Jonathan Amos

My last story as a staffer for the BBC. A puzzle that surrounds the end-of-life manoeuvres of the oldest UK satellite still up there - #Skynet1A. Who moved it, when and why? bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@AndrewParsonson Musk could see the writing on the wall. Few people in Europe could. bbc.co.uk/news/science-e…

This is why paywalls suck! You construct a horrendous clickbait headline and publish it on social media. Then, even the few people who don’t just read the headline can’t access the article, so the entire conversation degenerates into the worst possible version of the debate.

@AndrewParsonson The quote in the headline is, I presume (no FT sub either), the famous Musk quote when he sat on a launchers panel at a conference right in the early days. And it was longer - something like "I'm coming and you're all dead". But the FT headline reads like it's quote from Europe.

UK taxpayers spent £400m to rescue OneWeb from bankruptcy and yet today France is the country that extracts the defence and industrial value from this asset. A tale as old as time. europeanspaceflight.com/france-awards-… via @ESpaceflight

Truly profound insights into the way Planet Earth is working are just over the horizon. "Planetary Intelligence" is coming. will4planet.substack.com/p/planetary-in… Thank you @Will4Planet. We just need to make the right choices. Can we be trusted?

I'm saddened by the passing of Craig Venter, a brilliant scientist and visionary entrepreneur whose partnership with the NIH led to the mapping of the human genome—unlocking new insights about ourselves and our common humanity. I'll always be grateful for the chance to know him and learn from him. His legacy will endure with every new discovery built on his lifetime of research and innovation.

13 questions in 20 minutes and not a single one about Artemis II… at an event honoring the Artemis II astronauts. Speaking as a former White House Correspondent, I get how the game is played. But come on y’all. That’s just bad etiquette and deeply incurious. These are the first humans to travel to the moon in over 50 years, and nobody had a question worth asking them?

I'm reasonably convinced now that Iceberg A23a has completely collapsed. The USNIC is no longer tracking a berg of that name. But A23k (also not listed) does lumber on, albeit in a disheveled state. This view is from Thursday (9 April) NOAA-21 VIIRS. usicecenter.gov/Products/Antar…

Watch the Artemis II SLS launch from every conceivable angle. images-assets.nasa.gov/video/KSC-2026…

End days for Iceberg A23. The two largest remaining fragments - A and K - had major blowouts on or just after the 28th of March. The largest chunks are ~50 sq km. A23 calved from the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986. Quite the journey it's had over four decades.

The last two big fragments of the once mighty A23 iceberg. The US National Ice Center calls the bottom-left object A23k and the top-right, A23a. Its latest report (20/3/26) said both were about 140 sq km. Latitude is roughly 50 deg S.

bunch of legends right here.

Front cover reveal! Here is the cover of my second book, HOTOL & Skylon: The story of Britain's spaceplanes, that is being published by the British Interplanetary Society @BIS_spaceflight this year. Spanning more than 40 years, the story follows the engineers whose ideas 1/2

This is pretty cool. @SurreySat has been engaged to develop the spacecraft platform for the Lazuli space observatory, which is Eric and Wendy Schmidt's idea for a privately-built telescope with a primary mirror larger than Hubble's.

@ByJoshLewis Some of the ways these bergs melt and fracture can inform us about the ways ice shelves could also collapse when confronted by warmer waters and air. Already, we've seen ponding surface melt water leading to hydrofracture on Antarctic Peninsula shelves. e.g. Larsen B in 2002.

@JCDAmos Seems very odd for the researchers to compare this to Antarctica proper, which will not move around, let alone so far north into hotter waters

Not quite RIP, but maybe last breaths. The BBC's Mark Poynting and Erwan Rivault catalogue the life and times of Iceberg A23a: bbc.co.uk/news/resources…

It's hard to believe it was once so big. See Erwan's comparison map below. The US National Ice Center will soon stop cataloguing and tracking the old giant.

Every day now brings another blowout. This image from Nasa/Terra/Modis comes from yesterday (6 March). As Mark and Erwan point out: at 48 deg South, the iceberg is nearer the equator than London.

Iceberg A23a crosses the 49th Parallel South and suffers another big fragmentation event. Now only 170 sq km. Still bigger than many British cities but a far cry from the 4,000 sq km behemoth that broke free from Antarctica in 1986.

@Will4Planet @Rob_Coppinger @FT @Google One more to add to the list. Upper-atmospheric pollution from space debris re-entry. It’s an emerging issue that industry needs to grapple with some urgency.

Great to see @FT exploring the complexities of orbital data centres & our work w/ @Google on Suncatcher. Just a quick response here. Generally, space-based AI is a lofty goal, but it's a more sustainable long-term solution in comparison to terrestrial alternatives. Absolutely true that all the components take real Earth resources, but one does not need: 1) buildings, 2) land, 3) water cooling; & with simple 24/7 solar power, 4) large battery plants or nuclear/fossil power stations to get continuous power. 🌍 Most of the specific issues raised, we already know how to solve: - Cooling: this is the hardest bit, but we cool devices in space all the time with passive & active radiators. It drives mass but the calcs show it's altogether cheaper in space with launch <$200-300/kg, which we estimate is coming in just 2-3 years <-- hence starting now. - Space debris: agreed, we have to take care but we do know how to avoid this, mainly by flying in low, 'self-cleaning' orbits. - Radiation hardening: advanced computers perform very well for many years in orbit. We need to test TPUs, but unlikely to be a roadblock. - Servicing: one doesn't need it; we'll just accept a small failure rate. - Monitoring: much easier in space than terrestrially: neither launches or orbital objects can be hidden, unlike underground buildings. - Astronomy interference [my add]: we need to take care not to ruin observations from ground-based telescopes. Luckily we'll use dawn-dusk polar orbits, which reduces this significantly. In sum, lots of complex issues to tackle, but all look tractable. This is a Moonshot, but its an idea whose time has come... 🛰️🖥️💫

Iceberg A23a lost a 1/4 of its area on Sunday. Image left is from Saturday. Image right is today. Now just 315 sq km and surrounded by the spreading melange from Sunday's sudden collapse. Notice how quickly the ramparts corralling surface meltwater have reformed.