A Road Trip with Commander Chris

Happy Trails! Send me a postcard!

Do the Clouds of Venus Really Host Life? June 3, 2025
On the surface (you're welcome for the joke), Venus is not even close to being hospitable to life. But that's not the end of the story.
Reusable Chinese Rocket Soft-Lands in the Ocean in a New Test June 3, 2025
Chinese rocket startup Space Epoch put on a show recently, with a demonstration test launch of their reusable Yanxinghe-1 rocket booster.
Did the Hubble Just Cancel the Milky Way-Andromeda Collision? June 2, 2025
The idea that the Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31) will collide emerged after decades of observations by a host of astronomers. The Hubble played a decisive role in the determination during the early 2000s. It was a triumph of precision astronomy and space telescopes. Now, the Hubble has played an equally important role in […]
Future Telescopes Could Detect Life Managing their Planet Atmospheres June 2, 2025
The challenge in the search for habitable worlds is clear. We need to be able to identify habitable worlds and distinguish between biotic and abiotic processes. Ideally, scientists would do this on entire populations of exoplanets rather than on a case-by-case basis. Exoplanets' natural thermostats might provide a way of doing this.
Missions to Mars with the Starship Could Only Take Three Months June 2, 2025
In a recent paper, UCSB physicist Jack Kingdon identified a trajectory for a rapid transit (90 days) to Mars using SpaceX's Starship. This proposal offers an alternative to mission architectures that rely on nuclear propulsion to reduce transit times.