Alejandro Soto

@soto.space

2679 Followers 995 Following

Planetary scientist and aerospace engineer. He/him. https://www.alejandrosoto.net My writing represents me alone and not my employer nor anyone else.

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"This RFI requests potential payload details that can be provided to NASA and potentially shared globally via an opt-in approach to a public Lunar Payload Database. Of greatest interest to NASA would be payload teams that are self-funded and can deliver their completed flight units to CLPS and perform their own operations while the payload is on the lunar surface. NASA’s approach to working with payload providers will simplify the broader launch, landing and surface deployment approach for any payloads that aspire to land on the Moon."

The image has text that has a statement from the AAS followed by a quote from the President's 2027 Budget Request:

The budget request also adopts a policy prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for journal subscriptions and the publication of research results unless required or pre-approved:

“In accordance with administration policy announced in the budget, NASA will follow new governmentwide grants guidance prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for subscriptions to academic journals, as well as for the publication of research results that are not specifically required by federal statute or approved in advance by a federal agency. This policy preserves funds to support actual research by ensuring that the American taxpayer does not pay for the research, publication, and access to that research, essentially triple charging the public for the same product.”

A gif of dozens of Agent Smiths from the Matrix move, staring morosely with a few looking around. Each agent is dressed in the same suit and tie with the same haircut and wearing the same sunglasses.

A tweet from Russell Vought, OMB director: "The National Science Foundation will be breaking up the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. This facility is one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country. A comprehensive review is underway & any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location."

An image of a hill/small mountain, mostly in dark silhouette. Above that, the sky is mostly cloudy, and the clouds are in orange hues, reflecting the light from the sunset. There is wavy and streaky structure in the clouds.

An acoustic levitator. There's a white frame that is two spherical "caps" separated by some struts. Each cap is covered with acoustic transducers, point at the transducers in the other cap. There are wires and some electronic hardware (an oscilloscope) in the background. All of this on a white surface.

A snippet from the article posted by Ryan.

Caption from NASA: Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered a new moon orbiting Uranus in images taken by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). This image shows the moon, designated S/2025 U1, as well as 13 of the 28 other known moons orbiting the planet. (The small moon Cordelia orbits just inside the outermost ring, but is not visible in these views due to glare from the rings.) Due to the drastic differences in brightness levels, the image is a composite of three different treatments of the data, allowing the viewer to see details in the planetary atmosphere, the surrounding rings, and the orbiting moons. The data was taken with NIRCam’s wide band F150W2 filter that transmits infrared wavelengths from about 1.0 to 2.4 microns.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. El Moutamid (SwRI), M. Hedman (University of Idaho)

Text from an old textbook showing the delta-v calculation.

A screenshot of Tom Nicholls and Popehat arguing about national foods. It’s the posts right before this one.

A dirt road heading into the distance with a lake on the right and trees in the distance. Beautiful clouds fill the sky.

An image of a stealth bomber in flight. From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit

A lake view.

Within Planetary Science, increased funding is requested for a new Mars initiative to provide lower-cost, competitively selected missions and instruments that address both human exploration and science objectives. These payloads will take advantage of the new Commercial Mars Payload Services established within ESDMD. The Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program will continue to develop scientific instruments for Artemis II and III missions and payloads for commercial delivery to the Moon via the Commercial Lunar Payload Services project, which has been transferred to ESDMD. NASA will terminate the Mars Sample Return mission and will further reduce the portfolio by halting progress on several other missions. Activities within Planetary Science Research, Venus and Mars Technology, and Radioisotope Power Systems are reduced, and will focus on high priority science investigations and technologies relevant to planned missions.

From NASA: These images of Titan were taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on July 11, 2023 (top row) and the ground-based W.M. Keck Observatories on July 14, 2023 (bottom row). They show methane clouds (denoted by the white arrows) appearing at different altitudes in Titan’s northern hemisphere.

The left side shows to maps of Venusian gravity. The top left is gravity measured by the Magellan mission while the bottom is a simulation of gravity measured by the future Veritas mission. The right plot shows how Veritas will see more and smaller coronae than Magellan.

Figure caption:

Fig. 5. Resolvable coronae in the Magellan and VERITAS gravity datasets.
(A and B) Distribution of (broadly/finely) resolved coronae superimposed over the Magellan global gravity degree strength (A) and the predicted VERITAS global gravity degree strength (B). For a definition and discussion of degree strength, see Methods. The maps are in Mollweide projection centered at 130°E. White features indicate broadly resolved coronae (one to three independent data points within the radius), while green features mark finely resolved coronae (four or more data points within the radius). See Methods for further details. (C) Histogram illustrating the distribution of coronae diameters [from (5)]. The purple solid line represents the cumulative count of coronae smaller than the specific diameter. The blue and red vertical dashed lines mark the average resolutions of VERITAS and Magellan of l = 190 and l = 80, respectively. The gray shaded area highlights coronae smaller than the best possible global average resolution that VERITAS can achieve.

A snippet of a text message that says, "We are reaching out to you one last time as we approved your".

A screenshot of an Ars Technica article with the title and subtitle of '“A sicker America”: Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary. In Senate hearings, Kennedy continued to express anti-vaccine views.' There is also a picture of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy.

Open letter from the Chair to members of the MEPAG community:

We have received the message below from HQ, which impacts our ability to conduct MEPAG activities. As a result, I am pausing planning for the hybrid meeting in April/May, and the SFL-SAG and Goals committee will be stopping work until further notice. We will let everyone know as soon as we are able to resume work.

Vicky Hamilton, Chair

“As NASA continues to review and ensure compliance with presidential actions, we are requesting that you please pause all meetings and activities of Planetary Science Analysis/Assessment Groups. This includes ExMAG, LEAG, MAPSIT, MEPAG, MExAG, OPAG, OWWG, SBAG, VEXAG, the cross-AG EDIA Working Group, and any other groups or activities that have been developed by the AGs. Please make your communities aware of this request.”

These presidential actions may include, but are not limited to, the following Executive Orders and Presidential memoranda:
Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing
Initial Guidance Regarding DEIA Executive Orders
Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions
Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women
Unleashing American Energy

Thank you and we will reach out regarding next steps.

A photo of a sticker that says "# Heliophysics Is A Word". There are also small logos on the sticker, presumably from scientific sponsors. The logos are for: National Solar Observatory, COFFIES, CGS, SHIELD, Southwest Research Institute, and Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society.

Voyager 1 looked back at Saturn on Nov. 16, 1980, four days after the spacecraft flew past the planet, to observe the appearance of Saturn and its rings from this unique perspective. A few of the spokelike ring features discovered by Voyager appear in the rings as bright patches in this image, taken at a distance of 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles) from the planet. Saturn's shadow falls upon the rings, and the bright Saturn crescent is seen through all but the densest portion of the rings. From Saturn, Voyager 1 is on a trajectory taking the spacecraft out of the ecliptic plane, away from the Sun and eventually out of the solar system (by about 1990). Although its mission to Jupiter and Saturn is nearly over (the Saturn encounter ends Dec. 18, 1980), Voyager 1 will be tracked by the Deep Space Network as far as possible in an effort to determine where the influence of the Sun ends and interstellar space begins. Voyager 1's flight path through interstellar space is in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. Voyager 2 will reach Saturn on August 25, 1981, and is targeted to encounter Uranus in 1986 and possibly Neptune in 1989. The Voyager project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Photo of a Mars rover themed sock on a left foot. Lots of read, black, and white.

A screenshot with text that says, 'Javier Flores, a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant from Puebla, Mexico, who’s lived in Castle Hill for four years while working as a butcher, said that “I couldn’t vote but if I could, I would choose him.”

“They should remove everyone who isn’t supposed to be here — the bad people,” Flores told THE CITY in Spanish. “The people who have a bad record, you know, who have a criminal history.” '

A slide from the CW3E organization. On the left, there's statistics on the number of atmospheric rivers as a function of strength and the number of atmospheric rivers as a function of the state in which the storm landed. On the right is a map of the trajectories of these atmospheric rivers, right up to land fall.

A satellite image of the eastern seaboard with most of the image filled with Hurricane Helene.

A screenshot of a text message that says: "We've asked SIX TIMES if you support Kamala Harris... but you never completed
the poll! :("

From the Princess Bride: You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

A plot of sea ice extent for Antarctica. Colored curves for multiple decades plus 2023 and 2022.

A plot of sea ice extent for the Arctic from the NSIDC's Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph tool. Multiple lines for decades of data, 2023 data, and 2012 data. Plus shading for two standard deviations.