I have to admit, realizing it is somehow late August was a bit startling. I’m not entirely sure where my summer went, but I am grateful that my garden is finally producing veg, and the temps are starting to slowly trend downward. The Dog Days of summer are named for the appearance of the Dog Star Sirius rising with the Sun. Running from July 3 to August 11, these are typically the hottest days of the year and once upon a time, in the Roman Empire, that heat was blamed on Sirius’ - the brightest star in the sky’s - being in close proximity to the Sun. Today we know this isn’t so, but it...
You can visit a piece of Bennu
Credit: NMNH We would be remiss if we didn’t update you all on the Bennu sample return mission. As of writing, no word has been released on if the science team has managed to get the TAGSAM capsule open, yet. Remember how that boop became a shove and the capsule had...
Lucy finds a moonmoon
Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL Last episode, we brought you some early science results from the Lucy mission, which is out exploring asteroids in the main belt on the way to hanging out amongst Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. The biggest piece of news was the...
Mars quakes, ices, and places for …biosignatures?
Credit: NASA While asteroids are proving themselves more complicated than we expected, Mars, in a fit of publications, is also demanding attention for all its icy complexity. Back in May 2022, the Insight lander recorded a Marsquake with a magnitude of 4.7. While not...
Lucy Sends Science Home
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...
Beating up rocks reveals possible origin of Ceres organics
Credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Once upon a time, we thought asteroids were just bland rocks. Turns out, if you actually look at them from up close, they are complex and interesting. When the Dawn mission visited the largest...
It’s a world, it’s a math error, it’s … new physics?
Credit Katherine Brown & Harsh Mathur When I was little, I was totally into all those “In Search of…” shows. There are so many cool mysteries in history waiting to be solved, and I love that I’ve gotten to see some of these great mysteries get solved. The giant...
(Big-)Moonless worlds have unstable tilts
Modern-day Mars experiences cyclical changes in climate and, consequently, ice distribution. Unlike Earth, the obliquity (or tilt) of Mars changes substantially on timescales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. At present day obliquity of about 25-degree...
Perseverance collects a River of Science
Jezero Crater as Seen by ESA's Mars Express Orbiter: This image shows the remains of an ancient delta in Mars' Jezero Crater, which NASA's Perseverance Mars rover will explore for signs of fossilized microbial life. Credit: NASA The remnants of ancient dunes aren’t...
How Rivers Flow: Here, Mars & Titan
This false-color image shows Titan’s second-largest body of liquid, Ligeia Mare, in the moon’s northern hemisphere. Scientists think that rivers flowing into large bodies of liquids like this one should form deltas. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI/Cornell New research...
Geoarchaeology: Protecting humanities record of exploration
Apollo 15 lunar module with Mons Hadley in the background. Credit: NASA / JSC / ASU / Andy Saunders I don’t know about you, but there have been a lot of random times when I or someone near me has said, “Someday archaeologists are going to have a field day with…” as we...