Mars Landings, Space Utopia, and Nightmare Wasps

Ice on Mars

Simulation of Schiaparelli landing   ©ESA

 We are mere days away from the attempt by ESA / Roskosmos to break the NASA Mars exploration monopoly , with the two- part mission to identify the chemical makeup of the atmosphere.
The attempt will be aided by the orbiting Mars Express, with its instruments that were initially to designed to aid the ill - fated Beagle 2 lander.
Since 2003 , Mars Express has been orbiting and relaying priceless data , and will now help the dual- faceted Exomars mission in its final stages of entry /descent into the Martian atmosphere.
The mission is basically an attempt to prove whether there were conditions once favourable for life on Mars.
The Trace Gas Orbiter will remain in a low orbit around Mars, with Schiaparelli attempting a surface landing.
Schiaparelli is basically a laboratory,  not a  roving explorer, so sadly no companion for Curiosity .
Don't forget though, that Opportunity still roams the martian surface, collecting information.
It's all very functional , reducing the unknown to manageable levels of ' known' and understood - which is very necessary, at least in our own ' backyard ' , especially given the revelation that there are ten times as many galaxies in the heavens than previously thought.
The latest estimates peg the figure at two trillion galaxies.
I laugh at the thought of a team of lab- coated scierntists attempting to count every single one only to reach one trillion , 6 billion, 3million and 457,000 when someone interrupts and they have to start again.
Trivial, but it tickles me.
I'm assured however, that's not how it's done.
Still, let me just say that again-
Two trillion galaxies.
My attempt to rationalise such a huge number led me down another internet  rabbit hole.
A trillion is a milion million.
Which is a lot.
And that's the number of galaxies in the observable universe at least .
Galaxies, not stars.
There are possibly 400 billion stars in our own galaxy.
Which puts our little exploration of our neighbouring world in perspective.

Dione also contains water

In our own tiny corner of space, we have a solar system teeming with watery moons with subsurface oceans.
Recent data from the Saturn system explorer Cassini tells us that the moon Dione may also harbour an underground ocean , up to 40 miles deep: the deepest part of our own oceans is  a mere 7 miles / 9 km, or so.
It joins the growing list of  Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede , and the contentious planet / dwarf planet Pluto which all seem to contain large bodies of water

On another positive note, a new initiative is announced , with the purpose of creating a nation of space - dwellers who will colonise a giant orbiting craft known as Asgardia.
The ultimate goal is to democratise space, which sounds fine, but my concern is why choose a Nordic name then , thus firmly laying claim to a specific nationality and its own mythos ?
Just saying...

Speaking of which, space brain is a potential new danger for future human travellers to the outlying worlds...


On a final, uncomfortable, note:
A prehistoric nightmare wasp* somehow conflated in my mind with the news that a virus has been disovered that contains DNA from a mosquito
Nightmare fuel.

Megalara Garuda -These specimens are dead - phew !

*Obviously I checked further, to find any living descendants of the ancient ' nightmare wasp '.
This foolish internet quest led me to the Megalara Garuda wasp, discovered in Indonesia in 2011.
The fact that no-one lives on the island where it was discovered is not really surprising...

Hell and High Water

© Flickr / SpaceX

Blimey, we've got a unifying theme this week - well , I think so - on Monday last, NASA announced the discovery of water plumes erupting from the surface of Europa
Personally, I wasn't too impressed, as we'd already heard of similar plumes on Enceladus .
Perhaps the most impressive thing is the sheer scale of the water jets - up to 125 miles / 200 km above surface level.
So, pretty darned impressive.
Enough so that we already have an illustration of a SpaceX craft there.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the fatal dose of radiation levels on Europa , courtesy of  Jupiter .
Not much chance of a quick selfie before imminent death...

Likewise, the recently mooted ocean beneath the surface of Pluto may be up to 62 miles / 99 km deep - That's a lot of sea.
The deepest part of our own oceans is a mere 7 miles / 10 km .
On the subject of oceans,  rising sea levels present a very real threat to NASA
Time to find a new launch pad !
Launch pads could be a wise investment, what with the increasing noise about the colonisation of Mars / the Moon / deep space.
The rockets currently being displayed by Elon Musks Space X and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin appear to be engaged in a ' mine is bigger than yours ' routine, with operational capabilities coming a poor second...
Still, healthy competition can only lead to better designs, surely
Speaking of designs (see what I did there?), it appears that ostrich eggs are marked with protein dna strands going back a long time.
I'm not sure what this means in the greater scheme of things , although there's probably a direct link to a Jurassic World - type scenario, where we happily watch dinosaurs with colourful feathers tearing each other apart.

 From Earth, we move inwards towards Mercury where we have been surprised to learn that there is tectonic activity happening there now - and also, it's shrinking - hardly surprising , with an average daytime temperature of 800 degrees farenheit.
Pretty hellish, then - but still active.
I find it somehow comforting knowing that worlds we previously considered geologically dead, are very much active.
We have Mercury, wilting in the sun, and Pluto with its beating heart is far from being the distant ball of windswept ice that my childhood imagination conjured...

Final frames from Rosetta    © ESA

POSTSCRIPT

Rosetta has ended its mission . After an epic 6 billion-mile journey, the Rosetta craft has descended to the surface of Comet 67P . The media is awash with words like crashlanding, and such - but at only 1 mph, it's hardly a spectacular finale.
Personally, I still wonder why it was not simply left to drift in space , perhaps locked into the comets orbit forever ?
After all, surely theft of industrial secrets isn't an issue in space ?
On the other hand, you can never trust those pesky aliens.
Perhaps we should build a Space Wall...