By way of Instapundit -- and special attention to min0taur! -- I bring you this report on an upcoming space mission for lightsails.

Forty years ago, man walked on the Moon for the first time. It may be a long time before we get back there again, but I hope not.

Charles Krauthammer doesn't really understand how we can choose not to go back there either.

Not the usual thing you expect to see from the National Weather Service, but apparently Louisville is receiving a shower of debris from the collision of two satellites earlier this week.

No report yet of cats and dogs sleeping together.

It's apparently Post A Link Day, as -- via Instapundit again -- I pass along a link that shsilver will appreciate. Here's an on-line debate about whether or not Pluto should be a planet. And Ceres. And maybe Vesta used to be a planet before something ran into it.

Via Instapundit, this article that points out that our solar system is a pretty rare bird.

Of course, I've suspected that for a while.

Now here's a walk I would have liked to go on. By way of Instapundit, here are some really nice photos from a recent spacewalk mission.

By way of Instapundit, a photo of the Earth and the Moon taken from Mars.

Hushabye, lullabye, love, one, two, three.
Stars twinkle down at the baby and me.
One is a blue star that shines all alone.
That's the star Mommy and Daddy call home.

Maybe not quite alone, I suppose.

We appear to have successfully taken a shot at our failed spy satellite. Exactly how well it worked, we'll see when the satellite comes down.

Via Instapundit, apparently Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space. He was, however, the first to survive the trip.

A friend pointed me to this footage of a failed Delta launch. It's very impressive.

And luckily, no one was injured.

Ok, it's very seldom that reading columnist Charles Krauthammer brings tears to my eyes, but he succeeded in doing so with the last four paragraphs of this column.

You might enjoy reading it.

Via Instapundit, the original Apollo moon film archive is being scanned and made available online for free right here.

Cool!

Well, at least we will have twelve planets and probably more soon if the current IAU proposal to define a planet (more or less) as a spherical body that orbits the sun is voted in. I think the definition is being a bit too inclusive. Something like Ceres or Pluto that is part of the orbiting rubble collection probably shouldn't be a planet.

According to this report the Marines are interested in developing a reusable spaceplane for delivering a strikeforce of troops anywhere in the world in a big hurry, getting them there in two hours or less, and then getting them out when the job is done.

Fortunately, this is not a link to the song. Instead, it presents a series of models that will give you an idea of how small the Earth is compared to other astronomical bodies.

In this Guardian article on dark matter, researchers at Cambridge University are quoted as discovering that dark matter comes in chunks at least 1000 light years across of at least 30 million times the mass of the Sun. (Or maybe 30,000 solar masses -- I may have misread the abbreviation.)

However, they also discovered that the Milky Way is the largest galaxy in the local group, not Andromeda. So, as it says above, we're number one!

Via Instapundit, the Stardust mission successfully landed the return capsule on Earth, carrying samples collected from the tail of Comet Wild 2. The previous Genesis mission had the return capsule crack open on landing, which limited the usefulness of the samples.

This Quicktime movie zooms in from here to the Galactic core with accompanying narration.

Yup, plural moons. The Hubble Space Telescope spotted two more moons orbiting Pluto in circular orbits.

It's getting weird out there in the cold spaces.

My friend, David Manship, pointed out this cool animated GIF that shows dust devils blowing around on the Martian surface as seen from the Spirit rover.

Cool!

Yes, the title of this entry won't mean much to you unless you're familiar with obscure Moebius Theater sketches. But given what Gerson named the planet he found, the folks who are pushing this project to search for extra-solar planets may be making a mistake when they let the discoverers name the planets they find...

Apparently, the U.S. Planetary Society has gotten together with the Russians and is planning to launch a test vehicle using solar sails. Cool!

Via Instapundit, this article says that two NASA scientists have found signs that indicate that life may exist on Mars today.

No, it's not very likely that this asteroid will hit the Earth on Friday, April 13th, 2029. In fact, the chances are currently estimated at 300-1 against.

But talk about your bad luck if it did hit.

Via Instapundit, I pass along this story about a newly-discovered asteroid that zipped past inside geosynchronous orbit this week. Fortunately, it was really small and probably would have disintegrated in the upper atmosphere had it hit us. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything we could have done about it if it wasn't small and was headed right for us.