Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 19, 2023 Geostrategy-Direct By Richard Fisher Ideology matters in the Chinese-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) Moon coalition, with China agreeing to take an astronaut to the Moon from member dictatorship Venezuela, and with the Sept. 1 admission of South Africa, a leftist pro-China state which in 2024 will see 30 […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 11, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 ■ You can see in the stars that the season is changing: We’ve reached the time of year when, just as the stars come out, Cassiopeia has climbed as high in the northeast as the Big Dipper has sunk in the northwest. Cas stands […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 4, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 ■ Jupiter’s four bright Galilean moons are roughly the size of our own Moon, but at 1,800 times the distance, they appear in a telescope as hardly more than pinpoints. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot should transit the planet’s central meridian tonight around 1 a.m. […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 29, 2023 Geostrategy-Direct By Richard Fisher On Aug. 23 India became the fourth nation to report successfully achieving the soft landing of an unmanned spacecraft on the Moon, following Russia (February 1966), the United States (June 1966) and China (December 2013). At about 8:30 Eastern time, Chandrayaan-3’s 1,726-kilogram Vikram Moon lander […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 27, 2023, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. MONDAY, AUGUST 28 ■ Different people have an easier or harder time seeing star colors, especially subtle ones. To me, the tints of bright stars stand out a little better in a sky that’s the deep blue of late twilight. For instance, the two brightest […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 23, 2023 COSMIC VIEW Today’s headline: ‘India is on the Moon’: Success following Russia’s crash landing puts pressure on China Is India’s space vehicle really on the moon and did live Americans really shuffle through lunar dust with their boots? Real journalists are obliged to independently verify information they publish. How […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 22, 2023 Geostrategy-Direct By Richard Fisher On Aug. 19, Russia’s Luna-25 unmanned Moon exploration vehicle crashed into the Moon and was destroyed, dashing what was to be the first element of the China-Russia International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), raising the stakes for China’s unmanned Moon probes to begin to populate the […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 21, 2023, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. MONDAY, AUGUST 21 ■ Different people have an easier or harder time seeing star colors, especially subtle ones. To me, the tints of bright stars stand out a little better in a sky that’s the deep blue of late twilight. For instance, the two brightest […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 15, 2023 Excerpts from weekly Sky&Telescope report. MONDAY, AUGUST 14 A winter preview: Step out before the first light of dawn this week, and the sky displays the same starry panorama it does after dusk around Christmas. Orion is striding up in the southeast, with Aldebaran and then the Pleiades high above it. […]
Special to CosmicTribune.com, August 8, 2023 Geostrategy-Direct By Richard Fisher The United States plans its manned return to the Moon, in 2025 or 2026, to be followed by China’s astronauts in 2029. One key to their respective abilities to build lunar facilities as the basis for dominating choice strategic locations on the Moon will be […]