A lot of space organizations have big plans of their own for our sole natural satellite. China's space agency could landed its Chang'e-4 craft & its rover on the far side of the moon. The lander will explore the area near the south pole on the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth.

Lunar traffic will likely pick up with a planned lander/rover mission by India's space agency that could launch as soon as Jan. 30. A few weeks later, a SpaceX Falcon 9 is scheduled to send the first Israeli lunar lander on its way.

Google Lunar XPrize contestants, SpaceIL and at least three other finalists -- Berlin's PTScientists, India's Team Indus and Florida-based Moon Express -- are all aiming to land on the moon at some point in 2019.

Moon Express and a fifth XPrize finalist, Astrobotic, have also been chosen to work with NASA to send new science experiments to the surface of the moon. At a press conference in November, the space agency said the first commercial lunar payloads from the program could fly in 2019. They'll likely demonstrate technology needed to develop future lunar landers and missions.

China may be able to launch its Chang'e-5 mission by the end of the year. The follow-up to Chang'e-4 would collect samples from the surface and bring them back to Earth, marking the first time that's happened in decades.

Other spacecraft will get closer to space rocks in 2019. Both Japan's Hayabusa-2 and NASA's Osiris-Rex will spend part of the year making preparations to swipe samples of the asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, respectively. Hayabusa-2 is scheduled to collect its sample this year while Osiris-Rex will wait until 2020.

NASA's Juno spacecraft is scheduled to make seven more close passes by Jupiter in 2019.

Mars Insight probe will get to work drilling into the Martian surface to explore the planet's interior and listen for "Marsquakes."

Europe's Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS), which is meant to provide a better look at exoplanets around distant stars. It could launch as soon as November.

Rare glimpses of the far side:

These are the first pictures of Ultima Thule from the New Horizons probe way beyond the orbit of Pluto. I'll post more enhanced images of it if they become available (scroll down to near the bottom for the most recent pictures).

Well, that didn't last long. As I predicted last year, when the revival of the Roseanne TV was announced, it's been canceled. I praise ABC for doing a good job making sure the show didn't go too far & wasn't too bigoted. Unfortunately although they were able to control the show's content a bit, they had no control over the star's bigoted life... a devoted Trump supporter.

Roseanne in a tweet said former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett looked like the Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.

Hours later, ABC canceled Ms. Barr’s show. The sudden cancellation of a hit show with some of the highest ratings for a new series in years stunned an industry.

According to two Disney insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe company matters, there was more at stake than just a hit show. Disney has been widely praised in recent years as a leader in efforts to combat racial stereotypes through its movies and TV series.

Roseanne dismissed accusations that the comment was racist, defending it as just a joke. That's the problem with most racists. They don't even know they're racists. To even think up, & say a thing like that, thinking it was a funny joke makes them racist, but they don't know it. They say they were just "kidding around". To joke that a top adviser to Obama looks like they descended from a Muslim monkey, is extremely insulting & racist.


That's like Trump's "Locker Room" humor isn't really funny unless they're a filthy pig. But they don't know they're a pig.

Sirius in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog, blazes brightly in the southern sky. Sirius is only eight and a half light years away.

All the bright planets are visible in the sky, the inner planets in the evening and the outer planets in the morning. At 6:30 a.m. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are spread across the southern sky. Jupiter is the brightest of the trio of planets and is the furthest west. Mars, appearing red, and Saturn, appearing yellow, are in the south-southeast, appear similar in brightness and are separated by 11 degrees.

After sunset look low in the western sky for Venus and Mercury. Venus will be the brightest object in the sky and will be an easy object to spot. Mercury is not nearly as bright, but shines bright enough four degrees to the upper right of Venus.

Time to spot the Andromeda Galaxy is growing short as the galaxy sets earlier each night. First look for what resembles a large slender letter V, which is beginning to drop below the horizon. The second pair of stars from the horizon are the two stars needed to start looking for the galaxy. At 9 p.m. the galaxy is 15 degrees above the horizon in the northwest. These two stars are separated by about four degrees and, moving this same distance to the right of the two stars, will lead you to the galaxy.

You'll need to be in a very dark sky location in the country to see Andromeda. It may just appear as a faint small cloud, but should look more like a galaxy with binoculars or a small telescope. Andromeda is the closest galaxy to us, right next door to our own galaxy. It's on a collision course with us. In a few billion years, before our sun blows into a red giant, & burns up the earth, the gravity of Andromeda colliding with our own galaxy will have upset the orbits of stars, planets, & asteroids probably rendering the earth uninhabitable.