Or SLIM, if you want to actually write acronyms properly (snark).
Also, it’s JAXA, not Jaxa. And NASA and ESA, not Nasa and Esa. But I digress.
Anyways, kudos but too bad yet another space mission failed. At this point I’m wondering how on Earth NASA managed to land people on the Moon so successfully in the 1960s and 1970s without killing half of them in the process. We can barely manage to get a tiny robot rover the size of a marble to land (see the link above for the picture of the “hopper” and “shape shifting” ball…curious about the “shape shifting” bit…)
“We continue receiving valuable data,” the company said in a statement, “and providing spaceflight operations for components and software relating to our next lunar lander mission, Griffin.”
Well, yeah, great. But the Peregrine lander still is a failure. Propulsion leak. Solar panels that didn’t open in time.
And NASA is counting on these privately operated products to get people back to the Moon? And they’ve delayed the Artemis again by another year?
When I was in school, we were all talking about people on Mars, living in permanent communities in the 2020s. And we can’t even get a tiny Moon lander to work right.
Sigh. And after BBC posted “Vulcan rocket” I so had my hopes up. (“The Vulcan rocket,” not “Vulcan rocket,” Spock 🖖)
Taters the cat chases a laser pointer in a video sent to Earth from Psyche
Aiming the laser at the spacecraft so the transceiver knows where to point back is the most difficult part, Wright said. And because Earth and the spacecraft are both moving, the lasers must point to where the destination will be in a few minutes. “The beam’s so narrow, it can’t just point to Earth. It needs to know exactly where on Earth,” Wright said. “Trying to hit a dime from a mile away while you’re moving at 17,000 miles an hour — that’s the challenge.”
So NASA has been working on this idea for a while now. The invisible laser beam that carried this video file came from the Psyche probe, on its way to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Psyche is 19 million miles away right now. The laser beam took 108 seconds to reach Earth.
Mars and Earth are on average 140 million miles apart and can be up to 250 million miles apart depending on the timing of their respective orbits.
I don’t think lasers are the answer here. A good start, maybe, but you can do the math. Having to wait between 10 to 20 minutes, or more, for a one-way transmission (double that for an exchange of messages) would not be ideal for a human settlement in an emergency.
Star Trek style instant interstellar communication is still just scifi. Unless there’s still something out there we haven’t found yet, even quantum communication will take time…
But at least NASA has finally realized that non-science people like cat videos.
This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which planets are forming. An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to provide the first observation of water and other molecules in the inner, rocky-planet-forming regions of a disc in one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy. These results suggest that the conditions for rocky-planet formation, typically found in the discs of low-mass star-forming regions, can also occur in massive-star-forming regions and possibly a broader range of environments.
Because of its location near several massive stars in NGC6357, scientists expect XUE 1 to have been constantly exposed to a high ultraviolet radiation field throughout its life. However, in this extreme environment the team still detected a range of molecules that are the building blocks of rocky planets.
“NASA will hold off sending commands to its Mars fleet for two weeks, from Nov. 11 to 25, while Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the sun. Called Mars solar conjunction, this phenomenon happens every two years,” NASA said in a statement.
It’s funny that Live Science just announced this three days…given that the time period in which Mars is directly behind the Sun opposite the Earth only lasts from November 11th through November 25th.
From the beginning of the Golgo 13 story, 「剥がれた鍍金」(hagareta tokin, “The peeled away metal plating”).
Despite the fact that the manga Golgo 13 is about as conservative as you can get (openly misogynistic and racist at times, as well), I’ve been a fan since before coming to Japan in 1999. I hadn’t realized that the original anime movie that I saw back in Boston was based on what became the manga with the most printed volumes in the world in July 2021. This year marks its 50th anniversary, and the stories are being reproduced in larger format, grouped according to physical region.
The group of stories based in Japan came out a short while ago (I already got copies of stories based in France and the Middle East, and a book based in Italy is due soon). Interestingly, one of the stories is reproduced from December 2001 — four months after JAXA successfully launched the H-IIA rocket following a previous failure (hence, the “peeled metal plating” title).
Currently, OSIRIS-REx is located at a distance of 7 million km from our planet. On September 24, OSIRIS-REx will drop a capsule with samples of asteroid matter, after which it will enter the earth’s atmosphere and land on the territory of the Utah Test and Training Range.
The tiny spacecraft launched back in 2016 and reached the asteroid Bennu in 2021.
One main reason for this mission is to find out what Bennu is made of. After the asteroid spewed out tiny “micromoons,” OSIRIS-REx successfully collected a tiny soil sample. By “tiny,” I mean less than 50 to 60 grams. And it couldn’t actually land, since the asteroid is too small to have enough gravity to support the spacecraft.
Now we have less than two weeks to find out what’s in the soil — assuming the capsule is retrieved without incident. And then OSIRIS-REx will head back out to visit yet another asteroid (Apophis) in 2029.
Yes, that famous “planet-killer” the media screamed about a few years ago as “the most dangerous asteroid in the world.” (uh. “in the world”?) It will “only” approach within 38,000 km in April 2029, but could possibly collide in 2036.
ESA image. Gateway is planned to be much smaller and more cramped than ISS (about 1/6 the size).
NASA and its international partners see Gateway as a key platform to support the agency’s Artemis moon program and to build the technology required for future deep-space missions. Although the first elements of the small space station are expected to launch before the Artemis 3 mission lifts off in 2025 or 2026, NASA previously said that those astronauts will not use Gateway to “make that mission have a higher probability of success.”
While it’s a good idea to see some planning for this, I think maybe NASA should focus on getting Artemis 1 to work properly before they go on about Artemis 3 and 4.
Taking advantage of Gateway’s orbit far away from Earth’s protective magnetic field, three instruments will study risks due to radiation from the sun and from cosmic rays. Scientists hope this knowledge can help inform future long-term missions to the moon and Mars.
Since Gateway will orbit the Moon and not the Earth, the biggest problem will be preventing astronauts (and instruments!) from getting fried by solar radiation. Scientists need to come up with materials to shield people on Gateway and the Moon, or else we’re going nowhere…
One main reason for landing at the Moon’s South Pole is that the presence of water would help us build permanent settlements…
This region on the moon is an attractive place for humans to build a lasting presence due to the fact that water ice is located underfoot. Future moon-dwellers can potentially tap into that water for consumption, or even to create rocket propellant, instead of depending on water shipped from Earth.
Another reason has now been found…iron, manganese, aluminum, titanium…and “surprisingly” sulfur. Why should they be surprised? It’s already been established that the Moon has ice, and sulfur forms every time hydrocarbon and sulfates combine. Plus sulfur obviously results from volcanic activity, and it’s likely the Moon was volcanic when it first formed. And sulfur is also produced through nuclear fusion – i.e., the Sun.
So what can we do with this knowledge?
Having a more complete chemical composition of the lunar south pole area means future travelers to — and possible inhabitants of — the region can also plan for what else they don’t need to bring from Earth. In particular, some scientists have suggested moon-dwellers could use sulfur in bits of infrastructure such as building materials, solar cells and batteries.
Hmmm…I think more studies are needed first…define “bits,” for example.
Comet Nishimura’s orbit means that this is likely its first and final trip through the inner solar system. It is possible that the comet originated outside our star system, which would make it the third known interstellar object ever detected, following ‘Oumuamua — which some astronomers speculatively suggested was an alien spacecraft — and Comet 2I/Borisov.
Discovered just two weeks ago by an amateur Japanese astronomer (after whom the comet is now named), the comet Nishimura will approach Earth at its closest on September 13th. But it will be at its brightest about five days later as it approaches the Sun.
Its fate?
Astronomers don’t know when the possible interstellar interloper will depart the solar system. However, it is also possible that the intense force of the comet’s solar slingshot will rip its solid nucleus apart, according to NASA.
Also, its nucleus gives off a “green glow,” which is the result of sunlight breaking apart dicarbon, or diatomic carbon. So getcher geek on, chemical lab rats!
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