I’ve had a few questions what happened to me after I wrote the previous post from April 15 and the answer is – I was just too busy for a followup! After over a Month of almost complete lockdown, Germany has allowed to open smaller and now bigger stores and businesses to open again and most restrictions have been lifted – save for wearing masks and keeping a distance of two meters. Sadly even those comparatively mild restrictions seem to be too much for the majority of people, because now the Corona cases are rising again after three Months of falling.

At the end of next week, school summer holidays are ending in NRW and it might get even worse then. Schools are not prepared very well, what I heard from friends who have school-age children is not encouraging and could easily lead to spreading infections again. Germany is now almost reaching 1000 new cases each day and while that might not seem much compared to the disaster in the US, it’s still way too much. I can’t imagine why anyone would put themselves into harm’s way just because they don’t want to follow a few basic safety precautions – the only thing that comes to my mind now is, what is wrong with people? Seeing the protests in Berlin this weekend with ten thousand people on the streets proclaiming the end of Corona is simply madness.

On the other side, I’m okay and have avoided catching COVID-19 so far, but only because I’m in a position to mostly keep away from danger. Right now going shopping is the worst problem and I haven’t even been in our local shopping mall for weeks because the crowded supermarkets in the basement are frightening to say the least. Luckily there is a decent supermarket that is less crowded and spaceous enough to be at least somewhat safe. I’m sure that I could survice a Coronavirus infection, but that is not a reason to throw all caution away. I’m continuing to be as careful as possible, but sadly this is not all over yet.

But there have still been some good things happening:

• Two weeks ago, we held the first CosmoQuest-A-Con – a virtual Convention streamed on Twitch wih lots of guests ranging from scientists, artists, authors, musicians and more! The recorded shows will be up on Youtube soon, but you can still buy tickets afterwards to support Cosmoquest.
• Daily Space is still broadcast live on Twitch from Monday to (currently) Thursday with all things space and astronomy, hosted by Dr. Pamela L. Gay and Annie Wilson – and also available in a recorded version on Youtube the day after.
• SpaceX launched two NASA Astronauts to the International Space Station with its Crew Dragon – Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have been up there since early June and will be returning to Earth tomorrow after a successful stay on the station! It was the first crewed mission to the ISS that launched from the US since the Space Shuttle was mothballed nine years earlier.
• NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover finally launched on Thursday and is now on its way to Mars, where it will arrive next February. It’s an updated version of the still hard-working Curiosity, bringing the number of operational rovers on the red planet back up to two.

I’m not really posting space and astronomy news here anymore because it’s too time-intensive for me, but I’m probably going to put up a new updated post with a collection of space news links soon. I hope I can bring myself to write something here regularly again too, but there’s not much to talk about so I can’t really prove anything!