• Space Stories: Radioactive Ceres, Moon Clues, and Starlink’s Shine

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —SkyandTelescope.org: “Asteroid Ceres Was Radioactive — And That Could Explain a Lot“ A team of U.S. planetary scientists has shown that unexpected surface features on the dwarf planet Ceres can be explained by radioactive decay in its interior long ago. If they are right, their model could explain features…

  • Space Quote: Studying Exoplanets

    “We are interested in understanding the diversity and atmospheric compositions of planets between the size of Earth and Neptune…“‘Super-Earths’ and ‘mini-Neptunes’ are the most common types of planets in our galaxy. But we only have a few examples of atmospheric measurements from these types of planets.” -Statement by Johanna Teske, a staff scientist at the…

  • Pic of the Week: Captain Picard in California

    This week’s image shows Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) and Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher) discussing Star Trek at the 2022 Comic Con in San Diego, CA. You can watch the full panel discussion here. You can also watch the season three (and final season) trailer for Star Trek: Picard here, indicating our favorites from The…

  • Podcast: Avoiding a Nuclear Winter

    If you are looking for a heavy story, just listen into this week’s StarTalk podcast, “Nuclear Winter with Ann Druyan and Brian Toon.” You can hear all about the Future of Life award given to Carl Sagan and others for “reducing the risk of nuclear war by developing and popularizing the science of nuclear winter.”…

  • Russian Rockets No Longer an Option

    Northrop Grumman is switching from Russian-made rocket engines to U.S.-made rocket engines for its Antares rocket ships that bring supplies to the U.S. International Space Station (ISS). Russia has not shipped any engines since March following its invasion of Ukraine, so Northrop Grumman needs an alternative. It can fly two more missions with the Russian-made…

  • Space Mission: A Trip to the Oort Cloud?

    While NASA does not have any plans to send a specific missions to study the Oort Cloud, the most distant region in our solar system containing trillions of frozen objects, it has already sent five spacecraft in that direction. Two Voyager spacecraft, two Pioneer spacecraft, and the New Horizons spacecraft are all heading that way,…

  • Space Quote: Finally Seeing the Individual Leaves

    “It is like humanity just got a brand-new pair of eyeglasses for the distant universe…We are suddenly seeing that those green areas on the tops of trees are actually made of thousands of individual leaves. We suspected it, but we are now seeing it for the first time.” -Statement by planetary astromomer Heidi Hammel in…

  • A Day in Astronomy: Curiosity Rover Arrives on Mars

    On this day in 2012, the Mars rover Curiosity landed on Mars (using Eastern Time). The rover was sent to the Red Planet to to explore the Gale crater and look for evidence that Mars had the conditions needed to support microscopic life in its past. A video from NASA walks you through the rover’s exploration to date and also highlights Maggie,…

  • Profile: The Cosmosphere

    You may have visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum or ventured down to Florida to visit the Kennedy Space Center, but have you heard of the Cosmosphere in Kansas? Started in 1962, the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas claims to host “…the largest combined collection of U.S. and Russian space artifacts in the world…

  • Pic of the Week: The Cartwheel Galaxy

    This week’s picture is one of the latest images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows the Cartwheel Galaxy, which is about 500 million light-years away. The Hubble’s view of this same galaxy is provided below. Here is a little more from NASA: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos…