• First Class Fun from the US Post Office

    While the U.S. currency remains pretty boring, at least U.S. postage stamps continually change and highlight various aspects of American society. Two of those themes are science fiction and space exploration, and you have a few options if you want to show your interest in these areas. These stamps include: I know, you hardly ever…

  • Television: Debating Putin’s Nukes

    Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was a guest on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday. During the broadcast he discussed his new book, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, which I commented on in an earlier post. The odd part of the discussion came when Mr. Tyson was trying to explain that hydrogen bombs…

  • Artemis I: If at First You Don’t Succeed…

    NASA is ready to try the uncrewed Artemis I mission again next month. The planned date is November 14, with November 16 and 19 as back up dates. Should you need it, here is a quick summary of the Artemis I mission again: Artemis I will be the first integrated flight test of NASA’s deep space…

  • Arecibo Observatory Gone Forever

    If you were hoping that the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico would have a second life, it may be time to say goodbye. Efforts to rebuild the radio telescope since it collapsed in 2020 have ended. Nature reports that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has given up on the idea of rebuilding the telescope…

  • Pic of the Week: Stellar Tantrum

    This week’s image is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. While it may look like an enormous interstellar stingray, it actually shows gas streaming from a newly-formed star. Here is the story from the European Space Agency (ESA): An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.…

  • Space Stories: Venusian Balloons, Sun Observations, and a Private Moon Trip

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —NASA.gov: “JPL’s Venus Aerial Robotic Balloon Prototype Aces Test Flights“ A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project…The shimmering silver balloon ascended more than 4,000 feet (1 kilometer) over Nevada’s…

  • NASA Confirms Success of DART Mission

    NASA has saved the Earth, or it would have had the asteroid Dimorphos and its partner been heading towards us. That is the news from earlier today from the space agency. NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson made the following comments regarding the results of the impact by the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft: This mission…

  • Starlink Having Problems in Ukraine

    As if Elon Musk doesn’t have enough problems with his Twitter purchase and declining shares at Tesla, now the Ukranians are reporting that SpaceX’s Starlink internet service failed to work during a critical point in their battle to push the Russians out of Ukranian territory. This problem has been going on for weeks, but we…

  • Have You Heard of Super-Mercuries?

    I often here of super-Earths among the spotted expolanets, but super-Mercuries? They are less common, with only eight spotted to date, including two recently found around exoplanet using the Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) spectrograph on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The two super-Mercuries were spotted…

  • Space Quote: The Russians Are All In on the Space Station

    “We are going to keep flying [to the] International Space Station as long as our new infrastructure [is being] buil[t]. We don’t know yet how it’s going to be built and what kind of modules we will have, but I’m sure that we will stay in international partnership when we fly [to the] ISS and…