Blogs about Space

This week, the 4th international conference on the history of physics finally took place at Trinity College Dublin. The event, supported by the Institute of Physics and the European Physics Society, was the fourth in …

The Full Moon is Friday September 29. Mars is very low in twilight. Saturn is visible in the evening sky. Saturn is past opposition, but still bright and a good telescope object. Jupiter is is …

The harvest moon spills a little extra moonlight our way this week.

Back from Bennu

A material called aerographite offers options for solar sails that transcend the capabilities of both beryllium and graphene, the latter being the most recent candidate for fast sail missions outside the Solar System. Developed at …

The details are still to be worked out, but NASA has chosen three museums to display pieces of asteroid Bennu as collected and returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx mission. The three venues in Washington, …

On 2023 February 12.8 (20:18:07 UTC), K. Sarneczky found a small asteroid with the 0.60-m Schmidt + CCD of the Piszkéstető Observatory in Hungary (K88 MPC code) that was soon after put on the NEOCP …

A slight correction is required. I initially assumed the acceleration of the Starship “Hail Mary”was 1.5 gee, but that’s not quite right. The audiobook, which I’m listening to currently, reminds me it’s actually 15 m/s^2. …

A rescan project, but a rescan of a reprint. I blogged about this book in 2012 here:https://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2012/12/flying-in-space-1961.htmlI think it is Czech, but may be a difference Russian language. I got a Russian reprint of this …

During the course of my professional career, one of the more important projects I had the pleasure to work on was the joint US/Russian Federation (RF) RAMOS (Russian American Observation Satellites) program. Before the project’s …

Two different eclipses of the Sun will be visible from all of North America in the coming school year. (And then we won’t see another one until 2045!) The first will be an annular (ring …

It being a Saturday, and the weather forecast suggesting a temperature of around 30° C, I made an early start this morning to beat the tourist crowds and the heat as I walked around. I …

End of the Chase for New Horizons?: How the journey taken from start to implementation of the incredible New Horizons mission is facing derailment, somethig that has echoes from the past.

China Moon exploration planners are detailing the country’s next robotic lunar probe mission, the Chang’e-6 to be launched around 2024. This Moon lander is to set down in the south pole-Aitken Basin on the lunar …

Next to the Orion Nebula, the Rosette Nebula is definitely a must-do on the list of every aspiring astrophotographer. Located not too far from Orion in Monoceros, this large H II region has spectacular features, …

This artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like based on new observation. The exoplanet, of a size between Earth and Neptune, orbits the cool dwarf star K2-18. A new investigation of the …

For the kid who had everything from the worlds of Major Matt Mason ....... Major Matt Wallpaper!I mean, Wow! Who wouldn't have wanted this on their wall back in 1967! I seem to recall I …

I was listening to a favorite symphony this morning, Mendelssohn’s Fourth, the Italian Symphony. The first movement is as sunny as I’ve ever known it to be in Italy, even in Tuscany. I started wondering …

durf: Boston Dynamics steals Japanese kawaii tech for its latest robot:

Image credit: NASA.The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) had its origins in talks aimed at developing a common U.S./Soviet docking system for space rescue. The concept of a common docking system was first put forward in …