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| Huge slab of ice found on Mars... Image : American Geophysical Unit |
It's actually been quite the week in space. I was planning to create this blog last Wednesday 19th October , in celebration of Exomars arriving at its destination , but - oops , that didn't happen.
Exomars, a two-pronged exploration mission by ESA had only partial success.
The Trace Gas Orbiter is in place, but apparently the Schiaparelli lander had issues with a parachute jettisoning too early. Given that the parachute failed, and the probe entered a freefall reaching a speed of 186mph, the expression ' touch down ' is an understatement.
Further understatement in the BBC report - ' The mood is not positive ' ...
My first response was to wonder why they didn't just aim it at one of the ice caps, letting the heat melt the ice and hopefully absorb some impact that way, but that ignores the Space Treaty and potentially endangers any as yet undiscovered life, I suppose..
That being the case, though, what about the unsuspecting martian who may have been struck by Schiaparelli?
How do we know our puported martian victim is okay ?
There he / she / it is walking along, minding their own martian business when ka-ding! a lump of hot metal from space...and this one doesn't even have a golden disc with details of where it's from.
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| Identifying disc from Voyager... |
Anyway , the whole Exo-mars thing was really a ' tech demo' , being a dry run for the next mission from ESA , which involves a Curiosity - style rover.
Let's just hope that goes to plan...
Staying with the idea of malfunctioning space probes, earlier in the week , Juno had an issue when two valves opened very slowly , with a resultant loss of a crucial 'window' for a closer orbit (14 days instead of 53.5) around Jupiter .
This means that Juno won't really ' science ' until Dec 14th, almost two months from now.
If those pesky valves open fast enough.
It makes you realise just how time - sensitive these things are.
Media also tell us of the approach as New Horizons now heads out to Kuiper Belt Object MU 69. The rendezvous is not until 2019 , but we now know that the object appears to be very red.
It seems amazing that we have reached a point in our history where we look for news from an event in the future , rather than now...and quite incredibly , we already know that MU69, a rock drifting a billion miles away in space, is red.
We're not quite advanced enough to determine which particular shade of red, but ...patience is a virtue.
Speaking of space events - I almost missed the news of the two Chinese astronauts reaching their space station.
Pause for a moment - China has a space station ?
Well . yes, but it seems to have happened ' under the radar '. Hmmm
I recall the coverage of the ' Jade Rabbit' moonshot , but a space station ?
Tiangong 1 , known as the ' heavenly palace' is the station.
Anyway, well done China , and a shame on our media bias
Meanwhile back on Earth
Palaeontologists have discovered a cave painting that shows some form of ' missing link '- a hybrid between European cattle and the bison.
Again, I must express a little concern - since when did a cave painting become empirical evidence of a species?
I can see it now - deep in a dark cavern in the shadow of retreating glaciers, the neolithic man and his companion are daubing the walls
Hey - I'm drawing a white horse with a horn on its nose. That'll confuse them'
I'm extrapolating of course, but it is surely as likely as a new species defined by 18, 000 year old art scrawled in a dark cavern by flickering torchlight.
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