Artemis III for National Moon Day

Happy National Moon Day, the 57th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon! Yesterday, I asked "Artemis III, anyone?" Not reading any objection, I'm kicking off today's celebration with NASA Introducing Artemis III.

In 2027, the Artemis III mission will practice docking the Orion spacecraft with two lunar landers in low Earth orbit. On future Artemis missions, landers will bring astronauts to the lunar surface. While Artemis III will not land on the Moon, it will test the complex capabilities we need to return humanity there — this time to stay.

NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, Frank Rubio, and Andre Douglas will join European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano on this historic mission.

As if that's not enough, NASA also compiled Artemis III Announcement Recap: Crew, Mission Details, and What’s Next.

Another step toward one of the most complex spaceflight missions in history, NASA provided updates on Artemis III and announced crew members for the test flight. Planned to launch in 2027, the mission will practice docking the Orion spacecraft with two lunar landers in low Earth orbit.

On future missions, including Artemis IV in 2028, landers will bring astronauts to the lunar surface. While Artemis III will not land on the Moon, it will test the complex capabilities we need to return humanity there — this time to stay.

Crew assignments are as follows:
• NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, commander
• ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Luca Parmitano, pilot
• NASA astronaut Andre Douglas, mission specialist
• NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, mission specialist
• NASA astronaut Bob Hines, backup crew member

Both of those look good, as expected for successfull PR, but it's not all smooth flying. Artemis III depends on launches by SpaceX and Blue Origin and both are having their issues, as PBS NewHour explained in How a Blue Origin rocket explosion could impact NASA's moon mission.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded on the launchpad during a test in Cape Canaveral on Thursday. The company, owned by Jeff Bezos, said no one was injured and all personnel were accounted for. But the rocket has a crucial role in NASA’s Artemis program to return American astronauts to the surface of the moon. Amna Nawaz discussed its significance with science correspondent Miles O’Brien.

Early this January, I wrote, "Starship is running behind schedule and holding up a lunar landing, so I'm rooting for Blue Origin to either win the contract or inspire SpaceX to get its act together in time." Looks like Blue Origin has to get its act together, too.

I close with National Day Calendar's NATIONAL MOON DAY | July 20.

If possible, would you tour the moon one day? Let us know in the comments!

Not what I was expecting, but worthwhile just the same.

That's a wrap for today's holiday. Stay tuned for the television nominees at the Critics Choice Super Awards.

2025 in space from ESA, KING 5, Business Casual, and the Marsh Family

Today's year-end retrospective is this year's version of 2024, another busy year in space, according to NASA, ESA, Reuters, and New Scientist. Unfortunately, NASA hasn't uploaded a year-end review video, so I'm featuring ESA highlights 2025.

2025 was a landmark year for Europe in space. From celebrating 50 years of ESA to new missions, scientific breakthroughs, the year reaffirmed Europe’s leadership in science, exploration, climate action and innovation.

At least the European Space Agency is still informing the public. I consider NASA not producing an equivalent video about 2025 for YouTube an example of one of 2025's science breakdowns.

KING 5 SEATTLE did provide some NASA footage in A look back at 2025's key moments in space travel.

NASA sets its sights on another lunar landing within the next three years.

I'm looking forward to Artemis II next year.

Business Casual (not the original account) uploaded 2025 Space, in 5 minutes.

From the 3rd interstellar object to enter our solar system, 3I Atlas, to the potential discovery of life on [M]ars, 2025 was groundbreaking year in space exploration.

I think this account is a bit suspect — there is another Business Casual account that is larger and older, but currently inactive — but this is a good montage showing space events around the world, including Katy Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sánchez, and others flying on Blue Origin to the edge of space. The Marsh Family sang about that event in "Flight from Earth" - Marsh Family parody of Katy Perry's "Firework" on the Blue Origin space launch.

This is a song about Jeff Bezos’s launch of six female celebrities into zero gravity this week, via his elite suborbital tourism outfit, Blue Origin. In lots of respects it was very slick, exciting, impressive, and a tribute to technological advances, entrepreneurial investment, and the potential of the human species to navigate new frontiers. In lots of other respects it was a bizarre, vacuous, self-indulgent, problematic, transparent PR stunt hiding behind money, reputations, weird notions of girl power, and leaving in its wake a rather foul taste and lots of environmental damage. While we have no issue with the women involved, their quest for exhilaration and a life-altering opportunity etc., we do have issues with the framing and coverage of this joyride – as many others clearly do.

If you want to celebrate women, progress, science, space travel, and the future, surely there are better models and better mechanisms out there? If you have billions of dollars, surely there are better ways you can spend it?

We chose to adapt the anthemic 2010 song “Firework” by Katy Perry – one of Bezos’s invited trail-blazing space tourists – and whatever you think about her, this is a tough song to deliver live! We shared the relentless belts between the three girls. Apologies we forgot to isolate the clicker so you may get some of that too. The original song (co-written with Ester Dean and producers Stargate and Sandy Vee) was on her biggest album Teenage Dream and is on our pump-up football playlist.

I'm not normally this cynical about space, but I couldn't resist.

That's a wrap for today's look at space. Stay tuned for more year-end retrospectives through New Year's Eve.

Bolide over southeast U.S. and Asteroid 2024 YR4 update for Asteroid Day and Meteor Watch Day

Happy International Asteroid Day, the younger but paradoxically more established version of Apophis Day! It's also National Meteor Watch Day, so I'm beginning today's post with a spectacular meteor, which CNN reported as Fireball flies across the sky and causes sonic boom on Friday.

A ‘daytime fireball’ was caught on video in the sky over South Carolina – causing a sonic boom, according to the American Meteor Society. CNN has reached out to emergency management officials in North Carolina and Tennessee, as well as NASA for comment.

That's quite the meteor! Good thing it mostly created a natural fireworks show, maybe some property damage, and no injuries.

Now for two updates on Asteroid 2024 YR4, beginning with Global News reporting Asteroid now poses real threat of hitting Moon, NASA warns.

An asteroid once considered a threat to Earth is now on a potential collision course to the Moon.

NASA says the object has just over a four per cent chance of impacting the Moon, seven years from now.

Though the odds may seem small, scientists warn that the damage could be significant.

Vincent McAviney reports on why the space agency says this risk is no longer trivial.

That sounds alarming, if still unlikely. The European Space Agency was a lot calmer in From threat to no sweat: Asteroid 2024 YR4.

How did asteroid 2024 YR4 go from being the riskiest asteroid ever detected to posing no real threat? First spotted in December 2024, its impact risk initially soared to 2.8%, surpassing previous record-holder Apophis. But thanks to refined observations from our Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre and other institutions, its risk quickly dropped to just 0.001% within days. This dramatic shift follows a well-known pattern—asteroid impact probabilities often rise before plummeting as more data becomes available. Now, nearly all possible impact scenarios have been ruled out, and 2024 YR4 has been safely removed from our risk list.

Nothing about a possible impact with the Moon, but NASA's planetary defense blog lists that probability as 4.3%, as Global News reported.

That's a wrap for June's blogging. Stay tuned for Canada Day to begin July.

'NASA 2025: To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond' and 'ESA 2025: A fifty-years legacy of building the future'

I closed My preferences and predictions for the Saturn Awards on Science Fiction Day 2025 with "Enough holidays. Stay tuned for this year's edition of 'NASA 2024: Onward and Upward' and 'ESA’s future of space travel'." I'm following through by sharing NASA 2025: To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, which sounds a bit like Buzz Lightyear.

Preparing to orbit and do science on the Moon, investigating how solar wind interacts with Mars, and demonstrating quiet supersonic flight are just a FEW of the milestones we have planned for 2025.

Much of this continues what NASA did in 2024, but that's a good thing. It's also what I'm least worried about with the incoming administration. As I wrote in 2016, "space policy is the one area where Trump might actually be good for the country." I also wrote "It's like hoping for the alternative history in The Man in the High Castle to happen just so there could be commercial SSTs by the early 1960s...The cost would be too high." I fear the cost might be higher this time.

Now for ESA 2025: A fifty-years legacy of building the future.

In 1975, 10 European countries came together with a vision to collaborate on key space activities: science and astronomy, launch capabilities and space applications: the European Space Agency, ESA, was born.

In 2025, we mark half a century of joint European achievement – filled with firsts and breakthroughs in science, exploration and technology, and the space infrastructure and economy that power Europe today.

During the past five decades ESA has grown, developing ever bolder and bigger projects and adding more Member States, with Slovenia joining as the latest full Member State in January.

We’ll also celebrate the 50th anniversary of ESA’s Estrack network, 30 years of satellite navigation in Europe and 20 years since ESA launched the first demonstration satellite Giove-A which laid the foundation for the EU’s own satnav constellation Galileo. Other notable celebrations are the 20th anniversary of ESA’s Business Incubation Centres, or BICs, and the 30th year in space for SOHO, the joint ESA and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.

"In 2025, ESA looks ahead to a busy and exciting year." So do I. To paraphrase what I wrote last year and the year before, here's to 2025 being another great year in space.

2024, another busy year in space, according to NASA, ESA, Reuters, and New Scientist

I closed 'Can a twice-a-year shot help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic' — Science Magazine's 2024 Breakthrough of the year by telling my readers "Stay tuned for this year's edition of 2023 in space from NASA, ESA, Reuters, and PBS NewsHour tomorrow. Here's to 2024 being another exciting year in space!" It was.

I begin with NASA: Best of 2024.

Find out more about the NASA missions mentioned in this 2024 year-end highlight video by taking a deep dive with these resources.

The Great American Eclipse wasn't a breakthrough, so Science Magazine didn't cover it, but it was a big science story, and I'm pleased that NASA included it in their year-end summary. It also showed up in NASA Johnson's Space to Ground: 2024.

2024 on the International Space Station was a year filled with excitement, challenges, and milestones as we mark 25 unbroken years of humans living, working, and flying in humanity's home in low-earth orbit.

Seeing the umbra from above added a spectacular dimension to the event!

NASA missed one achievement in the year-end summary, which NASA Goddard described in Parker Solar Probe: Humanity’s Closest Encounter with the Sun.

Controllers have confirmed NASA’s mission to “touch” the Sun survived its record-breaking closest approach to the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024.

Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at a blazing 430,000 miles per hour — faster than any human-made object has ever moved. A beacon tone received in the late evening hours of Dec. 26 confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the encounter safely and is operating normally.

This pass, the first of more to come at this distance, allows the spacecraft to conduct unrivaled scientific measurements with the potential to change our understanding of the Sun.

NASA's year in review came out just a little too early to include this feat of science and engineering.

Follow over the jump for space news from both inside and outside the U.S., although the Russian space agency Roscosmos played a supporting role in the ISS highlights.

'NASA 2024: Onward and Upward' and 'ESA’s future of space travel'

2023 in space from NASA, ESA, Reuters, and PBS NewsHour looked back, so it's time to look ahead with NASA 2024: Onward and Upward.

Landing science on the Moon, demonstrating quiet supersonic aircraft, and launching two new Earth climate satellites, plus a mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons, are just a FEW of the milestones we have planned for 2024.

To paraphrase what I last wrote in NASA looks ahead to 2023, here's to 2024 being another great year in space! If everything NASA plans happens, to say nothing of all the rest of the world's space agencies and companies like SpaceX, it will be.

Speaking of the world's space agencies, the European Space Agency is looking even farther ahead in ESA’s future of space travel.

For 40 years, ESA has been shaping the future in space, while delivering crucial access to space for Europe. That work continues, as brand-new rockets are set to take flight: some reusable, some carbon-neutral, with hybrid propulsion, two and three stages, small, large, crewed and uncrewed, to Earth orbit and deep space, the journey continues.

All of these missions are currently in development in Europe and will ensure our continued ability to explore beyond our own home, while looking back to learn more about it.

This, is the future of space exploration.

This Crazy Eddie approves.

2023 in space from NASA, ESA, Reuters, and PBS NewsHour

I decided to write this year's version of the year in space with inspiration from 2021 in space from NASA, ESA, and Reuters. First, NASA 2023: Nothing is Beyond Our Reach.

NASA’s mission is to explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery. NASA showed the world that anything is possible in 2023.

That was fun and inspiring, but not as informative as the usual This Year @NASA video. I'm turning to the European Space Agency's 2023: ESA’s year in space for something comparable to what I was hoping for from NASA.

2023’s highlight was the highly anticipated launch of Juice, Europe’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer. The Juice spacecraft was placed on course to Jupiter on the second-to-last Ariane 5 launch vehicle in April. After an eight-year journey, Juice will begin observing the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Calisto and Europa.

I learned a lot from that video and, as I'm fond of writing, it's always a good day when I learn something new.

Space agencies and companies outside of NASA and ESA made space news as well, which Reuters reported in 2023 Year in Review: Space highlights | Reuters.

India's Chandrayaan-3 moon mission, SpaceX's Starship launches, and more. A look at some major events in the field of space exploration in 2023.

SpaceX's Starship launches were certainly spectacular, but I don't know if I'd call them successes.

I close with WATCH: Miles O’Brien explains the major space discoveries of 2023 from PBS NewsHour.

This year brought incredible discoveries as humanity ventured further into space than ever before.

PBS NewsHour science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins digital video producer Casey Kuhn to talk about those discoveries including the "hum of the universe," the James Webb Space Telescope, and the OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu.

Miles O’Brien managed to connect space news to science, tying this entry to Weight loss drugs Science Magazine's Breakthrough of the Year for 2023. Good. I like connections.

I plan on posting another retrospective of 2023 after examining the horror TV nominees at the Saturn Awards. Stay tuned.

2022 has been another great year in space

I closed 2021 in space from NASA, ESA, and Reuters with "Here's to 2022 being another great year in space for all participants!" It was. Watch NASA 2022: A Year of Success.

Throughout America's story, there are defining days. Days when minds change, hearts fill and imagination soar.

NASA’s mission is to explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery.

In addition to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the video featured DART and Artemis, the three subjects of NOVA PBS's Three Major Space Stories of 2022.

From rocket launches, to dazzling new images, and even planetary defense, 2022 was a big year for space discovery.

These are also my choices for the three top space stories, which appeared again in An Astronomical and Historic 2022 – What We Did This Year @ NASA.

In 2022, we launched our mega Moon rocket for the first time – sending the uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon, we kicked off a new era in astronomy with record-breaking new imagery from the Webb Space Telescope, we moved an asteroid in humanity’s first ever planetary defense demonstration and much more. Here’s a look back at those and other things we did, this year @NASA!

This video shows that some of NASA's most important, if less spectacular, work takes place on Earth, not up in space.

Follow over the jump for videos from ESA, Reuters, and SciShow Space.

James Webb Space Telescope is the top science story of 2022

It's the last week of 2022, so it's time for me to look back at the year about to end with retrospectives until New Year's Eve. I'm changing up the order from previous years and beginning this year's series with the year in science. As I have all those years and more, I start my examination with Science Magazine's 2022 Breakthrough of the Year: JWST's golden eye sees the universe anew.

Not many telescopes get introduced by the president, but JWST, the gold-plated wunderkind of astronomy built by NASA with the help of the European and Canadian space agencies, deserves that honor. It is the most complex science mission ever put into space and at $10 billion the most expensive. And it did not come easy.

Science Magazine has more at 2022 Breakthrough of the Year on their website, including nine runners-up and three stories in a category I don't remember seeing before, Breakdowns of the Year. Those include the failure/discontinuance of Zero COVID in China, international conflicts and tensions affecting science cooperation among the major powers, and the war in Ukraine causing an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. I agree; none of these are good news.

WatchMojo compiled their own list of the Top 10 Biggest Scientific Discoveries of 2022.

These scientific discoveries will blow your mind! For this list, we’ll be looking at the most amazing things we learned through scientific research this year. Our countdown includes Brain Cells Playing Video Games, Footprints from the Ice Age, A Detailed View of the Distant Universe, and more! What do you think is the most significant discovery here? Are there any we missed? Tell us in the comments.

WatchMojo added an obvious top ten story in the comments and pinned it.

The discoveries keep coming! On December 13th, researchers announced that they'd managed to produce more energy from a fusion experiment than they'd put in, a groundbreaking step towards abundant clean energy!

That was only one day after WatchMojo uploaded the video. There is such a thing as being too soon. Just the same, I doubt nuclear fusion would have displaced the JWST from the top of either list.

Speaking of the JWST, this post makes for a second installment on the space telescope after Time introduces the 2022 Nobel Prize winners plus the Innovator of the Year for Nobel Prize Day. I plan on covering it again tomorrow for 2022 in space, along with the successful DART mission that made both Science Magazine's and WatchMojo's top ten. Stay tuned.

Time introduces the 2022 Nobel Prize winners plus the Innovator of the Year for Nobel Prize Day

As I promised twice, I'm covering the Innovator of the Year for Nobel Prize Day today, but I'm saving that for after I feature the this year's prize winners themselves. Watch Meet the 2022 Nobel Prize Winners from Time Magazine.

The Peace Prize is one of six awards established by Swedish chemist (and inventor of dynamite) Alfred Nobel in 1895. The prize is considered the most expansive in its recognition, given that it awards people “who have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

As I wrote last year, "The Peace Prize recipients generally piss people off and I'm O.K. with that as long they piss off the right people. I think this year's prize qualifies." So does this year's and I'm O.K. with that.

If one counted the categories carefully in the first video, one would have noticed Time Magazine only covered five, the ones actually created by Alfred Nobel himself. The sixth prize recognizes economics; it was created decades later by the Bank of Sweden, named in honor of Nobel, and is administered by the Nobel Foundation.* The Economic Times reported on the announcement in Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke along with two academics awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Douglas W. Diamond, economist at the University of Chicago, and Philip H. Dybvig at Washington University in St. Louis won the prize alongside Mr Bernanke for the role banks play during financial turmoil.

While I had fun with Bernanke when he was Chairman of the Federal Reserve, calling him Helicopter Ben, I have the same opinion of his winning this award that I did when Robert Shiller won the economics prize in 2013 — he deserves it and it's about time.

Speaking of time, pun intended, here is the recognition I've been telegraphing for two days: The James Webb Telescope Team: TIME Innovator of the Year 2022, which might contribute to future Nobel prizes.

The James Webb telescope has come to represent something larger and grander than all of us. The long effort to get the spacecraft built, the mission it was assigned—searching for clues to the very origins of the universe—have worked a certain transcendent good. From the hands of a team of thousands of researchers, engineers, and factory-line workers came a ship that, if it doesn’t exactly kick open the doors to the secrets of the cosmos, at least parts the curtain. “This beautiful machine,” says senior project scientist John Mather, “has worked in every way that it was supposed to work.”

Consider this a down payment on the entry about the James Webb Space Telescope I promised in 2021 in space from NASA, ESA, and Reuters. I expect to write the rest of it when I recap the year in space for 2022. In the meantime, congratulations to all the winners and stay tuned for the Entertainers of the Year as the Sunday entertainment feature.

*A more literal translation of Sveriges Riksbank is Swedish Royal Bank, but the official translation is Bank of Sweden, so I'm going with that.

2021 in space from NASA, ESA, and Reuters

As I wrote twice, "Here's to 2021 being another great year in space!" and "If all goes as NASA plans, it will be." NASA shows that it was in We Did Some Amazing Things This Year @ NASA – December 21, 2021.

2021 was the busiest year yet for NASA in low-Earth orbit, we also made progress preparing for a flight test around the Moon, and had a very active year exploring space, studying Earth, testing technologies for next generation aircraft, and much more. Here’s a look back at those and other things we did this year at NASA.

Congratulations to NASA, including on the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which occurred after the U.S. space agency uploaded this video. I plan on writing an entry about it next year, but I'm moving on to NASA's partner in this and other missions, the European Space Agency (ESA), which uploaded their own summary of their year in space, ESA highlights 2021.

We’re almost ready to say goodbye to 2021, a year in which ESA once more succeeded in continuing operations in a challenging global situation, and creating some important milestones in the field of European spaceflight. As always, ESA has been at the forefront of science, with several science missions en route to their destinations or being prepared for flight, such as BepiColombo, Solar Orbiter, JUICE and ExoMars, and not least rounding off the year with the impending launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Europe’s Copernicus programme continues to be the largest Earth observation system in the world, and ESA is even preparing more Earth observation missions. In 2021, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet carried out his Alpha mission to the Space Station, and Matthias Maurer began his Cosmic Kiss mission, continuing into 2022. As we said farewell to Prof. Jan Wörner, a new Director General took the helm of ESA and we welcomed Dr Josef Aschbacher with his ambition to accelerate the use of space in Europe. Meanwhile, the latest Vega rocket flight has paved the way for the transition to Vega-C, and the new Ariane 6 launchpad was inaugurated.

In addition, the ESA is also involved in the Orion capsule and Artemis mission to return to the Moon and hopefully go on to Mars, another cooperative venture with NASA. May next year's mission help pave the way.

Organizations and people beyond the western space agencies also made news in space this year. Reuters captured some of that in 2021’s space exploration highlights.

NASA's Mars landing, billionaires in space, first Arab woman astronaut and more – here are some of the highlights in space exploration this year.

In addition to the billionaire space race, China, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates all made space news this year. Here's to 2022 being another great year in space for all participants!

Stay tuned as the retrospectives continue through New Year's Eve.

2020 in space from NASA and the European Space Agency

Happy Boxing Day! For the rest of the year, all six days of it, I plan on being a good environmentalist and recycling ideas I've used before to review the year about to end. Today, it's NASA looks back at the year in space. Watch We Persevered This Year @NASA – December 21, 2020.

2020 was historic for NASA. We launched humans to the International Space Station from America again, made progress on our plans to return humans to the Moon and explore Mars, had an unprecedented encounter with an asteroid, and displayed perseverance and resilience in space and on Earth … all, while helping the country deal with a global crisis. Here’s a look back at highlights from those and other things we did this year at NASA.

When NASA asked if we were ready for 2020, it said its 2020 plans were "Launching Americans from U.S. soil, sending a new rover to Mars, and continuing to prepare for human missions to the Moon." My response was "'Here's to another great year in space for 2020!' If all goes as NASA plans, it will be." All that did happen, so as bad as 2020 was with the COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying recession, it ended up being a good year in space and elsewhere for NASA.

It was also a good year for the European Space Agency, which is cooperating with NASA on several projects. Watch ESA highlights 2020 to see which ones they are.

2020 has been another year of progress for ESA. The launch and commissioning of Solar Orbiter heralded a new era of space science, whilst Eutelsat Konnect revolutionised telecommunications. The new Vega SSMS began a cost-effective new launch system for small satellites, deploying exciting new technologies such as PhiSat and ESAIL. ESA’s Earth Observation activities were also showcased, with the launch of Sentinel-6 and an international effort to monitor the environmental and economic impact of COVID-19. Gaia and Cheops yielded new findings about our universe; ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano returned successfully from orbit. With a lunar programme agreement signed and new steps being taken to control debris, ESA is set to begin 2021 at the forefront of space exploration.

Here's to 2021 being another great year in space!

Seeker explains NASA's plans for asteroids on Asteroid Day 2020

Happy International Asteroid Day! To celebrate the today, which I see as the younger but paradoxically more established version of Apophis Day, I'm sharing four videos Seeker posted during the past year about asteroids. The most recent, which was uploaded just yesterday, had Seeker ask If An Asteroid Was Heading For Earth, How Could We Stop it?

NASA and ESA have a unique plan to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid—here’s why.
...
Agencies around the world are working to bring samples of asteroids back to Earth, like NASA’s Osiris-Rex and JAXA’s Hayabusa-2, because bringing a piece back is like looking into a time capsule from the universe. BUT asteroids pose a serious threat to Earth. And ESA and NASA have a unique plan to combat that particular problem: they’re going to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid.

But asteroids also post a serious threat to Earth and so ESA and NASA formed a scientific collaboration known as the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment, or AIDA, to combat this potential problem. The collab consists of two missions: NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, and ESA’s Hera Probe.

DART will smash into an asteroid in 2022 helping the AIDA mission study how effective a kinetic impactor would be in asteroid deflection and then four years later the Hera probe will arrive to do some assessments.

As I wrote in a comment at the video, "Perfect video for International Asteroid Day!"

Seeker examined the mission eight months ago in NASA Plans to Slam a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid, which I'm including for completeness.

What if a deadly asteroid was on a collision course to Earth? NASA and the ESA have come up with a solution.
...
Asteroids impacting Earth can be devastating—killing all the dinosaurs in existence level devastating. But even the asteroids that aren’t mass-extinction huge can be a serious threat.

Every few thousand years Earth (a.k.a. you and I) get hit with a massive asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, so what is the plan when we get hit with the next asteroid?

We get hit with an asteroid about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza every few thousand years, and when the next one hits it could cause massive damage to an entire region. So when we spot the next one coming, what’s the plan?

Enter: NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination office.

As I have written many times about Apophis Day, it's when I observe the perils of space, particularly asteroids. Follow over the jump for the promise of asteroids.

Mars landings, real and fictional, for World Space Week

October 4-10 is World Space Week, exactly the kind of event I celebrate on this blog.  To that end, I bring two videos about Mars landings that came out during the past seven days, beginning with Schiaparelli’s descent to Mars from the European Space Agency (There is nothing wrong with your speakers; the video has no sound).

Visualisation of the ExoMars Schiaparelli module entering and descending through the martian atmosphere to land on Mars.

Schiaparelli will enter the atmosphere at about 21 000 km/h and in less than six minutes it will use a heatshield, a parachute and thrusters to slow its descent before touching down in the Meridiani Planum region close to the equator, absorbing the final contact with a crushable structure.

The entire process will take less than six minutes: the animation has been sped up.

Schiaparelli is set to separate from the Trace Gas Orbiter on 16 October, after a seven-month cruise together through space, and will enter the atmosphere on 19 October at 14:42 GMT.

Next, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert opened one of its episodes last week with Stephen Is Already On His Way To Mars.

Now that Elon Musk has unveiled his plan for human colonization of Mars, Stephen imagines what it might be like to be one of the first Earthlings to visit.

To quote Bugs Bunny, "I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albequerque."