Ranks

The U. S. Space Force has adopted its system of rank.  It will follow the Air Force system, which flows from the Army model.

Starfleet of fiction and legend, of course, uses the Navy system.

Oh, Those Kids

 Two high school students have helped find four planets orbiting a sunlike star.

They participated in a special science program run by Harvard and MIT.

DeJong

Paul DeJong, St; Louis Cardinals shortstop, is involved in an effort to put a weather station on the Moon to monitor Earth's temperature.

Advances in technology and a reduction in launch costs are making it possible for individuals to come together and attempt such projects.

Perspective

 AT&T has announced quarterly revenues of nearly $47 billion.

That's more than twice NASA's annual budget.

TOI-178

 Scientists have discovered five planets in tight orbital synchricity around a star designated TOI-178.

A sixth planet, the innermost, is out of step.

SpaceX

 SpaceX launched 143 satellites at once over the weekend.

It was the company's first multiple customer launch.

Kraken Mare

 Scientists using Cassini data have decided that Kraken Mare, a huge methane sea on Sarurn's moon Titan is at least 1,000 feet deep.

Kraken Mare is larger than all the Great Lakes combined.

Pioneer 10

 Eighteen years ago today, Pioneer 10 beaned its last transsmossion home.

It gave us some of our first close ups of the gas giants.

Magnetar

 Astronomers think giant flares they've observed in a nearby galaxy were caused by a magnetar.

Magnetars are neutron stats that sport extremely powerful magnetic fields.

Ceres Megasatellite

 A new paper proposes building a huge colony-- a megasatellite-- around the dwarf planet Ceres.

It says the project could be completed within 16 years.

Pluto

 A new study finds Pluto-s blue haze contains organic compounds.

Even that far out sunlight can still power chemical reactions.

VO

Virgin Orbit launched several cubesats into space this weekend on a 70-foor-long, two stage rocket which was itself air-launched from a 747.

The flight makes VO a competitor in the burgeoning small satellite market.

NoKo

 North Korea has displayed what it says is a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

That could increase the threat to the United States.

Blue Origin

 Blue Origin may fly passengers on a suborbital flight as early as April.

BO may yet beat Virgin Galactic to the punch in that market.

UFO

 Pursuant to FOIA requests, the CIA has released 2,700  pages of UFO data to The Black Vault website.

The agency says that's all the UFO documents it has.

Link?

 Scientists have found a world five times as massive as Jupiter about 1300 light years away.

With an orbital period of 218 days, it may begin to link hot Jupiters to the gas giants in our solar system.

Wobbles

 Researchers have confirmed Mars wobbles on its axis.

So far, the only other world known to do that is Earth.

Rover

 NASA is developing a duel axel rover to use on Mars.

It will be able to navigate rough terrain.

Oumuamua

Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb still contends, in a new book, that the object Oumuamua could have been alien technology.

Oumuamua is the first known object to have entered the Solar System from outside and is now headed back to the stars.

MUFON

 In December. 483 UFO sightings worldwide were reported to MUFON.

Of those, an even 400 were in the U.S.

India

 India's space agency intends to have reusable rockets yet this decade.

No government space agency has that yet.

Apollo

 Congress has passed a law that seeks to protect Apollo landing sites on the Moon from disturbance.

The law, however, only restricts NASA and U.S. entities.

UFO

A  section of the COVID Relief bill passed recently demands, bizarrely, that the government issue a report laying out what it knows about UFOs  within 180 days.

June might be interesting.

Allstate

 A new commercial for Allstate, of all things, has two astronauts driving across the lunar surface in a buggy.

Presumably, that reflects increasing popular support for space exploration.

Alien Civilizations

 A new study argues that most civilizations that may have existed in the Milky Way are likely dead now, largely due to self-annihilation.

As we know of zero cases in which a technologically and scientifically advanced civilization annihilated itself, that part of the study's conclusion, at least, seems more driven by a particular political slant than a judgment grounded in data.