The Mars Cargo Transfer Vehicle from NASA's DRA 5.0, using 3x111 kN nuclear engines with 900s Isp, in-line LH2 drop tanks and a payload held in a biconic aeroshell. #space #art by SpacePozzolo. www.deviantart.com/spacepozzolo...

The orbital eccentricity of Uranian moons Ariel and Miranda would have generated enough tidal heating to grant them immense oceans up till ~100 million years ago. Ariel's ocean was 170 km deep, while Miranda would have been 53% liquid water by volume! www.psi.edu/blog/evidenc...

Cutting into reflective metals with lasers is doubly difficult: -Much higher intensity needed to get through, up to 20x with silver -Compounding with the risk of intense light travelling back up your optics and destroying them. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

In 1991, the US started building the Superconducting Super Collider. With a circumference of 87 km and a collision energy of 40 TeV, it would be 3x larger and more powerful than the LHC at CERN. After tunelling 22.5 km and spending $2 billion, it was cancelled.

🔵 In 2025, the NASA/ESA/CSA #Webb Space Telescope found a new moon orbiting Uranus! Called S/2025 U1, it joined the 28 other known moons around the ice giant. Webb’s infrared view also revealed the planet’s rings and atmospheric details in stunning clarity 🧪🔭 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... @stsci.edu

Stylised and far-fetched animation of an orbital ring around the Earth. Such structures, if we ever build them, will in reality be invisible from such a distance. #SciArt #blender #spaceart

Self-steering mass beams that can be focused on spots of ~100m across 1000 AU: sacramentol5society.nss.org/wp-content/u... These would be composed of 1 micron spinning 'smart particles' that reflect or absorb external laser pulses to counter dispersion, enabling easy interstellar propulsion.

A delicate 1000m wide solar-electric spaceship, held together by cables. Most of its bulk is thin-film photovoltaic panels feeding a pair of swivelling thrusters, with propellant tanks and payload clustered nearby. #space #art by Orbital Illustration. www.artstation.com/artwork/PmV6do

Bullseye is an upcoming General Atomic cruise missile, a new 5th gen type of fully autonomous stealth missile that finds its own targets after tracing its own sea-skimming/low-flying path without GPS. It's based on the Israeli 'Ice Breaker' and 50% of it will be made in the US.

Renault's Filante Record 2025 travelled 1008 km on a single charge of 87 kWh, at an average speed of 102 km/h: www.renault.lu/gamme-concep... It relied on low weight (1000 kg of which 600kg is battery), ultra-low rolling resistance tires and reduced drag with just 1.19x1.71m frontal area.

A straightforward explanation of how helicopters take their 14,000 RPM turbines and use then to power both the main rotor at 256 RPM and a 1400 RPM tail rotor across 95-120° direction changes: youtu.be/iG0WC2ewM4I

Tolkien station, a Mercury base constructed on the planet North Pole in a permanently shadowed crater of the same name. It's resupplied by SpaceX Starships upgraded to methane-nuclear propulsion. #space #art by QuintessenceReality2. www.deviantart.com/quintessence...

Nanochannel arrays of 30 billion tubes per cm^2, each as little as 33 nm, can be drawn from glass: www.researchgate.net/publication/... It can also be used to create massively parallel optical fibers, and can be used for developing semiconductor masks or analyzing liquids via chromatography.

Proposal to deploy and test a 3.7 m diameter Moving Belt Radiator from a Space Shuttle with gallium fluid heat exchanger, 58 kg total mass: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citation... MBRs could have 5x the performance of regular heatpipes and be very compact once the flexible belt is folded up.

From "The Resources of the Solar System by Dr. R.C. Parkinson, a design using gas-core nuclear rockets to ship cargo across a solar-system wide economy sustained on resources from Mars to Callisto... #space #art by William Black www.deviantart.com/william-blac... www.deviantart.com/william-blac...

Breaking the space-bandwidth product bottleneck on conventional microscopes with RUSH: real-time, ultra-large-scale, high-resolution imaging. www.nature.com/articles/s41... A flat-curved-flat imaging strategy grants 1.2um resolution at cm-scale FoV for taking bio videos at 5.1 GPix/s.

I realized that the minimum-energy crewed Mars mission post is the denouement of the crewed flyby planning story I've dug into these past 30 yrs. If I were to plug it into a new edition of my HUMANS TO MARS book, it would conclude what is in the 2001 edition chapter 4. ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20...

The Krafla Magma Testbed project in Iceland is starting its KMT-II drilling mission this year. It aims to touch actual magma at -2100m, exploring the 900°C environment and testing 'magma geothermal energy' in the one place we can today: kmt.is/about/

A cubic millimeter of mouse brain with 75,000 neurons, vizualized by Quorumetrix Studio: youtu.be/blaS5fBJdsE Watching the way the signals propagate through the layers, with pyramidal cells integrating and processing 11,061 inputs at a time is mindbending.

6 wheels. 8m long, 2.7 tons, driven by 3500 horsepower from a 44.5 litre V12. It had wings, a drag coefficient of 0.18 and a target speed of 750 km/h... in 1939. The Mercedes Benz T80 was built but never made its attemp due to the outbreak of WWII. www.mercedes-benz.com/en/art-and-c...

"Injection Burn": an interstellar probe makes a low pass over a red dwarf star to enter its orbit. I like the huge magnetic nozzle it uses! #space #art by TerranAbassador www.deviantart.com/terranabassa...

LockM doc on laser weapons emphasizes protecting non-stealthy aircraft like AWACs or B-52, defending light vehicles, 'perfect snipers' or endless airborne SEAD: web.archive.org/web/20170707... Also depictions of integration options including submarines, airships or aboard the B-2 bomber

Single-pixel imaging to push domains outside the capability of conventional cameras cheaply, including extreme frames per second, long or short wavelengths, or real-time tracking of invisible gas leaks and such: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Take the Boxer AFV, replace its wheels with tracks, give it a 1200 hp V10 engine and mount a 14 ton turret with an autoloaded 120mm L/44 cannon on top, and you get KMW's pseudo-light tank Boxer RCT120. It even has APS and a Spike ATGM launcher!

A great design for a space repair/construction robot. The arms are sleeved in flexible fabric and the 'payload tail' looks like it can be swapped out according to the mission. #space #art by Chen Liang www.artstation.com/artwork/LR9JP0

The deep valleys of Enceladus: flickr.com/photos/53460... This is ice at -200°C, hard as rock and exposed directly to vacuum.

'Monster shocks' when the magnetic field of a neutron star is crushed and swalled up by a black hole in a merger event: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... These simulations trace the last bright millisecond and the pulsar-like striped wind that can result from it.

The hypersonic aircraft that Hermeus hopes to develop: youtu.be/F5k_IG-_pvc -Halcyon: passenger travel -Darkhorse: military drone -Quarterhorse: high speed testbed

'Home in the Sky', a large rotating habitat made of many smaller modules. It's a neat way to set the initial radius for comfortable rotation, then expand it to full capacity by adding modules over time. #space #art by Mitchell Stuart. www.artstation.com/artwork/zPbAzD

Saturn's rings caught between Epimetheus and Titan: science.nasa.gov/photojournal... This was captured by Cassini around 1.8 million km from Titan and converted into a scene as would be seen by human eyes.

The Gamma Ray Rocket: vixra.org/pdf/1201.002... An exquisite concept for antiproton annihilation down a a relativistic high current pinch (at 10^13 kg/m^3 density!) allowing efficient energy extraction in a 'photon avalanche' that produces a laser beam, for pure C exhaust.

Anything but wings: www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/9/... Lift augmentation using lateral jets blowing on the tiny lift surfaces of a hypersonic aircraft, generating vortices that aid in low speed flight.

Early concepts for the space elevator from Wandering Earth 2. #space #art by MING 0 www.artstation.com/artwork/KedaRX

The XM360 program developed a 36% lighter 120mm tank gun with a UHS steel barrel and tantalum bore liner, plus muzzle brake and blast deflector to limit recoil for mounting aboard smaller vehicles: ndia.dtic.mil/wp-content/u... Testing involved firing MRM-KE rounds over 12.8km range!

10 MW Nuclear-Electric Propulsion for Mars missions: pubs.aip.org/aip/acp/arti... 5000s Isp hydrogen MPD thrusters are powered by Brayton turbine-generators heated by 1600K reactors. Heavy shielding, cold radiators and meek PMADs bring propulsion power density down to 123-140 W/kg.

10,000,000 solar mass Black Hole Stars could be the explanation for the Little Red Dots that JWST has been hunting down: astrobites.org/2025/12/29/b... They'd match the mass, luminosity and size of these objects considered too large and early in the Universe's history to be galaxies.

A defended Island 3 colony: 32km long, 5 km wide, housing 7 million people. #space #art by Glenn Clovis. www.artstation.com/artwork/28NNB

The engagement with my previous artwork has inspired me to share the upgraded version! #art #3d #blender #space #spaceship #noai

HPNY BSKY

This is how Australia is loading its 60 ton M1A1s destined for Ukraine aboard commercial shipping: youtu.be/H1zyg5Y71rA

FCLP with the Rafale M: youtu.be/9pV5_B2psPM Several landing attempts seems to have been done with only one afterburning nozzle, perhaps simulating an engine-out scenario?

Protecting Earth with DE-STAR phased array lasers: www.celestialmechanics.co.uk/planetarydef... The 10km wide DE-STAR4 produces a 100 GW beam that can be focused on a 30m wide spot at 1 AU, vaporizing asteroids or moving 10 tons to Mars in 30 days.

The Earth owes its formation to nearby supernovae: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Supernova shockwave -> cosmic ray nucleosynthesis -> radioactive isotopes (26Al) implanted in protosolar disk -> radioactive heating of planetesimals -> drying, volatile evaporation -> terrestrial planets!

If a helicopter descends through its own downwash, it can enter a Vortex Ring State that dramatically reduces lift. The solution is the Vuichard Maneuver that allows the helicopter to 'sidestep' its downwash and shift its rotor into undisturbed air. www.aopa.org/news-and-med...

J1407b is a suspected 'Super-Saturn' exoplanet orbiting V1400 Centauri, a young star just 20 million years old and still surrounded by vast dust rings from its formation. Just stunning #space #art by @justinasvitkus.bsky.social www.artstation.com/artwork/RKJaBO

A sort of spaceship around Jupiter. It seems to be carrying an atmospheric probe, but lots of details don't make sense. #space #art by Andy Piatti. www.artstation.com/artwork/rlk2W5

On this map, New Valley in Egypt gets 2695 kWh/m^2, while Erriff in Ireland gets 783 kWh/m^2. globalsolaratlas.info/map?c=20.838...

Wernher von Braun's Manned Mars Landing presentation from 1969, with gorgeous illustrations: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citation... It's an all-propulsive 270 day trip using nuclear rockets that swings by Venus that takes 725 tons of stages assembled in LEO, returning after 640 days.

NearStar Fusion's approach to impact fusion: a 'plasma railgun' driver that accelerates 50g projectiles up to 10 km/s, targeting deuterium gas held inside magnetized coils. A steel chamber protected by a molten salt waterfall captures the fusion energy as heat: youtu.be/wddgOmkixvo

Hey Martians, did I mention we now also have a video of epic Phobos passing over a Martian dust storm near Pavonis Mons? 🌪️🌋🥔 Video & full info: flic.kr/p/2rNN8wk Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY @esa.int Mars Express HRSC 300 MP Photo quoted below Easy zoom: easyzoom.com/image/674026