One of the delights of living in this part of the world is the Karoo night skies. Enjoy them at their best by visiting the Leeuwenboschfontein Observatory and you can find details of where it is and when the observatory is open to the public on https://www.leeuwenboschfontein.co.za/pages/lbf-astronomical-observatory/

Tourists have been getting in the way of a Mars simulation project. Why would they do that?

The Sky Guide Africa South 2022 is now available at bookshops. Published by Struik Nature it is a terrific little book for anyone wishing to know what's up.

It's conference season, but many of the usual conference goers are staying at home, and it's not just because of covid. Sending things into the atmosphere is bad.

The European and Japanese space agencies have sent craft Bepicolombo to investigate Mercury, and after 3 years it's arrived. Kechil describes something of this interesting mission. Also, fun in space! Star Trek's Captain Kirk has finally actually gone into space, plus the Russians are making a film aboard the International Space Station.

NASA is to soon launch a new mission called Lucy to examine the Trojan asteroids which circle around Jupiter. It's a 12-year mission, and will find out about the formation of the outer planets, amongst other things we don't know about yet.

Dr Sudanshu Barway, formerly of the South African Astronomical Observatory and now at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, talks about an extraordinary observation of 3 merging galaxies each with supermassive black holes. These will eventually collide, but thankfully not for a very long time.

A new gravitational wave detector has observed a couple of wobbles. Is this some new exotic phenomenon in deep space or is it something going on in the instrument? We don't know. Even if we could discount discrepancies inside the detector we still wouldn't know for sure! Mysteries abound.

What is SpaceX up to now? Well at this moment a crew of 4 is hurtling around planet Earth to raise money for a children's hospital, among other things. And they are all wearing SpaceX spacesuits. I want one!

Following our series of controversial topics in space, Kechil now faces extra-terrestrial mining. Coming soon at an asteroid near you!

Advertising in space! Continuing with the theme of controversial projects in space, Kechil interviews Dr Francois Malan about one particular project. Don't worry, you aren't going to be looking up into the night skies above Cape Town and seeing flashing lights.