• Space Stories: A New Martian Crater, the Final Piece of China’s Space Station, and the Falcon Heavy Flies Again

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —NASA: “NASA’s InSight Lander Detects Stunning Meteoroid Impact on Mars“ NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the…

  • Look Up, Again: An Asteroid is Really Coming

    Yes, you have heard it all before – a “planet killer” asteroid is coming our way. Well, in this case it appears to be true, but the 1.1km to 2.3km asteroid will only cross our path rather than hit us, at least for now. The asteroid, named the ever-boring 2022 AP7, is among the top…

  • Space Mission: ESA’s Euclid Telescope

    To follow up on the previous post, Russia also lost out on launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid spacecraft. Russia was supposed to launch it on a Soyuz-ST/Fregat rocket this December, but the country’s invasion of Ukraine led to a change in plans. SpaceX will now be launching the spacecraft next year. Euclid was designed…

  • Has Russia Lost its Space Mojo?

    Marina Koren’s article in The Atlantic, titled “The Russian Space Program Is Falling Back to Earth,” has plenty to say about the state of Russia’s space program. Her assessment is pretty bleak outside of the continued collaboration related to the International Space Station (ISS). She notes: Beyond the ISS, though, Russia’s space portfolio isn’t all…

  • A Day in Astronomy: Visit to Asteroid Gaspra

    On this day in 1991, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by asteroid Gaspra, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Galileo conducted a quick fly-by while flying towards Jupiter and its moons. The spacecraft also visited the asteroid Ida. Asteroid Gasprawas first discovered back in 1916 by Russian astronomer G. N. Neujmin, who decided to…

  • Space Quote: Starlink Threatened by the Russians

    “Quasi-civilian infrastructure may be a legitimate target for a retaliatory strike.” -Statement to the United Nations by Russian senior foreign ministry official Konstantin Vorontsov in reference to attacking SpaceX’s Starlink satellites being used by the Ukrainian military as it pushes back the Russian invasion. In a Reuters article, “Russia’s Anti-satellite Threat Tests Laws of War in Space,”…

  • Pic of the Week: Webb’s First Deep Field

    This week we have another recent image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) showing a thousands of galaxies, some of which have images distorted by the gravity of other galaxies. It is quite a collection of distant worlds. Here is the story from NASA: Thousands of galaxies flood this near-infrared image of galaxy cluster…

  • Space Stories: Approaching Lucy, Chinese Space Ambitions, and Conan the Bacterium

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —NASA.gov: “NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Captures Images of Earth, Moon Ahead of Gravity Assist“ On October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured [the above] image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 890,000 miles (1.4 million km). The image was taken as part of an instrument calibration…

  • Study Findings: Fusible Mantle Cumulates Trigger Young Mare Volcanism on the Cooling Moon

    Science Advances abstract: [China’s] Chang’E-5 (CE5) mission has demonstrated that lunar volcanism was still active until two billion years ago, much younger than the previous isotopically dated lunar basalts. How the small Moon retained enough heat to drive such late volcanism is unknown, particularly as the CE5 mantle source was anhydrous and depleted in heat-producing…

  • A Day in Astronomy: Motion Pictures of Earth

    On this day in 1946, we saw the Earth from space for the first time in history, and the sub-orbital motion pictures were captured by a V-2 rocket, a deadly German weapon that was finally put to good use. The U.S. launched the missile from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The rocket…