9 June 2025
On 27 January POTUS (the President Of The United States) signed an executive order to create an “Iron Dome” of defence against ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles and other advanced aerial attacks. This was renamed “Golden Dome for America” on 24 February. Surprisingly, the renaming isn't about POTUS' preference for golden things. Apparently “Iron Dome” is a registered trademark, owned by an Israeli defence firm.
25 September 2023
We certainly live in exciting times. There's been recent news about some potentially exciting discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
10 January 2022
In my last newsletter I wrote about the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. Post launch there were many operations that it had to go through to be successfully deployed, the most major of which included its unfolding.
27 December 2021
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has successfully launched!
10 May 2021
The Chinese launch vehicle - Long March 5B has been in the news over the past week. The rocket was launched at the end of last month to carry the living quarters of China's independent space station into orbit.
14 December 2020
A few weeks back a monolith was discovered, in the desert in the state of Utah in the USA. Since then they've been popping up in various places around the world. The famous monolith from Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey (based on Arthur C. Clarke's novels) would appear to be the inspiration for these.
1 May 2020
Lockdown made me think of what it would be like to travel to Mars. Stuck in familiar confines, the same people around every day. The same food. A slowly diminishing blue marble the only vibrant object in a black sky hung with tiny white stars.
4 June 2017
Robert Bigelow is convinced that aliens are not only real, but they have visited earth and are living on our planet. He believes that his grandparents were visited by an alien craft, and says that he has spent millions gathering evidence that aliens are among us. People have pointed out that his company Bigelow Aerospace's logo looks a lot like the head of a "gray" - the most popular depiction of an alien, with big almond shaped eyes and a teardrop face.
1 August 2015
Noel Townsley shares what he learnt at UFOs and their Spiritual Mission, a conference held by Share International NZ at Mt Eden Village Centre, Auckland.
1 May 2015
Hosted by Fraser Cain of AstronomyCast, this hour long magazine-style show takes listeners through the previous week's space news. Each episode has an assortment of guests who take it in turns to present, each with their own topic, and with Fraser asking the questions and expanding the stories. Each week a cast of regular voices tend to appear, and there's a wider community of more infrequent guests.
1 February 2003
For almost half a century, it's seemed like human destiny to go into Space. When we were kids, everyone wanted to be an astronaut when they grew up. The loss of the Columbia space shuttle hasn't extinguished that dream, but it firmly reminds us that leaving the Earth behind is a very difficult thing to do. If things were just a little bit different - if our species were as big as elephants, or aquatic, or if the Earth's gravity were much stronger, it may have been impossible. As it is, raising a human being into low Earth orbit, to say nothing of going further, is a hugely expensive proposition. And once up there, the lack of gravity leads to muscle wasting and other physiological problems. Food and air also need to be brought up from the planet below.
1 August 1989
A very short note this time as space is limited.
1 May 1987
An Auckland astrologer who predicted the space shuttle accident says the American space shuttle accident says the American space programme will face further disasters this year.