As the Cassini mission embarks on its final dive this Friday into Saturn, it will continue taking photos all the way down (or as far as it remains operations.) We've grown accustomed to seeing remarkable images for the mission and the planet, but clearly the show is not over, and perhaps far from it. …
Continue reading "Cassini Nearing the End, Still Working Hard"
Reading about some of the views coming from the man recently nominated to become NASA's Administrator, Rep. James Bridenstine of Oklahoma, I heard the sound of a door closing. Other doors will surely be opened if he is confirmed by the Senate, but that shutting door happens to be to the gateway to a realm …
Continue reading "Is That the Foundation of NASA I Feel Shifting?"
The triumphant Cassini mission to Saturn will be coming to an end on September 15, when the spacecraft dives into the planet. Running out of fuel, NASA chose to end the mission that way rather than run the risk of having the vehicle wander and ultimately land on Europa or Enceladus, potentially contaminating two …
White dwarf stars, the remnant cores of low-mass stars that have exhausted all their nuclear fuel, are among the most dense objects in the sky. Their mass is comparable to that of the sun, while their volume is comparable to that of Earth. Very roughly, this means the average density of matter in a …
Continue reading "Of White Dwarfs, "Zombie" Stars and Supernovae Explosions"
Asteroid, we've long been told, started tiny in our protoplanetary disk and only very gradually became more massive through a process of accretion. They collected dust from the gas cloud that surrounded our new star, and then grew larger through collisions with other growing asteroids. But in recent years, a new school of thought has …
Continue reading "Primordial Asteroids, And The Stories They Are Telling"
I'm taking a little break alongside the Atlantic but can't leave exoplanets et al completely behind. Water worlds are inferred, or known, to be present and perhaps not uncommon in the galaxy. And there is reason to conclude that they may have much more water than Earth. Although 70.8% of all Earth's surface is …
I was moved to weigh in after reading Vice President Mike Pence's comments last week down at the Kennedy Space Center -- a speech that seemed to minimize NASA's performance in recent years (decades?) and to propose a return to a kind of Manifest Destiny way of thinking in space. The speech did not appear …
Continue reading "Has America Really Lost It's "Lead in Space?""
This article of mine, slightly tweaked for Many Worlds, first appeared today (July 6) in Astrobiology Magazine, http://www.astrobio.net As NASA inches closer to launching new missions to the Solar System’s outer moons in search of life, scientists are renewing their focus on developing a set of universal characteristics of life that can be measured. There …
I hope you will indulge me in this foray into a very different look at the many worlds in which we live. My father is being buried today. It is no tragedy; he lived to almost 97 and had a full life. But still... As all of you have no doubt experienced in one way …
I hope you will indulge me in this foray into a very different look at the many worlds in which we live. My father is being buried today. It is no tragedy; he lived to almost 97 and had a full life. But still... As all of you have no doubt experienced in one way …
Many Worlds 