The Latest Update on Astrobotic's Next Moon Mission...

Astrobotic

Griffin-1 Mission Update (Press Release)

Griffin-1 continues to gain momentum on the path to deliver Astrolab’s FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform) rover, Astrobotic’s own CubeRover®, and several additional payloads to the Moon. Read on for updates on integration, payloads and software testing.

Propulsion Integration

Griffin-1’s propulsion architecture centers around four high-performance Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV) propellant tanks engineered to be both lightweight and structurally robust, reliably containing substantial propellant loads at extreme operating pressures. Once the four propellant tanks are installed, final integration activities will be completed, and Griffin-1 will undergo environmental acceptance testing to ensure that the lander will endure the challenging environments of launch, space and the lunar surface.

Avionics Ready for Launch

In-house designed avionics flight hardware has been assembled and accepted for flight. These systems form the backbone of Griffin’s on-board control and telemetry, clearing a critical path towards spacecraft integration and ongoing system electrical testing. Designing, building and testing our avionics systems in-house enables the team to accelerate the development cycle, allowing for low-cost, rapid iterations that reduce risks and enhance performance.

Tighter control of this process also enables the team to design core products that are more easily adapted to future mission requirements, decreasing the cost and schedule for the next missions to space.

In tandem with flight-equivalent avionics, Astrobotic has implemented a fully closed-loop simulation of the descent and landing sequence. This system uses our custom LunaRay software to generate real-time images and 3D point clouds (dense sets of spatial data points that represent the shape and features of the lunar surface). These are processed by our Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) and Hazard Detection & Avoidance (HDA) systems, and are a vital step in validating our autonomous landing technologies for a GPS-denied environment.

Griffin-1 Manifest

Astrolab’s FLIP (FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform) rover is undergoing developmental thermal vacuum testing, and core rover systems are integrated. Astrolab has individually tested key units and completed integrated functional testing of avionics, power and telecommunications. In addition, we have completed mobility and egress testing using the FLIP test platform.

Over the next several months, Astrolab will complete payload integration and vehicle-level protoqualification testing. The mission will demonstrate critical technologies—including telerobotic operations, lunar mobility, solar power generation and thermal resilience—that form the foundation of Astrolab’s larger FLEX rover. In addition to commercial and government payload operations, Astrolab will conduct key experiments in mobility, perception, dust characterization, guidance and navigation, and communication.

BEACON‘s joint mission development with Astrobotic and Mission Control is well underway. A simulation has been completed on a Flatsat, a high-fidelity electrical copy of the rover used for testing. The rover has successfully connected and communicated with the Griffin lunar lander’s Flatsat.

This integrated simulation, which included CubeRover® operating with Mission Control’s Spacefarer™ software, is helping finalize the rover’s software ahead of its expected completion at the end of October.

All secondary payloads have been received and are undergoing final physical and functional checkouts on our Production FlatSat system, which supports end-to-end systems and software verification.

Structural Integration

Griffin’s core structure is nearing full integration. Pressurant tanks, ramps, attitude control thrusters and solar panels have all successfully undergone fit checks.

Looking Ahead

With engine qualification testing underway and critical systems coming online, Griffin-1 is advancing towards the Moon. Each milestone brings us closer to delivering payloads to the lunar surface, demonstrating precision landing, and advancing sustainable lunar infrastructure. The team is targeting the next viable launch window, which opens in July 2026.

Stay tuned for more mission updates as we near completion of Griffin-1 for the Moon and beyond.

Source: Astrobotic

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Astrobotic


Astrobotic


Astrolab

What Could've Been with 'Trident'...

L.M. Prockter et al. LPI / JPL / SwRI

Just thought I'd point out that Trident, an Outer Planet flyby mission that was under consideration by NASA five years ago, would've launched sometime this month (between October 10th and October 30th, to be exact) had NASA selected it as one of its next Discovery-class spacecraft back in 2021. Trident ended up losing to two Venus missions, DAVINCI and VERITAS, that will either be cancelled for budgetary reasons by Trump or not launch till later next decade.

Had Trident not launched this month, it could've lifted off in October of next year for an arrival at Neptune and its enigmatic moon Triton in September of 2038. Would've, could've, should've.


L.M. Prockter et al. LPI / JPL / SwRI

Brought Back from Cancellation, Artemis' Robotic Rover Has Found a New Ride to the Lunar Surface...

Blue Origin

NASA Selects Blue Origin to Deliver VIPER Rover to Moon’s South Pole (News Release)

As part of the agency’s Artemis campaign, NASA has awarded Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, a CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) task order with an option to deliver a rover to the Moon’s South Pole region. NASA’s VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) will search for volatile resources, such as ice, on the lunar surface and collect science data to support future exploration at the Moon and Mars.

“NASA is leading the world in exploring more of the Moon than ever before, and this delivery is just one of many ways we’re leveraging U.S. industry to support a long-term American presence on the lunar surface,” said acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy. “Our rover will explore the extreme environment of the lunar South Pole, traveling to small, permanently shadowed regions to help inform future landing sites for our astronauts and better understand the Moon’s environment – important insights for sustaining humans over longer missions, as America leads our future in space.”

The CLPS task order has a total potential value of $190 million. This is the second CLPS lunar delivery awarded to Blue Origin. Their first delivery – using their Blue Moon Mark 1 (MK1) robotic lander – is targeted for launch later this year to deliver NASA’s Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies and Laser Retroreflective Array payloads to the Moon’s South Pole region.

With this new award, Blue Origin will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface in late 2027, using a second Blue Moon MK1 lander, which is in production. NASA previously canceled the VIPER project and has since explored alternative approaches to achieve the agency’s goals of mapping potential off-planet resources, like water.

“NASA is committed to studying and exploring the Moon, including learning more about water on the lunar surface, to help determine how we can harness local resources for future human exploration,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’ve been looking for creative, cost-effective approaches to accomplish these exploration goals. This private sector-developed landing capability enables this delivery and focuses our investments accordingly – supporting American leadership in space and ensuring our long-term exploration is robust and affordable.”

The task order, called CS-7, has an award base to design the payload-specific accommodations and to demonstrate how Blue Origin’s flight design will off-load the rover to the lunar surface. There is an option on the contract to deliver and safely deploy the rover to the Moon’s surface. NASA will make the decision to exercise that option after the execution and review of the base task and of Blue Origin’s first flight of the Blue Moon MK1 lander.

This unique approach will reduce the agency’s cost and technical risk. The rover has a targeted science window for its 100-day mission that requires a landing by late 2027.

Blue Origin is responsible for the complete landing mission architecture and will conduct design, analysis and testing of a large lunar lander capable of safely delivering the lunar volatiles science rover to the Moon. Blue Origin will also handle end-to-end payload integration, planning and support, and post-landing payload deployment activities. NASA will conduct rover operations and science planning.

“The search for lunar volatiles plays a key role in NASA’s exploration of the Moon, with important implications for both science and human missions under Artemis,” said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters. “This delivery could show us where ice is most likely to be found and easiest to access, as a future resource for humans. And by studying these sources of lunar water, we also gain valuable insight into the distribution and origin of volatiles across the Solar System, helping us better understand the processes that have shaped our space environment and how our inner Solar System has evolved.”

Through CLPS, American companies continue to demonstrate leadership in commercial space advancing capabilities and accomplishing NASA’s goal for a commercial lunar economy. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley led the VIPER rover development and will lead its science investigations, and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston provided rover engineering development for Ames.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA

Japan's Venus Mission Has Ended...

JAXA

Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki Operation Completed (News Release)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) conducted the termination procedure for the Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki (PLANET-C) starting at 9:00 AM on September 18, 2025 (JST), thereby ending the probe's operations.

Akatsuki was launched from the Tanegashima Space Center on May 21, 2010, aboard the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 17. The spacecraft successfully entered Venus orbit in December 2015, becoming Japan's first planetary orbiter beyond Earth. Since then, Akatsuki continuously observed Venus's atmosphere for more than eight years.

The mission’s scientific achievements focussed on planetary meteorology and included the discovery of the largest mountain wave (stationary gravity waves) in the Solar System, the elucidation of the mechanism that maintained high-speed atmospheric circulation (super-rotation) around Venus, and the application of data assimilation techniques (popular in Earth's meteorological research) to Venus for the first time.

Communication with Akatsuki was lost during operations near the end of April 2024, triggered by an incident in a control mode of lower-precision attitude maintenance for a prolonged period. Although recovery operations were conducted to restore communication, there has been no luck so far. Considering the fact that the spacecraft has aged, well exceeding its designed lifetime, and was already in the late-stage operation phase, it has been decided to terminate operations.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of the organizations and individuals who have cooperated and supported the development and operation of Akatsuki.

Source: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

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JAXA / ISAS / Akatsuki Project Team

Send Your Name to the Moon Early Next Year!

NASA

Launch Your Name Around Moon in 2026 on NASA’s Artemis II Mission (News Release - September 9)

NASA is inviting the public to join the agency’s Artemis II test flight as four astronauts venture around the Moon and back to test systems and hardware needed for deep space exploration. As part of the agency’s “Send Your Name with Artemis II” effort, anyone can claim their spot by signing up before January 21.

Participants will launch their name aboard the Orion spacecraft and SLS (Space Launch System) rocket alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

“Artemis II is a key test flight in our effort to return humans to the Moon’s surface and build toward future missions to Mars, and it’s also an opportunity to inspire people across the globe and to give them an opportunity to follow along as we lead the way in human exploration deeper into space,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator, Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The collected names will be put on an SD card loaded aboard Orion before launch. In return, participants can download a boarding pass with their name on it as a collectable.

To add your name and receive an English-language boarding pass, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/artemisnames
To add your name and receive a Spanish-language boarding pass, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/TuNombreArtemis
As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, the approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight, launching no later than April 2026, is the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign. It is another step towards new U.S.-crewed missions on the Moon’s surface that will help the agency prepare to send the first astronauts – Americans – to Mars.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Brandon Hancock


NASA

A Second Raider Takes Flight on Patriot Day...

USAF

US Air Force Announces Arrival of Second B-21 Test Aircraft at Edwards AFB (Press Release)

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) -- The Department of the Air Force has announced the arrival of the second B-21 Raider flight test aircraft, September 11, at Edwards Air Force Base, California, significantly enhancing the Air Force’s capacity to conduct comprehensive testing and sustainment training.

The addition of the second aircraft expands the Air Force’s testing capabilities beyond initial flight performance checks, enabling progression into critical mission systems and weapon integration testing phases. This advancement marks a significant step towards operational readiness of the nation’s sixth-generation stealth bomber.

“With the arrival of the second B-21 Raider, our flight test campaign gains substantial momentum,” said Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink. “We can now expedite critical evaluations of mission systems and weapons capabilities, directly supporting the strategic deterrence and combat effectiveness envisioned for this aircraft.

The presence of multiple test aircraft at Edwards AFB also provides Air Force maintainers invaluable hands-on experience in managing simultaneous aircraft sustainment operations, testing the effectiveness of maintenance tools, technical data and the logistical processes that will support future operational squadrons.

“The addition of a second B-21 to the flight test program accelerates the path to fielding,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin. “By having more assets in the test environment, we bring this capability to our warfighters faster, demonstrating the urgency with which we’re tackling modernization.”

Concurrent with the expanded flight-testing effort, fiscal year 2026 will see the launch of extensive military construction projects at all three designated B-21 main operating bases. Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, the first base set to receive operational B-21 aircraft, is already progressing rapidly on numerous infrastructure projects to ensure readiness when the aircraft arrive.

“The B-21 Raider program represents a cornerstone of our strategic nuclear modernization,” Allvin added. “The concurrent efforts in testing, sustainment preparation and infrastructure investments clearly illustrate our commitment to providing unmatched capabilities to deter and defeat threats well into the future.”

The B-21 Raider is a stealth strategic bomber designed to deliver both conventional and nuclear payloads, developed in partnership with Northrop Grumman under the oversight of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. The program continues to execute its flight testing and ground testing campaigns as well as low-rate initial production.

Source: United States Air Force

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The Search for Ancient Life on the Red Planet Has Made a Big Breakthrough...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / MSSS

NASA Says Mars Rover Discovered Potential Biosignature Last Year (News Release)

A sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. Taken from a rock named “Cheyava Falls” last year, the sample, called “Sapphire Canyon,” contains potential biosignatures, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before a conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life.

Perseverance came upon Cheyava Falls in July 2024 while exploring the “Bright Angel” formation, a set of rocky outcrops on the northern and southern edges of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley measuring a quarter-mile (400 meters) wide that was carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago.

“This finding is the direct result of NASA’s effort to strategically plan, develop and execute a mission able to deliver exactly this type of science — the identification of a potential biosignature on Mars,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With the publication of this peer-reviewed result, NASA makes this data available to the wider science community for further study to confirm or refute its biological potential.”

The rover’s science instruments found that the formation’s sedimentary rocks are composed of clay and silt, which, on Earth, are excellent preservers of past microbial life. They are also rich in organic carbon, sulfur, oxidized iron (rust) and phosphorous.

“The combination of chemical compounds we found in the Bright Angel formation could have been a rich source of energy for microbial metabolisms,” said Perseverance scientist Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University, New York and lead author of the paper. “But just because we saw all these compelling chemical signatures in the data didn’t mean we had a potential biosignature. We needed to analyze what that data could mean.”

First to collect data on this rock were Perseverance’s PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) and SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instruments. While investigating Cheyava Falls, an arrowhead-shaped rock measuring 3.2 feet by 2 feet (1 meter by 0.6 meters), they found what appeared to be colorful spots. The spots on the rock could have been left behind by microbial life if it had used the raw ingredients, the organic carbon, sulfur and phosphorus, in the rock as an energy source.

In higher-resolution images, the instruments found a distinct pattern of minerals arranged into reaction fronts (points of contact where chemical and physical reactions occur) that the team called leopard spots. The spots carried the signature of two iron-rich minerals: vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulfide). Vivianite is frequently found on Earth in sediments, peat bogs and around decaying organic matter.

Similarly, certain forms of microbial life on Earth can produce greigite.

The combination of these minerals, which appear to have formed by electron-transfer reactions between the sediment and organic matter, is a potential fingerprint for microbial life, which would use these reactions to produce energy for growth. The minerals can also be generated abiotically, or without the presence of life. Hence, there are ways to produce them without biological reactions, including sustained high temperatures, acidic conditions and binding by organic compounds.

However, the rocks at Bright Angel do not show evidence that they experienced high temperatures or acidic conditions, and it is unknown whether the organic compounds present would’ve been capable of catalyzing the reaction at low temperatures.

The discovery was particularly surprising because it involves some of the youngest sedimentary rocks the mission has investigated. An earlier hypothesis assumed signs of ancient life would be confined to older rock formations. This finding suggests that Mars could have been habitable for a longer period or later in the planet’s history than previously thought, and that older rocks might also hold signs of life that are simply harder to detect.

“Astrobiological claims, particularly those related to the potential discovery of past extraterrestrial life, require extraordinary evidence,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Getting such a significant finding as a potential biosignature on Mars into a peer-reviewed publication is a crucial step in the scientific process because it ensures the rigor, validity and significance of our results. And while abiotic explanations for what we see at Bright Angel are less likely given the paper’s findings, we cannot rule them out.”

The scientific community uses tools and frameworks like the CoLD scale and Standards of Evidence to assess whether data related to the search for life actually answers the question, "Are we alone?" Such tools help improve understanding of how much confidence to place in data suggesting a possible signal of life found outside our own planet.

Sapphire Canyon is one of 27 rock cores the rover has collected since landing at Jezero Crater in February 2021. Among the suite of science instruments is a weather station that provides environmental information for future human missions, as well as swatches of spacesuit material so that NASA can study how it fares on Mars.

Managed for NASA by Caltech, NASA JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.

Source: NASA.Gov

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The Latest Update on America's Next Saturn-bound Robotic Explorer...

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Steve Gribben

NASA’s Dragonfly Soaring Through Key Development, Test Activities (News Release - September 8)

NASA’s Dragonfly mission has cleared several key design, development and testing milestones, and remains on track towards launch in July 2028.

Dragonfly, a car-sized, nuclear-powered rotorcraft being designed and built for NASA at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, will explore Saturn’s moon Titan. Following launch and a six-year journey to Titan, the Dragonfly rotorcraft will spend over three years investigating multiple landing sites across the moon’s diverse surface. Flying a comprehensive science package, Dragonfly seeks to understand Titan habitability and the building blocks of life as we know it.

Hardware is being built and software developed, tests are being completed and analyses verified as the team progresses through its development schedule.

“Dragonfly has moved far beyond a concept on a computer screen – the components of the rotorcraft lander are being built as scientists and engineers transform this bold exploration idea into reality,” said Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle, Dragonfly principal investigator from APL. “From the cleanrooms to the wind tunnels, we’re performing critical tests that are informing our next steps of development and demonstrating how Dragonfly will perform on and above Titan’s surface.”

Recent tests have included aerodynamic analyses of Dragonfly’s rotors and durability trials of the foam coating that will insulate the rotorcraft from Titan’s frigid temperatures. The science payload is also coming together, with instrument components delivered and set up for additional testing. Flight systems are also being evaluated and the flight radio has been delivered and tested.


NASA

Riding the Wind

APL and NASA engineers are wrapping up a monthlong campaign to confirm the performance of Dragonfly’s rotors in Titan-like conditions at NASA Langley Research Center’s Transonic Dynamics Tunnel in Virginia.

Bathing the sensor-laden model in a flow of heavy gas that simulates Titan’s thick atmosphere, the testing team has been gathering data on the rotor system’s aeromechanical performance – looking at factors like stress loads on the rotor arms, and effects of vibration on the rotor blades and lander body – information that will eventually feed into Dragonfly’s flight plans and navigation software.


NASA

Mass Spectrometer on the Move

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have completed a critical part of the Dragonfly Mass Spectrometer (DraMS), which will analyze chemical components and processes on Titan, including potentially biologically-relevant compounds. The Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer, effectively the “heart” of the DraMS package, has cleared its acceptance review and is being prepared for space-environment tests and integration with other DraMS components.


Johns Hopkins APL / Justin Artis

Keeping Dragonfly Warm

APL engineers have completed structural and thermal testing of the foam insulation for the Dragonfly lander, verifying that the insulation will maintain its shape and protect the lander on Titan, where ambient temperatures get to approximately -300°F (or about -185°C). The lander body will be covered in a 3-inch-thick (7.6-centimeter thick) layer of Solimide-based foam, which is designed to cover science instruments and other exterior elements. The team has tested the insulation in the large Titan-environment chamber at APL, as well as in the wind tunnel at NASA Langley.


Johns Hopkins APL

Long-Distance Communications

Engineers at APL have completed the flight radios that will serve as the communications receiver and transmitter for Dragonfly’s journey to and operations on Titan. The APL-developed Frontier radios are versatile telecommunications devices proven on missions from the Sun to Pluto and beyond. As a software-defined radio — where software is used to customize the radio for specific mission requirements — the Frontier is smaller and needs less power than other deep-space radios, and can send and receive signals in a wide range of frequencies.


Lockheed Martin

Ensuring Safe Entry

Engineers at Lockheed Martin in Denver have passed the first set of major milestones for the flight aeroshell, taking a big step towards making sure the casing that will protect Dragonfly upon its arrival at Titan can withstand the extreme thermal and structural loads of a ballistic atmospheric entry. This includes fabrication, cure and thermal-cycle testing of the aeroshell heat shield and backshell structures, with a static test campaign and thermal protection system installation up next.

Dragonfly will formally begin its integration and test phase in January 2026. The mission is scheduled to launch in July 2028 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch vehicle from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Source: NASA.Gov

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The Dragonfly mission is flying through milestones! Recent thermal and environmental testing shows how the rotorcraft will survive and navigate Titan’s skies. This bold mission will explore one of our solar system’s most intriguing worlds. https://t.co/ctPlSEzMyS pic.twitter.com/k6Y9DUMstx

— NASA Solar System (@NASASolarSystem) September 8, 2025

On This Day in 2015: Workin' as an Extra on THE BIG BANG THEORY!

So it was 10 years ago today that I went to the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank to work as an extra on my favorite TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory!

It was surreal to walk into Stage 25 and see the set for the Pasadena apartment where Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), Penny (Kaley Cuoco), Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyer), Bernadette Rostenkowski (Melissa Rauch) and Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik) gathered to eat Chinese food and talk all things sex, science, Star Trek and Star Wars for several seasons.

In the fourth Season 9 episode shown above (titled "The 2003 Appoximation"), Raj's girlfriend Emily Sweeney (Laura Spencer) and Stuart Bloom (Kevin Sussman) join the gang as Howard and Raj—both standing off-screen—sing Hammer & Whip (Thor and Dr. Jones) in Stuart's comic book shop. Amy wasn't in this scene, but you can spot me wearing eyeglasses and a black sweater (and sporting a shaved head) while standing directly behind those rows of comic books and the couch where Sheldon, Penny and Leonard are sitting!

This production shoot was a 2-day call where the Thor and Dr. Jones scene was pre-recorded on Day 1, and the rest of the episode was filmed in front of a live studio audience on Day 2. I worked on a Season 10 episode of The Big Bang Theory as well...but I'll blog about it on its 10-year anniversary in 2026!

You can watch Howard and Raj sing Thor and Dr. Jones in the clip below:

Trump Continues to Double Down on his Stupidity...

So earlier today, this screenshot of a Truth Social post made by Donald Trump was shared online...showing that the fascist pedophile is ready to deploy U.S. military soldiers and ICE agents to the city of Chicago.

Not only is Trump apparently resigned to the fact that he'll never win a Nobel Peace Prize—not with him invading a third American city with American troops in three months—but he's trying so, so very hard to distract folks from the other fact that he raped underage girls with his dead buddy Jeffrey Epstein.

Nice try, Trump. The only way you'll make people forget that you're a child sex predator is by employing that memory-erasing gizmo Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones used in the Men in Black movies. Since those memory-erasing gizmos (called 'neuralyzers') don't exist, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene's Jewish Space Lasers, you'll have to make do with the fact that history will always remember you as the twice-impeached, 34-time convicted felon who canoodled with foreign dictators like Kim Jong Un and now-deceased pedophiles who conducted sex-trafficking operations on a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

MAGA!

The Trump Regime Just Keeps Doing Stupid Things...

So earlier today, Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming the Department of Defense back to the World War II-era Department of War. According to Fox News (yes, I'm quoting that Republican propaganda mouthpiece), the 5-time draft-dodging pedophile made the change because it sent "a message of victory, a message of strength" to the world.

Overlooking the fact that Trump showed just how weak he was when he met up with Russian dictator Vladmir Putin on U.S. soil last month to make a deal to end the Ukraine war (Trump unsurprisingly came away from the meeting empty-handed), this is just another stupid act by the convicted felon to distract the American people from his incompetence as president and his presence in the Epstein files. Also, this is another diversion from today's jobs report that announced only 22,000 jobs were added last month—with the unemployment rate in the U.S. increasing to 4.3%.

(Oh, and the U.S. now has more unemployed people than job openings for the first time since April 2021. In July, the U.S. had 7.18 million job openings, with 7.24 million unemployed individuals. Trump is bringing America back to a pandemic-era economy.)

The fact that Trump, the supposed anti-war candidate according to right-wing folks during the 2024 election season, would rebrand the Pentagon as a warmongering apparatus of the U.S. government makes it even more stupid that he tried to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Combine the Department of War with Trump illegally bombing Iran, illegally sending military troops to American cities like Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and possibly Chicago, and murdering 11 people on a Venezuelan boat in international waters in the Caribbean (an act of war, apparently), and Trump is just showing that he wants to enhance a fraudulent political legacy in American history that he absolutely does not deserve.

And of course, you have MAGA halfwits like Pete Hegseth enabling his sex-offending boss by sharing the tweet above. According to the Fox News article mentioned at the start of this Blog entry, this is Trump's 200th executive order. In other words, the next Democratic president will have at least 200 items to overturn—via executive orders—on Inauguration Day less than four years from now.

Have a nice weekend.

UPDATE (11:15 PM, PDT): For some stupid reason the Fox News article won't open if you click on the link at the start of this Blog entry. Look up "Department of War" on Google and you'll be able to visit the article there. Screw you, Rupert Murdoch's former company.

REMINDER: The unemployment rate was at or under 4% for 30 consecutive months under President Biden.

He averaged 343,750 jobs/month while in office.

By comparison, trump added an anemic 70,833 jobs per month from January to August 2025, and unemployment rose from 4% to 4.3%.

We… pic.twitter.com/s1B5v1MYcE

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) September 5, 2025

The Latest Discovery by a Mars Lander That Permanently Fell Silent Years Ago...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Marsquake Data Reveals Lumpy Nature of Red Planet’s Interior (News Release)

Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past.

What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior.

There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early Solar System was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection.

The finding was reported on Thursday, August 28, in a study published by the journal Science.

“We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.”

InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely-sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022.

Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data.

“We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper.

Quake hunting

Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically-active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts.

Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732° Fahrenheit (1,500° Celsius).

Scrambled signals

The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered.

“When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.”

Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle.

With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there.

Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early Solar System, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle.

Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early Solar System, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets.

On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.”

And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

Flying at Light Speed for 192 Months Now...

Sixteen Light-Years... That’s how far the Hello From Earth message has traveled since being transmitted from a giant NASA antenna in Australia to the exoplanet Gliese 581d in the summer of 2009.

As of 7 PM California time tonight (12 PM Sydney time on Thursday, August 28), the radio signal containing 25,878 goodwill text messages—including one by me—will have ventured across approximately 94 trillion miles (151 trillion kilometers) of deep space...which, as stated at the very start of this Blog entry, equals a distance of sixteen light-years.

The signal, despite traveling 186,000 miles per second (or 671 million miles per hour, or um, 1 billion kilometers per hour), will still take about 4 years to reach the Gliese 581 star system. Carry on!

Hubble's Successor Captures Images of 3I/ATLAS...

NASA / James Webb Space Telescope

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet (News Release)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on August 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been analyzing insights from Webb’s data, and a preprint is available online.

Webb is one of NASA’s space telescopes observing this comet, together providing more information about its size, physical properties and chemical makeup. For example, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the recently-launched SPHEREx mission have also observed the comet.

While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency’s ongoing mission to find, track and better understand Solar System objects.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / James Webb Space Telescope


NASA / James Webb Space Telescope

The Orbital Test Vehicle Flies Again...

SpaceX

U.S. Space Force Launches Eighth X-37B Mission (Press Release - August 23)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (AFNS) -- The U.S. Space Force, in partnership with SpaceX, successfully launched the eighth mission of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-8) on a Falcon 9 rocket at 11:50 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on August 21, 2025, from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A.

The SpaceX rocket carried the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle into orbit, marking the eighth space flight for the X-37B program.

"As we continue to set the pace for space, I am incredibly proud of our team's professionalism and persistence supporting this launch,” said Space Launch Delta 45 Commander Col. Brian Chatman. “X-37B continues to prove itself as a premier testing platform aiding in experiments to better understand our future in space. These experiments, X-37B itself, and Space Launch Delta 45's ability to perform fast, flexible launches all play crucial roles in bolstering our resilience and enhancing our ability to swiftly adapt to the challenges in space of today and tomorrow," Chatman added.

The X-37B is a dynamic and responsive spacecraft responsible for conducting a range of tests and experiments that expedite the development of critical next-generation technologies and operational concepts for reusable space capabilities.

Source: United States Space Force

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SpaceX


SpaceX


U.S. Space Force

An Update on America's Next Interstellar-bound Probe...

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Southwest Research Institute / Serge Brunier / Marc Postman / Dan Durda

NASA’s New Horizons Enters Mission’s Longest Hibernation Period (News Release)

Running with updated onboard fault protection software that improves its ability to operate farther from the Sun than originally designed, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has entered the longest hibernation phase of its mission.

At 4:12 a.m. EDT on August 7, flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, verified that New Horizons – acting on commands uplinked to its main computer on July 23 – had safely entered hibernation mode again. With the spacecraft now in the outer Kuiper Belt and more than 5.7 billion miles (9.2 billion kilometers) from Earth, the radio signals carrying that confirmation message from New Horizons needed 8 hours and 31 minutes – traveling at the speed of light – to reach the APL Mission Operations Center through NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Network station in California.

New Horizons, which had been in active data-collection mode since April, will now remain in hibernation. Pending a final Fiscal Year 2026 budget, the spacecraft may be awoken in late June 2026. This will be the longest hibernation period of the mission so far, surpassing the previous mark of 273 days from June 2022 to March 2023.

But the spacecraft won’t be completely at rest; New Horizons will continue to take round-the-clock measurements of the charged-particle environment in the Sun’s outer heliosphere and the dust environment of the Kuiper Belt using three different onboard scientific instruments. These data will be transmitted back to Earth when New Horizons wakes up.

“Even when our spacecraft sleeps, round-the-clock science data collection never stops,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

What Is Hibernation? Hibernation is a way to extend spacecraft life and reduce mission operations costs. During hibernation, New Horizons remains in a stable spinning mode with much of the spacecraft unpowered. The onboard flight computer monitors system health and broadcasts a weekly beacon-status tone back to Earth through NASA’s Deep Space Network of communications and tracking ground stations.

Since 2007, New Horizons has hibernated 23 times, for periods ranging from just days to many months.

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and the mission’s principal investigator. Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio, directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern, who leads the mission for NASA. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s Planetary Management Office in Huntsville, Alabama, provides NASA oversight for New Horizons.

Source: NASA.Gov

One of America's Newest Asteroid Explorers Takes a Snapshot of our Home Planet and its Natural Satellite...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / ASU

NASA’s Psyche Captures Images of Earth, Moon (News Release - August 19)

Headed for a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, the Psyche spacecraft successfully calibrated its cameras by looking homeward.

On schedule for its 2029 arrival at the asteroid Psyche, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft recently looked back toward home and captured images of Earth and our Moon from about 180 million miles (290 million kilometers) away. The images were obtained during one of the mission team’s periodic checkouts of the spacecraft’s science instruments.

On July 20 and July 23, the spacecraft’s twin cameras captured multiple long-exposure (up to 10-second) pictures of the two bodies, which appear as dots sparkling with reflected sunlight amid a starfield in the constellation Aries.

The Psyche multispectral imager instrument comprises a pair of identical cameras equipped with filters and telescopic lenses to photograph the asteroid Psyche’s surface in different wavelengths of light. The color and shape of a planetary body’s spectrum can reveal details about what it’s made of. The Moon and the giant asteroid Vesta, for example, have similar kinds of “bumps and wiggles” in their spectra that scientists could potentially also detect at Psyche.

Members of the mission’s science team are interested in Psyche because it will help them better understand the formation of rocky planets with metallic cores, including Earth.

When choosing targets for the imager testing and calibration, scientists look for bodies that shine with reflected sunlight, just as the asteroid Psyche does. They also look at objects that have a spectrum they’re familiar with, so they can compare previous telescopic or spacecraft data from those objects with what Psyche’s instruments observe. Earlier this year, Psyche turned its lenses toward Jupiter and Mars for calibration — each has a spectrum more reddish than the bluer tones of Earth.

That checkout also proved a success.

To determine whether the imager’s performance is changing, scientists also compare data from the different tests. That way, when the spacecraft slips into orbit around Psyche, scientists can be sure that the instrument behaves as expected.

“After this, we may look at Saturn or Vesta to help us continue to test the imagers,” said Jim Bell, the Psyche imager instrument lead at Arizona State University in Tempe. “We’re sort of collecting Solar System ‘trading cards’ from these different bodies and running them through our calibration pipeline to make sure we’re getting the right answers.”

Strong and Sturdy

The imager wasn’t the only instrument that got a successful checkout in late July: The mission team also put the spacecraft’s magnetometer and the gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer through a gamut of tests — something they do every six months.

“We are up and running, and everything is working well,” said Bob Mase, the mission’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’re on target to fly by Mars in May 2026, and we are accomplishing all of our planned activities for cruise.”

That flyby is the spacecraft’s next big milestone, when it will use the Red Planet’s gravity as a slingshot to help the spacecraft get to the asteroid Psyche. That will mark Psyche’s first of two planned loops around the Solar System and 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) since launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2023.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech / ASU

Discoveries Are Still Being Made About Dawn's Dwarf Planet Home in the Asteroid Belt...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA

NASA: Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability (News Release)

The dwarf planet is cold now, but new research paints a picture of Ceres hosting a deep, long-lived energy source that may have maintained habitable conditions in the past.

New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial metabolisms. Although there is no evidence that microorganisms ever existed on Ceres, the finding supports theories that this intriguing dwarf planet, which is the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may have once had conditions suitable to support single-celled lifeforms.

Science data from NASA’s Dawn mission, which ended in 2018, previously showed that the bright, reflective regions on Ceres’ surface are mostly made of salts left over from liquid that percolated up from underground. Later analysis in 2020 found that the source of this liquid was an enormous reservoir of brine, or salty water, below the surface. In other research, the Dawn mission also revealed evidence that Ceres has organic material in the form of carbon molecules — essential, though not sufficient on its own, to support microbial cells.

The presence of water and carbon molecules are two critical pieces of the habitability puzzle on Ceres. The new findings offer the third: a long-lasting source of chemical energy in Ceres’ ancient past that could have made it possible for microorganisms to survive. This result does not mean that Ceres had life, but rather, that there likely was “food” available should life have ever arisen on Ceres.

In the study, published in Science Advances on August 20, the authors built thermal and chemical models mimicking the temperature and composition of Ceres’ interior over time. They found that 2.5 billion years or so ago, Ceres’ subsurface ocean may have had a steady supply of hot water containing dissolved gases traveling up from metamorphosed rocks in the rocky core. The heat came from the decay of radioactive elements within the dwarf planet’s rocky interior that occurred when Ceres was young — an internal process thought to be common in our Solar System.

“On Earth, when hot water from deep underground mixes with the ocean, the result is often a buffet for microbes — a feast of chemical energy. So it could have big implications if we could determine whether Ceres’ ocean had an influx of hydrothermal fluid in the past,” said Sam Courville, lead author of the study. Now based at Arizona State University in Tempe, he led the research while working as an intern at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which also managed the Dawn mission.

Catching Chill

The Ceres that we know today is unlikely to be habitable. It is cooler, with more ice and less water than in the past. There is currently insufficient heat from radioactive decay within Ceres to keep the water from freezing, and what liquid remains has become a concentrated brine.

The period when Ceres would most likely have been habitable was between a half-billion and 2 billion years after it formed (or about 2.5 billion to 4 billion years ago), when its rocky core reached its peak temperature. That’s when warm fluids would have been introduced into Ceres’ underground water.

The dwarf planet also doesn’t have the benefit of present-day internal heating generated by the push and pull of orbiting a large planet, like Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa do. So Ceres’ greatest potential for habitability-fueling energy was in the past.

This result has implications for water-rich objects throughout the outer Solar System, too. Many of the other icy moons and dwarf planets that are of similar size to Ceres (about 585 miles, or 940 kilometers, in diameter) and don’t have significant internal heating from the gravitational pull of planets could have also had a period of habitability in their past.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

JWST Update #2: A New Satellite Is Found at the Third Outer Planet in our Solar System...

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. El Moutamid (SwRI), M. Hedman (University of Idaho)

New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus Using NASA’s Webb Telescope (News Release)

Editor’s Note: This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has identified a previously-unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet’s known satellite family to 29. The detection was made during a Webb observation on February 2, 2025.

“This object was spotted in a series of 10 40-minute long-exposure images captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam),” said Maryame El Moutamid, a lead scientist in SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division based in Boulder, Colorado. “It’s a small moon but a significant discovery, which is something that even NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft didn’t see during its flyby nearly 40 years ago.”

The newly-discovered moon is estimated to be just six miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, assuming that it has a similar reflectivity (albedo) to Uranus’ other small satellites. That tiny size likely rendered it invisible to Voyager 2 and other telescopes.

“No other planet has as many small inner moons as Uranus, and their complex inter-relationships with the rings hint at a chaotic history that blurs the boundary between a ring system and a system of moons,” said Matthew Tiscareno of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a member of the research team. “Moreover, the new moon is smaller and much fainter than the smallest of the previously-known inner moons, making it likely that even more complexity remains to be discovered.”

The new moon is the 14th member of the intricate system of small moons orbiting inward of the largest moons Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. (All of the moons of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.)

“It’s located about 35,000 miles (56,000 kilometers) from Uranus’ center, orbiting the planet’s equatorial plane between the orbits of Ophelia (which is just outside of Uranus’ main ring system) and Bianca,” said El Moutamid. “Its nearly-circular orbit suggests it may have formed near its current location.”

A name for the newly-found moon will need to be approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the leading authority in assigning official names and designations to astronomical objects.

“Through this and other programs, Webb is providing a new eye on the outer Solar System. This discovery comes as part of Webb’s General Observer program, which allows scientists worldwide to propose investigations using the telescope’s cutting-edge instruments. The NIRCam instrument’s high resolution and infrared sensitivity make it especially adept at detecting faint, distant objects that were beyond the reach of previous observatories,” said El Moutamid.

“Looking forward, the discovery of this moon underscores how modern astronomy continues to build upon the legacy of missions like Voyager 2, which flew past Uranus on January 24, 1986, and gave humanity its first close-up look at this mysterious world. Now, nearly four decades later, the James Webb Space Telescope is pushing that frontier even farther.”

Source: NASA.Gov

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