Long distance is hard (sorry, trigger warning for the hopeless romantics). No one knows that more than a group of NASA engineers and scientists who spent five months waiting (read: begging) for a clear response from Voyager 1…from 15 billion miles away. Read about what it was like to be in the room where it happened, particularly in the moment of victory, when the spacecraft finally responded – subsequently admitting on X, “I'm the problem it’s me.”
You know what they say, just Google it. Discover how a new Cloud-based method of spotting killer asteroids could change the planetary defense game.
A team at Hokkaido University can tell a lot from the “space weathering” marks on an asteroid sample originating from Ryugu. It’s sort of like palm reading, except that examining an asteroid's environmental signatures may not tell of the space rock’s future. However, it could predict the future for a spacecraft destined for the same environment, hence subject to the same dust degradation.
According to NASA, Starship’s destiny goes well beyond Artemis, as SpaceX and the agency “build a blueprint for deep space exploration." Ars Technica breaks down NASA’s expectations for Starship’s full scale refueling demonstration next year, which will involve a target and a chaser vehicle – because you always need a chaser!
Giant cigar galaxies, magnetars and gamma flares, oh my! A recent gamma ray surge from the cigar-shaped M82 galaxy just released more energy than our sun could generate in 10,000 years – in a tenth of a second.
Immaculate news for any trekkies (sorry Star Wars peeps) out there – or fans of prose-y, spoken word-like music:
Admiral James KirkWilliam Shatner just released “So Fragile, So Blue…” a whimsical, orchestral retelling of viewing Earth from space back in 2021.How do revered objects such as satellites go missing? I ask myself the same question every time I lose my phone. But like the back of my couch, space is a dark place, and sometimes, even prized possessions can disappear without a trace for 25 years.
Space Watch:
Plus this little mini-doc!