• Pic of the Week: Quasar RX J1131-1231

    This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope. It was highlighted in USAToday as one of the best images from 2024. It shows the gravitational lensing of RX J1131-1231, which is a quasar about 6 billion light-years from Earth. Here is more about the image: It is considered one of the best lensed…

  • Space Stories: Firefly Wins Another NASA Contract, Commercial Space Station Progress, and Another Starliner Delay

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Firefly Aerospace: “Firefly Awarded $179 Million NASA Contract for Moon Delivery to Gruithuisen Domes“ Firefly Aerospace, Inc., the leader in end-to-end responsive space services, was awarded an approximately $179.6 million NASA contract to deliver and operate six NASA instruments in the Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon’s near side in…

  • Space Quote: Drone Flights Over Military Locations Said to be Common

    “…there have been a limited number of visual sightings of drones over military facilities in New Jersey and elsewhere, including within restricted air space. Such sightings near or over Department of Defense installations are not new. The Department of Defense takes unauthorized access over its airspace seriously and coordinates closely with federal, state, and local…

  • A Day in Astronomy: The Birth of Philip K. Dick

    On this day in 1928, American science fiction writer Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago, IL. He would go on to write some of the best known books on science fiction, including: Mr. Dick had a troubled life with multiple wives, yet he created some of the most memorable characters and fiction. You may…

  • More Gift Ideas from The Mars Society

    If you are still fishing around for holiday gifts, you might want to check out The Mars Society’s gift store. For example, you may want a model of the Mars Perseverance rover and its accompanying Ingenuity helicopter (shown above) or may a signed copy of Robert Zubrin’s book The Case for Mars: The Plan to…

  • Additional Comments by the NASA Nominee

    According to a story in Chron, a few years back the current nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, made the following statement: I truly want us to live in a world 50 or 100 years from now where people are jumping in their rockets like the Jetsons and there are families bouncing around on the…

  • UFOs in New Jersey?

    What’s going on in New Jersey and other parts of the East Coast? We are hearing of mysterious drone flights over communities and military installations, which the government cannot confirm. Earlier this week, New Jersey State Senator Jon Bramnick stated: The State of New Jersey should issue a limited state of emergency banning all drones…

  • Pic of the Week: Grand Design Spiral Galaxy NGC 5643

    This week’s image comes from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope. It shows colorful spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located roughly 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus. Here is more on the spiral galaxy from the ESA Hubble site: NGC 5643 is what’s known as a grand design spiral, referring…

  • Space Quote: The End of Ingenuity on Mars

    “When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses…While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with.” -Statement by Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip…

  • Starship: To Mars or in the Service of Mars

    While Elon Musk has talked endlessly about going to Mars with his Starship, it seems the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in the service of Mars, God of War, has other ideas for his rocket. A recent Washington Post article, “Elon Musk’s Martian Dreams are a Boon to the U.S. military,” stated that DOD is…