• Moon World Resort: Why Leave Earth?

    It is quite the slogan to sell the Moon to the masses: “12 people have been there, 7 billion want to visit.” But this is not Elon Musk talking. This is a new real estate project aiming to bring the Moon to Earth in multiple locations in order to push shopping malls, spas, and condos.…

  • Astronomy Ideas on Borrowed Time?

    A recent Big Think story, “5 Consensus Ideas in Astronomy That Might Soon be Overturned,” comes as a good time as we reach further into space and back into time using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and contemplate other telescopes that should come online shortly. The story highlights these five ideas: For instance, regarding…

  • More Space Travel Offers from China and NASA

    The China Global Television Network recently reported that China is looking into offering space rides to commercial passengers by 2025, including suborbital flights, cargo flights, and trips to Chinese Space Station. For instance, suborbital flights are expected to be priced at 2 and 3 million yuan (or $287,200 to $430,800). Given the growing U.S. space industry with…

  • Royal Observatory Greenwich Winning Space Images

    London’s The Guardian newspaper recently reported on the winners in the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s 14th Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Once of the runner-up images, shown above, is titled “Back to the Spaceship” by Mihail Minkov. Located on Mount Buzludzha in Bulgaria, it was built as the House Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Here is a…

  • The State of the Space Industry

    A recent report by the Space Foundation shared the following figures: In a troubling time around the globe, those are some pretty positive numbers. Just in terms of launched spacecraft, we can also see the commercial sector is playing a large role: The [second quarter] edition also looks at the record pace of successful launches…

  • Pic of the Week: Martian Polygons

    This week’s image is from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Observer. The Martian surface looks magical as we see the effects of water and ice. We tend to see Mars in one way – the view from a lander or rover showing a plain desert-like horizon (shown below) – but from above we can see it is…

  • Space Stories: The Milky Way, Super-Earths, and Anti-Satellite Tests

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —ScienceNews.org: “Passing Through the Milky Way’s Arms May Have Helped Form Earth’s Solid Ground“ Earth’s journey through the Milky Way might have helped create the planet’s first continents. Comets may have bombarded Earth every time the early solar system traveled through our galaxy’s spiral arms, a new study…

  • Blue Origin Booster Mishap

    Delays and accidents are clear risks in the space industry, as we learned with the Artemis mission and now Blue Origin’s latest rocket launch. On Monday, a crewless New Shepard rocket launch (NS-23) went wrong, with the booster failing shortly after takeoff. Fortunately, the emergency system worked fine, indicating a crew would have returned safely…

  • Space Quote: A Return to the Space Race

    “Space will be the next great commons, a shared global resource like the oceans or cyberspace. History shows that these great commons are inevitably a source of competition and conflict, not voluntary cooperation. Whoever dominates space will determine the future of nations. We have to abandon the globalist fantasy that the U.S., China, and Russia…

  • Television: The Upcoming Star Wars Series Andor

    Enough about Star Trek. It’s time to talk about Star Wars. On September 21, Disney+ (the second Death Star of online content after the demise of Netflix) will be releasing its next Star Wars series called Andor. It’s a prequel to the movie Rogue One, starring Diego Luna as Cassian Andor five years before the…