Exploding Payloads, Hellish Planets, Impossible Drives and The Zombie Plague From Space

It's not a great week for Elon Musk as a Space X  Falcon 9 rocket goes up in flames on the launchpad  .
He quickly moved to quash initial reports of an explosion , saying instead that it was a ' fast flame' , which led to some wag continuing the euphemism, by stating that it was a 'fast flame leading to rapid disassembly' .
No-one was hurt, but I imagine the recruitment drive for a manned flight to Mars might suffer.
Mark Zuckerberg was also dismayed as part of the payload was a satellite aimed at bringing the internet to deprived African areas.
Fortunately, there is a 'plan B' , so all should be well.

Artist impression    Cannae

Meanwhile, that pesky Emdrive just won't go away.
Infact, not only is it still confounding many (breaking laws of physics) but it is being sent into space for a ' test drive '.
The space-bound version is known as the ' Cannae Drive ', which in Scottish slang, means it's a non-starter, but hey - that's just me being facetious - ahem.
Roger Shawyer is the engineer behind this seemingly impossible drive , which is now being crowdfunded...

Even in space, you can find urban legends.
The idea of a careless employee making a gross miscalculation by using metric instead of imperial units , or vice versa, seems to be a familiar trope -
yet even in an area defined by rigorous testing and peer group reporting, myths can take hold - the report of a failed Venus probe reminds me of something I read years ago - or did I ?
Speaking of hellish planets, further pictures emerge from Juno , currently orbiting Jupiter and attempting to survive its toxic atmosphere...

Southern lights of Jupiter  ( infrared image )   NASA

On September 8th 2016, NASA hope to launch Osiris Rex, heading out to asteroid Bennu, returning with a sample in 2023.
It will be the first ever sample return mission from an asteroid, with plenty of nail-biting moments ahead.
Of course, the media angle is the THREAT to EARTH posed by the asteroid, and comparisons are already being drawn with apocalyptic films ( cue Bruce Willis in a vest gazing into the middle distance).
I laugh at such foolishness, of course, because the REAL threat is from the asteroid sample which will contain the zombie plague from space.

Sticking with the asteroid thing, we end on a high, as they found the plucky little comet- lander Philae, our ill - fated explorer !
Sadly, it's too late in the day for any meaningful contact , as the Rosetta mission draws to a close .
A call has gone up for Rosetta to target Philae when the mission ends later this month (September 2016) so they can at least be reunited for eternity, which is almost touching.
Humanising toys and animals seems to be a fairly widespread  thing, but this is way beyond that...

Still, I'll be watching.
I'll definitely say ' goodbye'
And I'll probably say aww