This week’s blog is a collection of bits and pieces.

First, there’s a reminder that at the Before the Second Sleep blog alongside the review of Half Sick of Shadows there’s a giveaway copy to be won – just leave a comment to be in with a chance in the draw, which will take place sometime in November.

Secondly, for a bit of fun here is the link to the Desert Island Books chat which appeared on Prue Batten’s blog. What ten books would you take if you were going to be stranded on a desert island for a period of time. Well, you can find out my choices at that link – it’s a right mixture of fiction and non-fiction. And I got to pick my very own desert island, and with a minor stretch of credulity I selected Bryher, one of the Isles of Scilly. There are a lot worse places that you could get stranded…

What about space news?

Well, there have been recent updates to two of my favourite NASA missions. The future of Dawn, which has been orbiting the asteroid Ceres for some time, after originally studying Vesta, has been in question for some time. Basically there were two choices – leave the craft in orbit around Ceres until the onboard fuel supply runs out, or move on to a third destination and learn something there. Either way, the plan for the end of life has always been to avoid accidentally contaminating Ceres or anywhere else with debris. Well, the decision was finally made to stay at Ceres, carry out some manoeuvres to increase the scientific and visual return over the next few months, and then shift to a parking orbit late next year. The low point of the orbit should be only about 120 miles from the surface, half the height of the previous approach.

And finally, New Horizons, which provided great pictures of Pluto and Charon a couple of years ago, has been woken from its standby mode in order to carry out early preparations for a planned encounter in the Kuiper Belt. The target this time goes by the catchy name of 2014 MU69. Pluto is on the inside edge of the Kuiper Belt, whereas 2014 MU69 is in the middle. But although there are a fair n umber of bits of rock scattered in this disk-like region, it is still vastly empty, and the chances of New Horizons colliding with a previously unknown body are very slim. If all goes according to plan, the craft will navigate rather closer to 2014 MU69 than it did to Pluto – a necessary action, as the light levels are considerably lower. Since we know very little about the body, this does present a level of risk, but one which is considered worth taking. There are a few course corrections planned for late this year, then it’s back into sleep mode for a few months until the middle of next year. Flyby should happen on January 1st, 2019. And after that? More targets are being explored, and the power supply and onboard systems are reckoned to have another twenty years of life, so we could be in for more treats…