Month: December 2022

A group of nine people plan to fly a unique mission around the moon. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced on Dec. 8, 2022 the nine crew members, including himself, who would orbit the moon in a SpaceX Starship. The flight date has not been confirmed yet. Maezwawa invited artists around the world to apply for the opportunity, and has said that there are no scientific experiments or other responsibilities for these individuals aside from basic mission safety obligations. “I hope each and every one will recognize the responsibility that comes with…

NASA’s Mars InSight lander died a slow death by dust last week. For months and months, the robot, built to study the tectonic activity on the Red Planet, has been running on less and less power as its 25-square-foott (4.2 square meters) solar power array gradually disappeared under a thick blanket of dust. On Wednesday (Dec. 21), NASA announced it hadn’t heard from the lander for days, officially pronouncing the mission dead.  InSight, which landed in the flat, seemingly uninteresting Elysium Planitia basin, south of Mars‘ equator in November 2018,…

With Christmas here, eager audiences have had a chance to see director James Cameron’s new fantasy epic, sugarplums dancing in our heads have been replaced with “Avatar: The Way of Water,” with soaring, gliding, and swimming creatures known as skimwings, tulkuns, and ilus. These are just a taste of the exotic flora and fauna found on Pandora in 20th Century Studios’ $400 million sequel that has flooded multiplexes this holiday season 13 years after the original “Avatar” arrived back in 2009 to break box office records. Check out our guide to…

We know you’ve heard of rocks before, and you’ve likely heard of glaciers. But did you know that rock glaciers exist? And not only here on Earth — they’re also on Mars. We know very little about Mars rock glaciers, but scientists do suspect that they may hold significant amounts of water, which could aid future human exploration and settlement on the Red Planet. Thus, a team of researchers from the University of Arizona has set out to study their Earth-based brethren in order better understand this intriguing geological formation. A…

NASA is making the case for a “winter wonderland” on Mars. “Dreaming of a white Christmas” might never bring to mind the alien landscapes that appear at frigid corners of the Red Planet. But the space agency is enthused by it all. Its many missions over the past several decades reveal icy oddities on Mars, as well as how much Mars sometimes resembles Earth.  As NASA is now one mission deep into its Artemis program, learning how humans can thrive off our planet is crucial. Water ice is a valuable…

The portal-hopping multiversal explorers Rick and Morty have encountered some formidable foes in their misadventures over the years, but none so ferociously evil as horror legend H.P. Lovecraft’s amphibious Great Old One, Cthulhu.  Now, Portland-based Oni Press is injecting the madcap heroes into the fathomless depths of cosmic nightmares for the recently released “Rick and Morty vs Cthulhu (opens in new tab).” Written by industry veteran Jim Zub and crammed with psychedelic artwork from illustrator Troy Little and colorist Leonard Ito, this odd four-part odyssey offers plenty of the signature insanity…

The wintery scene of ice over the southern hemisphere of Mars as seen by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft.  (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) A newly released image of Mars shows an icy scene, with ribbons of red and white dancing across a frosty landscape near the planet’s south pole. While the snowy scene may evoke the feeling of a “winter wonderland” on the Red Planet, it was actually captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter on May 19. This means that the…

Santa Claus won’t be the only visitor to our night skies this Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve (Dec. 24), Mercury will shine brightly in the sky over Earth, reaching its peak altitude above the horizon during sunset on Christmas day before fading from the skies as 2022 progresses into 2023. Over the two days of Christmas the closest planet to the sun will reach its highest point in the sky during its current winter evening apparition, 12 degrees above the horizon (a little more than one fist’s width at arm’s…