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. […]

Venus appears pale yellow in visible light, but ultraviolet images reveal dramatic dark and bright patterns moving with the planet’s upper sulfuric acid clouds. Scientists have known about these markings for roughly a century, yet the chemical identity of the material responsible—the “unknown absorber”—remains unresolved. An international research team has now placed new quantitative constraints […]

China’s Tianwen-3 Mars Sample Return mission appears on track for launch next year, dedicated to return to Earth Red Planet collectibles in 2031. A new video posted on Weibo is being shown by CNSPACE.dev, a website on China space development, noting that multi-site sampling by drone is not displayed in the video, only sampling done […]

NASA’s Dragonfly spacecraft is scheduled to launch in summer 2028 and reach Saturn’s moon Titan in late 2034. The rotorcraft’s landing area on Titan has been named – Ahmakiq Undae. The region consists of dunes and interdune areas to the south of Selk Crater, extending to the edge of a range of hills or mountains. […]

Here’s a wait-a-minute question: What’s the frequency, Kenneth Arnold? Admittedly, I borrowed and bent that R.E.M. song line. But it came to me in reading the latest outpouring of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) documents, videos and illustrations by the Department of War on August 7. Those files are part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System […]

Taking LEO Off the Board: Russian Thinking About Anti-Satellite Warfare is authored by Aaron Stein, President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). “The Soviet Union and Russia have invested in anti-satellite weapons to ensure that their nuclear deterrent remains credible. For both the Soviet Union and Russia, the destruction of American satellites was (and is) […]