December 29, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay and reader Gary. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Oblique panorama of Pluto produced by images taken by New Horizons in 2015
A truly wonderful cool image, well worth viewing.
- Chinese scientists model how charged lunar dust grains stick to spacecraft
The research was published in August 2024, but highlighted this week at the link. The model is also a variation of many other comparable theories, including some that have already been harnessed in actual experiments, including one by Blue Ghost on the Moon.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay and reader Gary. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Oblique panorama of Pluto produced by images taken by New Horizons in 2015
A truly wonderful cool image, well worth viewing.
- Chinese scientists model how charged lunar dust grains stick to spacecraft
The research was published in August 2024, but highlighted this week at the link. The model is also a variation of many other comparable theories, including some that have already been harnessed in actual experiments, including one by Blue Ghost on the Moon.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Not exactly what Clifford D. Simak described…
The image of Pluto really is something, especially when one reflects on where/how far away it was recorded, and all the time and effort to do so.
Amazing.
It’s almost a dream.
Pluto is freaking awesome! I still remember when the New Horizons pictures were slowly rolling in, I don’t think anybody expected such a landscape. Charon’s no slouch either.
I understand it’s just one of many worlds in similar orbits. I get that everyone who discovers a pluto class object can’t be given the ‘planet discover’ title. I know Eris and others are bigger. Yeah, it has a high inclination to the ecliptic. But it will always be a planet to me. Fight me.
Wasn’t there some talk about a “global warming event” solar system wide?
The New Horizons guys were worried if the probe would get there before the atmosphere froze out.
Seeing windspeeds increase farther from the Sun at the “ice giants” floored me.
CO2 scrubber
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-efficient-reusable-compound-capturing-carbon.html
Here’s one for Ripley:
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-sugar-derived-crystals-stiffness-approaching.html
Wonka Aviation didn’t survive long after unionized Oompah Loompas began taking bites out of wing-boxes.
John: I’ve interviewed the planetary scientists who do this work, including New Horizons’ project scientist Alan Stern. They all refer to these planets as “planets”. They all think the IAU’s definition of a planet to be hogwash.
To the scientists who do this work, a planet is any object with a large enough mass that gravity forces it into a spherical shape. Very simple, and directly applicable to the data.
Vesta has always been a planet to me.
What F said.
Rover wheels
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-origami-wheel-explore-lunar-caves.html
New sensor layer
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-12-sensor-strain-temperature-material-layer.html
Robert Zimmerman wrote: “They all think the IAU’s definition of a planet to be hogwash.”
From what I read at the time, it was clear that some International Astronomical Union members expected hundreds of Earth-sized bodies in the Kuiper belt. My guess is that they feared that they would then have to name them all, ruining the ability of school children to memorize the names of all the planets, then interest in the planets and astronomy would wane, then astronomy would become a dead science, to be replaced by the similar-sounding astrology, the study of Astro and how he affects your everyday life. I may be exaggerating their fear, a bit, but fear is what I think drove their action to create a terrible definition of a planet.
Unfortunately, the definition that the astronomers chose is one that rules out every planet in the solar system as well as every other planet in the universe. It was badly thought out and the vote rushed through after the sane astronomers had gone to the airport to catch their flights home.
So, now the IAU has a tarnished reputation among the civilians, and it seems from Robert’s interviews that even the planetary scientists have a reduced respect for the IAU.
Re; Dwarf Planets
I have never found the IAU definition compelling. The orbit requirement is wholly circumstantial. Imagine if Earth were knocked out of its orbit by, say, a large passing rogue planet, and ended up in Jupiter’s orbit, or even as a Jupiter Trojan . . . well, by the IAU definition, Earth would no longer qualify as a “planet.”
This in turn raises the question, to be sure, of large moons that would otherwise qualify under the other two major IAU requirements (the Galilean moons, our own Moon, Titan, Triton, etc.) — not least given that more than one is larger than at least one major planet, Mercury!
As it is, we already have identified ten (10) “dwarf planets,” and the number is sure to increase considerably as we further investigate the Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disc. But I do not think this should alarm or dismay us, regardless of how it stretches the memnonic skills of schoolchildren.
Grandfather Pluto in, keep everything thing else found that is smaller a dwarf planet.
How hard would that have been?