Archive for the ‘Space Book Reviews’ Category
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September 15th, 2026
This is a new documentary film that had its world premiere at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival, held September 4-7.
The director of this film, Nanette Burstein, is well known for her other biopics, including one featuring Hillary Clinton.
This Carl Sagan film is roughly half about Sagan’s professional career and half about his personal life — as a child, as the husband of three different women (including a messy divorce), and dealing with the illness from which he died at a relatively young age.
Burstein relied a lot on the assistance of Sagan’s last wife, Ann Druyan, whom he met while they were working on the Voyager golden records and who assisted with the PBS series and accompanying book “Cosmos,” which made Sagan perhaps the best known scientist worldwide in the last half of the 20th century.
Druyan’s role in assisting Burstein almost made the film as much about her as about Sagan and she is interviewed at length in the biopic. Others interviewed include family members, space artist Jon Lomberg, and several of Sagan’s scientific colleagues.
Popularizer, philosopher, career shaping professor
My view is that Sagan is well known, and worthy of being the subject of a major film, because of his career as a scientist, as a popularizer of science, and as a philosopher about the interaction between science and popular/political culture. So devoting roughly half of the film to his personal life, with all the kinds of issues that affect normal people in their lives, is misplaced. Some important elements of Sagan’s professional life are overlooked as a result.
For example, there is no mention of Sagan’s early career — and later banishment — at Harvard, including his unique collaboration with the Russian astronomer I.S. Shklovskii in writing Intelligent Life in the Universe in the 1960s.
While Sagan was not quite the most creative planetary science researcher of his time — I would give that credit to Sagan’s younger (but never mentioned) collaborator Jim Pollack – his scientific research is underplayed in this movie, which emphasizes instead his important roles shaping NASA missions and science-related political issues like nuclear winter.
There is almost zero reference of Sagan’s role as a university professor in shaping the graduate-student careers of many who became leading planetary scientists in subsequent decades.
Image credit: NASA
Leading skeptic
Sagan’s later interest in the asteroid impact hazard, and debating Edward Teller on the matter, is omitted. His role as a leading skeptic is barely mentioned, except obliquely in reference to his penultimate major book, “The Demon-Haunted World”.
Sagan played other important roles, not treated in the movie, such as editor of the primary technical journal in planetary science, “Icarus”, and co-founder of the Planetary Society.
Nevertheless the treatment of Sagan explaining space to the public is well-done and moving and is accompanied by spectacular images.
Clark R. Chapman is a retired senior scientist for the Southwest Research Institute, Dept. of Space Studies, in Boulder, Colorado. Among numerous accolades, Chapman is recognized for establishing the scientific foundations of asteroid impact hazard assessment and planetary defense.
Posted in 
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
In classic wait-a-minute style, the European Space Agency (ESA)has released its Space Environment Report 2026
In brief, this chilling report points out that, indeed, Earth’s orbital environment is a finite resource.
Meanwhile, some of its orbits are getting crowded and increasingly churning with deadly, fast-moving pieces of defunct satellites and rockets that threaten our future in space.
Key takeaways
Some key takeaways — based on data collected until the end of 2025 — are:
- The number and scale of commercial satellite constellations continue to increase each year.
- Not enough satellites leave heavily congested orbits at the end of their lives, creating a growing collision risk.
- More than three intact satellites or rocket bodies are reentering the Earth’s atmosphere every day on average. At the same time, ten new payloads are launched daily.
- A new trend has constellations change altitude significantly year-on-year.
On-ground casualty risk
Image credit: ESA Space Environment Report 2026
For the first time, a new report metric has been added: on-ground casualty risk of reentries.
“Even though the numbers are low compared to everyday risks in life, the chance of a casualty increased in recent years due to increased traffic,” the report notes. That is, the casualty risk on the ground from fragments that survive atmospheric reentry is growing.
Image credit: ESA Space Environment Report 2026
This upward trend reflects the cumulative effect of more launches, more satellites and more reentries.
Runaway effect
The continued growth trends caused a worrying year-on-year development in the future projections. The expected number of objects and collisions in low-Earth orbit are skyrocketing in a runaway effect, despite the time horizon being shortened from 200 to 100 years.
The “ESA Space Environment Health Index” indicates that, in 2025, the long-term effect of our current activities in space over time got an order of magnitude worse in just one year.
Click on image to view yearly changes. Image credit: ESA Space Environment Report 2026
High price to pay
Active debris removal is required to stop the growth of the number of objects over time that is caused by space debris causing new debris on their own through collisions, known as the Kessler syndrome.
“Some indicators show that the interest in and adherence to space debris mitigation measures is on the rise,” the report points out, “but we need to be faster, more consistent and reliable. Without it, we are saddling future generations with a high price to pay for any activities in space.”
To access the full report – ESA Space Environment Report 2026 – go to:
https://www.sdo.esoc.esa.int/environment_report/Space_Environment_Report_I10R1_20260908.pdf
Wait-a-Minute!
Image credit: Barbara David
Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch Star Trek by Glen E. Swanson and Foreword by Margaret A. Weitekamp of the Air and Space Museum; 2025; 288 pages (Hardcover); $35.00
Put aside the issue of cranky sliding doors on the USS Enterprise. Level out those pointy Spock ears and discount your own troubling encounters with tribbles.
But live long and prosper by reading this book. Also, your timing is great: Star Trek was first launched on the NBC Television Network on Sept. 8, 1966 – 60 years ago!
Swanson, a former chief historian at the NASA Johnson Space Center, has detailed how NASA, the Smithsonian, and aerospace businesses helped shape, legitimize, and popularize the now-beloved television show Star Trek, even including looks at the merchandising of the TV show and its syndication.
This is a scholarly look at Star Trek’s helmsman, Gene Roddenberry, and the science fiction world he created that drew upon smart storylines, visual effects, as well as plausible science and technology.
“As a baby boomer, Star Trek was a big part of my childhood,” an inspirational adventure, Swanson explains. “But little has been published about how Star Trek itself was inspired.”
Within its solid eight chapters, the author notes the role of the RAND Corporation, the military and nationalism in Star Trek, as well as the roles the aerospace industry, NASA and the Smithsonian played, leading to the show’s “vindication through syndication.”
Spock ears in a box handmade by Leonard Nimoy.
Image credit: Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum
There is a wealth of well-researched facts and foundational observations offered in this book, replete with incredible endnotes and bibliography – assets that make this volume indispensible, not just for Star Trek fans, but those that deep dive into the meaning of space exploration.
Writes Swanson: “Is Star Trek an anomaly like the Apollo program? Both were products of the same decade. Apollo was the opening act to a period of time when our species could and did leave this world to venture out and explore another. Apollo was our first giant leap into space, and Star Trek was there to remind us not to get discouraged.”
So boldly go and get this terrific account of Star Trek’s beginnings and the evolving legacy it projects today.
For more information on this book, go to:
https://schifferbooks.com/products/inspired-enterprise
Also, you can test your Star Trek knowledge at this site, courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum’s Air and Space Quarterly at:
https://airandspace.si.edu/air-and-space-quarterly/issue-20/star-trek-museum-quiz
The Oscar- and Emmy-nominated documentarist Nanette Burstein working with co-screenwriter and editor Tal Ben-David, brings to life the story of Carl Sagan.
The new National Geographic documentary film, Carl Sagan: We Are Made Of Star Stuff, made its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival.
The 53rd Telluride Film Festival was held September 4 through September 7.
Sagan archive
Gaining access to Sagan’s archive, including audio recordings made at the end of his life, “Burstein draws together these accomplishments with events in Sagan’s personal life: a painful and highly public divorce, an enduring love affair, life-threatening health crises, professional rivalries,” reports the Telluride Film Festival’s program guide.
For a review of the documentary, go to:
Image credit: Telluride Film Festival
A Heart for Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Achieving the Impossible by Eiman Jahangir; Forefront Books; August 2026; 224 pages (Hardcover); $26.00.
In August of 2024, the author of this insightful and inspiring book flew aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket.
“People often assume that achieving a dream means following a straight line,” explains Jahangir. “My experience taught me the opposite. Dreams evolve. Doors close. New opportunities appear. The key is staying in motion long enough to recognize them.”
A Heart for Space is just that, a compassionate account of Jahangir’s dedication to travel spaceward.
On August 29, 2024, he became the first Iranian American man to travel to space and the first commercial physician astronaut. He is a professor of medicine and radiology in Nashville, Tennessee, where he serves as a leading cardiologist. Jahangir has authored more than fifty peer-reviewed publications and book chapters advancing the understanding of heart health.
This discerning and personal story is told in eight chapters, from Iran with love, why you need a flexible mindset to get ahead, to one moment can change everything and the author’s view from space. Jahangir notes the powerful impact of the “Overview Effect,” the psychological shift manifested in many space travelers when they view our home planet from space.
Image credit: Blue Origin/Eiman Jahangir
Vaulting to space via New Shepard, Jahangir recounts his crossing of the Karman Line, the internationally accepted border of space. “That four-year-old boy who started dreaming of space after setting foot in America was now looking down at the Earth from space,” he writes. The ten minute and eight second sojourn gave him clarity of purpose, enough rocket oomph and trajectory for Jahangir’s to write “8 steps to Chasing Your Dreams.”
Not only does the author motivate the reader to enjoy the ride of life. Within the book, there are appealing interviews he’s done with modern space pioneers, like current NASA administrator Jared Isaacman; Nicole Stott; Sian Proctor; Kellie Gerardi; Hayley Arceneaux; Eytan Stibbe; Chris Huie; and Drew Gaffney.
Jahangir has captured their candid reflections on risk, identity, leadership, and perseverance to shed light on what it takes to fulfill goals and ambitions, such as reaching orbit literally and figuratively.
For more information on this book, go to:
https://www.forefrontbooks.com/book/a-heart-for-space/
Also, visit his informative website at:
https://www.eimanjahangir.com/
Image credit: Eiman Jahangir
Taking LEO Off the Board: Russian Thinking About Anti-Satellite Warfare is authored by Aaron Stein, President of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).
“The Soviet Union and Russia have invested in anti-satellite weapons to ensure that their nuclear deterrent remains credible. For both the Soviet Union and Russia, the destruction of American satellites was (and is) viewed as part of the country’s broader nuclear war plan and part of the opening salvo in a nuclear conflict with the United States,” Stein writes.
Spurred by an influx of spending for the upcoming Golden Dome space-based interceptor architecture, Stein points out that “Russian planners are increasingly incentivized to further bypass traditional treaty norms and leverage co-orbital nuclear weapons to achieve a catastrophic mass-kill of low-earth orbit tracking networks and space-based defenses.”
Image credit: DIA
Stein explains that the future is certain to feature a more militarized space domain.
For Stein to “take LEO off the board,” means that Russia could leverage a nuclear weapon to mass kill commercial satellites, including US space-based missile defense.
For sure such a tactic would also harm Russian satellites.
“However, given the rapid expansion of targets, the redundancies the US is now building, and the decreasing cost of launch,” Stein observes, “Russian strategists are thinking about how to negate these advantages. The urgency is certain to continue, as the United States continues to explore and invest in space-based missile defense.”
To access the report – “Taking LEO Off the Board: Russian Thinking About Anti-Satellite Warfare” – at:
https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/web_stein-rsi-may-2026.pdf
Meet the Neighbors – Life on Mars and How to Find It by Steven A. Benner; Allen Lane, (an imprint of Penguin Books); July 2026; 416 pages (Hardcover); $40.99 (Amazon).
Talk about a “cold case” – nothing like dealing with life on Mars where the temperature can drop like a rock to roughly – 89°C at night. But that’s just one factor when thinking about is or isn’t there life on Mars today.
Twin NASA spacecraft Mars missions were launched in the 1970’s: a Viking 1 lander planted its legs on the terrain of Chryse Planitia on July 20, 1976, with the Viking 2 lander touching down months later at Utopia Planitia on September 3. Both asked a key question: Is there life on Mars?
Among their duties, the dual landers scooped up the first soil samples of Mars and deposited those precious collectibles into onboard, specialized equipment. To answer their query about life on the Red Planet, Viking scientists had tightly boxed up their cares and woes and sent that science gear to probe that issue.
Here’s the Red Planet rub. After interpreting all the Viking mission call backs: a majority consensus of scientists at the time was that Viking relayed a “no life on Mars” result.
However, is it possible that the two robots actually radioed back a very clear comeback: “Can you repeat the question?’’
Thought provoking chapters
Steven A. Benner is a chemist, synthetic biologist, paleogenetist, and astrobiologist – and author of this exemplary tale and head spinning volume.
You must read this book – a trite saying, but important to emphasize that point to space groupies, chemists, biologists, geologists, historians, philosophers, and scientific soothsayers.
There are those that might get bogged down in a chapter. No worries, Benner adds, skip to the next. Each chapter comes with a bullet point list of conclusions.
The book supplies witty and wonderful thought-provoking chapters, such as: “Our Place in the Cosmos,” “How ‘Yes Life’ Became ‘No Life’”; “Seeking Extant Martian Life Remained . . .Low Priority”; “The Motivational Logic of Exploration” to “The Origins of Life. A Solution”; “How Martian Life Might Survive” and the clarion chapter call “Astrobiologists of the World, Unite!”
In the past, missions to Mars might “follow the water.” They might assess “habitability.” They might even look for signs of ancient Martian life, says Brenner.
But now missions to seek extant life on Mars have been off the table. What’s going wrong here?
Image credit: Meet the Neighbors/Benner
Big questions
Importantly, this book also tells another story generated from Viking. It illustrates how actual scientists manage research that addresses “big questions.”
“For Viking, anomalous results that might have led to a back-and-forth discussion to correct mistakes in interpretations were rationalized away,” the author suggests. Benner provides examples of how fact and logic can prove less important than “culture” in a community of scientists.
Benner writes that the results of the Viking mission can all be explained by bacterial autotrophs that respire with stored oxygen on Mars (BARSOOMS). BARSOOM is the acronym for a Bacterial Autotrophthat Respires using Stored Oxygen.
“It is hard to not be enthusiastic about the results delivered by the Viking landers,” Benner writes. “Yes, with more money and more payload, more experiments could have been done. The conclusions might have been made more secure. But to repurpose a lyric from Meat Loaf, three out of three ain’t bad.”
Benner writes: “You might think therefore that the community would have changed its consensus opinion. You might think that the community would have had a collective Aha! moment. You might think that the search for extant life on Mars would be back on the table. You would be wrong,” he explains.
Propositions
Yes, science is hard, explains Benner, “especially for ape descendants.” Still, advocacy has a logic. “For extant Martian life, we can break that logic into propositions that we can examine individually,” the author suggests.
— Life arose on Mars
— Life survived on Mars
— We know how to identify any extant life that we will encounter on Mars
— We know where to access places on Mars where any extant life survives
From Benner there’s a call to action: “Astrobiologists of the world, unite! Do risky things. Seek to answer big questions. You have nothing to lose, and a world (Mars) to win.”
For more information on this landmark book, go to:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/477954/meet-the-neighbors-by-benner-steven-a/9780241808306
Image credit: NASA OIG
NASA Office of Inspector General (NASA OIG) reports that spaceflight is surging, but NASA’s primary launch sites are dated and approaching operating capacity.
This new OIG report assessed the infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center and Wallops Flight Facility, and the Agency’s ability to meet growing mission needs.
Read the report at:
Also, go to this OIG video at:
Book Review: Dinner with an Astronaut: Serving Space Stories: Past, Present and Future by Leroy Chiao with Victoria Bruce; Harper Collins/Hanover Square Press; June 2026; 256 pages (Hardcover); $32.99.
Leroy Chiao, one of the first Asian American astronauts in history, details his notable path into space. Chiao was selected by NASA as one of twenty-three members of the thirteenth U.S. astronaut group.
Divided into four parts – Hors D’Oeuvres, Appetizers, Main Course, and Dessert – the former astronaut provides food for thought via various questions, such as when did he first know he wanted to be an astronaut to his biggest disappointment from space traveling, along with his expectations concerning the future of human spaceflight.
Chiao flew space missions involving the U.S. Space Shuttle, Russia’s Soyuz, the International Space Station (ISS), and on spacewalks in both US and Russian spacesuits, and served as the commander of the ISS.
Sharing the wonders of space with those of us on Earth, Leroy details his astronaut training and otherworldly spaceflights.
Chiao and Bruce have written an inspiring, entertaining and witty account of what space exploration means and the perseverance it takes to depart the planet – and for Chiao that happened multiple times.
A great read from one of America’s most talented space explorers.
For more details on the book, along with a sample read and audio sample, go to:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/dinner-with-an-astronaut-leroy-chiao?variant=44270251147298
NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI) has released the 2026 Small Spacecraft Technology State-of-the-Art report.
This report provides an extensive overview and assessment of the state-of-the-art (SoA) for smallspacecraft technologies publicly available as of April 2026.
The report flags the fact that the pace of SmallSat technology advancement overall is rapidly accelerating.
“Recent developments in small satellite technologies reflect a broader shift from experimental, low-cost platforms toward highly capable, mission-flexible systems that can operate across increasingly demanding environments,” the report notes. “Advances in materials science, power systems, avionics, and communications are collectively enabling this transition.”
Major trend
One of the most critical enabling areas is energy storage and power management. A major trend in spacecraft technology is the push toward high-performance avionics capable of supporting autonomy, edge processing, and machine learning.
“In summary, small satellite technologies are undergoing a significant transformation driven by advances in materials, power systems, avionics, and communications, alongside evolving market demands,” the report explains. “These developments are enabling a new class of spacecraft that bridge the gap between traditional CubeSats and larger satellites, opening the door to more ambitious missions in Earth orbit and beyond.”
To access this highly readable, informative and reference-rich State-of-the-Art Small Spacecraft Technology report, go to:
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/soa-2026.pdf?emrc=d75388
