• A Second Japanese Moon Mission

    Japan is determined to get onto the moon as soon as possible. An attempt to land on the Moon earlier this year by a private Japanese company ended in failure, but things are looking good so far with the latest mission. Launched on September 6th, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) spacecraft, called the Smart…

  • Study Findings: Atmospheric Carbon Depletion as a Tracer of Water Oceans and Biomass on Temperate Terrestrial Exoplanets

    Nature Astronomy abstract of the study findings: The conventional observables to identify a habitable or inhabited environment in exoplanets, such as an ocean glint or abundant atmospheric O2, will be challenging to detect with present or upcoming observatories. Here we suggest a new signature. A low carbon abundance in the atmosphere of a temperate rock`y planet, relative to other…

  • Pic of the Week: The Space Plane is Back in Orbit

    This week’s image is a little more than an hour old. It shows the SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s launch of the USSF-52 mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier today. The mission involves the Air Force’s top secret X-37B, which will stay in orbit for an undisclosed period of time doing whatever it does…

  • ULA is Up for Sale

    United Launch Alliance (ULA), a space rocket partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is now being offered for sale. Both Blue Origin and Cerberus are showing interest, which could upset the space business as Blue Origin takes a big step forward or Cerberus gets into the space business. ULA, formed in 2006, has both a…

  • NASA Had a Busy Year

    This is the time of year for lists, so I wanted to highlight one of the more important lists, at least in the opinion of this writer. That’s right, we need to remember the important space milestones from this year. Fortunately, NASA recently summed up its successes in 2023 with a new video titled NASA…

  • Holiday Wishes from the Crew on the ISS

    You can watch a holiday video from International Space Station astronauts associated with three space programs provide greetings in three languages. They are away from family during the holidays, yet on the job to keep our space program going.

  • Merry Christmas from NASA

    NASA shared this image of NGC 2264, also known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster,” to brighten everyone’s holiday. You can read more about this image on this NASA page. You will also find an animated version of the “Tree” on the same NASA page. Merry Christmas to all!

  • Martian Habitat: One More Try

    The image above is one more attempt with an AI program to create a Martian habitat. As with the images in my last post, I asked the AI image program Freepik to respond to the following request: “Realist painting, surface of Mars, rocket and habitat in the foreground, ultra detailed.” The image generated was better…

  • AI Images: Habitat on Mars

    I was recently using OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 to test what it would provide if I was looking for examples of a Martian colony. I put in the following request: “Realist painting, surface of Mars, rocket and habitat in the foreground, ultra detailed.” One of the images, shown above, clearly shows the rocket yet the habitat…

  • Pic of the Week: Another Lunar View of Earth

    NASA is sharing a 51-year old photo from Apollo 17 showing both the American flag placed on the lunar surface by the crew as well as their home planet. It is a great shot that gives us plenty to thing about as the U.S. plans a return to the moon (with at least one other…