All Quiet on Sol , Saturns Rings Await and Orion begins the Hunt.

Almost spotless

THE SUN

Our Sun is approaching its lowest activity cycle, with precious little sunspot activity , as above.
This picture is very appropriate in its blankness, as I managed to lose my draft notes this morning* for this very blog.
Yes there was no backup, as there is no plan.
Please bear with me as I attempt to recall the newsworthy moments using good old fashioned grey matter - ahem.
The sun is not scheduled to reach its lowest point of activity until 2021- it generally means fewer power outages and possibly a wider sense of 'calm' if soothsayers are to be believed.
On the other hand it could be a bad omen.

THIRD PLANET FROM THE SUN...

IBM have created a molecule that could kill all known viruses , says the headline of this article - a strong claim, but something that could be a game changer.
It also puts IBM at the potential forefront of genetic adaptions ... which leads us to the report that scientists have successfully combined organic material with silicon.
What purpose this serves is yet to be seen, but it has never been done in nature ( to our knowledge) , so it's a first. Possibly.
Certainly the oldest 'fossils' found must be the ancient bacteria from some 2 .5 billion years ago - be warned, that link contains some heavyweight geology stuff...
After an upgrade, the LIGO gravitational waves detector is ready for another session of detection of space/time ripples ( shock-waves from black holes, basically ) - don't forget that it was only until recently that such waves remained undetected, languishing in the realms of  theoretical science.

 NASA will soon be testing their new Orion craft in advance of manned missions to Mars ( hey, no queue jumping - I know things are tough , but there won't be a manned Mars lift - off until 2021)

MEANWHILE, ON MARS...

Current thinking is that Mars once had sufficient water to cover its entire surface..
Waterworld ?- We hope not. Let's move on from that cinematic debacle...
This has inevitably led  to the question of potential fossils, but the timeline would appear to dash any such hopes.
Following from Octobers ill-fated ExoMars mission, all is not lost -
First images back from the Trace Gas Orbiter are good.


AT THE RINGS OF SATURN...

 Cassini orbit    NASA/ JPL / Caltech

NASA explorer craft Cassini is about to begin a spectacular flyby of Saturns rings, weaving in between and above and below, it will be the prelude to Cassinis farewell when it plunges into the atmosphere of Saturn on September 15 2017 ( at 5.07 pm PDT ).





* last Wednesday actually, the first in a series of odd little technical mishaps . . . which is why this post never happened. I find these things increasingly frustrating. If someone has it in for my micro blog, then I'm flattered for the attention, but seriously, what's the point ?