Tag: Earth

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Mars at Opposition: the Red Planet Comes Closer

Mars has been part of my story for a long time. Back in 2012, I told you about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, then about the landing of Curiosity. Since then, I have seen the Red Planet much closer: the Sama Airship has set down there more than once, and I still find red dust in places I would rather not mention. Here is a souvenir from one of those stops.

Max Von Sama and the Sama Airship on Mars

This month, you don’t need an airship to see it. On January 16, 2025, Mars reaches opposition: the Earth passes between the Sun and Mars, so the planet rises at sunset, stays up all night and shines at its brightest. Oppositions come back roughly every 26 months. A few days earlier, on January 12, Mars is also at its closest to Earth for this cycle, about 96 million kilometers away.

This is not one of the great oppositions, when Mars is near its closest point to the Sun and looks huge in a telescope. The next ones come in 2033 and 2035. But it is still a fine sight: a steady orange point of light in the constellation Gemini, not far from Castor and Pollux. With a small telescope and a calm night, you may even catch a polar cap.

Mars seen by the Hubble Space Telescope near opposition, July 2018 (NASA, ESA, STScI)

MetaSama likes to remind me that, between a good opposition and a great one, the difference is only a few million kilometers. For me, it is a few days of travel. For you, it is just a matter of looking up.

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Los Angeles Wildfires: Destruction Captured from Space

Los Angeles Wildfires: Destruction Captured from Space

In June 2012, I wrote about the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, so large that astronauts aboard the International Space Station could see its smoke. In January 2025, it happened again, this time at the edge of a city of millions.

On January 7, the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out in Los Angeles County, pushed by Santa Ana winds gusting up to 100 miles per hour after months without rain. From orbit, satellites followed the smoke as it drifted out over the Pacific. On the ground, entire neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Altadena were lost. When I wrote this post, at least 24 people had died and more than 12,000 buildings had been destroyed.

Smoke from the Palisades and Eaton fires, January 10, 2025. NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.

One detail stayed with me. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena had to be evacuated, and the Deep Space Network operations center was left empty for the first time since 1963. The team kept in touch with the spacecraft from elsewhere, and no data was lost. Far away, the probes went on talking, unaware that the people listening to them had to leave their homes.

From up here, Earth is a small, bright point in a great deal of darkness. It looks calm. It isn’t always. My thoughts go to everyone who lost someone, or everything, in those fires.

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Why we should keep a vigilant eye on the Artic

It has been a month since I left the Earth. I already shared with you some of my new experiences up there but if I can see wonderful things, I also realize the changes on our planet due to the ice melting, will have consequences. But not only catastrophic ones it seems.

I just read an article on CNN by Bob Reiss, a former reporter at the Chicago Tribune, who just published “The Eskimo and the Oil Man“:

What happens in the Arctic as ice melts there could soon cheapen the cost of the gas you buy and products you purchase from Asia. It could help make the nation more energy independent. It could draw our leaders into a conflict over undersea territory. It is already challenging Washington to protect millions of square miles filled with some of the most magnificent wildlife on Earth, and native people whose culture and way of life is at risk as a squall line of development sweeps across the once inaccessible top of the planet.

So it could be great, but it could also go terribly wrong:

The Russian military has identified the Arctic as one of the likely places for conflict to erupt in the 21st century over resources. Even if actual combat never occurs, whoever controls the high north will wield enormous influence in the coming decades.

Reiss concludes saying:

Look to the Arctic. That’s where much of our common future is about to play out.

Needless to say everyone should keep a vigilant eye on the Artic…

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Colorado Springs fire can be seen from Space!

Reuters recently reported that authorities have discovered a second body in the debris of a burned-out home in Colorado Springs. This marks the second fatality from a fierce wildfire that ranks as the most destructive in Colorado’s history, having incinerated 347 homes. Police confirmed the devastating toll.

I may not have a foot on Earth, but I know that an estimated 18,500 acres have burned, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes. The image shows homes in Colorado Springs (AP Photo/The Denver Post, RJ Sangosti).

How do I know this, besides reading the news like everyone else on Earth? Well, I can actually see the Colorado Springs fire from space! The International Space Station captured incredible footage of wildfires blazing across the western U.S., including Colorado.

I can’t even begin to imagine the devastation on the ground…