Will Pomerantz

Picture taken during 9th flight of Ingenuity helicopter. Contrast increased.

Séítah from the air - Ingenuity, sol 133 - From Thomas Appéré (thomasappere.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2manaSL

A photograph of Blue Origin‘s new Glenn rocket launching on second ever mission, this time carrying the escapade spacecraft for NASA. Photo credit Blue Origin.

The first stage of Blue Origin‘s new Glenn rocket after landing safely on its drone ship. Photo credit: Blue Origin.

Godspeed, ESCAPADE!

Congratulations to NASA and its partners, especially Rocket Lab and UC Berkeley.

And double congratulations to Blue Origin on and incredible day. That was a heck of a lot of fun. So great to see New Glenn GS1 stick the landing. That is very impressive!!

Apply for the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship! — Patti Grace Smith Fellowship Our award-winning program provides extraordinary undergraduates with their first work experience in the aerospace industry, personalized mentorship, and a cohort of similarly driven and talented stude...

And the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship was designed specifically to be the best program to help you get into the position to contribute, and ultimately to lead.

Applications are due October 17th (that's next Friday).

Learn more and apply at pgsfellowship.org/apply

A Patti Grace Smith Fellow poses with three of his mentors: the former head of the James Webb Space Telescope program, an astronaut who ran NASA for many years, and an astronaut who co-founded the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship.

Aerospace work is fun, important, and really, really challenging. We need ideas from every perspective if we are going to accomplish the ambitious things that we all dream of doing. To succeed, we need you.

A Patti Grace Smith Fellow smiles and poses in front a mural at her university that reads: "To most people, the sky is the limit. To those who love aviation, the sky is home."

So, undergrads, if you feel like you need more aerospace in your life, please know this: the aerospace community needs you just as much as you need it.

Patti Grace Smith, then the head of the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, awards the first ever set of private astronaut wings to Mike Melvill, the pilot of SpaceShipOne.

We named the Fellowship after Patti Grace Smith, a vital pillar in the aerospace community and key player the origin story of our modern commercial space industry -- as well as an incredible civil rights pioneer and a true role model of mine.

Whether you've been longing to work in aerospace your whole life or it is a potential career path you just recently discovered, if you want in to the aerospace industry, this is your chance!

We created the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship for students who are talented, passionate, and just getting started with an aerospace career.

Promotional flyer for the Patti Grace smith Fellowship, which is currently accepting applications for its Class of 2026. The flyer includes many images of past Fellows, a QR code pointing to pgsfellowship.org/apply, and the following text. "Space is an Attitude" - Patti Grace Smith An Award-winning, not-for-profit education program providing internships, mentorship, scholarships, and community for undergraduates seeking aerospace careers. What Fellows Receive: * 1-on-1 Mentorship from Executives and Alumni * 2500 Cash Grant + Scholarship Opportunities * Growing Network + Community of over 170 Alumni * Paid Summer Internship at leading Aviation, Space, and Defense Companies Apply at www.pgsfellowship.org

Please spread the word to all of the US undergraduates in your network: you have just over a week to complete and submit your application to the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship!

pgsfellowship.org

Marc Garneau, first Canadian in space and former federal minister, dies at 76 Marc Garneau has died at the age of 76, according to a statement from his family. He was the first Canadian to go into space and flew on three space shuttle missions.

So sorry to see this terrible news. As a rookie astronaut you are randomly assigned officemates when you first show up to NASA and one of them was Marc Garneau. He could not be more kind and helpful. He was an excellent representative of his country and of us all. www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/art...

Ed White floats in space on the first US Spacewalk. Photo taken June 3, 1965. White is tethered to his Gemini IV capsule; the capsule is out of frame, but the tether extends like an umbilical cord from the torso of White’s spacesuit. The Earth is a brilliant blue in the background of the bottom right corner of the image, contrasted with the black of space in the upper left and the his contrast lighting on the spacesuit, illuminated from the left hand side.

As he completed the first ever US spacewalk on June 3rd, 1965, Ed White said: “I'm coming back in... and it's the saddest moment of my life.”

It’s a relatable sentiment for far too many in the US space community right now!

Zoomed-in view of Ingenuity’s fuselage and interior, as adapted from the Mars 2020 Software Interface Specification. The helicopter camera locations and viewing frustrums are shown. The yaw (z), pitch (y), and roll (x) axes are also shown. For example, a given pitch angle corresponds to a right-handed rotation about the y-axis

Read about it here, in PSJ, just out in the winter!
doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/...

Brian Jackson presenting at the M-MATISSE international workshop

Brian Jackson of @boisestate.bsky.social just showed us how he's able to measure wind speed and direction from the tilt of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars in flight! This is fantastic since the wind sensors on the rovers were damaged. Wind has been something we're missing! 🧵
🧪🔭 #planetsci

Post Doctoral Research Assistant in Solar Activity Reconstructions:Whiteknights Reading UK

We're advertising a 3-year postdoc post on long-term solar activity reconstructions, using data from tree rings, ice sheets, sunspots and spacecraft. Closing date: 4 June.

jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

And thank goodness for that. Keep up the good work!

(And if you ever want to talk Mars helicopters, goodness knows I can talk about that til the cows come home!)

I've been feeling especially good about my @planetarysociety.bsky.social membership lately. Kudos to @caseydreier.bsky.social, Bill, Jennifer, and the rest of the team for helping bring some sunlight to the inspiring parts and the scary parts of what the future of planetary exploration could be.

Where no rover has gone before: how Mars helicopters enable a new era of exploration One of NASA’s greatest successes of the 21st century thus far came in a very unexpected form: a four-pound helicopter called Ingenuity. Ingenuity created a new Wright Brothers moment when it flew t…

Technological capabilities, national priorities, and budget constraints have aligned to make low-cost Mars exploration a major focus of the coming years.

Ingenuity showed a way to be bold without breaking the bank.

Please read my new OpEd in Space News for more!

spacenews.com/where-no-rov...

Via #FireflyAerospace "#BlueGhost got her first diamond ring! Captured at our landing site in the Moon’s Mare Crisium around 3:30 am CDT, the photo shows the sun about to emerge from totality behind Earth. Hope to have more shots to share soon! #BGM1" twitter.com/Firefly_Spac...

Martian moon Deimos seen crossing the face of Mars in this sequence of Thermal Infrared Imager images acquired during the Hera mission’s 12 March 2025 gravity-assist flyby of Mars.

source: www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

One crescent-like hemisphere of Jupiter in oranges and whites.

#JunoCam: This image of Jupiter was snapped during perijov 70 & was processed by Jackie Branc. Perijov is the point in a spacecraft's orbit that is closest to the planet. 🧪 🔭

Credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / @jackiebranc.bsky.social

Want to process your own JunoCam images? buff.ly/TxQbD5I

Me, in front of my poster at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The poster is titled “Going Where No Rover Has Gone Before: Observing and Exploring Mars by Air”

At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference for the first time in 22 years! What fun that my career has circled back around to Mars. If you want to talk Mars helicopters, stop by Row 19b #LPSC2025

Thanks for the correction! I thought I recalled it being Surveyor 3… but I made the slide 19 years ago, so my memory seems to have been a little off!

🚨 Applications for the 2025 SCAR Fellowships are now open! 🚨

With up to $15,000 in funding and 4–5 fellowships available, this is your chance to collaborate internationally and advance your research.

➡️ Apply by 31 July 2025
scar.org/scar-news/20...

Much of 2025 isn't what I expected or hoped for, to say the least. But this? This is the future we dreamed of, hoped for, and dared to think might be possible!

Before the champagne is fully dry for Blue Ghost's successful landing, we will also see commercial lunar robotic landing attempts from Intuitive Machines and from ispace, both of which have hardware en route to the Moon now.

I couldn't be more thrilled for the hard working folks at Firefly and at NASA, who displayed incredible vision and engineering prowess in pulling this off.

It's the latest and, thus far, most successful mission in a program by which NASA is in fact buying lunar missions and data from multiple different commercial providers -- none of which existed in 2006.

Firefly's Blue Ghost lander performed the first fully-successful commercial landing on the Moon this weekend, on a mission conducted for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Left: The title slide from the Aug-2006 final presentation of a NASA-commissioned study that I led, which found that a Lunar X PRIZE would spur an industry from which NASA could buy lunar missions and data.

Right: A photo taken by Firefly's lander from the surface of the Moon on March 2, 2025.

NASA’s Europa Clipper Uses Mars to Go the Distance - NASA The orbiter bound for Jupiter’s moon Europa will investigate whether the moon is habitable, but it first will get the help of Mars’ gravitational force to get

On March 1, the Europa Clipper spacecraft will soar past Mars, using that planet’s gravity to shape its trajectory, sending it first back by Earth, then on toward its 2030 rendezvous with Jupiter. Onward and upward! #Europa #EuropaClipper
www.nasa.gov/missions/eur...