I just learnt about the Trojan asteroids. And then my computer got a varus.

4/23/2025 6:34:01 PM

Quote :

"I consider Donaldjohanson a planet"

I bet you consider Pluto a planet too.

4/24/2025 8:15:02 AM

JUSTICE FOR PLUTO.

4/24/2025 9:10:44 AM

^^ I'm not gonna gatekeep planethood

4/24/2025 11:30:26 AM

In 2027 we will be back to the moon, in 2033 boots on the mars, in 2050 there'll be a million people moving to the mars!

5/16/2025 4:42:03 PM

There are already millions of people I'd like to send to the Mars.

5/16/2025 5:26:46 PM

THE FIRST 10,000 DAYS ON MARS (Timelapse)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3hPH_bc0Ww&t=47s

5/16/2025 5:38:30 PM

^

27 April 2025 -- 5 unmanned SpaceX Starships land on Mars.

LOL! Did I miss that? Seems like it would have been covered, even by the lamestream media.

5/17/2025 9:48:17 AM

Yeah, everything has been delayed to a certain extent.

5/17/2025 5:39:43 PM

Yeah, just a little.

5/17/2025 7:21:30 PM

Lol any day now

5/17/2025 9:13:06 PM

https://www.livenowfox.com/news/elon-musk-spacex-plans-mars

5/30/2025 4:01:10 PM

I mainly just want him to send himself and never come back.

5/30/2025 4:55:56 PM

Not sure if you fellow space nerds have seen this on the news, but the third interstellar object in recorded history has been observed entering our solar system. Dubbed 3I/Atlas, it is likely a comet, but we honestly don't know what it is. There is a nonzero chance that it is aliens. We currently have a few spacecraft on the way to/around Jupiter that I am working on, we're looking at if we can turn them on to image this thing and get a better look at what it actually is.

[Edited on August 8, 2025 at 8:23 AM. Reason : ]

8/8/2025 8:23:05 AM

LFG, Aliens!!



[Edited on August 8, 2025 at 10:15 AM. Reason : jh]

8/8/2025 10:14:22 AM

^^Why the big time jump in frames? Was this recorded by Epstein's prison surveillance camera?

8/8/2025 11:44:47 AM

8/8/2025 9:23:46 PM

What happens when Starship HLS tips over on the lunar surface?

8/10/2025 7:27:03 AM

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-nasas-juno-probe-changed-everything-we-know-about-jupiter/

Interesting read about Juno, which has been faithfully providing us all sorts of science about Jupiter for over a decade. Currently operating fine, but may lose funding soon. Still has it for now, so not time for a GNSP yet.

In other news, Europa Clipper and the ESA spacecraft JUICE (containing three NASA instruments that I work on) are both planning to image the 3I/Atlas interstellar object in November. JUICE has a bunch of instruments that will be turning on to take a look, with one of the three NASA ones being one of them. Its very convenient that we have two spacecraft already on a trajectory to take a look!

Here is more raw data if anyone is interested: http://aerith.net/comet/catalog/0003I/2025N1.html

The plot at the bottom is visual magnitude of the object, with smaller numbers on the Y-Axis (note the axis is inverted) being brighter. There are a handful of pictures taken from Earth-based observatories, but most of them just look like dots right now (looks like the site isn't allowing me to embed an image, but you can see it for yourself on the site).

[Edited on August 20, 2025 at 9:22 AM. Reason : embedded picture]

8/20/2025 9:14:51 AM

I am disappoint, son. From a nationalistic standpoint, I hope we beat China to the moon!

9/20/2025 1:08:01 PM

it's just a hit piece feel free to ignore

https://twitter.com/ApoStructura/status/1964016222858547473


https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/1959725079446823024


[Edited on September 20, 2025 at 1:48 PM. Reason : .]

9/20/2025 1:41:48 PM

That is an absurd take imo

[Edited on September 20, 2025 at 1:50 PM. Reason : The rando guys tweet not your pretty graphs]

9/20/2025 1:49:19 PM

Government shutdown has extended past three weeks at this point .

10/23/2025 1:52:16 PM

What does it mean for you?

Are you one of the people who will be taken care of in a different way?

10/23/2025 7:00:23 PM

Furloughed for 90% of my work since Oct 1. Illegal for me to go to work. For the 10% of my projects that I am allowed to support, I won't get paid until after the shutdown ends.

[Edited on October 23, 2025 at 8:53 PM. Reason : ]

10/23/2025 8:48:50 PM

That sucks in a way, but then if you stick it out, I guess you eventually get paid for not working, which is pretty cool. It's a very efficient and effective system of government.

How have you been occupying your time?

What about NASA contractors who aren't direct NASA employees?

10/24/2025 3:54:50 AM

I have had a few things around the house I have been putting off that I finally got around to— painted the front door and replaced the outdated hardware, cleaned up my garage, cleaned some big windows, replaced some stuff on my gas fireplace before the cold season. Nothing crazy but busy work that takes a long time.

Contractors can still work if their contract was funded before the shutdown. If their contract was up for renewal after Oct 1 though, they can’t renew until the shutdown ends. Anything significant usually requires a civil servant signature though, so major design changes and stuff like that is on hold.

10/24/2025 2:56:06 PM

I got a lot done the week after Hurricane Helene came through last year when I didn't have any power.

The yard ended up looking better than before the storm (after a ton of clean-up). But I had to eat cold oatmeal and take cold showers. Created a big calorie deficit.

Same with furlough during COVID.

10/24/2025 6:00:49 PM

Why did you have to eat cold oatmeal and take cold showers during COVID?

10/27/2025 2:32:36 PM

To kill the varus, of course! How did YOU defend?!

Actually, that sentence was meant to follow the first paragraph, and became a non sequitur when I added the second paragraph in between. Poor copy editing. Oops!

10/27/2025 4:46:04 PM

Blue Origin test was successful. I think they accomplished what space x first accomplished like 7 years ago.

11/13/2025 4:47:12 PM

^ Their cameras are way shitter, then had very few angles and lots of buffering. and the two ladies kept talking over the control guy. but i love rockets

11/14/2025 9:27:57 AM

https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-return-mission-dead

GNSP


I worked on this for 6 years. Published four papers and co-authored two more. Sad to see it go, but for all its flaws it made me a significantly better engineer. Wasn't my first canceled program/project and won't be my last...

In other news, Artemis II launch window opens next month. Rollout to the pad currently scheduled for Jan 17.

[Edited on January 12, 2026 at 10:54 AM. Reason : ]

1/12/2026 10:47:40 AM

That sucks dude. Got my fingers crossed for Artemis II for sure.

1/12/2026 1:06:50 PM

Artemis 2 has officially rolled out to the pad! Some pictures a friend at KSC took:





[Edited on January 20, 2026 at 11:00 AM. Reason : jpg]

1/20/2026 10:59:47 AM

nbd

1/20/2026 11:06:02 PM

Wet dress rehearsal for Artemis II yesterday revealed some hydrogen leaks. That's what happens when your fuel is the smallest atom in the universe. Launch window has been postponed to March 6.

2/3/2026 8:14:08 AM

I mean this respectfully, but does it even really matter? Like sure it'll be cool to do a lunar flyby, but hardware for Artemis III is nowhere close to being ready (2028 is laughable). From a historical perspective, the time between Apollo 8 and 11 was 7 months.

Relying on SpaceX's HLS/Starship continues to be such a massive mistake.

Bleh, not trying to knock what you do Wraith, you know I love space, but it's just so hard not to get frustrated at the direction of NASA sometimes. I'll absolutely still watch the launch and follow the mission, but just wish I could believe in the timelines.

2/3/2026 9:59:38 AM

I think we should send a Sea Dragon to the moon to intimidate the Chinese.

2/3/2026 10:20:51 AM

^^It isn't a NASA issue, it is a funding issue. Going from Apollo 8 to 11 in 7 months was achievable when we had ~4.5% of the national budget, full political support (IE listening to the scientists and engineers), and pretty much all of the funding going straight to Apollo. These days we have less than 0.5% of the national budget and it is spread out among hundreds of projects. We can't afford (metaphorically and literally) to have as many tests and stuff like we did in the 1960s, so we gotta nail it the first time, which makes everything take longer. If humans are ever gonna go anywhere beyond LEO, we gotta (re)start somewhere...

That being said, the HLS contract has been reopened for A3, so hypothetically it may end up being a different spacecraft/company for that mission...

[Edited on February 3, 2026 at 11:01 AM. Reason : ]

2/3/2026 10:58:26 AM

Yeah

I was really hoping the Chinese would encourage us to have another good ol fashion spacerace.

2/3/2026 11:07:49 AM

You gotta fund education for that.

2/3/2026 4:19:03 PM

Let get back some of that Somalia and other Fraud money we'll colonize the Moon/Mars by next year.

2/4/2026 9:33:18 AM

Sounds rather partisan to me

2/4/2026 10:08:44 AM

Yo, can I get some o dat fraud money?

2/4/2026 12:00:22 PM

Hell I'd be happy in colonizing my own apartment by next year white boy

2/4/2026 12:12:41 PM

Second attempt at the wet dress rehearsal went well yesterday. Hydrogen leaks are fixed. 14 days until the launch window opens!

Sidenote, not sure if you guys remember spacebat from a shuttle launch in 2009, but the A2 wet dress rehearsal featured spacebat v2.0. Little guy was perched on the outside of the core stage and probably froze.

[Edited on February 20, 2026 at 8:46 AM. Reason : ]

2/20/2026 8:32:10 AM

I do remember spacebat. And, RIP!



GNSP

2/20/2026 11:56:29 AM

welp. Helium issue. Fun fact, since hydrogen is diatomic and helium is not, hydrogen is actually physically larger than helium in nature. Back to the VAB it is. New launch window updated to April now.

2/23/2026 9:26:08 AM

What is the helium even for?

Probably good that they are going back to check things, because I had a dream within the past week that I was driving down to Florida for the launch, and right before I arrived (but I certainly could see it, and I guess in the dream you can get much closer than they let you in reality), there was a massive explosion on the launchpad (Apollo 23 style) that did a LOT of damage. Basically, I was the first car on the road that didn't get totally obliterated like something out of a Michael Bay movie. I did a U-turn and GTFO!

So, yeah, we don't want that to happen.

2/23/2026 9:19:13 PM