• 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.

  • Space Stories: SPHEREx Starts Mapping, Studying an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere, and Explosive Diamonds

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Engadget: “NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Has Begun its Mission to Map the Entire Sky in 3D“ A space observatory designed to map the entire sky over a period of two years to further our understanding of the early universe has started snapping images. SPHEREx, which launched in early March,…

  • Happenings with the Chinese Space Station

    The Chinese space program continues to operate and advance as NASA faces daunting cuts and general disorientation under the Department of Government Efficiency (a misnomer if there ever was one). On April 24, China sent three new astronauts (the Shenzhou-20 crew) to its Tiangong space station, while three astronauts (the Shenzhou-19 crew) safely returned from…