Topic: Pamela Gay

The biggest cuts NASA’s ever faced

by | Jun 12, 2025 |

Credit: Planetary Society On May 2, the president released his target bottom line numbers for NASA, the National Science Foundation, and other federal agencies. This budget includes a 44% cut over FY25 to the NASA budget and a 56% cut to NSF. If Congress takes these recommendations, entire programs will need to be eliminated, including dozens of NASA missions and numerous ground-based facilities. We are at a weird moment in time. Historically, presidents have said what they want to happen, Congress has done what they wanted, and researchers have gone on a never-ending roller coaster of...

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Small star hosts (smaller) huge planet

Small star hosts (smaller) huge planet

by | Dec 13, 2023 |

Artistic rendering of the possible view from LHS 3154b towards its low mass host star. Given its large mass, LHS 3154b probably has a Neptune-like composition. Credit: Penn State Solar systems keep finding new ways to surprise us and to convince us that we don’t...

Six planets in coordinated orbits

Six planets in coordinated orbits

by | Dec 13, 2023 |

https://youtu.be/KfZCGBhwpes In my personal opinion, one of the mathematically coolest things in our solar system is the orbits of Jupiter's three inner Galilean moons. It just happens, that these worlds orbit to a beat, with innermost Io circling four times for every...

500,000 Stars, with More Born Regularly

500,000 Stars, with More Born Regularly

by | Dec 6, 2023 |

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia) Our Solar System lives in a nice suburb of the Milky Way. Sitting about 25,000 light years from the galactic center, we’re in a good place to view what’s happening in the core district, but far...

More Theory-Changing Old Galaxies

More Theory-Changing Old Galaxies

by | Dec 6, 2023 |

Credit: Cluster image: NASA, UNCOVER (Bezanson et al., DIO: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.04026). Insets: Nasa, UNCOVER (Wang et al., 2023); Composition: Dani Zemba/Penn State Ok, I have to admit, the JWST is finding objects so exceedingly weird that my first reaction is to...

Lucy Sends Science Home

Lucy Sends Science Home

by | Nov 22, 2023 | ,

Credit: NASA Back in October 2021, a mission called Lucy lifted off on a multi-year journey to visit Jupiter’s two collections of Trojan Asteroids. Today, it is making its way through the asteroid belt before circling back to use the Earth to get a gravitational...