• The State of the Space Industry

    A recent report by the Space Foundation shared the following figures: The global space economy hit $469 billion in 2021; The space sector saw 9 percent revenue growth since 2020; and 1,022 spacecraft placed in orbit during the first six months of 2022. In a troubling time around the globe, those are some pretty positive…

  • Pic of the Week: Martian Polygons

    This week’s image is from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Observer. The Martian surface looks magical as we see the effects of water and ice. We tend to see Mars in one way – the view from a lander or rover showing a plain desert-like horizon (shown below) – but from above we can see it is…

  • Space Stories: The Milky Way, Super-Earths, and Anti-Satellite Tests

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —ScienceNews.org: “Passing Through the Milky Way’s Arms May Have Helped Form Earth’s Solid Ground“ Earth’s journey through the Milky Way might have helped create the planet’s first continents. Comets may have bombarded Earth every time the early solar system traveled through our galaxy’s spiral arms, a new study…

  • Blue Origin Booster Mishap

    Delays and accidents are clear risks in the space industry, as we learned with the Artemis mission and now Blue Origin’s latest rocket launch. On Monday, a crewless New Shepard rocket launch (NS-23) went wrong, with the booster failing shortly after takeoff. Fortunately, the emergency system worked fine, indicating a crew would have returned safely…

  • Space Quote: A Return to the Space Race

    “Space will be the next great commons, a shared global resource like the oceans or cyberspace. History shows that these great commons are inevitably a source of competition and conflict, not voluntary cooperation. Whoever dominates space will determine the future of nations. We have to abandon the globalist fantasy that the U.S., China, and Russia…

  • Television: The Upcoming Star Wars Series Andor

    Enough about Star Trek. It’s time to talk about Star Wars. On September 21, Disney+ (the second Death Star of online content after the demise of Netflix) will be releasing its next Star Wars series called Andor. It’s a prequel to the movie Rogue One, starring Diego Luna as Cassian Andor five years before the…

  • Podcast: Should We Search for Extraterrestrial Life?

    Here is a podcast if you like the debate format so you can listen to both sides before settling on your own position. Intelligence Squared has great discussions involving experts on a multitude of topics, but few touch upon astronomy. Hence, this is an episode worth sharing. Here is the set up for this debate:…

  • Artemis I: Still Looking for a Window

    According to Artemis blog, NASA is looking at a new Artemis I launch date of either September 23 or September 27. The blog states NASA has requested the following launch periods:  Sept 23: Two-hour launch window opens at 6:47 a.m. EDT; landing on Oct. 18  Sept. 27: 70-minute launch window opens at 11:37 a.m.; landing…

  • Pic of the Week: Spiraling Optical Illusion

    This week’s fascinating image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows what appears to be two colliding spiral galaxies. A cropped version is shown below to highlight the colors. Here is more from ESA: The two galaxies, which have the uninspiring names SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, lie more than a billion light-years from Earth.…

  • A Day in Astronomy: The Beginning of the Final Frontier

    On this day in 1966, NBC television broadcast the first episode of Star Trek. The new series lasted for three seasons. It was the beginning of a “cultural phenomena,” to quote Leonard Nimoy from the 1991 television special, Star Trek 25th Anniversary Special. While it may not technically meet the definition of astronomy, it definitely…