In lesser news: NewSpace startup Fleet Space announced that their payload- a science instrument- will join the ApophisExL mission to the eponymous asteroid in 2029. www.fleetspace.com/newsroom/fleet-space-targets-apophis-for-off-world-exploration-missionSeptember 23, 2025Fleet Space Targets Apophis For Off-World Exploration Mission The ApophisExL mission is a… Read More »Got It On Apophis Mission (Fleet Space)
A bit light for this blog, but… ESA has posted an explainer video for the RAMSES mission: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2025/10/Ramses_ESA_s_mission_to_rendezvous_with_asteroid_ApophisRamses: ESA’s mission to rendezvous with asteroid Apophis 13/10/2025 This week marks three and a half years until the Apophis flyby of Earth;… Read More »See RAMSES Teaser
In Acta Astronautica for October (vol. 235): Broslav, T. Dreyer, C. Sercel, J. Optical mining of carbonaceous chondrite simulants: Testing and lessons learned in asteroid mining research p. 1 .2025.04.033Wang, Y. Zhu, Y. Ding, Y. Research on the ignition characteristics and… Read More »Note, Paper: Light this Rocket, Little Rock edition
More papers in PSJ (Planetary Science Journal), vol. 6 (2025)- they just keep posting: Scully, Jennifer E. C. et al. Leveraging Ceres to Gain Insights into the Candidate Ocean Worlds of Umbriel and Oberon That Orbit Uranus 187 adec97Vinogradoff, Vassilissa… Read More »Note, Paper: Rock-Objects Contexts
It’s an odd-numbered year. Therefore, the American Astronomical Society’s meeting of their Division for Planetary Sciences will be a joint meeting (in Helsinki, FI) with the Europlanet Science Congress, on September 8-12: https://www.epsc-dps2025.eu/ Of course, next year will be two… Read More »2025 Joint EPSC-DPS Meeting, I
Now for the annual Smallsat Conference (smallsat.org), hosted as always by Utah State University, August 11-13. See the overview: https://smallsat.org/conference/schedule/ https://smallsat.org/conference/keynote/https://smallsat.org/conference/flash-talks/https://smallsat.org/conference/posters/ In case you don’t see the connection: Hera is currently flying with the Milani and Juventas 6U CubeSats, to… Read More »Smallsat meeting, 2025
Yes, it’s time for the 33rd Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG). https://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/meetings/sbagjune2025/ See the schedule: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/sbagjune2025/technical_program/?session_no=101 Really, the overarching theme was the strangling of planetary science, and not just at small bodies. We are talking about… Read More »Summer 2025 SBAG Meeting, Day 1
…see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 It’s now Day 5 of a weeklong conference: wrapping up loose ends. Here, the less technical but no less important soft sciences. And posters; lots and lots of posters. Panel Session… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 5
…see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 And now on Day 4 of the PDC, we get to the dramatic, unlikely (and hopefully never likely in our era) part of planetary defense: mitigation. That’s action taken when the impactor has… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 4
…see Day 1 The last post was the first day of a big, multi-day conference: lots of pleasantries and generalities. Here now we get into some real meat of the matter. Session 1: Hypothetical Threat Exercise Technical SessionThe international… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 2