In Acta Astronautica for July (vol. 232): Kuppa, K. McMahon, J. W. Dietrich, A. B. Autonomous shape modeling of small bodies using infrared image silhouettes P. 215 .2025.03.005Iwakawa, A. Mizojiri, S. Hall-effect thruster system of fully water propellant with microwave… Read More »Note, Paper: Acta Now
Previously (Winter’s SBAG), I briefly posted about D. Adamo’s research into asteroid way-stations on the path to Mars. Alongside, Lopez and Conte corroborated Adamo’s general idea with their own paper. Adamo’s paper has been published, by the AIAA’s Journal of… Read More »Note, Paper: Layover-Station Paper
Beresheet crashed.Vikram crashed.Hakuto-R crashed.Luna-25 crashed.Peregrine crashed.Resilience crashed. Hayabusa bounced. It then continued its mission, and… returned to Earth. Almost 20 years ago. The gravity of Earth’s natural satellite is one-sixth Earth’s gravity… and that of Ceres, the largest asteroid, is… Read More »“Low Gravity” Indeed
The White House 2026 budget request that covers NASA has been released… and it’s as bad as other White House actions on science would indicate. There hasn’t been carnage to this level since the ’80s abandonment of planetary exploration. The… Read More »FY2026 NASA Budget Request- Regress
Let’s check on Journal of Propulsion and Power for May (vol. 41 #3): Ezuka, F. Koizumi, H. Nakano, M. et al. Effect of Nonuniform Plasma on Grid Erosion of the Water Ion Thruster pp. 313 1.B39004Kim, J. W. Bhosale, V.… Read More »Note, Paper: Green Steam
Tonight, May 16 is the International Day of Light. Organized by UNESCO, SPIE, and IEEE Photonics, we celebrate light and all its wonders it brings to our lives. https://www.unesco.org/en/days/lighthttps://spie.org/community-support/international-day-of-light/idl-resourceshttps://www.dayoflight.org/https://www.lightday.org/about Let’s see… we use telescopes to study celestial objects of all sorts. Those telescopes… Read More »Day of Light, Tonight
In Acta Astronautica for Jun 2025 (vol 231): Lu, J. Shang, H. Zhang, X. Speeding up heterogeneous binary asteroid system propagation through the physics-informed neural network Page 64 .02.022Impresario, G. Zinzi, A. Amoroso, M. et al. The Italian microsatellite mission… Read More »Note, Paper: Asternbild Achtung
We have initial data from the Lucy mission, and its Sunday flyby of asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson. We knew it was an elongated asteroid beforehand, and it turns out imagery confirms this (rather than, say, a close binary system, or something… Read More »Lucy Flyby Update 2
I want to bring up a new NASA solicitation. No, I don’t want to bring to your attention a solicitation (announcement of opportunity), I want to show just how far the announcement and NASA policies have strayed from outcome-oriented, actionable… Read More »No More Paper- More Launch
The June (vol. 219) issue of Acta Astronautica is… impulsive, maybe brutish. Villegas-Prados, D. Cruz, J. Wijnen, M. et al. Emission and performance charaterization of io… p. 97 .224.03.013 Muniyasamy, S. B, S. Verma, V. et al. Periodicity and lifetime… Read More »Note, Paper: Abstract Blast