Tag: space

OVER THE MOON: NASA Artemis II Crew in Final Phase of Preparation for First Lunar Mission in Over Half a Century

The final stretch before lift-off.

Since 1972, no human being has orbited or set foot on the moon. And now, after much to-and-fro, it seems like the time has come to return to our natural satellite.

The four Artemis II astronauts arrived in Florida today (27), in the final phase of preparations for the historic mission.

Reuters reported:

“NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, are set to launch from Kennedy Space Center as soon as April 1 aboard NASA’s towering Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, riding inside an Orion crew capsule built to carry humans into deep space. The roughly 10-day mission will ​send the crew on a high-speed loop around the Moon and back.”

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NASA Unveils Plan for First Nuclear-Powered Interplanetary Spacecraft

The first-ever nuclear-powered spacecraft built for interplanetary travel will set off on a mission to Mars in 2028.

The Space Reactor‑1 Freedom (SR-1 Freedom) project was unveiled in Washington on March 24. NASA leadership said it’s the first step toward nuclear power on the moon and for exploratory missions farther out in space, where solar panels and traditional chemical propulsion would be less and less effective.

The ship was introduced by Steve Sinacore, NASA’s Fission Surface Power program executive, who said it comes from utilizing more than 60 years of NASA’s research into fission nuclear propulsion and repurposing a power and propulsion unit already nearing completion.

It will be fueled with low-enriched uranium, producing more than 20 kilowatts of advanced electric propulsion primarily through the transfer of heat from the uranium. It will also be equipped with radiation shielding and high-rate direct-to-Earth communications with images and data.

SR-1 Freedom’s first mission will be a year-long journey to Mars for a mission called “Skyfall.” Its job will be to deliver a payload of three helicopter drones modeled after “Ingenuity,” the first helicopter to fly on Mars, to the surface. The aircraft will then take readings of and below the planet’s surface in anticipation of a crewed mission, such as searching for water as ice trapped beneath the surface, and scouting out a landing site.

NASA leaders didn’t announce where the launch would take place or disclose what kind of rocket would be used.

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ELUSIVE MOON: Artemis II Lular Mission Delayed Again – SLS Rocket and Orion Capsule May Have To Be Rolled Back to Vehicle Assembly Building

How difficult it is to go back to the Moon…

The Artemis II Lunar mission suffered another setback, as it is expected to miss the March launch window.

Reuters reported:

“NASA is taking steps to potentially roll back the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft to its Vehicle Assembly Building after observing an interrupted flow of helium, the space agency said on Saturday. ‘This will almost assuredly impact the March launch window’, NASA said.”

Sky News reported:

“On Friday night, however, NASA discovered that the flow of helium – which is required for launch – to the rocket had been interrupted during a key part of the preparation process.

[…] Before the setback, the agency had announced that it was targeting 6 March to launch four astronauts around the moon and back.”

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BACK TO THE MOON: NASA Performs Successful Fueling Test, and Artemis II is Set To Launch for Historic Crewed Mission to the Lunar Orbit on March 6

It’s been fifty-four years since humans have been to the moon, but if all goes well, the wait is about to be over soon.

NASA announced that it successfully conducted a fueling test of the powerful SLS rocket, and with that, it’s aiming to launch the Artemis II mission in two weeks, on March 6.

The mission will send four astronauts on a historic trip around the moon.

CBS News reported:

“Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen are expected to enter pre-flight medical quarantine Friday evening at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

An early evening shot of NASA’s huge Space Launch System rocket atop pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center, awaiting launch on a mission to send four astronauts on a flight around the far side of the moon.”

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Renowned scientist who discovered water on distant planet shot dead on front porch of California home

A renowned scientist who contributed to the discovery of water on a distant planet was mysteriously shot and killed on the front porch of his desert California home. 

Carl Grillmair, 67, was identified as the victim of a fatal shooting in Llano, a rural area of northern Los Angeles, on Monday morning. 

Colleagues called Grillmair’s research ‘ingenious’ and said that discovering water ‘is a telltale sign the conditions of the planet are auspicious for life.’

The astrophysicist was found with a gunshot wound on his front porch after detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide responded to reports of an assault with a deadly weapon just after 6am. 

Emergency responders attempted life-saving measures, but he was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. 

While investigating the shooting call, the Palmdale Sheriff’s Station responded to a carjacking in the same area and arrested a man named Freddy Snyder, 29, who was named as a person of interest in Grillmair’s homicide case. 

Snyder was arrested for murder, carjacking, and burglary on Wednesday. He is in custody with a $2 million bail. 

Law enforcement has not released a motive in the alleged homicide. It’s unclear if the two men knew one another or whether the shooting was targeted. 

The LACSD hasn’t released Snyder’s booking photo or any further information on the case. 

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Elon Musk’s ‘Moon Cities’ Fairy Tale: A Transparent Cover for Militarizing Lunar High Ground

Introduction

In February 2026, Elon Musk announced a sudden, dramatic pivot for SpaceX, shifting focus from his long-touted goal of colonizing Mars to building a ‘self-growing city’ on the Moon within a decade [1]. This abrupt change, presented as a pragmatic realization that the Moon is closer, has been breathlessly reported by a compliant tech press. But to those who scrutinize the patterns of power, this narrative is not a scientific epiphany; it is a masterclass in strategic deception.

Musk’s track record is one of comic-book futures sold to a scientifically illiterate public-from perpetually ‘next year’ Full Self-Driving cars to the erratic Grok AI. His moon city promise is the latest chapter, a fantastical cover story designed to secure public funding and approval for a far darker agenda: the weaponization of the ultimate strategic high ground. This article will deconstruct the biological impossibilities of lunar habitation, expose the suicidal environmental realities, and reveal how the seductive fantasy of ‘moon cities’ is a transparent smokescreen for deploying the most terrifying planetary bombardment system ever conceived.

Elon’s Sci-Fi Fantasy: From Mars to Moon, Same Empty Promises

Elon Musk’s declaration that ‘SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon’ represents a glaring contradiction of his own multi-year Mars colonization crusade [1]. This isn’t a course correction based on new science; it’s strategic theater. Musk himself noted the Moon lacks the carbon dioxide needed to make methane for his Starship fuel, a fundamental logistical flaw he previously used to justify focusing on Mars [2]. The sudden ‘realization’ that the Moon is a quicker target is a laughable excuse for a public long conditioned to accept technocratic fairy tales.

This pattern of overpromising and underdelivering is Musk’s hallmark. He sells visions of the future to a public whose understanding of physics and biology has been eroded by a corrupt education system and a deceitful media. The moon city narrative is merely the latest shiny object dangled before the masses to distract from the underlying military-industrial drive. As investigative journalist James Corbett has warned, one of the most important strategies to prepare against government-endorsed weaponized narratives is to build community with like-minded people who share your views [3]. Questioning Musk’s sudden lunar zeal is the first step in seeing through the con.

The Biological and Physical Impossibility of Lunar Cities

The dream of a bustling lunar metropolis shatters against the unforgiving reality of lunar environmental science. First and foremost is the lethal radiation environment. The Moon has no protective magnetosphere or substantial atmosphere to shield its surface from galactic cosmic rays and solar particle events. As research has confirmed, ‘The radiation dose rates from measurements obtained over the last four years… are higher than previously conceived’ [4]. Prolonged exposure to this radiation would lead to rapid cancer development and catastrophic genetic damage for any surface dweller.

Furthermore, the Moon’s lack of atmosphere means a pure vacuum at its surface. This presents two immediate, insurmountable problems for human life and machinery. First, any pinhole breach in a habitat or suit means instant explosive decompression and death. Second, the vacuum eliminates the possibility of combustion, rendering standard internal combustion engines for heavy machinery-necessary for any construction or mining-utterly useless [5]. The concept of operating functional heavy machinery in a vacuum without oxygen is a fantasy.

Finally, the extreme thermal environment would mechanically destroy any human-made structure. Surface temperatures swing between -173°C (-279°F) at night to 127°C (261°F) during the day [6]. This constant, radical expansion and contraction would fatigue and crack even the most advanced materials, leading to inevitable catastrophic structural failure. The notion of permanent surface cities is an engineering impossibility.

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WAIT FOR THE MOON: Artemis II Lunar Mission Delayed for a Month After Hydrogen Leak During Fueling Test

Human beings are about to return to the moon soon – but not as soon as we expected.

Yesterday (3), NASA announced it would delay the Artemis II mission that will send four astronauts on an orbit around the moon.

The delay is due to issues that happened during a critical fuel test of its enormous rocket.

Member of NASA’s Emergency Response Team (ERT) stands guard at night in front of the Artemis II Space Launch System (SLS) on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Merritt Island, Florida. pic.twitter.com/9GgfYmwVEo

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) February 4, 2026

NBC News reported:

“Mission managers were conducting an elaborate launch day walkthrough, known as a ‘wet dress rehearsal’, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida when engineers detected leaking hydrogen at the base of the Space Launch System rocket. NASA was forced to end the test a little after midnight ET, with around 5 minutes and 15 seconds remaining in the simulated launch countdown.

Shortly after 2 a.m. ET on Tuesday, NASA announced it would forgo February’s launch window for the Artemis II mission around the moon, which extended from Friday through Feb. 11, to allow teams to review data and conduct another wet dress rehearsal. It said it will now aim for March ‘as the earliest possible launch opportunity’.”

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Hidden for Centuries, “Lost” Portions of a Mysterious Ancient Star Map Have Been Revealed Using X-Rays

Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, have used X-ray beams to reveal once-hidden references to an ancient star map from a centuries-old document.

The ancient palimpsest—a portion of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus—has been revealed to contain fragmentary references to an ancient star catalog once used by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus. The ancient star maps in question were created by the astronomer as early as 150 B.C., copies of which were made several centuries later.

Now, the “lost” ancient writing has been made discernible as bright orange markings the X-rays have revealed, according to Minhal Gardezi, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who was involved in the research.

A “Phaenomena” Emerges

The text revealed by SLAC researchers comprises portions of the poem “Phaenomena,” which dates to around 275 B.C. and is attributed to the Greek poet Aratus of Soli. The copies of the poem the SLAC team studied had likely been made sometime in the 6th century, at which time the unknown scribe also included sections comprising appendices relating to the positions of stars in various constellations, which were a perfect match for work known to have been undertaken by Hipparchus.

Originally transcribed on portions of animal hide, the remnants of the ancient poem were held within Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai desert for centuries. At some point between the 9th and 10th centuries, the original text on the palimpsest appears to have been erased and reused to record a series of monastic treatises, seemingly destroying the ancient scientific information the ancient record once contained.

SLAC’s particle accelerator has now revealed these “lost” portions of the ancient poem using powerful X-rays, making the invisible records from long ago visible again for the first time in centuries (images of which can be seen here).

In the past, very little from Hipparchus’s writings has been recovered, and most of our knowledge of the ancient Greek astronomer stems from secondhand sources. Based on such information, scholars are aware that he can be credited with the creation of one of the earliest star catalogs, as well as early mathematical innovations that include the invention of trigonometry.

The team’s discovery is important, since it offers a rare glimpse at such records from the ancient world, which were often recorded on perishable materials like papyrus, which seldom survive through the ages.

Going beyond even the surprise discovery of these ancient astronomical records, the SLAC team’s process reveals a promising new means by which researchers may be able to retrieve similar “lost” information from surviving ancient records, especially those kept on more rugged materials that were often reused throughout time.

The recent discovery represents a veritable cornucopia of ancient information related to a crucial period in the emergence of science close to two millennia ago. However, this is not the first indication that traces of earlier ancient writing had been present on the palimpsest. In the past, earlier use of advanced imaging techniques had already shown that some form of writing was discernible.

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NASA Aims To Build ‘Martian Outpost’ On Mars With Nuclear Propulsion

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced his agency’s commitment to developing a nuclear propulsion system for missions to Mars within the next three years.

“Before the end of @POTUS‘ term, @NASA will lay the foundation of a ’transcontinental railroad’ to Mars,” Isaacman wrote on X on Jan. 30. “By utilizing nuclear electric propulsion, our nation will have the tools necessary to establish a Martian outpost and maintain American superiority in deep space.”

The administrator shared a clip from a Jan. 30 appearance on Fox News in which he explained that while NASA continues its work to put boots back on the moon, it will also launch its first nuclear power and propulsion rocket by the end of President Donald Trump’s term.

“That’s going to essentially almost establish the transcontinental railroad to Mars,” he said. “It’s how you efficiently move lots of mass to Mars. So it’s not necessarily always the fastest way to get there, but it gives you the tools to build out potentially a Martian outpost, certainly to mine and refine propellant on Mars, which is what you’re going to need to bring your astronauts back home.”

He explained that America would have the capability to send astronauts to Mars, but the hard part was bringing them back. Nuclear power and propulsion solved that problem.

Meanwhile, Isaacman reaffirmed that the Artemis program would continue to push forward the goal of the president’s national space policy to not just land humans back on the moon, but to construct a lunar base in order to stay and fulfill its scientific, economic, and strategic potential.

That base, he said, will involve a nuclear power plant, as well as mining operations, and refining Helium 3, which is considered to be the best fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, and plan to do it before communist China’s plan to do so by 2030.

“The Chinese said they’re going to do it,” Isaacman said of a nuclear reactor on the moon, “We’re going to do it first.”

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Mitzpe Ramon to become Israel’s ‘Space City,’ creating new hub for civil space exploration

Israeli company Creation Space announced on Sunday plans to turn Mitzpe Ramon into Israel’s “Space City,” creating “the largest civil space ecosystem in Israel,” it said in a statement.

Space City aims to become Israel’s largest civilian space investigation and development campus, funded by government and private organizations, and partnered with Nvidia.

Led by Creation Space, it will include a technology campus, a control room for space missions, laboratories simulating the Mars environment, a startup accelerator program, and an academic campus dedicated to international research.

The project attracted NIS 100 million in investment from the Jewish National Fund-USA, the Mirage Foundation, CreationsVC, the Growth and Investment Authority at the Economy and Industry Ministry, as well as the Innovation Authority and the Israel Space Agency, both of which operate under the Innovation, Science, and Technology Ministry.

“The Space City will allow us to provide entrepreneurs with a full infrastructure, from acceleration programs to technological development laboratories, which significantly shortens the path from an idea to a proven commercial product,” said Dr. Roy Noar, CEO and co-founder of Creation Space.

“This is a model that attracts investors, establishes Israel as a key player in the global space economy, and is also capable of creating quality jobs in the Negev,” he added.

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