I’ve been far too busy this week to come up with a reasonable article to review and post. So, for something fun on Friday, here are some awesome classic NASA concept art pieces. Isn’t it crazy how amazing space concept art used to be?
The Moon is about to get busier, and a group of heritage experts just got together in Pisa, Italy to talk about keeping our favorite night-sky object from looking like a junkyard. The International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage (ISCAH) convened in September to develop guidelines for how spacecraft should be deorbited onto the lunar surface, which is a topic made urgent by the crash of a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage into the Moon last August. As lunar traffic ramps up, controlled crash-landings of retired orbiters and spent rocket stages are becoming an attractive end-of-mission disposal strategy, and that’s precisely what worries the committee.
For amateur astronomers, the concern is very real: every impact leaves a visible scar. There have already been 51 hard spacecraft impacts on the Moon (including nine rocket bodies and 19 lunar orbiters), each one churning up sticky, abrasive dust and creating new craters that alter the surface’s appearance. Because the Moon has no atmosphere to erase these marks, they persist essentially forever. As archaeologist Alice Gorman put it, we’ve hit “an inflection point where spacecraft craters aren’t just new archaeological sites, they’re an environmental hazard that may cause irreversible damage.” For those of us who enjoy sketching the lunar surface or tracking subtle albedo changes through our scopes, a growing constellation of fresh impact marks and dust plumes could gradually change the look of familiar features we’ve observed for decades.
The good news is that the ISCAH group, working alongside the World Monuments Fund, plans to move into a stakeholder dialogue phase in the coming months and reaching out to space agencies, private companies, heritage experts, and even communities with cultural or spiritual ties to the Moon. The resulting guidelines are slated for presentation at the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 2027, with the goal of eventually becoming internationally recognized standards of behavior. The ultimate aim, in the words of committee member Forassiepi, is a lunar future that is sustainable not just operationally, but also in preserving “the earliest traces of human presence in the history of space” and, as any backyard observer would agree, the quiet, pockmarked beauty of the Moon itself.
In a recent sit-down with NewsNation’s Blake Burman, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman struck a tone that should make any of us who’ve spent late nights staring at the night sky feel a little less alone in our conviction. He was asked point-blank whether he thinks any of the UAP footage out there could be extraterrestrial, and his answer was a resounding “be open-minded.” He even compared the current wave of sightings to a potential Sputnik Moment, which is that jolt of realization that we’re not the only ones building things up there. His parting line was the one that stuck with me: “If it’s aliens, I think NASA should have a seat at the table in this, for sure.” For an agency chief to frame the question that way, rather than dismiss it, is genuinely refreshing.
Where Isaacman hedges a bit is in his lean toward more prosaic explanations such as natural phenomena or next-gen stealth tech being tested near military ranges. That’s the cautious, “let the data speak” scientist in him talking, and fair enough. But it’s worth noting he’s also confirmed that NASA has captured imagery of objects the agency still can’t explain, and that the agency has been actively participating in the Trump administration’s PURSUE declassification effort. So while he won’t jump to the “aliens” conclusion just yet, he’s absolutely not closing the door. For those of us who’ve been telling people for decades that the answer is out there, even a measured “I lean this way but I’m not ruling anything out” from the head of NASA is a win.
The paragraph that really got me was the closer. Isaacman pointed out that right here in our own backyard including Enceladus with its subsurface ocean, Europa with its complex chemistry, so we can’t even rule out life. Then he zoomed out: billions of stars in the Milky Way, two trillion other galaxies beyond that. “It’s why NASA’s mission is so important,” he said. I think that’s the right framing. Whether the UAP files ultimately point to classified tech or something far stranger, the underlying question: Are we alone?“, is the one that makes all of this matter. And it’s a good sign that the person running the agency that’s best positioned to answer it is treating that question with the seriousness it deserves.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) partnership has turned down Spain’s bid to plant the long-stalled giant on La Palma, ending a last-ditch attempt to move the project from Hawaii’s Mauna Kea to the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory. After more than a decade of protests and permitting delays on the preferred Hawaiian summit, Spain put a package of up to €1 billion on the table; roughly €400 million from its technology agency plus loans involving the European Investment Bank and Spain’s official credit institute; if the consortium would commit to the Canary Islands site. The TMT International Observatory replied that its members (California, Caltech, Canada, India, and Japan) could not reach the consensus needed to accept the offer. The letter praised Spain’s “extraordinary” commitment and the scientific quality of the Roque, but construction there will not start in the near term.
For backyard observers, the news is a reminder of how hard it has become to finish the next generation of 30-meter-class telescopes. TMT was meant to give the Northern Hemisphere a counterpart to the southern giants now rising in Chile, opening deeper views of exoplanets, the first galaxies, and the faint outer solar system. La Palma already hosts the 10.4-meter Gran Telescopio Canarias and a dense cluster of other instruments under some of Europe’s darkest, steadiest skies; adding TMT would have made the island a true northern flagship. Instead, the project remains tied to Mauna Kea, where a new management authority is still working through community and legal issues, and some insiders now openly wonder whether TMT will be built at all. The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias says it will keep developing the Roque and look for other large facilities.
For us amateurs who follow big-telescope news the way others follow sports, the story is bittersweet: another chapter closed, the universe still waiting for that 30-meter mirror to open.
