No need for a quick spray of Windex to get a clear view of this situation. There’s a growing need for windows for rubbernecking space travelers, be it from suborbital hops, stays in Earth orbit and far-flung sojourns to the moon and beyond. Retrofire back decades ago when the first Mercury space capsule offered a […]

The development of China’s Moon-landing spacesuit Wangyu, meaning “gazing into the cosmos,” is progressing smoothly, with dozens of key technologies now in place, said Zhang Wanxin, an expert at the Astronaut Center of China, at an aerospace medical engineering conference in Tianjin. Since suit development began in 2020, efforts on Wangyu have focused on meeting […]

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is examining wind-formed, long, narrow, large ripples, even performing a wheel scuff on top of an undisturbed ripple. Over the past several weeks, and after some 14 years exploring Gale Crater/Mt. Sharp, the Mars machinery has gained one kilometer of elevation since landing. Here are some recently taken images of its […]

  Moon Base inhabitants take note of a newly discovered crater formed on the lunar surface, the largest, ever found in the solar system. As noted by NASA, the crater has officially been named McGetchin after pioneering lunar scientist Tom McGetchin. This crater formed on the Moon’s eastern edge sometime between April 11 and May […]

SpaceX has posted an overview of the 14th flight of Starship. The mission is now being prepared for launch as soon as Monday, September 28, pending regulatory approval. The 75-minute launch window will open at 7:15 a.m. Central “Texas” Time. As noted by SpaceX, the upcoming flight is planned to be the first to send […]

Last July, there were several events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Viking missions to Mars. Back in 1976, twin spacecraft missions — each consisting of a lander and an orbiter – made their way to the Red Planet and into the history books. The Viking 1 lander planted its legs on the terrain of […]

This is a new documentary film that had its world premiere at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival, held September 4-7. The director of this film, Nanette Burstein, is well known for her other biopics, including one featuring Hillary Clinton. This Carl Sagan film is roughly half about Sagan’s professional career and half about his personal […]

  The U.S. Department of War has issued a “legal waiver” for those wishing to disclose information regarding Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, better known as UAP, a hybrid term also linked to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Military service members, civilian personnel, and contractors are now green-lighted to disclose protected information. Targeted legal relief “This targeted legal […]

  In classic wait-a-minute style, the European Space Agency (ESA)has released its Space Environment Report 2026 In brief, this chilling report points out that, indeed, Earth’s orbital environment is a finite resource. Meanwhile, some of its orbits are getting crowded and increasingly churning with deadly, fast-moving pieces of defunct satellites and rockets that threaten our […]

Viewed as a major breakthrough in radio astronomy, China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) has detected 156,411 neutral hydrogen sources across nearly half the sky. The findings, published as a cover story in the journal Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, position FAST as the new global reference in hydrogen survey research. Identity cards […]

Reid Wiseman, commander of NASA’s Artemis II mission in April, led humanity’s first crewed voyage beyond low Earth orbit in 53 years — a nearly 10-day journey that looped around the moon and back. He told a standing room only audience at the National Book Festival on August 22 about what it looked and like […]

China’s Tiangong space station has upgraded its in-orbit kitchen. During a space lecture to science class students, the Shenzhou-23 crew —Zhu Yangzhu, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Lai Ka-ying — covered the crew’s daily orbital meals and upgraded food-heating tools aboard the space station. Lai, Hong Kong’s first payload specialist, explained the heating facilities, which enable astronauts […]

On August 20, 2026, U.S. President Trump signed The National Space Transportation Policy presidential memorandum, which sets a target of enabling over 1,000 space launches and reentries annually by 2030 through expanded launch infrastructure and industrial base capacity. What’s up with China’s plans for launch, and more recently, recoverable rocketry? What are the challenges and […]

NASA is pressing forward on the plan to establish a Moon Base in the lunar South Pole region. Announced on Tuesday, Sept. 8, NASA posted a NextSTEP-3 Broad Agency Announcement Appendix A. The Lunar Enabling Infrastructure Accelerator solicitation aims to mature and demonstrate capabilities in five areas: Vertical solar array technology that can provide consistent […]

China is making progress on its Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return mission. It appears on track getting the trek underway next year, dedicated to bring back to Earth roughly 500 grams of Red Planet collectibles in 2031. According to the China National Space Administration, the Tianwen-3 probe will have a lander, an ascender, a service capsule, […]

Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek by Glen E. Swanson and Foreword by Margaret A. Weitekamp of the Air and Space Museum; 2025; 288  pages (Hardcover); $35.00 Put aside the issue of cranky sliding doors on the USS Enterprise. Level out those pointy Spock ears and discount […]

The Oscar- and Emmy-nominated documentarist Nanette Burstein working with co-screenwriter and editor Tal Ben-David, brings to life the story of Carl Sagan. The new National Geographic documentary film, Carl Sagan: We Are Made Of Star Stuff, made its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. The 53rd Telluride Film Festival was held September 4 through […]

We are a “planet-based” species – all of us on a spin-filled Earth now housing 8.3 billion people. That’s the gravity of the situation. But we’re also a world of floods, typhoons, earthquakes, heat and cold calamities, volcanic eruptions, even encounters with Sun-caused aurora and bruises from incoming space rocks. It’s quite a world worth […]

Could Earth’s Moon be a witness plate, peppered with extraterrestrial material evidence of past extraterrestrial technology? “Whereas electromagnetic SETI is restricted to contemporaneous transmitters, searches for artificially generated particles integrate over gigayear timescales and are therefore sensitive to technomaterial released by civilizations long extinct.” The idea is that technogenic artifacts may survive natural interstellar transport […]

The European Space Agency’s Planetary Defense Office/Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center has published the following Imminent Imactor based on 11 observations: Imminent Impactor: CERNQ52 The Imminent Impactors page contains a list of the confirmed impacting objects detected by ESA’s Meerkat monitoring system in the last 15 days. Meerkat computes impact solutions using the systematic ranging method. […]