Image credit: © Solarseven

Welcome to the 553rd Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. So now, on to this week’s stories!

First up, a roundup of stories from Universe Today.

Matt Williams asks “Could There be Alien Life Right Beneath the Surface of Icy Worlds Like Enceladus and Europa?”

“Jupiter’s Atmospheric Bands Go Surprisingly Deep,” according to 3 new studies from the Juno probe data, Matt reports.

Matt also discusses how an “Air-Breathing Electric Thruster Could Keep Satellites in Low Earth Orbit for Years.”

Then, Evan Gough invites you to “Gaze in Wonder at Jupiter’s Mysterious Geometric Polar Storms.”

This wondrous image of Jupiter’s south pole shows the arrangement of cyclones that is unique in our Solar System: five circumpolar cyclones perfectly arranged around a single polar cyclone. Image: NASA/SWRI/JPL/ASI/INAF/IAPS

Next, we head over to The Hill for Mark Whittington’s opinion piece “President Trump gets how to commercialize space — Does NASA?”

Finally, we head over to Blasting News for the last 2 stories. First, “SpaceX’s Elon Musk reveals the real reason he launched that car into space.”

And finally, “NASA is competing with China for international partners in the return to the moon.”

Thank you for all of your stories – we’ll see you next week!

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to susie@wshcrew.space, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.