Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 14hMy favourite bit of reporting for this story was finding out ISS astronauts were growing little gardens in their quarters in secret—and only this summer have NASA explicitly permitted them to do this. Astronauts are, in many ways, just regular, hopeful humans. 🌱 25820
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 10/10/2026Wife and Wolf adventure appreciation post, just because. :) 070
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Scotland’s gorgeous, by the way. 4230
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 06/09/2026Quite enjoy getting this sort of alert. An asteroid has just been discovered before it’ll hit Earth! It’ll enter the atmosphere just northwest of Australia. (Don’t worry: it’s ~1m long, so it’ll just make a cool, brief fireball. We aren’t all about to die.) 34910
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 27/08/2026Seismologists! I have a couple of brief queries about how the massive earthquake identified by agencies like the USGS was, in fact, the colossal avalanche and landslide in Nepal. Is anyone free this morning to help me out via email? 2104
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 09/07/2026I’m genuinely astounded that, for some madcap reason, the International Astronomical Union decided to name an asteroid after yours truly! This is both absurd and heartwarming. (20635) Robinandrews hangs out between Mars and Jupiter—and at 24km across, it could kill everyone on Earth. ;) 127912
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 06/07/2026YO! I know a lot of asteroid scientists are at a conference right now, but is anyone available to talk for a story about how weird Torifune, the contact binary (!) that Hayabusa2# just flew by, is? LOOK AT THIS THING 4150
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 30/06/2026Happy Asteroid Day, to those who celebrate! Want to know how NASA, @esa.int and a global team of scientists and engineers are racing to save the world from killer asteroids? Then buy my book, HOW TO KILL AN ASTEROID—now available in paperback! ☄️ 💥 ☠️ wwnorton.com/books/how-to... 2369
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 03/06/2026NEW: Before the first stars were born, there were the Cosmic Dark Ages, a mysterious epoch that whispers in radio waves. And I got a sneaky look at a new plan to hear them—by unfurling an origami telescope in an impact crater on the Moon. 🤯 Me for NatGeo www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti... 0134
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 05/05/2026Fun bit of news: my @sciam.bsky.social Juno/Jupes feature, "A Planet Revealed", won the @aas.org 2026 Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism award! Thanks aplenty to my glorious editor @clarakm.bsky.social for shaping it, and always letting me write big space-y tales. :) 4253
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Yo! Question for my American or US-based seismologists. Can anyone explain this to mean? (I’ve been told that an active fault in specific regions are those that slipped during the Holocene, in the past ~11,000 years. So what’s this all about?) 111
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/04/2026random fish in the Pacific Ocean: wow what a nice day I’ve had, nothing could possibly ruin this wonderful day for me, not even something crazy like a metal creature falling from the heavens and bonking me on the head humanity: 0171
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 10/04/2026NEW: Should all go well, the crew of Artemis II will splashdown in the Pacific Ocean today. So: what’s next? In short: a moon base, built by astronauts and self-driving rovers, with robots scouting out benighted craters for hidden water. Me, for NatGeo: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti... 191
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 07/04/2026SCIENCE FICTION MADE REAL holy shit, #artemis 0150
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 07/04/2026In 1968, when Apollo 8 captured “Earthrise”, it made space exploration feel extraordinary. In 2026, “Earthset” has a different kind of power. If the Artemis program succeeds, this sort of image will feel *normal*. And that’s even more remarkable to me: space exploration becoming an everyday thing. 0130
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 03/03/2026NEW: Are we the descendants of alien microbes that hitched a ride on meteors shorn off Mars? Probs not…but scientists wondered if it’s possible for bacteria to survive asteroid strikes. So they fired artificial asteroids at them in a lab to find out. Me @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/s... 3144
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 02/03/2026S A N T I A G O + C A S A B L A N C A ~Chile 3 of 3~ Wine valleys. Seafood extraordinaire (and novel). Fancy stays and room service days. Cooking classes. Art. Ancient history. Scaling heights, seeing the sights. 030
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 01/03/2026A T A C A M A ~Chile 2 of 3~ Panchromatic horizons. Volcanoes. Flamingos. Vicuñas. Geysers. Magellan galaxies. Deep space through deep time. Dunes as waves on seas of sand. Unforgettable. 0172
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 28/02/2026P A T A G O N I A ~Chile 1 of 3~ Serrated mountains, glaciers, crystalline lakes, rainforests, condors, guanacos, and mischievous adventurers. Hyrule-via-Halo. Utterly wonderful. 0172
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 20/02/2026legitimately fascinating why the translation got so strange—apparently the same characters can be used for the word “parabola” as “to throw object in a line” haha. 200
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 01/11/2025And then there were two! Another one caught last night as well. Two lunar impact events in a row caught by @dfuji1.bsky.social 131
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 01/11/2025Hey there astronomy community! If anyone has any information or new footage of that impact flash on the Moon, please let me know—I’d love to see it/hear about it. 📸: @dfuji1.bsky.social 23414
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 07/10/2025BREAKING: ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (which is designed to look at Mars itself) turned to face interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS while it passed relatively close by, at a distance of 30m kilometres. And it caught it! Look at that adorable little puffy coma. More here: www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 061
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 01/10/2025Oh and hey, my book about stopping killer asteroids was the runner-up in the NASW Science in Society Journalism Awards in the Books category! Thanks for the nod, @sciencewriters.org. :) 181
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 24/09/2025NEW: Earlier this year, the volcanic island of Santorini was rocked by 28,000 quakes. It didn't end in an eruption—but it wasn't clear what was going on. Now, in part thanks to AI, we know: two volcanoes were communicating using magma! Me, for NatGeo. www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti... 192
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 19/09/2025Petition for this to be the actual mission patch. 051
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 02/08/2025One Year Ago Today. It was the best. 1110
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 21/07/2025Very cool update on 3I/ATLAS: the Vera Rubin Observatory (which hasn’t even got its survey going yet) has found images of the interstellar object going back to June 21, clearly showing a coma (that’s also expanding over time). There’s no doubt about it: it’s a comet. arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13409 1195
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 19/05/2025Delighted and humbled to find out I’m a finalist in two categories for this year’s @absw.bsky.social science journalism awards! I’m in absolutely phenomenal company—best of luck to all the finalists. :) 2222
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 09/04/2025Really excited to see this one in @sciam.bsky.social print: a brand-new feature on spooky “dark comets”, objects in the solar system that seemingly speed up and slow down like spaceships but have no evidence of any sort of propulsion. What could they be? 👻 ☄️ 0100
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 08/04/2025Source: noirlab.edu/public/news/... Source: keckobservatory.org/2024-yr4/ 010
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 08/04/2025Remember 2024 YR4, the asteroid that used to stand a decent chance of impacting Earth? Some rather good telescopes got a good look at it, and…it looks like a hockey puck! It also got thrown our way because Jupiter’s gravity yanked it out of the asteroid belt. Jupiter sucks. 7237
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 13/03/2025🚨BREAKING SPACE NEWS🚀 Hera, ESA's planetary defense spacecraft heading to the asteroid Dimorphos (the one DART smashed into), flew by Mars yesterday for a gravity assist and to test its cameras. It took images of Mars and the moon Deimos up close. AND THEY ARE AMAZING 🤩 110838
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/03/2025BREAKING PLANET NEWS 🪐 Rather hilariously, Saturn just got up to 128 new moons (thanks to some careful telescopic observations), bringing its total to…274? That’s just an absurd number of moons. (Not the MPC bulletin I was expecting today…!) 917355
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 18/02/2025I don’t have any cellular service where I am right now, but via WiFi: asteroid 2024 YR4 now has a 3.1% chance of striking Earth in 2032. That’s a new record for a dangerously sized asteroid! I prepped a story for this moment that should pop up soon. 050
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025hey everyone, quick, let’s introduce a bill to rename a random place in America as “fart mountain”, quick!! 020
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025It may be smaller, or larger. If it's too big, we may not be able to deflect it with one spacecraft. We'd need several to hit it perfectly, all without catastrophically breaking it. 100
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Yes, it's smaller than Dimorphos (YR4 is 40-90m), meaning it would need less of a deflection than a larger asteroid. But we aren't going to see it again until another Earth flyby in 2028. So much could go wrong if we try and hit it with something like DART. 100
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025This is chaotic, potentially very destructive—and if DART hit Dimorphos a little harder, it would have broken that asteroid too. You have to be very sure that when you hit an Earthbound asteroid, you are deflecting it, not fragmenting it. 100
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025One of my favourite parts of the DART mission is that it knocked off so much debris from this asteroid that it created a 30,000km-long comet-like tail that persisted for many months after impact day. 110
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025It's aim was to crash a van-size largely autonomous spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbited a larger asteroid named Didymos. Their aim was to "deflect" Dimorphos—in this case, by shrinking its roughly 12-hour-long orbit around Didymos by 73 seconds. 100
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Hey asteroid 2024 YR4 watchers! I'm seeing a lot of people claim that, if it is going to impact Earth in 2032, we can use a DART-like spacecraft to ram it out of the way. Well, not necessarily. The DART mission was fab, but might not be able to stop 2024 YR4. Let me explain 👇 110
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 09/02/2025One more thing to note: 2024 YR4 will very likely miss Earth. But you know how many asteroids of a similar size (~50m) exist and are on near-Earth orbits? 230,000. And how many have been found? 7%. We are going to see plenty more cases like 2024 YR4 in the coming years! Back soon. 2237
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 09/02/2025And if you want to know why Earth has never been safer from dangerous asteroids like 2024 YR4, I humbly suggest you pick up a copy of my (critically acclaimed!) book, HOW TO KILL AN ASTEROID—I promise that it’ll leave you with a grin on your face. :) robingeorgeandrews.com/how-to-kill-an… 171
Dr Robin George Andrews @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social · 07/02/2025Factcheck: 2024 YR4 is not the size of Disneyland. But if the asteroid does hit the planet, ground zero will not be The Happiest Place on Earth. ;) More importantly—how big is this asteroid in giraffes? Answer = 8 to 18 giraffes long. Asteroids are dangerous ~4 giraffes and up. You're welcome. 170