• What to do When an Asteroid is Heading for Earth

    Back in early April, officials from NASA, FEMA, other domestic and foreign government agencies, and private think tanks conducted an exercise – Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise 5 – to devise ways to deal with an incoming asteroid that threatened the planet. You can see the presentation components and results in the May 13th NASA…

  • Pic of the Week: Nebula RCW 7

    This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble space telescope. It shows the nebula called RCW 7, which is located about 5,300 light-years away. The ESA Hubble site describes the image in this way: Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat blue background towards the bottom,…

  • Space Stories: Astronomical Damage in Ukraine, An Awakened Black Hole, and Understanding Jupiter’s Giant Red Spot

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Science.org: “A Shattered Window to the Radio Sky“ In November 2023, photographer Eric Lusito made a rare visit to the Braude Radio Astronomy Observatory near Kharkiv, Ukraine, once one of the nation’s flagship scientific facilities. Since his visit, the Kharkiv region, which was partly occupied by Russian forces in…

  • Recent Book: The Wrong Stuff

    Here is a book released this month that may be worth taking to the beach. The Wrong Stuff: How the Soviet Space Program Crashed and Burned is a tale about a space program that wowed the world in the 1950s and 1960s until the U.S. stole the show with the first man on the Moon.…

  • When Will the Boeing Astronauts Return?

    The return of the two astronauts from the earlier Starliner mission has been bumped a few times now, with the latest return scheduled for this Saturday (June 22). The Boeing Starliner arrived at the International Space Station with thruster problems, and then encountered further helium leaks after that, so the need for additional time to…

  • Voyager 1 is Communicating Again

    The Voyager 1 spacecraft is communicating properly again after having issues since November 2023. NASA was able to fix the spacecraft that is currently more than 15 billion miles from Earth, which is a pretty impressive feat. Late last week, NASA noted: The team partially resolved the issue in April when they prompted the spacecraft…

  • Podcast: A Mixed Week for Musk

    While things appear to be going Elon Musk’s way with his ridiculous Tesla pay package, The Wall Street Journal had another story this week that discussed his self-serving management style that should not merit reward. The article, “Elon Musk’s Boundary-Blurring Relationships With Women at SpaceX,” highlights some pretty horrible behavior for a man that then…

  • Congressional Support for Chandra

    An earlier post discussed efforts to restore funding for the Chandra X-ray telescope, noting that the Save Chandra was established to push Congress to restore funding. Well, it appears some in Congress are listening. On June 6, nine members of Congress wrote to NASA opposing proposed budget cuts to the Chandra X-ray Observatory mission. In…

  • Pic of the Week: Frost on Olympus Mons

    This week’s image is from the European Space Agency (ESA) and shows Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest volcano in the solar system. Captured by ESA’s Mars Express, it shows water frost close to the planet’s equator, which was unexpected. Colin Wilson, ESA project scientist for both ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express, stated:…

  • Space Stories: Truncated Artemis III Mission, Origins of a Local Galaxy, and Chandra X-ray Observatory Exoplanet Efforts

    Here are some recent stories of interest. —Ars Technica: “As NASA Watches Starship Closely, Here’s What the Agency Wants to See Next“ NASA and SpaceX are planning for the possibility of modifying the Artemis III mission. Instead of landing on the Moon, a crew would launch in the Orion spacecraft and rendezvous with Starship in low-Earth…