Me

Nancy Grace Roman telescope is back from the vibe test. Shaken but not stirred!

From March 9th to March 13th, Pisa will be home to the global gravitational waves community! EGO and Virgo will host the @ligo.org - Virgo - KAGRA Collaboration Meeting, the biannual meeting of the gravitational wave community, for the first time in Italy after more than a decade.

This is lovely and affirms something I say all the time: Stories matter. Even kinda silly ones you watched as a kid (I have a long list of those, ones I still fondly rewatch sometimes).

They show us what to emulate, what to fight against, how to better ourselves, how to see through others' eyes.

This should be getting better as we leave solar maximum. Here's an update of HST altitude vs. sunspot number.

Really useful to see data on what a lot of us have felt. Algorithmic feeds are drugs that are not good for us.

👀 Did you know that ESA has Bluesky accounts in multiple languages?

🇩🇪 @de.esa.int — German
🇫🇷 @fr.esa.int — French
🇮🇹 @ita.esa.int — Italian
🇪🇸 @es.esa.int — Spanish
🇳🇱 @nl.esa.int — Dutch

If you’re looking for updates and events closer to home, make sure to follow your local ESA page!

YouTube video by Scott Manley Explaining Why NASA's Starliner Report Is So Bad

If only Boeing engineers put as much effort into materials comparability and O-ring sizing as I had to put into figuring out all the interesting redactions
youtu.be/L96asfTvJ_A

An embroidered patch shows a scene in space with an asteroid hurtling towards earth and a Tyrannosaurus rex (also in space) with its mouth open, either screaming or trying to bite the asteroid (I don't know). Along the top of the patch it says "NEO SURVEYOR." At the bottom of the patch it says, "NEVER AGAIN."

This unofficial patch for the NEO Surveyor project that my husband brought home from work is sending me.

A large mosaic of 700 thumbnails of declassified spy satellite images on spacefromspace.com

A screenshot of a dark world map with many coloured outlines representing the areas covered by satellite images on spacefromspace.com.

spacefromspace.com/declassified... is now home to over 700 georeferenced spy satellite images of locations all over the world taken between 1960 and 1984!

I've also published a new, very experimental, map view search method for all images available on the website: spacefromspace.com/declassified...

When the LD went around the horn and did her GO/NOGO poll to enter Term Count (T-10m), and got a GO, we got a little excited in the sim room, because when we restarted the countdown clock and came out of the hold, we knew we’d be passing through the events that stopped us during the first WDR.

NASA Puts Starliner Mishap in Same Class as Shuttle Tragedies NASA is putting the botched 2024 test flight of the Starliner capsule in the same category of disaster as the Challenger and Columbia shuttle accidents, underscoring the dramatic failures that kept a ...

Today, NASA will release an investigative report on the 2024 botched crew test flight of Boeing's Starliner, where the agency will declare the mission to be a Type A mishap -- the most severe category it can assign www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Screenshot of our dormant Twitter/X account, showing only one post and a pop-up saying "You aren't verified yet".

Screenshot of our Twitter/X account page after deletion, saying this account doesn't exist.

At our f2f meeting today we decided to delete our dormant Twitter/X account, following the excellent example of @ec-euclid.bsky.social. 🧪🔭

Historical NASA Budget Dataset A comprehensive, open dataset of NASA budget requests, congressional appropriations, and workforce data from 1958 to the present.

My historical NASA budget dataset has a new home on The Planetary Society's website, and is now updated with all final FY 2026 details. New per-sheet CSV/XLSX download options as well! Check it out at: www.planetary.org/space-policy...

Topographic map of Venus. Version 2.0 Updated topographic map of Venus. Description of the map is in the image. PDF version (211 MB) is available here. Credit: NASA / JPL / USGS / NSSDC / Roscosmos / Russian Academy of Sciences / Institut...

My new topographic map of Venus is now online.

Full resolution image version (~370Mpix) is available on Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/10958...
PDF version (~211MB) is available here: drive.google.com/file/d/1Ksf1...

🧵 1/5

And yet, every day, our most prominent Democratic politicians, scholars, public intellectuals, universities & university leaders, & other civil society organizations continue to use his platform as their primary social media outlet. One cannot help but notice this & draw conclusions.

China's Xinhua news agency has just published this editorial cartoon in response to Trump's rejection of climate policies.

It is pretty clear that China views this as a HUGE geopolitical fumble by the US leaving the field clear for China's to win the global race to clean-tech hegemony

YouTube video by The Planetary Society Carl Sagan unveils the Pale Blue Dot image

Today is the 36th anniversary of the pale blue dot picture. Yesterday we did a journal club about a classic Sagan paper and my grad student BP ended by sharing this video. I’d heard the more polished pale blue dot speech so many times but I find this one to be more human

youtu.be/tgQ1PtkZvGU?...

"Oversubsidized" is the best description of Musk I've ever heard.

Please enjoy our research paper on how Bluesky is the preferred home of academics of all stripes, including professors of rare moths. (Yes, we actually have lots of entomologists here).

academic.oup.com/icb/article-... 🧪

Hegseth's unconstitutional retaliation against Sen. Kelly was so brazen that an exasperated federal judge used more than a dozen exclamation points!

Highlights from the ruling: "Horsefeathers!" and "Please!"

"That is a troubling development in a free country!" buff.ly/YY60KWM

Judge says Pentagon 'trampled' on Sen. Mark Kelly's rights, blocks effort to demote him The Pentagon moved to downgrade Kelly’s military retirement rank and pay over a video he appeared in that urged the military and intelligence community not to follow illegal orders.

#Politics #Trump

Breaking from @nbcnews.com: DC federal judge block #DOD secretary Pete Hegseth from punishing or demoting Senator Mark Kelly, says Kelly has 1st amendment rights.

www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

Three things you’ll be able to do after our MOOC:
1️⃣ Undertand what climate data are and how they are produced
2️⃣ Pick the right type of climate data for your sector
3️⃣ Find and interpret trusted #C3S data with confidence

@ecmwf.int @w-u-r.bsky.social

⬇️

FAN EXPO Canada I A four day weekend celebration with a world of exciting family-friendly attractions, fandom-powered community events, and world-renowned celebrities! FAN EXPO Canada is the ultimate destination to Celebrate. Discover. Belong with all things fandom and pop culture. Get an autograph or a photo with your favourite guest, visit the celebrity panels, or...

PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR!
We're busily assembling an international #Expanse meetup at #FanExpoCanada for August 2026. Panels, parties, a location tour and at least one stop at that dive bar Wes was always talking about!
fanexpohq.com/fanexpocanada/

Horizons of Humanity - Science Politics Introducing a new column on the existential risks and opportunities that will shape humanity’s future.

Okay, another thing: If the ocean is not your thing, but outer space is...

We've launched a new column for space policy, too! The great @dagomardegroot.bsky.social is at the helm for that one: HORIZONS OF HUMANITY.

sciencepolitics.org/2026/01/13/h...

Dozens of researchers will move to France from US following high-profile bid to lure talent Large proportion worked at Columbia University, which had its grants cut and frozen by the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Almost all of the scientists were previously at US institutions

go.nature.com/4qMlrUR

Meanwhile, some launch time ESA archive digging brings out interesting pictures, like this one during Ariane 1 L3 launch campaign, CCU-1 with the payload stack going towards the ELA-1 launch pad at CSG, and the obligatory Renault 4 driving in the convoy :)

Elon Musk Y @elonmusk X.com For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20+ years.

SpaceX shifts focus from something that it will never do on Mars to something it will never do on the Moon.

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A bus stop near Tesla's flagship store in London. Imagine a Super Bowl ad that showed only this.

Cover drawn by me, featuring the character Amos Burton standing in a crowd with his gun drawn. In the foreground two shadowed figures approach him, also carrying guns. Like all four covers, it is coloured in a cyan and magenta colour scheme.

Amos hides behind a walk, protecting a young girl from two security types looking for them. He has his gun drawn and has one hand pressed against his side, where blood is visible leaking from a wound.

Amos is being punched in the face by a large guy with a beard and a shaved head. His head is covered in Belter tattoos.

Amos kneels on the floor in a dark room, looking exhausted. He is surrounded by the dead bodies of people he has shot. From behind him, a figure emerges from the darkness with a gun pointed at his head.

Here's all four covers I did for THE EXPANSE: A LITTLE DEATH