Hello friends!

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I didn’t quite get this one out in time for January, for reasons that will become clear by the end of this newsletter. But that only means that there is a lot of space and sci fi news to get to, so buckle up!

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Spaaaaaaaace News!

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) landed their “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon” (SLIM) on target on January 19, but… it was a little bumpy. It hit the lunar surface on its side, bending its solar panels out of position and forcing the lander to shut down to conserve battery power. Fortunately, after a week of being offline, a shift in lighting conditions allowed the lander to power up again. Before it landed, it deployed two small lunar rovers, which were able to grab pictures of the lander in its undignified position:

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Further out in our solar system, the Mars-based Ingenuity helicopter also had a bad landing. It damaged one of its rotors and will not fly again. But it’s done an amazing job. It was only supposed to work for a month and perform five flights, and it ended up flying 72 missions over three years! The Perseverance rover took one final picture of its faithful companion. Rest easy, Ingenuity.

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Speaking of Mars, a YouTube channel called ElderFox Documentaries has released an amazing collection of Mars images from NASA, upscaled to 4K resolution. If you have a 4K monitor or television, fire this up and enjoy the experience of feeling like you’re visiting another world.

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And finally, NASA opened up its sample return bay from its successful mission to the asteroid Bennu. Most of us probably think of asteroids as being solid rocks, like in Star Wars, but the truth is that most of them (at least the smaller ones) are more like piles of rubble, loosely held together by gravity. These gravel piles are 4.5 billion years old—as old as the solar system and the Earth itself—and early analysis of the rocks show them to be made of up to five percent carbon. This may give us clues about how life itself evolved, since we are all made up primarily of carbon ourselves.

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Sci-Fi News

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2024 is shaping up to be a great year for science fiction TV shows and movies. Next month we can look forward to the adaptation of Liu Cixin’s epic The Three Body Problem series on Netflix, as well as the conclusion to Denis Villeneuve’s two-part Dune movie. In April, I’ll be looking forward to the adaptation of the Fallout series of video games on Prime Video.

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In the mean time, I’m deeply hooked watching Station Eleven, a miniseries on HBO (or whatever HBO is calling itself these days) from 2021, based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel. The plot of the novel and the show revolves around a flu pandemic that kills off most of humanity. It follows characters before, during, and after the event, including many scenes from twenty years afterwards.

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I have to say, watching Station Eleven post-COVID is eerie and it definitely hits close to home in a lot of places. I wouldn’t normally watch something like this for exactly those reasons, but the acting is amazing. I’m a big fan of Mackenzie Davis from Halt and Catch Fire, and she puts on an acting clinic in this series. Definitely worth a watch.

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Personal News

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Okay, so this is the part where I explain the thing I teased you about in the beginning of this newsletter. A couple of weeks ago, I was laid off from my job of the last ten years, working for Activision, as a result of redundancies from the recent Microsoft buyout. Fortunately, I was given a decent severance package, so I don’t have to panic right away about finding a new job. But it definitely came as a shock, at least at first. Now that I’ve had a chance to process it, I’m treating it like an unexpected gift—a chance to take a breather from my very busy and exhausting work schedule, and focus on some of the things that I’ve always wanted to do but never had the time or energy to attempt. And you’d better believe I’ll be telling you about these projects in future newsletters! So stay tuned!

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Jeremy

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