But first,  Odysseus , with difficulty, but safely, landed 186 miles from the South Pole of the Moon.  The first American touchdown in more than 50 years, and by a private company from Houston, Intuitive Machines, with  $118 million of NASA money .  While Odie is vertical ( 14 feet tall ), and sent one signal back to Earth, it was weak.  However, the company later did say that data was streaming in.  The intrigue is that this region might well hold frozen water, which can be split into oxygen and hydrogen, serving as a space station for a future Mars project, or mined for Helium-3. Another U.S. firm, Astrobotic Technology, gave a shot last week, but the lander crashed back to Earth.  NASA is trying to kick-start a lunar economy, this being a $200 million gift to the company.  Well, not quite what was intended, but one spinoff so far is that the gold fabric protecting parts of Odie from extreme cold being marketed as  Omni-Heat Infinity  by Columbia Sportswear for winter wear. Previousl

Sure, Armstrong's walk on the Moon was remarkable.  Our space exploits helped bankrupt the Soviet Union, leading to the end of the Cold War.  Yes, the James Webb Space Telescope is doing wonders.   However, maybe the most impressive NASA space project has to be those two Voyagers hurtling into interstellar space.  You can keep track of their status  here .  Voyager 1 is 14.8 billion miles and Voyager II is 12.4 billion miles away from Planet Earth.  They are moving along at 38,027 miles/hour (I) and 34,391 MPH (II).  It has been more than 45 years since they were launched.  Light would take more than 22 hours to reach Voyager I.  Every day they move away by another three to four light-seconds.   See Voyager I's path . Tim Folger has an excellent article in the July 2022 issue of  Scientific American , entitled  Record-Breaking Voyager Spacecraft Begin to Power Down .  I'd recommend you read it, but the story is so extraordinary that I feel compelled to summarize the essence