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How many intelligent civilizations should there be in our galaxy right now? In 1961, the US astrophysicist Frank Drake, who passed away on September 2, 2022 at the age of 92, came up with an equation to estimate this. Whatever reasonable values you feed into the equation, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we shouldn’t be alone in the galaxy. Drake remained a proponent and a supporter of the search for extraterrestrial life throughout his days. Today, there are about 100 scientists at the SETI Institute working on nearly 100 research questions and each of these topics can be related to one of the terms in the Drake Equation.

On August 31, 2022, a delegation of National Science Foundation leaders, congressional dignitaries, and members of both the scientific and Native Hawaiian communities gathered near the summit of Haleakalā, Maui, Hawaii, to commemorate the inauguration of the world’s most powerful solar telescope -- The NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. It promises to reveal the Sun in ways never seen before and the images and data that will be produced by the Inouye Solar Telescope will write the next chapters of solar physics research. The inauguration put a stamp on an ambitious, multi-decade project to provide the world with its greatest solar observatory and marked the beginning of the Inouye Solar Telescope’s 50-year journey to revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, its magnetic behavior, and its influence on Earth.

Welcome to the night sky report for September 2022 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. In September, Pegasus becomes increasingly prominent in the southeastern sky, allowing stargazers to locate globular clusters M2 (NGC 7089), M30 (NGC 7099), as well as a nearby double star, Alpha Capricorni, which is an optical double (but not a binary pair). Also, Mars on the move during the month and it is prime viewing time for Jupiter. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase, so get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

It’s been 50 years since humans last visited the Moon, and even robotic missions have been few and far between. But the Earth’s only natural satellite is about to get crowded. At least six countries and a flurry of private companies have publicly announced multiple missions to the Moon to occur within the next decade. Many of these missions include plans for permanent lunar bases and are motivated in large part by ambitions to assess and begin utilizing the Moon’s natural resources. In the short term, resources would be used to support lunar missions, but in the long term, the Moon and its resources will be a critical gateway for missions to the broader riches of the Solar System. But these lofty ambitions collide with a looming legal question. The Outer Space Treaty – the 60-year-old agreement that guides human activity in space – forbids nations from claiming territory in space. This limitation includes the Moon, planets, and asteroids. So how will space resources be managed?

It was 45 years ago today, August 20, 1977, that NASA launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft on its historic mission to Jupiter and Saturn (and beyond). To double the chances of success, its twin spacecraft Voyager 1 was launched about a half month later on September 5, 1977. As originally designed, the Voyager twins were to conduct close-up studies of Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, and the larger moons of the two planets. But in the end, they accomplished much, much, more. In fact, the Voyagers are still exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. To this day, the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft continue on their 45 year journey. In August 2012, Voyager 1 made the historic entry into interstellar space, the region between stars that is filled with material ejected by the death of nearby stars millions of years ago. Voyager 2 entered interstellar space on November 5, 2018. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network (DSN). After making a string of discoveries on Jupiter and Saturn, their missions were extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The two Voyagers, still active after all these years, will continue to explore the outermost edges of the Sun's domain and beyond until their power sources run out and NASA loses contact.

The size of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers, has been determined by measurements made with the Hubble Space Telescope. The estimated diameter is approximately 85 miles across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than that found in most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons -- a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein follows a 3 million year long elliptical orbit, taking it as far from the Sun as roughly half a light-year. The comet is now less than 2 billion miles from the Sun and falling nearly perpendicular to the plane of our Solar System. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn… And that won't occur until the year 2031.

Astronomers estimate that there should be 100 million black holes roaming among the 100 billion stars in our galaxy. They are the remnants of supernova explosions that happened throughout the 10 billion years of the history of our galaxy. But since black holes emit no light of their own, they are extremely difficult to detect. Now, astronomers have at last come up with clear evidence for finding one in a needle-in-a-haystack search among a blizzard of stars seen toward the galactic center. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen, contributed to the discovery, using the Danish 1.54 meter telescope at European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla observatory in Chile.

Welcome to the night sky report for August 2022 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. The daily parade of four naked-eye planets in the mornings comes to an end this month. But there are still lots of great highlights, especially if you have access to binoculars. Plus, Saturn and Jupiter are returning to nighttime skies. In August, a flock of star-studded figures soars overhead. Look for the constellation Lyra, shaped as a small parallelogram, which points to Epsilon Lyrae and the Ring Nebula. You can also spot three bright summer stars: Vega, Deneb, and Altair, which form the Summer Triangle. And August is a great month to learn an easy-to-spot constellation – Cygnus the swan. The outlook for the Perseid meteors isn't great due to a full moon on the peak night of August 12, but still it's worth keeping an eye out for early Perseids after midnight the week before. The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

Surveying the cosmos from its isolated position in Antarctica, a collaborative project aims to reveal insights about the Universe’s beginnings. The South Pole Telescope (SPT), located at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, is a sub-millimeter observatory that performs measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The observatory is part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a globe-spanning multi-telescope project that recently captured the first image of a black hole at the center of a nearby galaxy. Since the 33-foot telescope began operating in 2007, it has helped researchers discover over 1000 giant galaxy clusters, including some truly exceptional ones, and has changed our understanding of the period when the first stars formed about 14 billion years ago, when the Universe was only 380,000 years old.

The dawn of a new era in astronomy has begun as the world gets its first look at the full capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a partnership between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The telescope’s first full-color images and spectroscopic data were released this week from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The selected astronomical targets represent the first wave of full-color scientific images and spectra the observatory has gathered and the official beginning of Webb’s general science operations. These first images from the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope demonstrate Webb at its full power, ready to begin its mission to explore the infrared universe.

Welcome to the night sky report for July 2022 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. The naked-eye planets of dawn – Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – dominate the sky this July, appearing more spread out each morning. In July, find the constellation Scorpius to identify the reddish supergiant star Antares, which will lead you to the globular star cluster M4 (NGC 6121). M22 (NGC 6656), in the constellation Sagitarius, another globular cluster, is one of the brightest clusters in the sky and is visible with the naked eye. Keep observing around the group of stars commonly known as the Teapot and you’ll be looking toward the center of the Milky Way. In that direction, you can see the Lagoon Nebula (M8, NGC 6523), the Omega Nebula (M17, NGC 6618), and the Trifid Nebula (M20, NGC 6514). Next, if you're feeling the July heat, note the origin of phrase "the dog days" of summer, which has to do with the bright star Sirius, also known as the “Dog Star.” The night sky is truly a celestial showcase. Get outside and explore its wonders from your own backyard.

The conditions in the vacuum of space are quite harsh compared to Earth and seeds in space must be able to withstand large doses of ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, low pressure, and microgravity. In 1946, NASA launched a V-2 rocket carrying maize seeds to observe how they’d be affected by radiation. Surprisingly, seeds were the first Earth life form to travel into space. Since then, the scientific community has learned a great deal about the effects of the space environment on seed germination, metabolism, genetics, biochemistry and even seed production. Astrobiologists have investigated how seeds would do back on Earth after spending extended periods on the International Space Station (ISS). The experiments they conducted on the EXPOSE missions were much longer than many other ISS seed experiments, lasting up to 682 days at a time, with the seeds placed on the outside of the station in the dead of space, rather than inside. Their goal was to understand not only the effects of long-term radiation exposure, but a bit about the molecular mechanisms of those effects.

Artemis is the first step in the next era of human exploration. Together with commercial and international partners, NASA will establish a sustainable presence on the Moon to prepare for missions to Mars. Artemis 1, planned for liftoff later this year, will be the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first in a series of increasingly complex missions, Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond. During this flight, the spacecraft will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown. It will travel 280,000 miles from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon over the course of about a four to six-week mission. Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.

In the not too distant future, it is expected that 65,000 satellites will be in Low Earth Orbit if the plans filed by four mega-constellation internet companies [SpaceX Starlink and Amazon Kuiper (United States), OneWeb (United Kingdom), and StarNet/GW (China)] are implemented. Currently, satellites placed in Low Earth Orbit, are almost completely unregulated – It’s like the wild, wild, west. New simulations show that from everywhere in the world, in every season, there will be dozens to hundreds of satellites visible for at least an hour before sunrise and after sunset. Right now, it’s relatively easy to escape urban light pollution by travelling to rural areas with dark skies. But these simulations show that in the future you won’t be able to escape this new satellite light pollution anywhere on Earth…Not even at the North Pole.

Welcome to the night sky report for June 2022 -- Your guide to the constellations, deep sky objects, planets, and celestial events that are observable during the month. Though the nights are shorter in June, they are filled with fine sights. Look for the Hercules constellation, which will lead you to a globular star cluster with hundreds of thousands of densely packed stars. Globular cluster M13 (the Hercules Cluster, NGC 6205) is best observed with a telescope, but binoculars will reveal it as a fuzzy spot. You can also spot Draco the dragon, which will point you to the Cat’s Eye Nebula (C6, NGC 6543). The morning quartet of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and Mars continues to shine, though they will spread farther apart over the next couple of months. And the constellation Lyra is easily located thanks to its brightest star, Vega.