Ahoy, Space Station Wagoners! Sorry for the dearth of updates, life out here in space has been fast and frictionless. I thought I’d share with you a recent discovery about the fringes of our star system; the discovery of a ring system around the dwarf planet Haumea!

artist’s depiction of Haumea and its two (known) moons; Hi’iaka and Namaka. Note the big red splotch-suspected to be the result of some sort of impact (image by Jose Antonio Penas)

You may remember Haumea (which is named after the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth, and as far as I can tell is pronounced “How-may-uh”) as one of the Trans-Neptunian objects discovered in the 2000s that led to much debate and hand-wringing by astronomers about what characteristics constitute a planet. When the Kuiper Belt dust had settled, the dwarf planet category had been created to classify objects like Haumea, Eris, Makemake, and Pluto. Kicking Pluto out of the big-boy planets club has led to much complaining by the uninformed. Who knows what other weird discoveries are waiting to be made at the ragged, icy edge of our solar system (hopefully a derelict starship with a working interstellar drive)? More details of the discovery can be found here at Space.com.

The Kuiper Belt (artist unknown)

Speaking of rings, I’d like to announce that your Space Station Wagon Driver will soon be forming half of a binary star system…I’m getting hitched!!!! It’s been an amazing five year mission since we met, and I feel so cosmically lucky to have found this companion for my universal voyage ❤

When you meet someone willing to put a starfish on their face with you in public, never let them go