October 28, 2026
The new dwarf planet candidate joins thousands of known objects in an area of the solar system beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. And the scientists say there may be more of them.
The Vera C Rubin Observatory (in Chile) which enabled astrophysicists from Harvard to spot “2026 ED138” will be featured in an upcoming documentary in mid-December. Probably too early to confirm the finding, but still, I hope they keep finding more. The Kuiper Belt is out there. WAY out there…
October 23, 2026
While NASA has successfully landed nine spacecraft on Mars over the past 50 years and China scored a 2021 touchdown, no one has ever reached Phobos or its sidekick Deimos. And no one has managed to fetch samples from Mars, let alone its moons.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-mars-moon-mission-fb51fbbf90374631e8ae658f9ca461
JAXA launched their MMX (Martian Moon Explorer) spacecraft successfully on October 20th. It hopes to arrive next summer.
And return with samples by 2031. Glad they got the initial launch window in time.
Nobody’s ever done this before. Let alone in conjunction with several other countries.
(The image is from another version of the article, but I wanted to post the original AP one bc it has a video clip of the rocket launch.)
August 28, 2026
Lunar eclipses occur when Earth moves between the sun and the moon and its shadow is cast on to the lunar surface. In Thursday night’s event 96% of the moon will be darkened by the Earth’s shadow at its peak moment. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/aug/27/lunar-eclipse-north-south-america
WordPress has gotten really wonky with the “quotation” formatting, so I hope this one works…
Anyway, I will of course still blog about science in addition to family history and other things I find interesting.
Remembering when I took a writing workshop online a few years ago, and they told me to choose only one genre in order to not confuse readers.
And I still think, nah. I think readers are smart enough to enjoy good writing when they see it. To me, the mark of a good writer is one who can wend and weave between multiple genres. Why limit yourself?
If you don’t like science writing, fine. If you don’t like history, fine. If you don’t like science fiction, fine. If you don’t like random thoughts about life, the universe, and everything…well, then, what on earth are you doing reading my blog? :p
Anyway, enjoy the eclipse if you are able to see it. I’ll keep on writing!
(Also, I really don’t care for this “AI can monetize your blog” BS. I’m not doing this for money. I just like to write. I hope you like reading it!)
July 17, 2026
Hibernation is extremely complex – after all, it affects every cell in the body – and there are almost certainly multiple switches involved in the process. MIT neuroscience researcher Siniša Hrvatin has identified another brain region that seems to play a key role in the process. In a paper published earlier this year (but not yet peer-reviewed), he and his team targeted a region known as the preoptic area, which plays a key role in metabolism and temperature. By activating neurons in the preoptic area of hamsters, the researchers put them into torpor, lowering the animals’ body temperature to 15C.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/ng-interactive/2026/jul/14/human-hibernation-space-mars
The key would be whether this is possible in humans.
And, of course, whether revival can be timed and automated – or perhaps with robotic (AI) assistance…
Of course, science fiction has posited “sleeper ships” for decades now. The Songs of Distant Earth (Arthur C. Clarke, one of the “Big Three”) is probably the most well-known of the classic sleeper ship stories, but there are plenty of others to choose from…
June 17, 2026
Six small satellites developed by universities and other organizations carried by the vehicle also were believed to be successfully separated, JAXA said.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-jaxa-h3-rocket-launch-9c64f2c59b9212d612902e74823b77b5
“Believed to be” successful. Very Japanese.
It’s a start. A late, very much delayed start. But at least it worked (finally).
June 16, 2026
“In the mission’s first five years, it’s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies,” [Julie McEnery, senior project scientist] said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-roman-space-telescope-launch-fastest-ever-rcna349773
It should be ready for launch in August, to be parked at the L2 Lagrange space near James Webb ((which has been there since 2021).
Two decades in the making. Yet “under budget and ahead of schedule”? Really?
I’m all for discovering tens of thousands of possibly inhabited worlds and learning more about dark energy and dark matter. But I’d also like to see a little more practical tech from NASA. How will this help us settle the solar system and figure out how to visit other systems?
May 25, 2026
Li Jiaying, a 43-year-old police officer and mother of three, serves as the payload scientist in the three-member crew who made their way to China’s Tiangong space station on Sunday night.
Congratulations to her!
But is it really important that she is a “mother of three”? I never see anything about male astronauts being a “father of three.”
Presumably she got sent into space because she qualified for the job, not because she has three children. Sexist reporting like this has to stop.
May 5, 2026
Just 300 miles or so across, this mini Pluto is thought to be the solar system’s smallest object yet with a clearly detected global atmosphere bound by gravity, said lead researcher Ko Arimatsu of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/atmosphere-icy-world-beyond-pluto-rcna343509
The planetoid, called “(612533) 2002 XV93” (good luck remembering that one), was discovered and tracked by three separate observatories in Japan in 2024.
So why is it being only announced now?
Because scientists are cautious folk. They still want other observers to document this in other countries, to increase the validity of their finding.
The fact that the planetoid has an atmosphere (ridiculously thin, something like five to ten million times thinner than that of the Earth’s) came as a surprise.
So is this the famed “Planet X”? Or “Nibiru”?
No worries. It’s not rogue and won’t destroy the Earth in 3600 years. Sorry.
April 2, 2026
Live up dates of the Artemis II mission to “cislunar space” (it will not actually land on the Moon but will take four astronauts farther away from Earth than anyone else so far).
March 3, 2026
Lunar eclipse, tonight from 6:30 to 11:00…
Except it still raining here in Japan, and we’ll see nothing.
Rats.
At least we’ll visit JAXA tomorrow…
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