• RIP: Cosmonaut Valery Vladimirovich Polyakov

    Last week cosmonaut Valery Polyakov passed away at the age of 80 (1942 to 2022). He still holds the record for the longest single spaceflight in history when he was aboard the Mir space station for 437 days and 18 hours during one stay between 1994 and 1995. By the time he retired later in…

  • DART: Watch the Asteroid Impact

    The Americans and Italians are putting on a show tomorrow night. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft is ready to strike Dimorphos, which is a moonlet to the asteroid Didymos. All of it should be captured by Italy’s Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids (LICIACub) in addition to DART’s own camera called the Didymos…

  • Space Quote: Captain Kirk, The Singer

    “The Masked Singer is the most extraordinary experience I’ve ever had. Well, I mean, the wardrobe was impossible. You can’t see, you can’t breathe, you can’t hear, you can’t think. There was no oxygen in there. I had a panic thinking, “Wait a minute, I can’t breathe. And I’m supposed to sing.” You know how you…

  • Artemis I Launch Set for September 27th

    This time of year the weather tends to be troublesome in the Florida region, but NASA still hopes to try again with its Artemis I uncrewed launch to the Moon on September 27th. Here are the updated mission facts: Launch date: Sept. 27, 2022 Mission duration: 38 days, 23 hours, 49 minutes Total distance traveled:…

  • Pic of the Week: Interacting Galaxy Pair

    This week’s image comes again from the Hubble Space Telescope, which is keeping us entertained as the James Webb Space Telescope cycles through its required observations and spins off images from time to time. While an earlier image appeared to show colliding galaxies, though it was believed to be an optical illusion, the collision above…

  • Soyuz Launch to Space Station a Success

    Earlier today, the Russian Soyuz MS-22 rocket launched from Kazakhstan and successfully placed three new inhabitants on the International Space Station (ISS): NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin. The three will stay on the ISS for the next six month, while three cosmonauts will be returning to Earth next week…

  • 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: Dark energy is…

  • 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…