Galaxy Explorer

Author: kevin

  • Close Calls in Orbit Highlight the Growing Threat of Space Debris

    In December 2025, a Chinese Kinetica -1  payload passed within roughly 200 meters of SpaceX’s Starlink-6079 satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO), narrowly avoiding a collision at orbital speeds 17k+ mph. SpaceX noted that a lack of shared trajectory data and cross-operator coordination contributed to the risk, underscoring the urgent need for better space-traffic management as orbital congestion grows.

    Just weeks earlier, a suspected impact from tiny orbital debris struck the Shenzhou-20 return capsule, causing cracks in its window and delaying the planned November return of three Chinese taikonauts from the Tiangong space station. The crew ultimately returned safely aboard a different spacecraft, but the incident highlighted how even millimeter-scale fragments — too small to track — can threaten human spaceflight and capsule integrity.

    These near-accidents are more than isolated scares; they echo the warning of Kessler syndrome, in which collisions generate cascading debris that triggers further impacts, potentially rendering large regions of low Earth orbit unusable for decades. Such an outcome would jeopardize weather forecasting, communications, Earth observation, scientific research, and future human spaceflight.

    Crucially, this is not only an engineering challenge but a policy failure. Space is a shared global commons, yet traffic coordination, debris mitigation, and accountability remain largely voluntary and fragmented. To safeguard access to LEO, the international community must move toward binding space-traffic management frameworks, mandatory data sharing, enforceable end-of-life disposal rules, and sustained investment in debris-removal technologies.

    Without collective action and responsible governance, Earth’s orbit risks becoming a graveyard of our own making. With cooperation, transparency, and forward-looking policy, however, we can preserve space as a sustainable environment for exploration, science, and generations to come.

  • C/2025 N1 and C/2025 K1

    What are they, you would be wondering.

    If I tell you that C/2025 N1 is the designation of the third interstellar comet ever detected by humans, you would know it has the other widely known name as 3I/ATLAS. Its orbit is hyperbolic — meaning it’s moving too fast to be gravitationally bound to the Sun — and the trajectory traces back beyond the solar system. It passed inside the orbit of Mars on its path through the inner solar system, and its closest approach to Earth will be around December 19, 2025 — about 170 million miles away.

    Because it didn’t form around our Sun, its composition, structure, and behavior offer a window into how comets, and perhaps planetary systems, elsewhere in the galaxy evolve.

    The less-known C/2025 K1 is a more modest comet — a native of our own solar system’s distant Oort Cloud. Astronomers around the world watched in real time as it dramatically broke up into 3 or 4 pieces after its close approach to the Sun, between November 11 and 13, 2025, after surviving perihelion, its closet encounter with the sun.

    It’s hard not to feel a sense of cosmic humility when you think about it. In a single year — 2025 — we’ve witnessed two remarkable cosmic events: one object, voyaging across the galaxy, unbound by the Sun’s gravity; another, a quiet resident of our solar system finally succumbing to solar forces after a lonely journey from the Oort Cloud.

    It makes me wonder — out there, beyond our telescopes, how many more ices and rocks from distant stars are drifting, awaiting their turn to pay a visit to our neighborhood? ☄

  • Book Review: Alien Earths

    When I first peered through my backyard telescope at the faint smudge of the Andromeda Galaxy, I wasn’t just looking outward. Instead, I was searching inward, wondering whether somewhere in that sea of stars, another child might be gazing back, asking the same question: Are we alone? Lisa Kaltenegger’s Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting and the Search for Life Beyond Earth doesn’t just answer that question, it reframes it, transforming cosmic wonder into a rigorous, hopeful, and deeply human scientific quest.

    Kaltenegger, a leading astrophysicist and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, writes with the clarity of a teacher and the passion of a pioneer. She guides readers through the evolution of exoplanet science – from the first wobbles detected in distant stars to the atmospheric fingerprints of potentially habitable worlds. What makes Alien Earths exceptional is not just its scientific depth, but its narrative arc: it’s the story of how humanity learned to see planets we cannot visit, using light bent by gravity and spectra split by prisms, all to answer an ancient question with modern tools.

    Reading this book felt like a conversation with a mentor who understands both equations and emotions. Kaltenegger doesn’t shy away from uncertainty; she embraces it as the engine of discovery. When she describes how the James Webb Space Telescope might one day detect bio-signatures – oxygen, methane, or even industrial pollutants – in an exoplanet’s atmosphere, she doesn’t promise aliens. Instead, she offers something more profound: a methodology for hope grounded in evidence.

    This resonated deeply with my own journey. Like Kaltenegger, I began with awe – a six-year-old mesmerized by black holes at the Air and Space Museum – and gradually learned that wonder must be paired with work. In my high school astronomy club, I’ve tried to emulate her spirit: not just showing Saturn’s rings, but explaining how we know they’re there. Similarly, while analyzing public datasets on detecting Baryon Acoustic Oscillations at high redshift range, I’ve wrestled with noise, calibration, and false results —experiences Kaltenegger vividly recounts from the front lines of planet hunting. Her book validated that frustration is part of the process; every ambiguous signal is a step toward clarity.

    One of Alien Earths’ most compelling insights is its emphasis on Earth as a template – and a warning. Kaltenegger shows how studying Earth’s own atmospheric evolution helps us interpret alien skies, but also reminds us that habitability isn’t guaranteed. A planet in the “Goldilocks zone” may still be barren, just as Earth itself has teetered on the edge of catastrophe. This duality struck me as I stood on a golf course last spring, watching a thunderstorm roll in: even our stable-seeming world is dynamic, fragile, and rare. Kaltenegger’s vision isn’t just about finding Earth 2.0—it’s about understanding what makes Earth 1.0 worth protecting.

    Alien Earths is more than a science book; it’s a call to participate. Kaltenegger writes not as a distant authority, but as an explorer inviting us aboard. For students like me – tutoring in math, coding simulations, or organizing telescope nights – her message is empowering: the search for life beyond Earth belongs to all of us. It requires coders, educators, engineers, and dreamers.

    In the end, this book is a perfect reflection of why I keep looking up. The night sky is a laboratory, a testing ground, and a community. Lisa Kaltenegger’s Alien Earths is an essential guide to that cosmos, reminding us that the search for other worlds is, ultimately, a profound journey to understand our own. It is a compelling, hopeful, and brilliantly accessible work that will leave you gazing at the stars with a renewed sense of purpose and wonder.

  • Ripples of Space Time

    Ten years ago — September 14, 2015 — something remarkable happened: for the first time, humans detected gravitational waves. That moment didn’t just confirm a prediction made by Einstein more than a century earlier; it gave us a new sense. Astronomy could no longer rely on light alone. We gained ears for the cosmos.

    I was in second grade when it happened. I don’t remember the day itself — only a vague memory of my dad telling me the story months later, wide-eyed over the kitchen table. The idea stuck with me: people use telescopes to see the universe, and now, with instruments like LIGO, we can also listen to it. That small, almost-childlike astonishment grew into something deeper as I got older.

    Learning about gravitational waves opened doors to other discoveries and concepts that reshape how we think about the cosmos. I learned about gravitational radiation from merging black holes and neutron stars, and about the cosmic patterns encoded in Baryon Acoustic Oscillations that act like a ruler for the expanding universe. Each concept felt like learning a new sense or tool — a way to probe corners of reality that were previously hidden.

    The decade since that detection has been a lesson in humility and wonder. Astronomy isn’t just about better telescopes or bigger observatories; it’s about inventing entirely new languages for the universe to speak. We’ve moved from watching to listening, and with every new “note” we hear, the universe becomes a little richer, stranger, and more inviting.

    Looking back, I like to think that my childhood fascination—sparked by a late-night kitchen conversation—was the first small step in a lifelong curiosity. Ten years on, that curiosity is still here: excited by what we can see, and even more excited by what we can now hear.

  • Book Review: What If?

    Have you read What If?  by Randall Munroe, the creator of the famous xkcd comics?

    This book is unlike any traditional science text. Munroe takes the strangest, funniest, and sometimes downright ridiculous questions—like “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?”—and answers them with real science, math, and a healthy dose of humor. What makes it special is that you don’t need to be a professional physicist or mathematician to enjoy it. The explanations are written in an approachable way, with clever stick-figure illustrations that keep things light while still making you think.

    Whether you’re a nerd who is deeply serious about STEM, or someone who leans more toward the arts and humanities, What If?  is the kind of book that works for everyone. It’s perfect to pick up during a study break, when you’re bored, or when you just want to see how science can be used to explore the absurd. It’s entertaining, thought-provoking, and strangely inspiring—it reminds us that curiosity, no matter how odd the question, can lead to fascinating insights about the universe.

    I’ve had this book since 6th grade, and it’s still one of my favorites on the bookshelf. No matter how many times I read it, I always stumble upon something new—whether it’s a quirky detail in the illustrations, a fresh perspective in the explanations that I didn’t catch before, or even a “what if” question that I come up with myself, like what would it be like to play golf on Mars?

  • Dream of Strings: The Elegant Universe

    After finishing the last page of The Elegant Universe, I looked up at the night sky, and the stars seemed to shine brighter than usual. As a high school student deeply interested in physics and astronomy, Brian Greene’s book not only guided me through the world of modern physics but also inspired me to reflect on humanity’s place in the cosmos.

    What attracted me most about this book is the way it explains relativity, quantum mechanics, and string theory, turning difficult science into something both exciting and inspiring. String theory—an idea that once confused me—becomes an elegant ballet of mathematics through Greene’s writing. He uses vivid comparisons to illuminate nearly incomprehensible concepts: the universe as a grand symphony, with fundamental particles as musical notes vibrating on strings, and the extra dimensions as the hidden stage where the performance unfolds. These analogies allowed me to glimpse the profound depth of modern physics.

    This book did more than just expend my knowledge. It changed my perspective on overcoming toward challenges. Physicists have been striving to find the grand unified theory of physics for many decades, and faced many failures but do not give up. This spirt of seeking truth of the universe inspire me, a student that may give up when facing difficult situation , to reignite the courage of seeking new knowledge.

    Closing the book, I realized that I may never become a theoretical physicist, but it gave me something even more valuable: an unquenchable curiosity. Gazing at the night sky, the universe still feels full of mysteries, and as Greene describes, it is these unanswered questions that make scientific exploration so captivating. Perhaps the key to understanding the universe lies hidden right before our eyes…🌌🪐💫

  • Honorable Mention at VJAS

    The results of the 2025 Virginia Junior Academy of Science (VJAS) Symposium came out today. I placed 4th in my category and received an Honorable Mention. Honestly, I felt a bit let down when I first saw the results, as I was hoping for something more.


    But after letting the news sink in, I realized that this experience was about so much more than rankings. I had the chance to present my research, to stand alongside other passionate students, and to share my love for astronomy with people who actually understood and appreciated it. That’s something I’ll never forget.


    Science isn’t just about is not about winning every competition—it’s about curiosity, persistence, and the drive to keep asking questions even when the answers don’t come easily. And in that sense, I don’t feel like I lost anything. This Honorable Mention is still a recognition of hard work, and more importantly, a stepping stone toward what’s next. I’m walking away from VJAS motivated and inspired. The journey continues. 🚀✨

  • The 2025 VJAS Symposium

    Today, I attended the 2025 Virginia Junior Academy of Science (VJAS) Symposium, held at Ferrum College in Virginia. Getting there was already a journey—we drove more than four hours yesterday afternoon.

    At first, I was hesitant to submit my research to VJAS since I had already presented the main results at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) back in April. However, my science teacher encouraged me to share the updated findings from my project, and I’m glad I followed that advice.

    After leaving school early yesterday, I stayed overnight in one of the college dorms—quiet and empty since most students had gone home for the summer. This morning, I woke up early, had breakfast in the dining hall, and walked around the campus, soaking in the calm before heading to the classroom for the Physics & Astronomy session at 8:45 a.m.

    As expected, I was the only student presenting research in Astronomy. I felt more confident in delivering my presentation this time, but I couldn’t help feeling a little uneasy when no one asked detailed questions about my work. Still, I was proud to share my findings and represent my field among peers focused on a variety of scientific topics.

    After the session, we had lunch, which included an engaging presentation about student research on water quality monitoring. Then, we headed home, knowing that the competition results won’t be announced for another two weeks.

    Overall, the experience was more than just presenting research—it was a chance to step out of my comfort zone, reflect on my growth as a student-researcher, and appreciate the diverse interests and talents of other young scientists. It also gave me the opportunity to enjoy the scenic beauty of rural Virginia.

  • The 63th National JSHS Competition

    Being selected as one of only five students to represent the Virginia Region at the 63d National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) was both an honor and an incredible opportunity. With 245 finalists gathered from across the country, I knew I was stepping into something much bigger than myself.

    The event took place at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia—just a short drive from my home. At first, I thought about commuting each day, but I quickly realized that staying at the hotel would let me truly be part of the experience. Living among the other students, sharing meals, and engaging in late-night conversations about science, research, and even everyday life made the symposium unforgettable.

    Not everything went as planned. I had an asthma attack earlier in the day, and it affected my presentation more than I wanted. At the time, I felt disappointed. But as the days went on, I realized that JSHS wasn’t only about the performance on stage. It was about the chance to learn from brilliant peers, to hear the stories behind their projects, and to receive thoughtful feedback from judges who genuinely cared about encouraging young scientists.

    Looking back, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. Even though my presentation didn’t go perfectly, I walked away with something more valuable—lessons in resilience, inspiration from others, and the confidence that I belong in a community of curious and passionate minds.

  • The 2025 National Astronomy Competition

    Today was the test day for the 2025 National Astronomy Competition (NAC), the second round of the USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad. This marks the fourth time I’ve made it to the second round since 8th grade, and each year still feels like a milestone.

    In the past few years—ever since the COVID-19 pandemic—the first and second rounds were administered online and proctored via video. But the rules changed this year: the NAC exam in 2025 required an in-person proctor, certified to oversee the test. That meant I had to drive to the K.W. Barrett Branch Library in Alexandria, VA, where a librarian served as the official proctor. Sitting in a quiet corner of the library, the experience felt more formal and perhaps more serious than in previous years.

    As for the test itself, it was definitely a little tougher than I expected. Some of the problems really pushed me to think deeply and apply concepts in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Still, I gave it my best effort. Hopefully, I’ll perform better this year and take another step forward in this journey.