Abstract submissions for the 2026 Workshop on Spacecraft Flight Software are due Dec 4, 2025. We look forward to your presentation, demo, or panel ideas. flightsoftware.org/workshop/FSW...

A display of pure power from Hurricane Melissa today. Remarkable satellite imagery.

From a crewmember on yesterday's Teal 74 mission into now-Category 5 Hurricane #Melissa. As clear of an eye as you will see in the Atlantic basin.

Registration is now open for the 2026 Flight Software Workshop, which will be in person at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. Both in-person attendance and remote viewing is available. Register here: www.eventbrite.com/e/2026-fligh...

Check your weather forecast and plan your nap schedule for some skywatching--the recently discovered Comet Lemmon is approaching perihelion just as the Orionids meteor shower is peaking! 🧪 🔭 www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

I'm almost through getting my D.Eng and it's been great. (I defend in the spring) Can't recommend it enough if you have a supportive employer!

Having applied more traditional denoising/convolution algorithms to my own amateur astronomy images - this is amazing work!

Very excited to actually be able to attend this in person for the first time!

Guest lecturing tonight at JHU SAIS as part of the Space Force program!

APL’s BAS/CS framework is helping secure critical infrastructure by standardizing alerts across cybersecurity systems and vendors. The system is already in use by military operators. https://jhuapl.link/f47

The real space war is being fought in cyberspace

Most of the time I write about foreign policy. Sometimes I write about Washington, DC and the relentless progressional climb to nowhere. open.substack.com/pub/rachelri...

NASA’s IMAP mission lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 at 7:30 a.m. EDT. Led by Princeton and operated by APL, IMAP will explore the heliosphere and provide critical data for space weather forecasting, which will help protect spacecraft, satellites and human explorers. https://jhuapl.link/d11

Security researchers located 37 separate “easy to exploit” vulnerabilities in #NASA’s core Flight System, which would have enabled them to hack into satellites. It’s time for the #space industry to up its #cybersecurity game. spectrum.ieee.org/satellite-ha...

ARCHIVE UP of this year's Bike MS fundraising stream, featuring @vinnycaravella.bsky.social, a fake plane crash, and... actually DOING things in Star Citizen??! Donations still open at blinkingguy.com! www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3AV...

Pythagorean Triple Square Day, as one man affectionately calls 9/16/25, is a day like no other this century.

CONTACT (backyard radio telescope part II)

If you haven't already, I'd love it if you checked out Dual Boot Diaries, a new podcast I started with my pal @adampatrickmurray.bsky.social. It's about us learning to use Linux instead of Windows:

When people say "We used to drink raw milk from our own cow and it was fine," That's... usually not the case! In families w their own cow, the mom usually boiled it before using. We just forgot bc that's a boring chore that mom did. And who pays attention to that? youtu.be/vKDPast9WFk

Receiving a lot of questions about my S-band station I use for #Artemis monitoring. I'll describe the system and at the end will be a link to where I posted some helpful information about the system. I can't personally answer everyone but this thread should help. 🧵⬇️

The first full episode of Dual Boot Diaries is up now. We talk about how our installs went, dip a bit into dual booting, and share our first thoughts about our new OSes of choice:

My daughter was up early the other day so I took her out to see a lovely view of Venus and Jupiter in the predawn sky.

I can’t believe Windows 95 is 30 years old. For me, it marks the beginning of the modern computer age and the dawn of the real Internet. We talked about it on this week’s Tech Pod!

So much nostalgia here. I was in high school when Windows 95 came out.

I've started a new podcast! I'm doing a limited-run series with @adampatrickmurray.bsky.social about switching from Windows to Linux called Dual Boot Diaries. You can find it on Apple Music, Spotify, Pocketcasts, and anywhere podcasts are found, but also on YouTube as a video...

In the Magazine: Students learning how things DON'T work. With his class exploring historical catastrophes like Chernobyl and Apollo 13, Prof Jim Bellingham is teaching future engineers to lead through crises. engineering.jhu.edu/magazine/inq...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins APL have shown that a quantum algorithm can speed up a computationally intensive information analysis task that traditional algorithms struggle to perform. jhuapl.link/06t

APL’s Satellite Communications Facility, built in 1961 for the Transit navigation system, remains critical to deep space missions. The SCF recently supported Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1, receiving data during cruise and lunar surface ops. jhuapl.link/978

🌟 The August 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the equatorial regions. Feel free to share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭 #stargazing

Gundam Wing’s Rhythm Emotion was completely reanimated for its 30th anniversary and it was sick. No notes

And my (probably not well calibrated) backyard weather station says 2.97 in of rain, so far.

Got some water in my basement from this one, first time in a few years. Our backyard is on a slope towards the house and the backyard drainage can only handle so much.

Flash Flood Emergency and PDS for southeastern Montgomery County, MD (just north of DC).

Neat downdraft on this one. But I can only agree about the tropical airmass.

Watching a nice little storm develop to my northwest (near Poolesville, MD)!

A very atmospheric sunset for the DC area following this evening's storms. 🌇

Reason number 837474 I’m glad I moved off Windows.

Yes! The light after today's storms was really something! 🌇

Since ranking top games of the 21st century is the latest fad, here's mine. With honorable mentions that I cut to make the top 10.

HOTDOG STAND

They're back! I loved Bombshell.

Some fun news to interleave in your TLs - the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program is an open sandbox for the astronomy community to collaborate on confirming and characterizing planets. It's totally voluntary, but apparently, if you build it, they will come! www.ipac.caltech.edu/news/exoplan...

I’ve added two more, inspired by some responses.

An article that I was interviewed for is on the front page of CNN! Exciting stuff. I hope that you find the article informative and helpful in your forecasting. 🌎

Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺

The Presidents Budget Request for NASA is out. It’s a bloodbath Canceled are DAVINCI, VERITAS, Juno, OSIRIS-APEX, US participation in ExoMars and EnVision… Huge cut to R&A. No funding to begin development of the Uranus Orbiter. If you’ve ever cared about NASA, time to contact congress.

On this week's What's Next?, I talk about The Farmer Was Replaced, a game that has taught me how to write Python scripts from scratch in the guise of managing a small farm. Highly recommended! next.content.town/p/learning-p...

We're currently in a bit of a Wild West of weather communication. And the correct response to it remains somewhat elusive. My thoughts on how out of control it's gotten, the Ryan Hall Y'all's of the world, and the SPC.

Makes my blood boil www.space.com/space-explor...