• Space Quote: We Have Come A Long Way

    “No competent thinker [can] maintain any single nebula to be a star system of coordinate rank with the Milky Way.” –Agnes Mary Clerke, Irish astronomer, founding member of the  British Astronomical Association, and honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, commenting in 1890 on the likelihood that other galaxies existed beyond the Milky Way. This comment…

  • Sidebar: The Artemis Mission

    With all the previous posts about NASA’s Artemis mission, I should have outlined the three stages ahead as we return to the Moon: Artemis I: This stage involves an uncrewed flight test around the Moon. The new Space Launch System carrying the empty Orion spacecraft will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The…

  • Follow-Up: SpaceX and Others Impacting the Night Sky

    In an earlier post I discussed Elon Musk’s belief that low Earth orbit (LEO) can host billions of satellites, but don’t tell that to astronomers. The satellites already in orbit are corrupting telescope images, so the problem can only get worse. And should we really put up tens of thousands more (forget billions), we may…

  • Private Space Missions: Is Venus Next?

    NBC news reports that a privately-funding space probe could visit Venus as early as next year as phase one of a three-part mission. The goal of the Venus Life Finder Mission, involving MIT alumni and Rocket Lab, is to search for signs of life or microbial-type life. This effort is another encouraging sign of increased…

  • Video: Cool Worlds and Exoplanet Moons

    We have located exoplanets (planets around other suns) and even free-floating planets (planets without a sun), but what about exoplanet moons? A recent video from the YouTube channel Cool Worlds titled “We Discovered a New Exomoon Candidate! A Survey of 70 Cool Gas Giants,” discusses efforts by the Cool Worlds Lab to find these new…

  • Where is This?: The February 4, 2022 Quiz

    Take a look at the image above. Can you determine where this image originated? Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the menu and selecting the “Where is this?” page.

  • Pic of the Week: Russia’s Luna-25 Moon Station

    The image above is an artist’s rending of Russia’s Luna-25 Moon Station that was to be launched last year and is now scheduled to be launched in July 2022. It will be the first domestic spacecraft in the country’s modern history on the surface of the Moon. Luna-25 will be equipped with a soil-sampling robotic…

  • Space Quotes: Key to Successful Space Programs

    “…in order for a space program to be successful it has to be a multi-administration effort. It’s like building an aircraft carrier; that takes about 12 years and spans many administrations. So the space program has to be the same way.” –NASA Administrator Bill Nelson responding to a Time Magazine question about the lack of…

  • Movies: The Coming Moonfall

    On Friday, February 4th, you can watch another crazy science fiction movie if you are up to it, but be prepared. Moonfall has the following premise from Movieinsider.com: In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it.…

  • A Second Trojan Asteroid Accompanies the Earth

    The National Science Foundation’s NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) recently reported that the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile confirmed asteroid 2020 XL5 is in fact a second and the largest Trojan asteroid accompanying the Earth. “Trojan” means that the asteroid orbits the Sun along the same path as the Earth. The…