Astro Blog

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/science/space/marcia-rieke-james-webb-telescope.html By Mark A. Stein , The New York Times interview.  Excerpt: When the James Webb Space Telescope sent its first images to Earth, no one was more excited than Marcia J. Rieke, who oversaw the design and construction of its camera. ...We’ve gotten the first images and we’re super happy. The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding. ... When did the astronomy bug bite you? As a kid, I read astronomy and science fiction books from the public library and became enchanted with the idea of visiting other planets. When I was in junior high, I worked as a babysitter and saved money to buy myself a telescope. ... This was in the late 1960s. How was it to be a woman in your field back then? My entering class was one of the first ones where M.I.T. made a big push to get more women accepted. In my class, there were something like 73 women

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60596449 By Georgina Rannard , BBC News.  Excerpt: A discarded part of a rocket should have crashed into the Moon's far side by now, say scientists who were expecting the impact at 12:25 GMT.  The three-tonne rocket part had been tracked for a number of years, but its origin was contested. At first, astronomers thought it might have belonged to Elon Musk's SpaceX firm, and then said it was Chinese - something China denies. The effects of the impact on the Moon should have been minor. The rocket stage would have dug out a small crater and created a plume of dust. ...The European Space Agency estimates there are now  36,500 pieces of space junk larger than 10cm. No space programme or university formally tracks deep space junk. Monitoring space is expensive and the risks to humans from high-orbit debris are low.… See also NASA web page, Space Debris and Human Spacecraft .