Using the Cluster Mass–Richness Relation

    If you don’t understand the research title, you are not alone. The abstract is even worse: The cluster mass–richness relation (MRR) is an observationally efficient and potentially powerful cosmological tool for constraining the matter density Ωm and the amplitude of fluctuations σ8 using the cluster abundance technique. We derive the MRR relation using GalWCat19, a publicly available galaxy cluster…

  • Space Stories: New Lunar Water Estimates, Coronal Mass Ejection, and Oxygen on Mars

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Southwest Research Institute: “New Findings Suggest Moon May Have Less Water Than Previously Thought“ A team recently calculated that most of the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are at most around 3.4 billion years old and can contain relatively young deposits of water ice. Water resources are considered key…

  • Audit Results: SLS Program is Unaffordable

    The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently completed a review of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), which is the cornerstone of the Artemis program. GAO assessed the extent to which (1) NASA has established plans to measure the SLS program costs post-Artemis I, and (2) the program has made progress with its plans to reduce projected…

  • Where is This? September 16, 2023 Quiz

    Take a look at the image above. Can you determine where this image originated? Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the “Where is This? The Answer Sheet” page.

  • Another Crew Heads for the ISS

    Earlier today, US astronaut astronaut Loral O’Hara as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub departed from Kazakhstan on a Soyuz rocket that will take them to the International Space Station (ISS). The space station will be crowded again until the three relieved crew members, including US astronaut Frank Rubio, can return to…

  • Pic of the Week: Astronaut Frank Rubio Still at Work on the ISS

    This week’s image shows astronaut Frank Rubio hard at work last year outside the International Space Station (ISS). He has now exceeded the U.S. space duration record, which was 355 days. All of this was unplanned, come as the result of a faulty Russian capsule that kept him on the station longer than his scheduled…

  • Damn it, Jim! I’m a Doctor, Not a Spider!

    The Star Trek name and characters have been thrown around in popular culture for years, but now scientists have locked onto them. A new group of spiders, part of the Roddenberryus genus (yes, that’s right), have been named Kirk, McCoy and Spock. If you do not believe me, take a look at this article in…

  • JWST Spots a Promising Exoplanet

    The exoplanet, some 120 light-years away, has caught the attention scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). K2-18 b, about 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has carbon-bearing molecules in its atmosphere, including methane and carbon dioxide. This could mean the exoplanet has a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface (called a Hycean exoplanet). Exoplanets…