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Outer Planet Cloud Colors
From my teens to my twenties, from junior high school to graduate school to young professor, I excitingly followed the first reconnaissance of the outer solar system by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft. But the exploration isn’t over. For the last decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has been systematically observing the colors and dynamics of…
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There and Back Again
I awoke yesterday at dawn in a log cabin in Vermont. Fortunately, the wifi was good. Each successive test of the SpaceX Superheavy Starship has been a significant improvement over the previous one, and test five was no exception, with both the booster and the ship demonstrating soft pinpoint landings — except this time, the…
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Rey’s Theme
Yesterday, as part of the Polaris Dawn mission, SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis became the youngest person to walk in space. Today, on a space-qualified violin, she performed Rey’s Theme, composed by John Williams as the musical leitmotif for Rey, the central character in the Star Wars movie The Force Awakens. The performance audio and video…
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Skywalker
Up before dawn this morning for the Polaris Dawn space walk, the first commercial space walk and the furthest from Earth since the Apollo program over half a century ago. After stalling for so long, human space flight is again advancing. Polaris Dawn’s Commander Jared Isaacman, Pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Mission Specialist Sarah Gillis, and…
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Where Are the Stars?
When viewing space photography, such as Apollo or International Space Station photos, people often ask, “Where are the stars?” Typically such photos properly expose the bright lunar or space station surfaces and consequently underexpose the dim background stars, rendering space as featureless black. Current ISS astronaut Matthew Dominick has been experimenting with photography, and his…
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Aero thermo dynamics
Up early this morning to watch the spectacular fourth integrated flight test of SpaceX’s Superheavy Starship, the largest rocket ever built. Each IFT has greatly improved on the previous one, and the fourth was no exception. For the first time, both the booster and the ship softly splashed down in the ocean! Especially impressive was…
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Venus’s Supercritical Ocean
The pressure and temperature near the surface of Venus are so high that its carbon dioxide atmosphere is a global ocean of a remarkable state of matter, a supercritical fluid, which fills any container like a gas but is as dense as a liquid. I created a carbon dioxide pressure versus temperature phase diagram using…
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Percy & Ginny
A chill went through the spaceflight community last week as NASA reported that it had lost contact with the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. Delivered to Mars underneath the Perseverance rover and intended as a 5-flight 30-sol tech demo, it had vastly exceeded expectations, including the first successful powered flight off Earth, a true Wright brothers moment,…
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All Engine(s) Running
I asked Siri to wake me at 7:15 this morning so I could watch SpaceX’s second Integrated Flight Test of Super Heavy Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. Unfortunately, my house suffered a rare power outage an hour or two earlier, so I found myself lying in bed watching the coverage on…
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We Are Going
After half a century confined to low-Earth orbit, and as soon as late next year, humans will once again leave Earth and voyage to Moon. The reality of this exciting adventure crystallized earlier this month when NASA announced the diverse and inspiring Artemis II crew: Clockwise from left in the photo below are Christina Koch,…
Category: Space Exploration
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Nice post, John! Thanks for writing these. I always enjoy them.
David Smith’s ein stein is an awesome shape!
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Thanks, Mark! I enjoy reading your posts as well.