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Science fiction and mystery make excellent bedfellows, and setting a “whodunit” in space is many a sci-fi reader’s kryptonite. If that’s you, do yourself a favor and wade through the backlists for Yume Kitasei’s debut novel, The Deep Sky . It’s hard to believe Kitasei wrote this page-turner a mere three years ago considering she’s published two more books since its release. But this was the novel that hooked me and more fans on her futuristic, high-stakes adventures. Content warnings include miscarriage, fertility issues, and death of a child.

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei

It’s bad enough when an unidentified murderer is on the loose but when you’re trapped with said murderer in a metal box hurtling through space? No thanks!

This is the predicament Asuka and her fellow crew members find themselves in. Oh, also, their ship has gone off track and they have limited time to correct the error. The Deep Sky is a ticking time bomb that puts a space team responsible for populating the new planet they’re bound for in dire straits. Asuka, whose Alt role identifies her as a jack of all trades master of none type, is cornered into playing amateur detective while her team, many of them pregnant, focuses on the big ship problem.

From the explosion that occurs when Asuka and a teammate go on a space walk, alerting the members to strategic acts of terrorism, to the a-ha! reveal at the end, Kitasei makes it difficult to put this book down. Driving the thriller is protagonist Asuka who’s burdened by the sense that she’s always and forever the odd one out among her peers. She’s biracial, has a complicated family life, straddles two countries, and struggles with insecurities about not being enough of anything. On top of it all, Asuka has old beef with the crew, but everyone either has old resentments, skeletons in their closet, or murky backstories thanks to growing up competing against one another for a spot on the spaceship Phoenix. Nobody is above suspicion, anyone might be the traitor in their midst.

This is a messy, emotionally-charged thrill ride filled with danger, deception, and flawed characters. One of my favorite aspects of Kitasei’s books is that they’re inclusive. The crew of this ship full of potential child bearers includes trans and nonbinary people, and Kitasei explores biracial identity with the intimacy you only get from lived experience.

What are you reading? Let us know in the comments !

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For the first time in seven years, Star Wars fans returned to theaters this year to celebrate the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu . The spin-off/sequel film stars Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver , and it acts as a direct continuation of the first three seasons of The Mandalorian , which are now streaming on Disney+ . Before that, Star Wars fans were treated to the highest-rated project in franchise history with the premiere of Maul — Shadow Lord , the animated Disney Plus series starring Sam Witwer . There was so little doubt that the show was going to be a smash hit that it was picked up for Season 2 before its premiere. Looking forward, Star Wars fans have the first Visions spin-off, The Ninth Jedi , which will begin streaming this August, as confirmed by the first trailer .

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How do you stop a large, threatening asteroid on its way to Earth? A new Chinese paper, investigating the issue, suggests a "pre-excavation detonation" could be the solution if there's enough warning time.

There may be millions of asteroids in our solar system, with a tiny percentage of them posing a possible, very tiny threat to our planet. NASA and many other entities keep an eye on the skies, and continue discovering new asteroids, but have found no imminent threats yet; Apophis , previously believed to be a small threat during its 2068 flyby of Earth , has now been ruled out as a problem for the foreseeable future.

But Earth has been smacked by space rocks in the past, with even the moderate-sized Chelyabinsk incident of 2013 causing reported property damage near its blast site in Russia. And as the researchers of a new paper point out, asteroids tens of meters in size and larger have been tracked flying safely , but closely, by Earth.

Assuming a theoretical space rock is on an imminent collision course and exceeds about 330 feet (100 meters) in size, simply blasting it (or even guiding it away) may not be a viable option, the researchers said in a peer-reviewed study in the journal Space: Science and Technology.

"Traditional kinetic impact, or long‑term force deflection methods, offer limited energy and cannot achieve effective deflection within short timeframes," the researchers said in a press release, adding they found few comprehensive analyses of how to do so. ( NASA did successfully deflect an asteroid moonlet's orbit with the DART spacecraft in 2022, for example, but that was a unique test case in space.)

So the team, led by Xiaowei Wang from the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, instead proposed using one of two "defense modes" for large incoming asteroids.

The first mode is a more simple impact detonation — simply put, smacking the asteroid's surface to create a shallow crater, in which a nuclear device is exploded. The other mode is a "pre-excavation detonation", or using a penetration device to create a deeper crater before exploding a nuclear warhead to "achieve deep detonation" in the interior of the asteroid.

The researchers' modeling included the energy of a launch vehicle, the velocity of the impact spacecraft, and changes to the velocity of the asteroid, in each of these two modes. The two modes were also tested against a "virtual threat asteroid database" assuming warning times of anywhere between one year and 20 years.

All in all, assuming enough time is available, it seems the deep-crater method wins out. "The flyby pre-excavation detonation mode, due to its ability to autonomously select the cratering location and achieve deep detonation, offers stronger energy coupling," the researchers wrote in the press release.

Such an impact could "destroy" asteroids that are roughly 330 feet (100 meters) or of that range, and push away asteroids of a size reaching about 0.6 miles (1 km) by imparting a velocity change of roughly 1 m/s in about 60 days.

In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos, and changed the binary system's orbit around the sun. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben) While a shallow-crater mission could be launched more quickly, the researchers added, "the impact location is random, energy coupling is weak, and requirements for the nuclear device's impact resistance and detonation timing are extremely stringent."

Real-world missions would also have to take into account the composition of an asteroid (as a pile of rubble would likely require a different approach than a solid rock), whether the pathways of any pieces generated by an impact pose a threat, and how to safely get the nuclear warhead into space in the first place, among many other technical issues. The researchers did not raise these considerations in the press release.

They did, however, provide "recommended solutions" for when to use each of the two options. The shallow impact might be preferable "for emergency defense" on a huge asteroid if there is an extremely short warning time, because that mission is less complex. Otherwise, the " deep impact " would be the way to go.