• Pic of the Week: Blue Origin Moon Landing

    The image above is from a NASA Office of the Inspector General audit report on the Human Landing System. It shows the complexity of the Blue Origin process for getting a crew on the Moon. It is complex, and has one more step than the SpaceX plan, which already seems close to impossible. This is…

  • Audit Report: Questions about the Human Landing System

    Auditors with NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) evaluated three aspects of the Human Landing System (HLS) to be used with the Artemis Moon landing: (1) the extent to which the HLS providers are meeting cost, schedule, and performance goals; (2) the HLS Program’s implementation of the insight/oversight model; and (3) the Program’s identification…

  • Sci-Fi Quote: Less Dystopia This Time

    “I think that’s what’s so special about this film, and why people are having such an emotional connection to it … it’s like we’ve been so saturated with dystopia in future narratives for the last decade to the point where it feels almost inevitable at this point. Then you have Andy sort of reminding us…

  • Space Stories: DART Did Its Diversionary Duty, A New Moon Crater, and A New Private Space Telescope

    Here are some recent space-related stories of interest. —Nautilus: “NASA’s DART Mission Offers Proof of Protection Against Asteroid Impacts“ In November 2021, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) aimed at finding out whether or not we could redirect the trajectory of a near-Earth object simply by crashing into it…The mission was a success, making…

  • Movie: Project Hail Mary

    The long-awaited second feature film of a book by author Andy Weir is almost here. After enjoying both the book and later movie-version of The Martian back in 2015 (yes, more than a decade ago), we are ready for his next film based on his 2021 book Project Hail Mary. Now you only have to…

  • Surviving on an Ice Planet

    Aeon always has some great articles every month, and one of these is titled “The Snowball Effect.” The article discusses two periods when glaciers covered the Earth from pole to equator. The last time was 645 million years ago, with the ice remaining for about 10 million years. Even so, life survived and diversified under…

  • Study Findings: An Adolescent and Near-resonant Planetary System Near the End of Photoevaporation

    Nature Astronomy abstract of study findings: Young exoplanets provide vital insights into the early dynamical and atmospheric evolution of planetary systems. Many multi-planet systems younger than 100 Myr exhibit mean-motion resonances, probably established through convergent disk migration. Over time, however, these resonant chains are often disrupted, mirroring the Nice model proposed for the Solar System. Here we present a…

  • Pic of the Week: Martian Highlands

    This week’s image comes from the the European Space Agency (ESA). Captured by ESA’s orbiting Mars Express, you are looking at a portion of the crater-covered Arabia Terra, which is a large plain in Mars’s ancient highlands. You can read more about this Martian region by visiting this site. Here is the ESA’s description of…

  • Senator Cruz Has Big Ambitions for NASA

    Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, earlier today highlighted some of the sections in the NASA Authorization Act of 2026 designed to counter Chinese ambitions on the Moon while also keeping the US in the forefront of space stations. In a Committee press release, he stated: Let me…

  • Podcast: Jerod Isaacman Speaks with Ross Douthat

    New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sat down with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently to discuss the future of NASA and more. You can listen to the interview, titled ‘The New Space Race,” via the New York Times‘ Interesting Times podcast or watch it on YouTube. I was a little skeptical about what I would…