News

As the U.S. government slashes its spending on basic science, one thing seems certain: there’s still plenty of money to go back to the moon. NASA’s Artemis II mission is only the tip of the space agency’s lunar-exploration spear: planning for a plethora of additional crewed and robotic follow-ups is… Read More

NASA is hitting the accelerator on space missions and moon trips in the hopes of achieving some big firsts — a permanent moon base and an interplanetary spacecraft harnessing nuclear propulsion. Read the full article at ScienceNews. Read More

Gazing at the moon, you may see a face or a round of cheese, but some astronomers see the ideal spot for their next giant telescope. They’re already drafting blueprints and making proposals — some with cash from an interested NASA. One moonshot plan would build a giant radio dish… Read More

Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani, director of the Lunar Labs Initiative, chaired a three-day meeting in October focused on the future of multi-messenger astrophysics in the era of NASA Artemis and commercial space exploration. Organizers said that the 2023 Lunar Gravitational Wave Workshop was… Read More

Until recently, gravitational waves could have been a figment of Einstein’s imagination. Before they were detected, these ripples in spacetime existed only in the physicist’s general theory of relativity, as far as scientists knew. Now, researchers have not one but two ways to detect the waves. And they’re on the… Read More

Engineering major Adam Fortner has spent many nights camping outside his Kentucky home, staring up at the stars and dreaming about space. Law, history and society major Ethan Thorpe had similar notions throughout his childhood, scouring astronomy websites and imagining life as an astrophysicist. Read the full article at… Read More

Karan Jani, research assistant professor of physics and astronomy, co-chaired the first international workshop focused on gravitational wave detection on the moon. The workshop builds on Jani’s recent studies that make the case for building a crewed, lunar-based observatory.  Read the full article at Vanderbilt News. Read More

A formidable pitch sounds like sci-fi, but NASA may just approve it. Read the full article at Inverse. Read More

Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani has led a series of studies that make the first case for a gravitational wave infrastructure on the surface of the moon. Read the full article at SciTech. Read More

Observatories on Earth almost have to squint to see what’s out there. Even in the most remote areas of the planet, light pollution, seismic noise and other interruptions can get in the way. Read the full article at Syfy. Read More