+Six years, four new hearts, one unbreakable promise — never give up.

Happy Sixth Birthday to the Family We Built From Stardust

We made it — six years.

I’m writing this from Rimini, where the June air drifts in off the Adriatic carrying that one-of-a-kind smell of salt and warm asphalt the coast does so well. FreeAstroScience is six years old today, and I’m trying very hard not to get sentimental all over my keyboard.

I’m losing that battle, for the record.

A Year That Refused to Sit Still

This was not a quiet year.

It was the sort of year that grabs you by the collar and says move — and the loudest changes walked in on two feet. People arrived. Wonderful, surprising people who turned a one-person project into something with a heartbeat of its own.

So let me introduce them, because they’re the real present this year.

The Friend Who Steadies the Ship

For the first time, FreeAstroScience has a vice president, and I never dreamed up a better one than Flavia Ceccato.

Flavia is a Brazilian federal auditor, researcher, and writer with a serious love for science, education, and the strange machinery of human consciousness. When she examines how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way we actually think, the whole room leans in and forgets to blink. Having her beside me feels less like filling a role and more like the universe finally letting out a long breath.

She makes the hard things look light. That’s a rare gift, and I don’t intend to take it for granted.

The New Voices Around the Table

Then came the writers — and oh, what writers.

From Sardinia arrived Denise Meloni, the one I affectionately call my “favourite diesel.” She starts deliberate, builds quietly, then runs forever without ever burning out, and her sentences carry the sun-baked stubbornness of her island. Reading her drafts feels like throwing open a shutter after a long winter, dust and light pouring in at once.

From India came Pranjal Amit Malewar, a suitcase of hard-won experience in one hand and a curiosity that never switches off in the other. He writes with the patience of someone who truly wants you to understand, not merely nod along. His perspective landing on our pages reminded me why this whole thing exists — science belongs to everyone, across every border.

And then, like weather no forecast saw coming, Hurricane Matthew Brahm rolled in from the United States.

I call him a hurricane because that’s precisely what he is: energy, motion, a gust of fresh air that scattered the old dust and left every corner brighter. Some people join a team. Matthew arrived like a change of season.

A New Home, Built Brick by Brick

While the family grew, the house had to grow with it.

At the end of March we packed everything up and moved the entire site from Blogger to WordPress. Anyone who’s done a migration knows the feeling — boxes everywhere, cables in the wrong sockets, that one plugin sulking in a corner at two in the morning while the screen hums and your coffee goes cold. We did it anyway.

By early June, the rebuild was finished: cleaner, quicker, far nicer to wander through on a phone in bed.

We even gave the logo a modern face — same soul, sharper smile — so it finally looks the way this project has always felt from the inside. If you’re new here and want the short version of who we are, our story lives over on Who We Are.

Why Any of This Matters

Here’s the part I most want you to hear, so I’ll keep it plain.

A small confession about the work itself first — I simplify the heavy physics on purpose, sanding down the rough mathematical edges so the wonder reaches you before the equations have a chance to scare you off. That’s not cheating. That’s hospitality.

Six years ago this was one person, one wheelchair, and a slightly absurd belief that science could be warm and human and free for anyone willing to look up.

Today it’s a Brazilian vice president, a Sardinian diesel, an Indian veteran of ideas, an American hurricane, and tens of thousands of you reading from cities I’ll never visit yet somehow already love. The cosmos is enormous and we are tiny, and here we are holding hands across continents anyway. What more reason does anyone need to keep going?

What I Want to Say to You

Now the unscientific bit — the thing no telescope will ever measure.

To Flavia, Denise, Pranjal, Matthew, and to every single reader who stayed through the migrations and the long nights and the occasional terrible joke — I love you all. You turned a stubborn idea into a living, breathing family, and I will never quite get over it.

Six years down. The sky’s still up there, impossibly large, and we’re still pointing at it together.

Onward to year seven, then — and remember the only rule that’s never changed around here. We never, ever give up.