• Follow DIU Rather Than DOGE at NASA

    Years ago the Department of Defense (DOD) established the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to use the full force of private sector innovation to address DOD needs. This has been a successful initiative that has lowered costs while improving DOD efficiency. Whether it is working to create better batteries or micro-reactors for the military, it represents…

  • Pic of the Week: Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5335

    This week’s image looks like something ginned up by AI, but it is from the Hubble Space Telescope. Just the number of stray galaxies in the image is amazing. Here is the description of the image from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble page: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 5335 observed by the Hubble Space Telescope…

  • Space Quote: Lunar Sample Sharing

    “I wish that every country would follow in the footsteps of the U.S. and now China.” –Statement by Frédéric Moynier, a cosmochemist at the Paris Institute of Planetary Physics, regarding China’s sharing of lunar samples from its 2020 Chang’e-5 mission. Seven institutions in six countries now have access to these samples, including two institutions in…

  • Help NASA Classify New Galaxies

    If you have a little bit of time left in your day, maybe you want to help NASA classify a few galaxies captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The NASA site has more than 500,000 that need to be classified, and volunteers can make this process faster. For instance, you can help determine if…

  • Space Stories: Stranded Mars Samples, Cancelled Lunar Rover, and New Plans for Martian Travel

    Here are some recent space-related stories of interest. —Scientific American: “NASA Spent Billions to Bring Rocks Back from Mars. Trump Wants to Leave Them There“ …on May 2 the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) dropped a budgetary bombshell, proposing to cut NASA’s top-line funding by a quarter, slash the space agency’s science budget…

  • Aeon Article: Extraterrestrial Tongues

    If you do not usually visit the stories in Aeon, you may want to make an exception and check out a new article titled “Extraterrestrial Tongues.” It discusses the ways science fiction have portrayed different languages and how it may be too simplistic considering all of the possibilities for “communication” with an alien civilization. The…

  • Video: Andor Versus Star Trek

    If you are watching the Star Wars series Andor on Disney+, you are well aware of the dark workings of the imperial bureaucracy as it crushes the spirit of its citizens. Reason magazine, always a proponent of less government, has created a fun video that highlights the realistic nature of the bureaucracy in Andor versus…

  • Space Quote: Soviet-Era Space Probe May Come Down Tonight

    “As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact.” -Statement by Marco Langbroek, an expert on Space Situational Awareness at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, pertaining to the Venera 8 probe that…

  • Pic of the Week: The Eagle Nebula

    This week’s updated image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the Eagle Nebula in all its glory, located not too far from the Pillars of Creation. For more on this spectacular image, we turn to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble page: Unfurling along the length of the image is a pillar of…

  • Astronomy Question: The Gap Between the Earth and the Moon

    True or False: If you lined up all of the planets in our solar system, you could fit them between the Earth and the Moon. Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the “Astronomy Question Answer Sheet” page.