• It Was Inevitable – NASA Names First Chief AI Officer

    David Salvagnini, currently NASA’s chief data officer, will now also hold the title of Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer. It seems to be the trend these days as AI infiltrates organizations. With regards to the new position, NASA noted: This appointment is in accordance with President Biden’s Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy…

  • A Day in Astronomy: Birth of George Lucas

    On this day in 1944, George Walton Lucas Jr. was born in Modesto, CA. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1967, co-founded American Zoetrope with another filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, and started making films that eventually changed America cinema. He would one day go on to create the Star Wars franchise, one…

  • Space Stories: Robot Trains on the Moon, Commercial Space Stations, and Russian Lunar Reactors

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —NDTV: “NASA Announces Plans To Build First Railway System On Moon“ As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) readies to return astronauts to the moon, it has announced its plans to build a levitating robot train on the lunar surface. In a blog post, the American space agency provided…

  • Video: Check Out Aeon Astronomy & Space Travel Videos

    Aeon is a website of ideas run by Aeon Media. It’s mission is to explore and communicate knowledge that addresses our shared need to make sense of the world. While it covers quite a few topics, I wanted to highlight some of its videos on astronomy and space travel. Below are just a few I…

  • Don’t Miss the Northern Lights

    Tonight you can still capture the Northern Lights here in the U.S. After an 11-year absence. The solar event will have the greatest show in the Ohio River Valley through the Midwest and into the Pacific Northwest (see CNN map below). Amazingly, the show was seen as far south as Florida yesterday evening. The good…

  • Space Quote: Congressional Appeal for More NASA Funding

    “An improved appropriation for FY 2025 of $9 billion for SMD will give the agency the necessary resources to pursue Decadal priorities such as the Earth System Observatory, Geophysical Dynamics Constellation, Habitable Worlds Observatory, and Mars Sample Return, while maintaining our nation’s highly-skilled workforce and fleet of operating and developing spacecraft including the Chandra X-Ray…

  • Pic of the Week: Little Dumbbell Nebula

    This week’s image comes from the NASA/European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope. It shows what is called the Little Dumbbell Nebula, more formally called  Messier 76, M76, or NGC 650/651, which is about 3,400 light-years away. The image is being shared as part of the celebration of Hubble’s 34th anniversary, which is discussed in this…

  • TESS is Back Online

    As of May 3, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) was functioning again after flipping into safe mode back on April 23. NASA shared this info regarding the shutdown: The operations team determined this latest safe mode was triggered by a failure to properly unload momentum from the spacecraft’s reaction wheels, a routine activity needed…

  • Space Stories: Missing Water on Venus, More About Planet Nine, and Possible Life on an Exoplanet

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —University of Colorado at Boulder: “Venus Has Almost No Water: A New Study May Reveal Why“ Planetary scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered how Venus, Earth’s scalding and uninhabitable neighbor, became so dry. The new study fills in a big gap in what the researchers call…

  • Boeing Needs Just One More Day

    Today was supposed to be the day that Boeing launched a crewed capsule to the International Space Station (ISS), but things did not go according to plan (again). Two hours before the planned launch a valve issue on the Atlas V rocket’s second stage put everything on hold. A launch as early as tomorrow is…