Tag: science

Pluto’s cratered glacial terrain

12:56 pm

Panorama of Pluto's eastern limb
Click for full resolution. For original images go here, here, here, and here.

Pluto in true color
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from four New Horizons’ images that were cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken by New Horizons on July 14, 2015 (here, here, here, and here), about 30 minutes before its closest approach of 7,800 miles above Pluto.

I have searched the New Horizons’ press release archive, and as far as I can tell, this sequence of images and the terrain it shows was never highlighted publicly by the science team. For that reason, I am not sure exactly where to place it on the global true-color image of Pluto to the right, released by the science team shortly after that fly-by. I suspect the panorama covers a strip on the eastern limb of the globe, in the darker crater region to the east of Pluto’s giant frozen nitrogen sea. It is also possible this is actually covering the north pole regions, with the raw images as released oriented with north to the right.

Other than these guesses I cannot tell. If anyone has better information please provide it in the comments.

What the panorama does show us is cracked and pitted terrain, thought to be mostly made up of frozen ice mixed with dust and debris with some nitrogen and other materials thrown in. Though in many ways it resembles the Moon, that similarity is only very superficial. For example, the polygon shapes near the picture’s center suggest ice floes or glaciers, though there is no underground liquid ocean on which they could float.

This is a very alien world. And it is likely even more alien than the few pictures obtained during that New Horizons’ fly-by have suggested. After all, we only saw in high resolution one hemisphere. Who knows what’s really on the planet’s other side?

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Chinese scientists pinpoint a prime landing site for its manned lunar mission

9:21 am

Potential landing site for China's manned lunar landing

Though no final decision has apparently been made, a just published research paper suggests that China is considering a location almost dead center on the Moon’s near side, on the edge of a mare region dubbed Sinus Aestruum, for its first manned lunar landing, presently targeting a 2030 launch date. From the abstract:

We propose four prospective landing sites in the traversable areas, which provide a range of diverse geological samples, including volcanic debris, mare basalts, Copernicus crater ejecta and high-Th materials. Such a collection may provide insights into the geological evolution of the region and enhance our understanding of the lunar mantle composition and volcanic processes.

The red star on global lunar map to the right, taken from figure 1 of the paper, shows the location of this region. The lower map zooms into the region, with the four stars indicating the four prospective landing sites. The region has several rilles, long meandering channels thought to have formed from lava flow, that could be reached during an EVA.

Though it appears the scientists of this paper are lobbying for this landing region and no final decision has been reached, its location and wide variety of geology strongly suggests this will be the final choice. If so, of the four landing sites outlined two are in the smoother mare regions, and two are off the edge, in rougher terrain. For safety considerations, it is likely the final landing site will be in one of the former.

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Webb takes a look at a strange planetary nebula

9:49 am

Nebula PMR-1
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The two false-color pictures to the right, reduced to post here, were taken by two different infrared cameras on the Webb Space Telescope.

The object, PMR-1, is about 5,000 light years away and has apparently not been studied very much in the past. In 2013 astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to get a first look in the infrared, at a much lower resolution. They also gave this object a nickname, the “Exposed Cranium” nebula. From the Webb press release:

The nebula appears to have distinct regions that capture different phases of its evolution — an outer shell of gas that was blown off first and consists mostly of hydrogen, and an inner cloud with more structure that contains a mix of different gases. Both Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) show a distinctive dark lane running vertically through the middle of the nebula that defines its brain-like look of left and right hemispheres. Webb’s resolution shows that this lane could be related to an outburst or outflow from the central star, which typically occurs as twin jets burst out in opposite directions. Evidence for this is particularly notable at the top of the nebula in Webb’s MIRI image, where it looks like the inner gas is being ejected outward.

While there is still much to be understood about this nebula, it’s clear that it is being created by a star near the end of its fuel-burning “life.” In their end stages, stars expel their outer layers. It’s a dynamic and fairly fast process, in cosmic terms. Webb has captured a moment in this star’s decline. What ultimately happens will depend on the mass of the star, which is yet to be determined. If it’s massive enough, it will explode in a supernova. A less massive Sun-like star will continue to shed layers until only its core remains as a dense white dwarf, which will cool off over eons.

The dark lane suggests we are looking at the star’s equator, with the two lobes on either side the material being flung out ward from the poles. It is also possible this is wrong, because the lobes on either side do not have a clear distinct jet-like appearance.

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Dart changed the orbit of the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroids around the Sun

2:54 pm

Dimorphos just after impact

When the Dart spacecraft impacted the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, it not only shortened Dimophos’ orbit around its companion asteroid Didymos by about 33 minutes while reshaping the asteroid, a new study has found that it also changed very slightly the orbit of both asteroids around the Sun.

The image to the right, annotated to post here, was taken by the Italian LICIACube spacecraft moments after the September 26, 2022 impact.

The research paper describing this research can be found here. From the press release:

The new study shows the impact ejected so much material from the binary system that it also changed the binary’s orbital period around the Sun by 0.15 seconds. “The change in the binary system’s orbital speed was about 11.7 microns per second, or 1.7 inches per hour,” said Rahil Makadia, the study’s lead author at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “Over time, such a small change in an asteroid’s motion can make the difference between a hazardous object hitting or missing our planet.”

To be precise, the orbital speed was slowed 1.7 inches per hour, which while tiny would mean its solar orbit is now slightly shortened.

The result proves that a similar impact could be used on some asteroids to deflect them from hitting the Earth, though we would need to know a lot about that asteroid prior to launching the mission to accurately predict the orbital change. Otherwise, any impact could be a dangerous crap shoot that could do more harm than good.

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Curiosity looks uphill at its upcoming travels

12:41 pm

Panorama looking up Mount Sharp
Click for original.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Since May 2025 Curiosity has been exploring in great detail the boxwork formations located on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. It is now about to complete those investigations, with the Curiosity science team beginning their planning for moving onward and upward.

The panorama above, enhanced to post here, was taken on March 2, 2026 by the rover’s right navigation camera. It looks uphill along the valley that Curiosity is in toward the mountainous region the rover is targeting. Note that the peak of Mount Sharp is not visible, being more than 25 miles away beyond the horizon and about 15,000 feet higher up.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right mark Curiosity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area this panorama covers. The red dotted line marks the rover’s approximate planned route, while the white dotted line indicates Curiosity’s actual travels.

Right now Curiosity is traveling through a geological layer the scientists have dubbed the sulfate unit. The lighter colored hills seen on the horizon have also been identified as sulfate, but believed to be much more pure. The geology there should be very different. Instead of rough and rocky it could be like traveling over soft porous sand. This however is merely a guess on my part, based on imagery of those light-colored hills.

The actual route through those hills however remains unknown. Either the science team has not yet released it, or is still trying to figure out the best way through.

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ESA loses contact with the coronagraph satellite of its duel-satellite Proba-3 mission

9:24 am

The Proba-3 mission
The Proba-3 mission. Click for original.

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that engineers have lost contact with the Coronagraph satellite of its duel-satellite Proba-3 mission, and are working now to recover contact.

During the weekend of 14–15 February 2026, an anomaly onboard Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft triggered a chain reaction that led to the progressive loss of attitude (spacecraft orientation) and prevented the entry into safe mode.

Because the spacecraft’s solar panel was no longer facing the Sun, the onboard battery started to discharge quickly. This caused the spacecraft to enter survival mode, when minimum electronics are active and data transmission to the ground is interrupted.

The exact root cause of the anomaly is under investigation, and mission teams and operators have joined forces to attempt to re-establish contact with the spacecraft to recover the situation.

The Coronograph satellite is the heart of this mission. It records the data, available because the Occulter blocks the Sun from view so that the corona, the Sun’s atmosphere, can be seen. Based on this report, it does not look good that the spacecraft can be recovered.

At the same time, the mission has apparently achieved all of its initial goals, and was now on an extended mission.

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New Webb data says asteroid 2024 YR4 will miss the Moon in 2032

2:54 pm

Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the mid-infrared
Asteroid 2024 YR4 as seen by Webb in the
mid-infrared in April 2025. Click for original image.

New Webb data collected in February has now eliminated any chance the potentially dangerous asteroid 2024 YR4 will hit either the Earth or the Moon when it makes its next close pass on December 22, 2032.

Using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observations collected on Feb. 18 and 26, experts from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have refined near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4’s orbit and are ruling out a chance of lunar impact on Dec. 22, 2032. With the new data, 2024 YR4 is expected to pass by the lunar surface at a distance of 13,200 miles (21,200 km).

Earlier less precise data had suggested 2024 YR4 had a 4.3% chance of hitting the Moon in 2032. That chance is now zero. This result is actually disappointing, in that an impact of this asteroid, estimated to be about 200 feet in diameter, would have not only been spectacular, but would have been scientifically useful. We would have been able to observe it closely with many ground- and space-based telescopes, and garnered a lot of useful information about the asteroid, the Moon, and the very nature of impacts.

The impact would have also eliminated the chance this asteroid might hit the Earth in the future. 2024 YR4 orbits the Sun about every four years. Previous calculations suggested another potentially dangerous fly-by of Earth in 2047, but these numbers are unreliable because the orbit will be changed by the 2032 fly-by in ways that cannot be predicted as yet.

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The auroras of Jupiter and Ganymede

11:13 am

According to two different university press releases in the past month, new details have been discovered about the auroras found on Jupiter as well as its largest moon, Ganymede, caused by the interaction of Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field not only with Ganymede’s weak one but with the motion of all four Galilean moons as they orbit the gas giant.

The first study used data from Juno when it made a close fly-by of Ganymede in 2021. It not only showed how the aurora was caused by interaction between the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Ganymede, it found that Ganymede’s auroras were similar to those on Earth.

Similar structures, known as ‘beads’, have been observed in the auroras of Earth and Jupiter, where they are linked to sub-storms and dawn storms, large-scale rearrangements of the magnetosphere that release enormous amounts of energy and produce intense auroral activity,” explains Alessandro Moirano, post-doctoral researcher at LPAP.

Ganymede interacts with Jupiter’s space environment in a similar way to how Earth interacts with the solar wind; therefore, the discovery of auroral patches on Ganymede similar to those on Earth suggests that the fundamental physical process(es) could be generally induced in the coupling between any celestial body, its magnetosphere, and external forces.

The aurora's on Jupiter
The auroral footprints of Io and Europa
on Jupiter

The second study, released yesterday, used the Webb Space Telescope to a get a more detailed look at Jupiter’s auroras, caused as the four Galilean moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — travel through Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field, causing energetic particles to following Jupiter’s magnetic field lines down to its poles, there creating the auroras.

Webb’s data found that the auroral footprints on Jupiter caused by each moon were different from Jupiter’s own aurora.

However, the footprints created by Io and Europa, did not have the characteristics expected from Jupiter’s main aurora, which contains a lot of hot material. Instead, in one snapshot, they discovered a cold spot within Io’s auroral footprint that registered temperatures much lower than expected, with extraordinarily high densities.

As the data was limited to a single 22-hour window, the results are very uncertain. More observations are planned, covering a longer time period, to see if this phenomenon can be captured again.

All of these results are very tantalizing, but to really get a handle on what is going on will require continuous observations over years, from many spacecraft devoted exclusively to Jupiter. And that isn’t going to happen for quite some time.

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Does weightlessness cause blood clots?

9:44 am

The uncertainty of science: A new study on Earth using an “dry immersion tank” now suggests that weightlessness could increase the chances that female astronauts could get blood clots during long space missions.

First reported in 2020, an International Space Station mission detected an unexpected blood clot in a female astronaut’s jugular vein. To date, space-health research has had more male participants but with the number of female astronauts on the rise, a new SFU–European Space Agency study examined how microgravity affects blood clotting specifically in women. Key findings

  • 18 female participants experienced five days of continuous simulated microgravity in a European Space Agency (ESA)-sponsored VIVALDI I dry immersion study.
  • Coagulation time (the time it took for blood clots to start forming) was longer.
  • Once started, clots formed faster.
  • Once formed, the strength and stability of the clots was greater

The dry immersion tank is “a specially designed water bath with a waterproof sheet to keep participants dry while floating, and simulating weightlessness.”

The researchers admit these results are very uncertain. For one, none of the clots that occurred during the study were “clinically concerning,” which means they were the kind of clots that the body deals with normally without threat. The researchers also noted in their paper’s abstract that “current published research on this topic is male-centered,” which explains the female focus of this particular research.

This research suggests that blood clots could be an issue on long missions in weightlessness, but the data is sparse and very incomplete. Moreover, based on more than a quarter century of missions longer than six months in space, it appears the one blood clot cited above might have been the only incident so far recorded. And any results using immersion tanks on Earth is questionable, as they are a poor substitute for actual weightlessness in space.

Nonetheless, these results add weight to the need for developing interplanetary spaceships with some sort of artificial gravity. Without it, the health of any passengers going on long missions to other planets like Mars is certainly at risk, not simply from blood clots but from bone loss, vision damage, spinal deformities, and overall loss of cardio-vascular and muscular strength, all issues that have been documented well in space.

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The mysterious spokes in Saturn’s rings

11:59 am

A bent spoke in Saturn's rings
Click for original.

Cool image time! When Voyager-1 did its fly-by of Saturn in December 1980, its cameras captured something in the gas giant’s rings that no one had predicted or expected, spokes of brightness pointing outward along the surface of the rings at right angles to the planet. Even more puzzling, these spokes actually appeared to rotate around Saturn, always pointing away from it.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on March 7, 2007 by the Saturn orbiter Cassini. It shows a close-up of one such spoke, though in this case it is bent. From the press release:

A bright spoke extends across the unilluminated side of Saturn’s B ring about the same distance as that from London to Cairo. The background ring material displays some azimuthal (i.e., left to right) asymmetry. The radial (outward from Saturn) direction is up in this view. A noticeable kink in the spoke occurs very close to the radius where ring particles orbit the planet at the speed of Saturn’s magnetic field. Such a connection is most intriguing to scientists studying these ghostly ring phenomena.

If gravity alone were affecting the spoke material, there would be no kink and the entire spoke would be angled toward right, like the bottom portion. That it bends to the left above the kink indicates that some other force, possibly related to the magnetic field, is acting on the spoke material. The shape might also indicate that the spoke did not form in a radial orientation, thus challenging scientists’ assumptions about these features.

In other words, the spokes exist because of multiple factors, some still unknown, that cause these streaks of brightness in the rings. For some reason, the millions of tiny ice particles that comprise the rings are brightened along these spokes, and it isn’t just gravity that is causing it.

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Charon’s surface, completely unlike Pluto

1:09 pm

Panorama of part of Charon's surface
Click for full resolution. For original images go here, here, and here.

Charon

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from three images taken by New Horizons as it began its July 14, 2015 fly-by of the Pluto-Charon double planet system (found here, here, and here), show in close-up one specific swath of Charon cutting across its equatorial regions.

The true color global image of Charon to the right shows the approximate area covered by the panorama above. For scale, Charon has a diameter of about 750 miles, about half that of Pluto. For clarity I have rotated the panorama so that it more closely aligns with the rectangle of global image.

One of the most remarkable discoveries made during New Horizons’ fly-by was how completely different Pluto and Charon appeared, despite their likely formation together at the same time and in the same location of the early solar system. While Pluto had frozen nitrogen seas and water ice mountains floating at the shores, Charon more resembled Mercury, cratered with many large ridges and canyons criss-crossing its service. Both planets appear to be icy, but somehow Charon appears to lack the large differentiated variety of materials seen on Pluto.

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Old and new optical space telescopes team up to view the Cat’s Eye

9:39 am

Cat's Eye Nebula as seen by both Hubble and Euclid
Click for original images.

Astronomers using both NASA’s long established Hubble Space Telescope and Europe’s new Euclid space telescope have produced new optical/infrared images of the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula.

Those images are to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. The Hubble image at bottom shows the complex structure of the nebula itself, located about 4,400 light years away and believed created by the inner orbital motions of a binary star system that act almost like the blades in a blender, mixing the material thrown off by one or both of the stars as they erupt in their latter stages of life.

In Euclid’s wide, near-infrared, and visible light view, the arcs and filaments of the nebula’s bright central region are situated within a halo of colorful fragments of gas zooming away from the star. This ring was ejected from the star at an earlier stage, before the main nebula at the center formed. The whole nebula stands out against a backdrop teeming with distant galaxies, demonstrating how local astrophysical beauty and the farthest reaches of the cosmos can be seen together with Euclid.

Euclid has a primary mirror 1.2 meters in diameter, about half that of Hubble. Though it can’t zoom in with the same resolution, its view is as sharp since it is in space above the atmosphere. It thus provides a wider view, which in this case helps provide a larger context to the detailed close-up view provided by Hubble.

In many ways Euclid is Hubble’s replacement, produced by the European Space Agency, as NASA and the American astronomy community has not been able to get together to build their own new optical orbiting telescope.

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Two moons of Saturn against its majestic rings

12:25 pm

Mimas and second moon against Saturn's rings
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on December 23, 2005 by Cassini as it orbited Saturn.

The larger cratered moon is Mimas, known best for the single giant crater that dominates one hemisphere. I have not been able to identify the brighter but smaller moon.

Note the pattern within the largest bright central ring in the background. It is possible this is an optical illusion, but it is also possible this pattern is inherent in the ring itself. Other images show similar patterns that scientists have concluded were real.

This image was part of a set of eight images all taken in the space of less than two minutes, as the smaller moon moved from the lower left to the upper right and was eclipsed by Minas as it did so. Below are four of those pictures, showing the sequence.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: Sunspot activity tumbles in February, including the 1st blank days since ’22

10:53 am

The uncertainty of science! It is the start of the month, and thus time for another sunspot update, using NOAA’s monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere, updated by NOAA to include the activity in February but annotated with extra information by me to illustrate the larger scientific context.

Last month I lambasted NOAA’s solar science panel for its consistently failed predictions, and made a tentative prediction of my own, suggesting the ramp down to solar minimum might not be occurring as they had predicted in April 2025.

This month I can lambast myself, because the Sun in February saw a significant drop in sunspots, including three consecutive days in which the Sun was blank of spots, for the first time since 2022. This drop supports the NOAA panel prediction and makes my prediction look foolish, but it also suggests the ramp down is continuing to go faster than predicted.
» Read more

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Rocket Lab completes in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters

8:38 am

Built by Rocket Lab for NASA and launched in November 2025, the company has now completed the in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters and is about to hand operations over to the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UC-Berkeley).

With both spacecraft now fully commissioned and successfully operating at the Earth–Sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), Rocket Lab is preparing to hand over operational control to [UC-Berkeley], who will lead science operations at L2 and prepare the mission for its cruise to Mars.

Under contract from [UC-Berkeley], Rocket Lab was selected to design, build, and provide commissioning operations of the two high delta-V Explorer-class interplanetary spacecraft for ESCAPADE. Rocket Lab moved from concept to launch readiness in just over three years, proving commercial collaboration can deliver important science key to supporting future human and robotic exploration of Mars on ambitious schedules and for significantly smaller budgets than typical interplanetary missions. This speed was made possible through Rocket Lab’s vertically integrated spacecraft production, with key components including solar arrays, reaction wheels, propellant tanks, star trackers, radios, avionics, and flight software designed and built in-house.

Launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in November 2025, the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, completed spacecraft commissioning and executed two precise trajectory correction maneuvers, placing both spacecraft into their loiter trajectory near L2, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

Both spacecraft will be sent on their way to Mars in December 2026 when orbital mechanics between the Red Planet and Earth are right for the journey. Once in Mars orbit the two orbiters will allow for a three-dimensional study of the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere.

Though this is a NASA-funded mission, note that it was built a commercial company and operated not by NASA but by a university. For this reason, it was not only built fast and at a low cost, it uses an innovative flight path that allowed it to be launched anytime and wait in orbit for the right moment to go to Mars. This last innovation provides for a lot more flexibility.

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Mars’ fast moving gigantic lava floods

2:23 pm

A Martian crater broken by flowing lava
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on December 12, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this a “crater interrupted by flow.” And what a flow! This unnamed 1.4-mile wide crater was not only filled and partly buried by the flow, that flow was so strong it cut through the crater’s rim at two points, refusing to let that rim block it in any way.

The flow in this case is lava, coming down from the Tharsis Bulge where four of Mars’ biggest volcanoes arose. And that flow was quite vast, as the nearest of those volcanoes, Arsia Mons, is almost 800 miles away. Because of Mars’ relative light gravity, about 39% that of Earth’s, lava on Mars can flow across large distances in a very short time. It might have only taken a few weeks for that flow to cover that 800 miles.
» Read more

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Early notes of Galileo discovered in margins of Ptolemy’s most famous book

11:20 am

A researcher reviewing the text of a 16th century printing of Claudius Ptolemy’s most famous book, The Almagest (in which he outlined his theory that the Earth stood at the center of the universe), was astonished this January to discover previously unidentified notes in the handwriting of Galileo in the book’s margins.

As [historian Ivan Malara flipped through the pages, he spotted something out of place. Someone had transcribed Psalm 145 on an otherwise blank page—in handwriting reminiscent of a very, very famous Tuscan astronomer.

That book, Malara came to realize, had been extensively annotated by none other than Galileo Galilei. Malara’s discovery, described in a paper now under review at the Journal for the History of Astronomy, promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science: the moment when Earth was thrust from the center of our universe.

The article at the link tries to makes the absurd and false claim that “many historians’ typical portrayal of Galileo as being motivated by philosophy or even political savvy, not careful math. ‘He has been presented as a big-picture sort of guy—not interested in the nitty-gritty technical details of astronomy,’ says James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound.” The article does this to suggest these newly discovered notes will profoundly change that interpretation.

That interpretation is wrong however. Anyone who has read any histories or biographies of Galileo (as I have) knows this portrayal is false. It is very clear from all his work that Galileo was very evidence-based, focused on the data and facts — the nitty-gritty technical details — to determine the larger picture. And these newly discovered notes confirm this:

Galileo’s notes, perhaps written around 1590, or roughly 2 decades before his groundbreaking telescope observations of the Moon and Jupiter, reveal someone who both revered and critically dissected Ptolemy’s work. And they imply, Malara argues, that Galileo ultimately broke with Ptolemy’s cosmos because his mastery of the traditional paradigm’s reasoning convinced him that a heliocentric system would better fulfill Ptolemy’s own mathematical logic.

Fascinating stuff. I can’t wait to read the final paper.

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China outlines plans for manned space program

10:26 am

China’s state-run press today outlined a short update on the status of its manned space station program as well as its planned manned lunar landing, still targeting a 2030 launch.

For the space station, these are its upcoming plans:

China is scheduled to launch two crewed missions and one cargo spacecraft mission for its space station operation in 2026, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). An astronaut from the Hong Kong or Macao special administrative region is expected to carry out a space station flight mission as early as this year, the CMSA noted.

One astronaut from the Shenzhou-23 crew will conduct a year-long in-orbit stay experiment, the CMSA said.

I am willing to bet that China is planning an even longer station mission that will break Valeri Polyakov’s 14.5 month record mission, set in the 1990s on Mir.

As for China’s lunar landing plans, nothing new was announced:

China is targeting a crewed lunar landing by 2030. The development of major flight products, including the Long March-10 carrier rocket, the Mengzhou crewed spacecraft, and the Lanyue lunar lander, is proceeding smoothly. Key tests have been completed, including the zero-height abort test for the Mengzhou spacecraft, the landing and takeoff test for the Lanyue lunar lander, the static fire test and the low-altitude demonstration and validation test for the Long March-10 rocket system, and the maximum dynamic pressure escape test for the Mengzhou spacecraft system.

In 2026, the country will intensify efforts to advance the construction of supporting facilities and equipment for the lunar mission at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern Hainan Province, as well as the development of ground support systems.

China has not yet outlined a program of missions leading up to that lunar landing. Like Apollo and now Artemis, it makes sense to do low orbit rendezvous and docking tests of these various spacecraft before heading to the Moon. It also makes sense to do these same tests first in lunar orbit, before landing. Expect China to announce such a program soon, for launch in the 2027-2029 timeframe.

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Europe’s Jupiter probe Juice releases its first image of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas

9:18 am

Comet 3I/Atlas as seen by Juice
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) probe Juice, presently on its way to Jupiter, yesterday released its first image of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas from the data it gathered in November 2025 but only now has been able to send back to Earth.

That picture is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. From the press release:

[T]he science camera on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS spewing dust and gas. The tiny nucleus of the comet (not visible) is surrounded by a bright halo of gas known as the coma. A long tail stretches away from the comet, and we see hints of rays, jets, streams and filaments. The inset in the image shows the same data, but processed to highlight the coma structure.

As also noted in the release, though this comet is from outside our solar system, “its behaviour is completely in line with that expected from a ‘normal’ comet.”

The picture was taken on November 6, 2025, just seven days after the comet made its closest pass to the Sun. At that time Juice took 120 images, which could not be sent back until now because the Sun was in the way. The science team is presently analyzing that data, and plans a full release of its work next month.

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New analysis suggests Moon’s magnetic field shifted multiple times from weak to strong to weak

10:03 am

The uncertainty of science: A new analysis of Apollo lunar samples suggests that the Moon’s magnetic field actually shifted back and forth from strong to weak, with it being weak most of the time.

The problem scientists have had since the Apollo missions is that the Apollo samples, which all came from the relatively flat mare regions, tended to exhibit evidence of a strong past magnetic field, even though the Moon’s size and make-up suggested its field should have always been weak. This new research offers a solution:

The research team analysed the chemical makeup of a type of lunar rock – known as the Mare basalts – and found a new correlation between their titanium content and how strongly magnetised they are. Every lunar sample which had recorded a strong magnetic field also contained large amounts of titanium – and the samples containing less than 6 wt.% titanium were all associated with a weak magnetic field.

This suggests that the formation of high-titanium rocks and the generation of a strong lunar magnetic field are linked. The researchers believe that both were caused by melting of titanium-rich material deep inside the Moon, temporarily generating a very strong magnetic field.

Because the Mare basalts were an ideal landing site for the Apollo missions, due to being relatively flat, the astronauts brought back far more of the titanium-rich basalts (containing evidence for a strong magnetic field) than are representative of the lunar surface. As a result, large numbers of these rocks have been analysed by scientists back on Earth, and this was previously interpreted to mean that the lunar magnetic field was strong for long periods of its history.

Instead, the limited number of samples, all from the same regions, biased the conclusions. The scientists predict that future missions to more places on the Moon will confirm their findings.

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