Topicsspace exploration11 items
Ken Shirriff's teardown of a 1980 Spacelab core-memory module makes 128 KB of RAM feel extraordinary again—each bit a ferrite ring you can point at.
Inspired by righto.com · Ken Shirriff
Terafab's 100-million-square-foot pitch is hard to ignore, but the more interesting experiment is collapsing mask design, logic and memory fab, packaging, and test into one SpaceX-style vertical manufacturing loop.
Inspired by terafab.ai · SpaceX / Tesla
China and the United States are racing toward crewed south-pole landings and lunar bases. The finish line is infrastructure—power, water, comms, transport—not a flag, and not legal ownership of the Moon.
Inspired by science.slashdot.org · Slashdot
A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage hit the Moon at about 5,400 mph on August 5 after drifting for a year—photographed by Korea’s Danuri, the same orbiter SpaceX launched in 2022 that recorded the accidental crater.
Inspired by apnews.com · Associated Press
NASA’s “Big Bang” power fix keeps Voyager 2’s three remaining science instruments running another year on a probe launched in 1977 for a five-year mission—now nearly 49 years old and still returning data from interstellar space.
Inspired by space.com · Space.com
IEEE Spectrum on satellite reentry particles lingering aloft—arguing “burn up” often relocates debris into the upper atmosphere, so constellation growth needs the full environmental cost of coming home counted, not just orbit risk.
Inspired by spectrum.ieee.org · IEEE Spectrum
Chris Garry’s Apollo-11 repository preserves the original Apollo Guidance Computer source for Comanche055 and Luminary099—transcribed from MIT Museum hardcopy with Virtual AGC—arguing that mission software deserves the same care we give spacecraft, spacesuits, and recordings.
Inspired by github.com · Chris Garry
Kate Mothes shares MELODYSHEEP’s film assembled from NASA Artemis II footage. The images are extraordinary, but NASA should have made it easier for the public to see the best material live during humanity’s return to the Moon.
Inspired by thisiscolossal.com · Kate Mothes
Ashley Strickland reports on New Horizons waking from its longest hibernation nearly six billion miles from Earth. Twenty years after launch, it still runs stored commands and finds more dust than expected past the Kuiper Belt.
Inspired by cnn.com · Ashley Strickland
Collin Cherubim and colleagues report near-infrared transit spectra showing helium escaping from LHS 1140 b. It is not a detection of life — it is a rocky world in a habitable zone with an atmosphere we can finally begin to study.
Inspired by science.org · Collin Cherubim
When investment-grade debt trades at junk yields, ambitions have not changed— only the market price of financing those ambitions has moved.
Inspired by ft.com · FT Alphaville
