space

New Glenn & ESCAPADE

Fantastic launch (and landing) today by Blue Origin - there's another reusable rocket on the table.

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, in its second official launch, sent NASA's ESCAPADE mission on its way to Mars. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (NASA makes such great acronyms) mission will use two small satellites (built by another private space company, Rocket Lab) to study space weather conditions at Mars.

In only its second try, Blue Origin executed a perfect landing of New Glenn's booster on their drone ship, "Never Tell Me The Odds."

As awesome as SpaceX's achievements are, we need MORE private space companies doing amazing things, so Blue Origin's success today is great news. Like SpaceX, Blue Origin will be headed to the moon as part of Artemis, and they have grand plans for orbital stations and beyond.

Learn more about the launch today here.

Image Credit: Dave Limp (link) and Blue Origin.

The Milky Way Shines in Radio

This is what the Milky Way would look like at night if your eyes could see radio waves. It's a new image created by the Murchison Widefield Array, which scanned the sky in 20 radio "colors" over frequencies from 72 to 231 megahertz.

What do I think when I see an image like this? Space isn't cold, dark and silent at all. It's vibrant, busy and fiercely, chaotically alive. Which makes it a fantastic place for stories.

Learn more here.

Choose the Form of Your Destruction

Is the universe doomed to suffer a Heat Death (which means cold) or a Big Crunch (or possibly Big Bounce)? Which is it, dammit? For the last 3 decades, scientists have insisted the expansion of the universe was accelerating; that one day no more galaxies would decorate our sky, then no more stars. Then the universe would grow still and cold.

Now some pretty reputable research says...oops? Maybe not? Maybe the expansion is slowing, will eventually stop, then reverse?

You don't need to read the article unless you're into astrophysics. The point is that, for a science fiction writer, all the things we DON'T understand can be very frustrating - but possibly nothing is more frustrating than when we're confident we DO understand something...until we don't.

The fact that the universe is expanding, and that the expansion is accelerating, is baked into the Amaranthe worldbuilding, and not just as background - it's actually somewhat important to the Rasu/Dzhvar shenanigans. If scientists eventually decide that, no, they're now definitely sure it's doing no such thing, that flip is going to painfully date my books for future readers.

And I'm going to be ANNOYED.

https://thedebrief.org/a-potential-paradigm-shift-in-cosmology-scientists-uncover-evidence-the-universes-expansion-is-slowing-down-not-accelerating/

P.S.: For the record, I actually prefer the Big Bounce scenario. If all life in the universe is going to end, better for it to do so in an exciting rush of colliding galaxies and stars into a dramatic singularity, then an explosion to start all over again. No one wants to die cold and alone in the dark.

P.P.S.: A reader on X pushed back a little bit on my take, pointing out that science is not frozen into a fixed, unchanging doctrine like religion; instead it bends and changes as our knowledge grows, and that’s a good thing. And it IS a good thing; in fact, it's one of the most admirable aspects of science. It's just frustrating when you're trying to make your scifi grounded in scientific plausibility & the foundations keep changing. But, that's what I get for writing out on the far edge of what we know!

Starship Test 11

Starship Flight Test 11 on Monday was pretty much perfect. Despite continuing to push the booster and the ship to their limits in multiple ways, not only did nothing blow up,* but both performed precision, controlled soft landings. After some bumps in the road (i.e., explosions) in earlier test flights, with 2 fantastic successes in a row, SpaceX seems to have gotten its mojo back, and Starship's future looks bright indeed.

Moon/Mars, here we come!

You can watch a video of the controlled ocean landing of the ship here: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1978905901344907726, and read more about the details of the test flight here: https://spacenews.com/starship-successfully-completes-11th-flight-test/

Photo by John Kraus: https://x.com/johnkrausphotos/status/1977883695651467447

*Okay, the ship DID ultimately blow up when it fell over into the ocean (after executing a perfect landing maneuver and hover), but that happens every time and is totally expected, so it doesn’t count. Soon, the MechaZilla chopsticks will be catching the ship, enabling reusability.

Binary Black Holes

This is our clearest look at two supermassive black holes in orbit around each other. The primary one is 18 billion times the mass of the Sun. The image was created using a space-based antenna that created, in effect, a radio telescope 190,000 km wide.

Incredible. Just 6 years ago we directly imaged a black hole for the first time - now here we are casually snapping pics of binary black holes. ...Okay, maybe not "casually." I'm sure it was a ton of work. But these days, we can just do things.

Learn more here: https://www.utu.fi/en/news/press-release/scientists-capture-an-image-of-two-black-holes-circling-each-other-for-the-first

2026 Space Art Calendars

I know, I know - wall calendars are so last century. But what if they have gorgeous space art on them....?

I just thought I'd briefly pimp 2 calendars from 3 amazing astrophotographers (2 are a married couple), Catherin Machin and Ian Lauer, and Andrew McCarthy. These are as beautiful as they come. I'm not an affiliate, and no perks come to me from sharing these. I just suspect that some of you, like me, are suckers for a collection of space art you can justify hanging on your wall.

Machin/Lauer: https://catmachin.com/products/2026-calendar

McCarthy: https://cosmicbackground.io/products/2026-cosmic-calendar?variant=46400264405161

Star Trails

Astronaut Don Petit is back on Earth now, but while he was on the ISS, he took thousands of incredible pictures and videos from orbit, and many of them are only now being catalogued and shared. Visit his X feed regularly to see a constant stream of beautiful images.

In his words: “High resolution star trail from the SpaceX Crew 9 Dragon, marked by a fleet of flashing Starlink satellites, glowing atmosphere, soon to rise sun, and arcing stars. Captured over the Pacific Ocean with Nikon Z9, Sigma 14mm f1.4 lens, effective 24 minute exposure compiled from individual 30 second frames, f1.4, ISO 1600.”

Source

Sunshine

Ace astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured a banger of a photo of the ISS against the sun recently (see it here). Now he’s released an incredible bonus shot from the session. This is one hell of an optical illusion!

Source

P.S.: The title of this post is a reference to a quirky but excellent 2007 movie, “Sunshine,” about a team of astronauts sent on a mission to reignite the dying Sun with a nuclear fission bomb.

Two Worlds, One Sun

This stunning visual was created by NASA, the Curiosity rover, and photographer Damia Bouic.

The Sun appears slightly smaller from Mars than from Earth, since Mars is 50% further from the Sun than Earth. More striking, perhaps, is that the Martian sunset is noticeably bluer near the Sun than the typically orange colors near the setting Sun from Earth. The reason for the blue hues from Mars is not fully understood, but thought to be related to forward scattering properties of Martian dust.

The terrestrial sunset was taken in 2012 March from Marseille, France, while the Martian sunset was captured in 2015 by NASA's robotic Curiosity rover from Gale crater on Mars.

Destination Mars

On Thursday, Elon Musk shared SpaceX's plans for Mars over the next 8 years (and a permanent moon base, since it's on the way ) - and beyond, to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

It is ambitious, perhaps even audacious. But the suite of technologies Elon has built are, it turns out, all positioned to make this a reality. Rockets, robots, autonomous and hardy vehicles, tunnel diggers, a space-based communications system, battery packs, cutting-edge astronaut suits...it's almost like he had a plan all along.

There will be challenges and setbacks along the way, but I am so here for this.

- First Starship to Mars planned for 2026

- Enlarging future generations of Starship

- Mars settlement in 2030s

- Robotic + human labor used

- Moon Base in planning

- 100s of Mars landings

Here’s the link to the entire presentation, if you'd like to watch it: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1928185351933239641

Cosmic Tornado

Wow. Now THIS is the kind of imagery I am here for. Look at that crispness and clarity! And the galaxies in the background.... On behalf of amateur space aficionados everywhere, I declare that JWST was worth the time, trouble and money it took to build and deploy.

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this beautiful juxtaposition of the nearby protostellar outflow known as Herbig-Haro 49/50 with a perfectly positioned, more distant spiral galaxy. Due to the close proximity of this Herbig-Haro object to the Earth, this new composite infrared image of the outflow from a young star allows researchers to examine details on small spatial scales like never before.

Herbig-Haro objects are outflows produced by jets launched from a nearby, forming star. The outflows, which can extend for light-years, plow into a denser region of material. This creates shock waves, heating the material to higher temperatures. The material then cools by emitting light at visible and infrared wavelengths.”

Blue Ghost's Farewell Message

On March 16, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander completed its mission as lunar night arrived. It was a spectacular success in every sense and marks a new era for commercial space missions.

As the craft shut down, it sent one final message home.

Don't worry, Blue Ghost. You'll have plenty of friends - human and robotic - to keep you company soon.

I have words on the moon!

It's a historic day for private space exploration. Early Sunday morning, Firefly Space's Blue Ghost stuck the landing, making it the first fully successful private, commercial moon landing!

On a tiny nanofiche onboard Blue Ghost reside two of my short stories, "Apogee" and "Solatium," as part of the Lunar Codex. All the thanks to Samuel Peralta for making so many writers' and artists' dream come true.

Blue Ghost is ALSO carrying a bucketload of science. Instruments will investigate the structure and composition of the moon’s mantle, the heat flow at different depths beneath the lunar surface, the interaction of solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field, and the impact of solar radiation on the lunar surface.

The lander also carries the Lunar PlanetVac, which is designed to collect regolith from the lunar surface that could be returned to Earth as part of a separate mission, and the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, which will test the ability to use GPS signals at lunar distances.

Blue Ghost will operate for about 14 Earth days on the lunar surface. On March 14, Firefly expects to capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the moon’s horizon. How amazing is that going to be?

Athena Mission

That’s one heck of a selfie, Athena!

This image is from the Intuitive Machines Nova-C “Athena” lunar craft, which is currently headed toward the moon for a scheduled March 6 landing.*

* Wholly incidentially, with a digital recording of three of my short stories, Venatoris, Re/Genesis and Chrysalis, on board (along with hundreds of other stories, novels and art). I am super excited!

Are We Alone?

Nah.

The math of the universe is in our favor. Given the staggering number of planets, it's impossible that we're alone. Still, the more the merrier! Call me an optimist (if you've read my books, you already know I am), but I don't believe "The Dark Forest" theory is correct. And I don't like a future in which we have to hide, anyway.

"Are We Alone? Intelligent Life May Be More Common Than We Thought, New Penn State Study Suggests": https://thedebrief.org/are-we-alone-intelligent-life-may-be-more-common-than-we-thought-new-penn-state-study-suggests/