• Pic of the Week: Eerie Crater Marks the Spot

    This week’s pic is an eerie crater within the Airy Crater on Mars that marks an important spot – 0° longitude on Mars. You can see this position of this smaller crater, Airy-0, within the larger crater below. NASA posted this image on Instagram with a few more details: The larger crater that sits within…

  • SpaceX is Worth About $125 Billion

    Even though Tesla is having valuation issues these days as Mr. Musk pursues Twitter, SpaceX seems to be doing well. Nasdaq news reports that the company had no issues raising $1.5 billion in new funding. The valuation for the company is now $125 billion, up from $100 billion last year. While the company is earning…

  • Hubble: Galaxies Are Moving Away Even Faster Than Expected

    Astronomers using data from the Hubble Space Telescope have determined that the universe is expanding at a faster rate than estimated earlier. Using the Hubble data, the press release stated: After 30 years of meticulous work using the Hubble telescope’s extraordinary observing power, numerous teams of astronomers have narrowed the expansion rate to a precision…

  • You Stole My Dark Matter!

    ScienceDaily reports that astrophysicists found some small galaxies lack Dark Matter after encounters with larger galaxies. In the article, “How Galaxies Can Exist Without Dark Matter,” we learn that the astrophysicists found seven galaxies stripped of dark matter after collisions with galaxies about 1,000 times more massive. Astrophysicist James Bullock from the University of California,…

  • In Case You Missed It: Public Views on the Space Program

    Back in July 2019, the Pew Research Institute issued the results of earlier surveys about the US space program. Let’s look at the answers to six of the questions: Most Americans think sending astronauts to Mars or the Moon should be a lower priority for NASA – or say it should not be done at…

  • Starliner: Third Time’s the Charm

    Finally, we have another spacecraft that appears capable of bringing astronauts into orbit. After two earlier tries, Boeing’s Starliner was successfully launched on Thursday and then connected with the International Spaced Stations (ISS) today. Now we just need it to undock on Wednesday and safely return. In a press release, Jim Chilton, Boeing’s senior vice…

  • A Day in Astronomy: Pioneer Venus

    On this day in 1978, NASA launched Pioneer Venus from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission had two components: the Pioneer Venus Orbiter that remained in orbit around the planet until 1992 when it entered the Venusian atmosphere and burned up, and the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe (known as Pioneer 13) that carried four probes later dropped into the…

  • Pic of the Week: Mars InSight Lander

    NASA recently shared an image showing the accumulation of Martian dust on the solar panels of the Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) Mars lander. The photo above was taken on April 24, 2022. The Mars Insight lander was launched May 5, 2018 to study the interior of Mars. The lander…

  • Supernova: One Ring to Rule Them All?

    Astronomers recently reported that a strange ring just outside of the Milky Way galaxy that may be an intergalactic supernova remnant. SciTechDaily had a story on the discovery first reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Initially detected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), the object (later named J0624–6948) is…

  • The Little Martian Helicopter that Could

    The Washington Post recently posted a story about the great success and potential demise of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter that accompanied the Perseverance Rover to the surface of Mars last year. It has already lasted for more than a year flying multiple missions, yet it may not make it through the Martian winter given the accumulation…