• NASA’s FY 2023 Budget Request

    So what else did NASA Administrator Bill Nelson share with the Senate Committee on Appropriations last week (beyond his comments about the International Space Station)? In his prepared statement regarding NASA’s $26 billion budget request, he highlighted a number of priorities for his agency, including: the Artemis Program to bring astronauts back to the Moon…

  • World’s First Liquid Mirror Telescope

    An earlier post mentioned NASA’s plans for a liquid mirror telescope in space. Well, India now has one here on Earth. The Indian Express reports that the liquid mirror telescope was designed and built at the Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems Corporation and the Centre Spatial de Liege, Belgium. While funded by Canada and Belgium,…

  • International Space Station: Russians Still Busy

    Earlier today, NASA announced that an uncrewed Russian cargo ship, Progress 81, arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) without incident. Work continues among the Americans and Russians aboard the ISS regardless of the situation on the ground, which is reassuring. As NASA administrator Bill Nelson said last month at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing,…

  • Pic of the Week:  Gypsum Dunes on Mars

    This week’s amazing image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2005. The University of Arizona’s Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, which operates HiRISE, described the image in this way: This image suggestion outlines a contact between gypsum-rich dunes in Olympia Undae and flat-lying layers…

  • Whatever Happened to NASA’s Mariner 8?

    An earlier post noted the anniversary of NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft to Mars, launched on May 30, 1971, but what about Mariner 8? What happened to that Mars bound spacecraft? Both Mariner 8 and 9 we developed together so one could replace the other if needed, which was pretty smart. The Russians did the same…

  • Space Stories: Near Earth Hazards, Mars Helicopter, and Super-Earths

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Spacenews.com: “House committee questions proposed delay in NASA asteroid mission“ Members of the House Science Committee used a hearing about the planetary science decadal survey to criticize a proposal in NASA’s budget request to delay work on a space telescope to track near Earth objects (NEOs). —NASA: “NASA’s…

  • A Day in Astronomy: Mariner 9 Launched Towards Mars

    On this day in 1971, the Mariner 9 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. It would become the first spacecraft from Earth to orbit Mars (or any other planet). It arrived at Mars on November 14, 1971. The Soviets were also working on their own program, launching their two Mars-bound spacecraft even…

  • Profile: Asteroid Bennu

    Back in 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from asteroid Bennu, named after the ancient Egyptian mythological bird associated with the Sun, creation, and rebirth. These samples are scheduled to return to Earth until next year, but in the meantime there is already a lot that NASA knows about this asteroid. Some of the key points are listed…

  • TV: Obi-Wan Kenobi

    While Star Trek is generally a better fit for an astronomy site, I did not want to ignore the release this week of Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. As with the other similar releases in the last few years, including The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, Disney is mining the Star Wars stories for new…

  • Black Holes in the Center of Galaxies are More Common Than We Thought

    We already knew a supermassive black hole sits at the center of our galaxy and others like it, but what about dwarf galaxies? SciTechDaily reports that astronomers in the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Department of Physics & Astronomy have found that large black holes are also more common than previously thought in dwarf galaxies.…