A New Radio Dish for Space Exploration Has Emerged in the California Desert...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

New Next-Gen Dish Adds Muscle to NASA’s Deep Space Network (News Release)

Deep Space Station 23 at NASA’s Goldstone facility in the California desert is the latest next-generation antenna to be added by the network’s enhancement project.

NASA’s Deep Space Network facility in California is marking the addition of a brand new 34-meter-wide (114-foot-wide) radio frequency antenna to the agency’s deep space communications and navigation system. The network uses giant dish antennas located at three global facilities to support more than 40 spacecraft exploring the Solar System and interstellar space.

The new Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23) is located at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, near Barstow, and is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA leadership and personnel as well as dignitaries gathered at the complete DSS-23 antenna for a ceremonial ribbon cutting. It’s the latest to be added as part of the Deep Space Network’s Aperture Enhancement Project, which began in 2009 to upgrade and expand the network by adding six new 34-meter multifrequency beam-waveguide antennas. These versatile dishes can enhance many missions operating over different radio frequencies.

“By expanding the Deep Space Network, we are strengthening the communications foundation NASA needs for the bold missions ahead — from exploring more of the Moon than ever before to peering deeper into the Solar System,” said James Kenyon, associate administrator of the Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This new antenna will help us deliver on our national goals for space exploration and push beyond the limits of what once seemed impossible.”

After completing a testing campaign from May through July to demonstrate its capabilities, the new DSS-23 began operations on August 3, tracking NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Since then, it has been communicating with dozens of missions such as NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Psyche, Juno, Voyager 1 and other robotic spacecraft in deep space.

“The addition of this next-generation antenna brings us closer to a completely modernized network that embraces advanced technology to ensure NASA’s leadership in deep space communications,” said Dave Gallagher, director of JPL. “After over 60 years of continuous operations supporting consequential missions, these upgrades prime the network for a new era of exploration. The teams that designed, planned and built DSS-23 should be proud.”

Enhanced capabilities

Construction of DSS-23 began in February 2020. After the 133-ton metal reflector framework was placed and bolted atop the antenna’s pedestal in December 2024, engineers installed the panels to the framework that reflect radio frequency signals transmitted to and received from spacecraft. Then came the careful process of calibrating the antenna so that it can work in concert with the rest of the network.

It is the fifth antenna at Goldstone (joining three 34-meter antennas and one 70-meter, or 230-foot, antenna) and the fifth enhancement project antenna to join the network, which includes antennas at the DSN’s Goldstone, Madrid, and Canberra, Australia, complexes. Multifrequency beam waveguide antennas direct signals down to a stable, climate-controlled underground room, rather than housing heavy, sensitive electronic equipment on the moving antenna dish. In addition to offering versatility, this design allows easy access for maintenance and upgrades to the system.

“The biggest challenge wasn’t actually constructing the antenna. It was transforming a complex collection of mechanical, electrical, software, radio frequency, and infrastructure systems into a single, mission-ready asset,” said Germaine Aziz, manager of the Deep Space Network Aperture Enhancement Project at JPL. “Every subsystem must be integrated, calibrated, and verified to operate with extraordinary precision and reliability before it can support NASA’s deep space missions.”

The enhancement project will be complete when a sixth enhancement-project antenna, Deep Space Station 33, comes online at the Canberra facility in 2029, bringing the total number of 34-meter antennas across the network to 13. The 34-meter antennas can be arrayed (combined and operated together) to provide an equivalent communications backup for each facility’s single 70-meter antenna, which, after more than 50 years of near-continuous operation, are getting increasingly costly to maintain and repair.

Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL manages the agency’s Deep Space Network with the oversight of NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the Deep Space Network and Near Space Network. They include missions that support astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, monitoring Earth, exploring the Moon, and exploring the Solar System and beyond.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

America's Next Great Observatory Is Ready to Meet Its Rocket!

NASA / Sydney Rohde (Rocz)

Roman Space Telescope Encapsulation (Photo Release - August 21)

Teams inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida encapsulate the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope within the payload fairing on Friday, August 21, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Encapsulation shields the spacecraft during rollout, ascent, and the early phases of flight.

Roman will investigate dark energy and dark matter, conduct a statistical census of planetary systems, and enable a broad range of additional astrophysics research.

Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, August 30, 2026.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Sydney Rohde (Rocz)


NASA / Sydney Rohde (Rocz)


NASA / Sydney Rohde (Rocz)

Photos of the Day: New Additions to the OBSESSION Collection...

Richard T. Par

So earlier today, I got these three One Wish Willows in the mail! Why did I buy these Obsession movie collectibles, you ask? Here's why:

- I wanted one Willow to place on my bookshelf for display...next to the package for my CD copy of Rock Burwell's terrific music score for Curry Barker's hit horror film
- I wanted another Willow to make a fake wish for world peace (and by that I mean fake wishing to win the lottery or at least move to a better city)
- And I wanted one last Willow to um, collect dust somewhere else in my house

I should've just bought two Willows! It was only $24 for three, though.



Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par

The Latest Update on America's Next Great Observatory...

NASA

Launch Dress Rehearsal Complete Ahead of NASA Roman Space Telescope Liftoff (News Release)

The team preparing to launch NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed a mission dress rehearsal on Thursday from Florida’s space coast.

During the exercise, Roman teams ran through a full end-to-end simulation of launch-day operations leading up to liftoff. They practiced powering up the spacecraft, simulated fueling operations for the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, conducted mock weather briefings, and practiced troubleshooting a variety of scenarios.

This rehearsal is a standard part of preparation and contributes to mission success, especially since NASA missions often involve unique requirements specific to a given spacecraft. During the simulation, the team was on console at NASA and SpaceX facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and SpaceX facilities at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center, where they tested and demonstrated proficiency on everything from communications to mission systems.

Completing the rehearsal brings the team one step closer to sending Roman on its mission to address essential questions about dark energy, planets outside our Solar System, and infrared astrophysics. By conducting wide-field surveys, the telescope will explore the Universe’s structure, evolution and composition.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 30, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

Source: NASA.Gov

Video of the Day: The Season 2 Teaser Trailer for AHSOKA!

Last night, Lucasfilm released the poster above and the teaser trailer below for Ahsoka Season 2...which premieres on Disney+ five months from now!

This latest update for the Star Wars streaming series was unveiled at the D23 Expo in California's Anaheim Convention Center. Reprising the role of Ahsoka is Rosario Dawson, with Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine Wren), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Hera Syndulla), Ivanna Sakhno (Shin Hati), Eman Esfandi (Ezra Bridger), David Tennant (as the voice of Huyang), Ariana Greenblatt (young Ahsoka), Lars Mikkelsen (Grand Admiral Thrawn) and Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker) making their return as well, respectively.

Rory McCann replaces the late Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll, the fallen Jedi who got stuck on the planet Peridea with Ahsoka, Sabine Wren and Shin Hati (as well as the Force Ghost of Anakin Skywalker) at the end of Season 1.

I absolutely can't wait for Ahsoka Season 2—which promises to showcase just how cunning Grand Admiral Thrawn will be as he takes on the New Republic (which he only recognizes as the Rebel Alliance). It's been over 31 years since I read Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire trilogy (where Thrawn made his debut), but I still remember Thrawn being such an unstoppable foe in those novels! The second season of Ahsoka definitely appears to be up to the task in conveying this in live-action...moreso than Thrawn's appearances in Season 1 and Star Wars Rebels, respectively.

It also looks like we're gonna get some awesome space battles (with the B-Wing, my favorite starfighter to fly in the classic 1993 X-Wing video game, leaping into action against Thrawn's Star Destroyer Chimaera and the rest of his Imperial forces) and lightsaber battles between Ahsoka, Shin, Huyang, Ezra, Baylan, Anakin and company.

Ahsoka Season 2 gets released on January 20!

Artwork of the Day: The Three Faces of (Freaky) Nikki...

Richard T. Par

Just thought I'd share these three illustrations that I drew last week of Nikki Freeman, Inde Navarrette's iconic character from the blockbuster horror film Obsession.

I watched so many reels on Instagram of amazing artwork drawn by other folks of Nikki that I had the urge to draw Bear's dream girl as well (Bear, of course, is played by Michael Johnston in Obsession, respectively).

There are so many great screenshots of Nikki in Obsession that I wanted to emulate using a mechanical pencil and a sheet of paper, but I felt that this trio of drawings was enough!

Anyways, Obsession is still being shown in theaters...while you can also stream it on apps like Peacock as well as purchase it on regular DVD and Blu-ray. I prefer DVD or Blu-ray (if you can no longer see it on the big screen)— Support physical media! No, Focus Features and Blumhouse Productions aren't paying me to promote Curry Barker's hit horror film.


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par

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

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / SwRI

NASA’s New Horizons Finds Evidence of Recent Liquid on Pluto’s Surface (News Release)

A new analysis of imagery collected during NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s 2015 encounter with Pluto provides evidence that liquid nitrogen is rising to Pluto’s surface through cracks in the northern edge of the Sputnik Planitia, part of the massive heart-shaped glacier on the dwarf planet’s surface. This is the first evidence of recently flowing liquid on Pluto.

“Pluto never stops surprising us,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator of New Horizons and lead study author from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “In addition to suggesting that liquids have recently expressed themselves on Pluto’s surface, this result also suggests a new kind of time-variable feature on Pluto.”

The Sputnik Planitia is a vast, frozen nitrogen glacier on Pluto, larger than the U.S. states of Texas and Oklahoma combined. In 2015, New Horizons’ images of the northernmost portions of this region revealed city-sized geologic convection cells on Sputnik Planitia separated by both thin dark linear and more diffuse dark features, suggesting historical liquid flows. Now the new research, published on July 31 in the Planetary Science Journal, indicates that these dark linear and diffuse features may be occasionally and temporarily wetted, perhaps from time to time, by a liquid, most likely liquid nitrogen.

The journal paper’s authors include both planetary science experts in Pluto and experts in terrestrial glaciology.

Surface patterns on northern Sputnik Planitia have been darkened in ways that resemble glacial features on Earth that have been wetted by rain or by the subsurface emergence of liquids to the surface. Pluto’s atmospheric and thermal conditions make liquid nitrogen rain physically impossible, suggesting that liquid nitrogen is flowing up from underneath the glacier.

Source: NASA.Gov

Over a Million Virtual Passengers Are Set to Launch Aboard America's Next Great Observatory...

NASA / Jolearra Tshiteya

NASA’s Roman Telescope to Carry 1.35 Million Names to Deep Space (News Release)

On July 27, technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida installed a memory card containing 1,350,144 names as part of a commemorative plaque on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The names were submitted by people globally, including astronauts from Artemis II and Artemis III. The memory card will travel with the Roman observatory to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, or L2, about one million miles from Earth, where the Sun’s and Earth’s gravity balance out.

Roman is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and one of the architects of the agency’s modern science program. Roman championed space-based observatories that could study the Universe from above Earth’s hazy atmosphere while making their data broadly available to the scientific community.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / Jolearra Tshiteya

The Latest Update on America's Next Great Observatory...

NASA / Sydney Rohde (Rocz)

NASA Fuels Roman Space Telescope for Late August Launch (News Release)

Technicians completed fueling NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, bringing it an important step closer to launch. On July 25, the team completed operations that carefully loaded 290 gallons of hydrazine fuel into the observatory at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

After launch and separation from the rocket, Roman will use this onboard propellant to perform maneuvers as it travels to Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, or L2, located about one million miles from Earth. There, about four times the distance to the Moon, it will have an ideal home for astronomy.

Roman will use its propellant to power two types of thrusters that help it stay in its planned orbit around L2 and ensure the solar array panels face the Sun, which is the observatory’s main source of power throughout the mission. Roman has a five-year primary mission, and potentially enough fuel to support an additional five years for an extended mission. The Roman team recently cleaned and checked out the six solar array panels to prepare them for launch.

Researchers are eager to study thousands of exoplanets that Roman will discover, to learn how closely they resemble Earth. They will also use Roman to study the mystery of dark energy and why it’s causing the Universe to expand faster over time.

Now that fueling is complete, technicians will soon attach Roman to a device that secures to the rocket’s top stage. After that, Roman will be encapsulated within the rocket’s protective shell, known as a payload fairing. The payload fairing protects the spacecraft from aerodynamic forces and heat during ascent.

Launching nine months ahead of schedule, NASA and SpaceX are targeting liftoff for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.

Source: NASA.Gov

The Latest Update on Rocket Lab's First Interplanetary Spacecraft...

NASA / UCB - SSL / NAU - Radiant / Lucint

NASA’s ESCAPADE Snaps Family Portrait of Earth, Moon (News Release)

On July 3, one of NASA’s two Mars-destined ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) spacecraft captured photos of Earth and the Moon in visible and thermal infrared light. At the time, the spacecraft was 363,250 miles (584,600 kilometers) from Earth and 115,600 miles (186,100 kilometers) from the Moon, making the Moon appear relatively large.

Taken with the Sun only partly illuminating Earth and the Moon, the visible light image shows the two bodies as crescents, with only around 8% of each face sunlit. Yet in the thermal infrared image, the shadowed hemisphere of Earth is illuminated by its own heat from both the atmosphere and surface, glowing at -10 to -44° Fahrenheit (250 to 280 kelvins). Without the insulating blankets of oceans and atmospheres, the Moon’s far side remains at a much cooler -280° Fahrenheit (100 kelvins).

The ESCAPADE mission used its Visible and Infrared Observation System cameras, provided by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, to capture the images, which are more than just road trip photo album snaps.

"We are thrilled that ESCAPADE was able to accommodate these excellent space-qualified cameras which will search for visible Martian aurora and investigate thermal properties of the Martian surface and atmosphere,” said Rob Lillis, the mission’s principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. “Since Earth and the Moon are well-known targets, imaging them provides an important calibration check for ESCAPADE’s cameras.”

The ESCAPADE spacecraft, which were built by Rocket Lab, are currently in a “loiter” orbit around Lagrange point 2, a location in space about a million miles from Earth. In November 2026, the spacecraft will fly by Earth to use the planet’s gravity to slingshot their way to Mars. When the spacecraft arrive in September 2027, they will study how a million-mile-per-hour stream of material flowing from the Sun, known as solar wind, interacts with the Martian environment and how that drives atmospheric loss at the Red Planet.

The ESCAPADE mission is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division and is part of the NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program. The UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory leads the mission with key partners Rocket Lab; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Advanced Space; and Blue Origin.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / UCB - SSL / NAU - Radiant / Lucint