“The moon really is its own unique body in the universe. When we have that perspective and we compare it to our home of the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common. Everything we need, the Earth provides, and that, in and of itself, is somewhat of a miracle.”
“It is blowing my mind what you can see with the naked eye from the moon right now,” Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen radioed ahead of the flyby. “It is just unbelievable.”
Live up dates of the Artemis II mission to “cislunar space” (it will not actually land on the Moon but will take four astronauts farther away from Earth than anyone else so far).
To find out that the outsourced company in charge couldn’t even be bothered to test the product. They just happily pocketed $72 million of taxpayer dollars and laughed all the way to the bank.
Just one day after NASA said it was eyeing a potential March 6 launch date for the Artemis II lunar mission, the space agency said Saturday that complications with the rocket could delay all launch attempts in March from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
(Btw, WordPress, the “quote” field used to have a separate area where you could put a link to the quote’s source. Where did that go? Nothing like helping the spread of unverified fake news…)
In two separate papers published Monday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, astronomers zeroed in on the TRAPPIST-1 system, which consists of seven rocky planets that orbit a single star. Both studies outlined initial results from observations by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, suggesting that one planet in particular, known as TRAPPIST-1e, may have a nitrogen-rich atmosphere like Earth’s, though follow-up studies are needed to confirm the discovery.
Trappist 1e is in the “Goldilocks zone” in orbit around its star (i.e., not too cold, not too hot, just right). However, the Webb telescope can’t determine whether its atmosphere has any carbon dioxide, hydrogen, or oxygen, only nitrogen. Yet nitrogen is a clear sign that life is possible, because without nitrogen, DNA and other proteins are not possible. Of course, it could be simply a whole lot of microbes. Or even just ammonia.
Closer to home, the Mars rover Perseverance has found evidence of life in the distant past. Maybe. It found evidence that certain rock features may have happened because of microbes.
May.
That’s how science works, folks. A whole lot of maybes.
This group comprises millions of individuals who are deeply interested in our space programme
The name “Enterprise” is tied in with the system on which the Nation’s economic structure is built.
Use of the name would provide a substantial human interest appeal to the rollout ceremonies scheduled for this month in California, where the aeronautical industry is of vital importance.
It is really too bad that the shuttle looked nothing at all like the Enterprise (Constitution class).
And an odd coincidence that the original name chosen by NASA was…
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