Heavens Above - Flybys, Marsquakes and Icy Craters

As a seasonal gift, NASA have made a downloadable  wrapping paper available - just the thing for that scale model of a Saturn V rocket...

Enough seasonal frivolity , what lurks in the Heavens Above ?
Like a stone skimming across the surface of a lake, the recent flyby of asteroid 2003 SD220 was a reminder of the vulnerability of our little home in space. It has already been pointed out that the one-mile long space-rock is a potential planet killer. Christened the 'hippo' asteroid by someone in JPL...I'm just surprised that it has not yet been likened to Oumuamua , or declared an alien scout ship...

Don't panic ! This was three years ago...recent flyby was only 1.8 million miles

...speaking of which, as we pass the shortest day of the year and head for Yuletide, we anticipate the New Years day encounter with ' Ultima Thule', the Kuiper belt object targeted by New Horizons since its Pluto flypast in 2015
As well as being the most distant flyby in our history, this is generating intrigue , due to anomalies regarding its lack of reflectivity - and (inevitably) the internet has arisen to the occasion with talk of it being an alien communications beacon, and other speculation born of fantastical fictions...
On the subject of distant neighbours in our solar system, a far flung contender has been discovered, with an orbit varying from 25 billion kilometers (from the sun) to a mere 3 billion, bringing it closer than Neptune. Not really big enough to be the ninth planet though...a place occupied by Pluto, IMO

This week saw the first firing of thrusters on the ESA/ Jaxa Beppi-Colombo mission to Mercury ...not a dramatic event  but a significant one, it allows tiny course corrections on its seven-year long journey ( the equivalent of being pulled by 250 ants, apparently) , so this is a very gentle journey, aiming to gather lots of science whilst approaching and orbiting Mercury in 2025.

Seismometer being placed on Mars       ESA

If you are impatient for science, don't forget that Insight just placed its Seismometer on Mars , and will begin relaying results of 'marsquakes' by the end of January 2019.

Korolev Crater   

The Mars Express Hi-Res Camera has recently imaged a crater filled with water ice, which is a permanent feature, a 'cold trap', with a depth of over a mile', and is comparable in volume to the Great Bear Lake in Canada (it says here...)

In a broader sense, though, the excitement of possible biological life on Mars is tempered by the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, which has found no methane in the Mars atmosphere*...( personally, I think the subterranean martians must have a very advanced extractor fan - ahem )

* This appears to contradict earlier findings , so is not a definite statement


Here is a link to an animation detailing how to make a Dyson Sphere (well, you never know when you'll need to harness the power of the sun). As one commenter said, You Tube has come a long way from its early days of ' how-to-films' about making play-do...


On that note, have a very festive seasonal, and I'll see you on the other side !

TTFN


G

Mars Welcomes Careful Explorers, Rovers On The Dark Side Of The Moon, And Asteroid Missions

Launched in August, the amazing Parker Solar Probe has already traveled twice as close to the sun as the previous Helios probe, and is now sending close - up views of the sun, whilst peeking from behind its heat shield. However, most of the images will be downloaded  next year, as the sun is now between us and the probe...
As well as taking unique images from such close proximity, it has also broken speed records , travelling at 375,000 kmh . The Parker Solar Probe will eventually break both those records again, hopefully attaining a speed of 160 km/s, and a distance of 6 million kilometres from the sun during the mission
Whilst thinking of the Parker mission, I suddenly had a recollection of how to pass a hand through the flames of a fire (quick, or get burned * )...a piece of childhood enacted beside a bonfire being used to toast marshmallows...ahem

* A very unscientific explanation for how a fast-moving object near a flame can escape the ' heat- transfer', which causes the burn.

Insight goes teal...

After  a text-book landing, Mars now has a new robot resident. As the dust settles and the solar panels unfurl, we have begun to receive data from Insight . It will be a few months before all experiments are active..in the meantime, here is a first - the ambient winds of Mars , recorded by microphone on the Insight lander, on December 1 . I was oddly entranced by the recording - it may not be dynamic, but - it's the gentle wind on another world...

Esa Mars rover scheduled for 2020

 The ExoMars Orbiter is being used to relay signals data to Earth from the latest arrival - don't forget that this is a static mission, and the joint European / Russian  'rover' will launch in 2020, aiming for an equatorial region of Mars, which holds great potential for samples of ancient or even current life - fingers crossed that this new European initiative does not go the way of ill-fated Schiaparelli lander .
Also launching in 2020, the planned NASA rover, based on the design of Curiosity, will target the Jezero Crater, which also has great potential for the discovery of ancient, or even current life.
With the inclusion of Curiosity, Insight, and the Chinese orbiter / rover scheduled for 2020,  that would give us five active** ground-based probes on Mars: looks like the race is on for the first discovery of alien life on Mars. May the best rover win...

** Not including Opportunity, presumed MIA, following planetary dust- storm

Osiris - Rex has arrived at asteroid Bennu
The whole sample return mission will take another 5 years, and is already pipped at the post by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission , with its ' hopping' robots which were deployed some time ago ...in a gesture of magnaminity, the Director of Hayabusa2 graciously sent a message of congratulations

3-D Ryugu !             Image Jaxa ?

China has launched Chang 'e-4 , first ever mission to land a rover on the 'dark side' of the moon , with a view to exploration and collection of soil samples for a future return mission to Earth.

Yuri Milner is aiming to  search for life in the oceans of the Saturnian moon Enceladus , and NASA have contributed to the project- I hope that we see more of this kind of cross-over, with private initiatives  and public bodies co-operating on mutual goals. It's a win-win, with more exploration happening faster...

Enceladus  Image                  NASA/ JPL/ Caltech

BACK ON EARTH...

Apparently the decline of giant herbivores in prehistory was not linked to human predators , but was in tandem with a decrease in forest / jungle environments and the resultant expansion of grasslands- so don't feel angry about early hominids: their discovery of tool-making and slow-cooking was not to blame for the extinction of large mammals. 

Liquid Rock, Stars, Space Rocks and Rock Stars

My ' boarding pass', enroute to Mars. Happy landings ...

Farewell to the historic Dawn - a probe which  became the first in our history to visit two different bodies in the asteroid belt, returning a wealth of information to increase our understanding of the early formation of the universe.
Dawn ceased communication with the Deep Space Network on October 31st , and it is believed that the craft ran out of  the fuel , hydrazine .
Dawn will remain in orbit around Ceres for a few decades.
It feels odd, but even as I write this, I'm aware that Dawn is already history; it launched in 2007: since then, in terms of ground - breaking, we've landed craft on a comet , hopping(!) rovers on an asteroid, had multiple take-off and landings of re-usable rockets , used a 'skycrane' to land another explorer on Mars ( and inserted the Mars Orbiter ) , had an up close flypast of Pluto and its moon, Charon, gathered info from Saturn and its moons, and Voyager 1 became the first craft to enter interstellar space. (I'm sure there are many more, and I apologise for any omissions) Every one of these was a 'ground-breaking' achievement, and I am both amazed and humbled by it all.
Go, humanity !

A large impact crater has been discovered beneath the Greenland ice sheet, dating back at least 12000 years.
Speaking of comets, the comet which helped eradicate the dinosaurs from Earth has been shown to have liquified huge amounts of rock , albeit briefly; still on the subject of space rocks, Oumuamua is heading away from us now, but NASA have learned even more about this perplexing 'traveller' from beyond. Buried amidst the excited chatter of how its 'albedo' gives us an estimate of its size, was the quiet revelation that it changed speed and direction.
This was apparently due to outgassing , but that relies on Oumuamua being an icy body, rather than a rocky one - Hmm - I'm almost tempted to see what the ' fringe' elements think - but even Harvard scientists believe that it may be an alien probe...


The ongoing search for alien life is being hampered by the demand for GPUs being used for cryptocurrency mining. Personally, I'd say the problem is also being exacerbated by the new demand for VR graphics. One of my pet theories is that portals to our multiverse exist in these burgeoning virtual spaces, so perhaps it's advantageous (or did I just play too much  Half - Life..? )

Before VR, there was humble anaglyph 3-D, and this new volume of images, lovingly prepared by none other than Queen guitarist, and Professor of Astrophysics, Brian May, adds a new dimension to a slew of images from the moon missions.

One of the oldest stars in the universe is hiding in a distant corner of our own Milky Way . At 13.5 billion years old, it is a remnant from just after the 'Big Bang' ( okay, .22 billion years after, but that's close)

Stunning image of the Jovian clouds from Juno


I was entranced by the image of swirling gaseous cloud -tops of Jupiter, my feverish imagination wondering how it would feel to travel into such a broiling mass - of course, it would probably be anti-climactic, as Jupiter has no solid rocky core, so the curious onlooker would find themselves eventually back in space, possibly with a battered sign attached to the windshield / viewport, saying ' Thank You for driving carefully through our Jovian funk '
Speaking of large clouds in our corner of space, the Mars Explorer has been observing a curious cloud in the equatorial region of the ' Red Planet '; which brings us neatly to the pending arrival of Insight on Mars, on the 26th of  November . I will be watching with crossed fingers, as my avatar will be aboard...

Designed to measure seismic activity , Insight will be a static lander, which has already attracted much online speculation ; apparently the designated landing site is close to a crashed ufo , and a walled city...

Apparently, a crashed ufo on Mars...        pic: NASA

Mysterious Mercury , Moving LaunchPads, Foraging On Mars And Fake Suns

Bepi Colombo selfie  (with insulation , because - cold)    ESA

On October 20th, the Ariane V rocket containing Bepi - Colombo blasted off on its mission to  unravel the mysteries of Mercury.  The next day, we received a selfie from space...

I don't know about you, but the vast, dark expanse of space gives me odd feelings (shivers, decides to add photoshopped stars...)


It is hoped that the strange world closest to the sun will reveal more of itself to the joint ESA / Jaxa mission , helping us to understand its mysteries, like why it has such a large iron core and a surface composed of highly flammable sulphur, without being already burned away...
The  mission will make great use of gravity assists from Venus and Earth - but in this case, the aim is to slow down, not speed up - the tremendous pull of gravity near the sun would otherwise send the mission to a high-speed fiery death.
At this point I thought I'd make a scurrilous comparison to holding marshmallows too close to a bonfire -
but that would be silly, wouldn't it ?
Despite the lengthy travel time , the mission should greatly increase our understanding of Mercury.


Meanwhile, back on Mars 


Deafening silence from the Opportunity rover which was encased during the vast dust storm that swept across Mars earlier this year.
Attempts are being made to listen for any signal from the stricken rover - ironically, seasonal winds on Mars which begin in November,  may blow dust away from those delicate solar panels, so it's time to cross fingers and hope.
The original remit for Opportunity and its sister rover ,Spirit *, was to last 90 days - the years of time we've had since then (2004) has been a bonus
There is also evidence of electrified dust - devils on Mars, which are credited with the mysterious cleaning of solar panels on the rovers...
 Personally, I'm stunned that in our solar system we now have a world peopled entirely by robotic explorers...

                                    Pinpointing collection sites on Mars              NASA/JPL

The future sample collecting mission scheduled for 2020 is narrowing down the potential sites to a couple which may provide the biosignatures hoped for.
In terms of astrophysics, I am a luddite , but it seems unnecessarily complex that three missions are required to collect and return the samples to Earth.
It's frustrating like the Mercury mission which will take seven years to arrive...
Correction, I am not a ' luddite' - just impatient.

In the meantime, don't forget that the Insight mission is next to land on Mars , ( November 26th) complete with robotic 'grabber' arm (officially, it's the Instrument Deployment Arm)
Insight is designed to stay put , taking delicate seismic and other measurements.

Soon to be launched from a jet is the Icon, an orbiting device designed to monitor the interaction of Earth and Space, weather - wise. The actual launch will be from a  ' Stargazer' jet, the only 'moving' launchpad of its type**.

Stargazer L101 with Pegasus              NASA

Meanwhile, in the upper atmosphere...

It appears that ambitious plans are afoot to launch a giant 'fake sun' into space.
The satellite would act as a mirror, reflecting the suns light onto an area covering some 80 km .
Lack of available information on this ambitious plan makes me wonder whether it is just an internet nonsense - but there has been a precedent ; back in 1993 , the Russian project Znamya 2  briefly cast a light upon Europe before burning up on re-entry.

Znamya 2 mirrored sunlight back  to Earth          MIR/ CSS

'Till Next We Meet


G

* Just a brief vid of Opportunity trying to free itself from a sand trap back in 2010

  ** I almost said 'the only moving launchpad ..in the world', but of course  -

Gateway To Hell, Giant Meteorite, Vacuum Decay, Bring Back Pluto !

Scattered across the ancient Mediterranean were alleged gateways to hell, according to Roman fables.  One such gateway remains at Hierapolis  in Turkey - Hooray ! We can throw the evil-doers (mostly high-ranking government officials) into the fiery pit from whence they came..but wait - it appears that toxic gas was responsible for the fate of sacrifices....

Ploutonion, named after the god Pluto...

Speaking of Pluto, New Horizons recently made a course correction, putting it on target for its rendezvous with Kuiper Belt object MU69 - 'Ultima Thule',  on Jan 1, 2019

Voyager 2 is nearing the beginning of interstellar space, following Voyager 1 , which left our solar system 6 years ago, and is now the farthest spacecraft from Earth, at 13 billion miles distant.

enamel pin available    Pin Alchemy @GreggB4

In the never - ending search for the elusive planet X , they have discovered an extremely distant object...personally, I just want Pluto re-instated as a planet. It's a lot closer - and we've 'been' there...just because it has an elliptical orbit is no reason to expel it from our solar system ! 

Bring Pluto Back Into The Fold...

A news report asks whether the JWST could spot alien life - the answer is possibly, but first they have to actually get the damn thing into space. Currently looking at a 2021 launch, it is running 14 years behind schedule - at this rate, you'd have a better chance taking pictures from the porthole of a Space X cruiser...

Speaking of the JWST, it appears that its predecessor is hobbling through space with stabiliser problems- down to one gyro from four...fingers crossed for the Hubble telescope, our 'eye-in-the-sky' since 1990

click here for more                 NASA/JPL/ University of Arizona

In other news we may have evidence of the first exomoon , which is great, but the current fad for deducing where something is by defining where it's NOT strikes me as possibly counter - productive*...discuss

A giant meteorite used as a doorstop in a rural farmhouse ? Sounds like the start of a science fiction...

Speaking of quantum computers, which we were not, or perhaps we were - here is a good / straight forward guide to that world of bizarreness

Another way to feel small and insignificant is to read this report on hypervelocity stars racing through our milky way...and the icing on the cake has to be this apocalyptic theory of vacuum decay ...honestly, what's the point ?

In a parting wave of cheerful news, the Ukraine has just announced plans to build a solar energy station...in Chernobyl.
If I were being crass, I'd say that every cloud has a silver lining.

Cheery Bye !


G

* I parallel this with our Anti-Social 'social' media culture, where a person is judged for what they didn't do- Person:  You didn't 'like' that anti-government joke
                 Me      :   I worry about 'humanising' the monsters.
                 Person:    So you're a nazi sympathiser, then ?
                 Me      :    WTF

Hopping Bots, Killer Bots, Art Around The Moon, and a Base In Space

Dynamic image by Rover 1A  Hopping   ( no photoshop !)          JAXA 

This weekends big news has to be the landing of Japans hopping modules on Ryugu, an asteroid some 158 million miles from Earth.
That's worthy of a momentary pause for reflection.
At 7 inches wide and 2.8 inches tall, the little ' hopper' modules really will be like specks of dust on  the asteroid surface...but these electronic specks will gather a wealth of information on what appears to be a rocky remnant from when our solar system was formed
Using the weak gravity of the asteroid, the robots will be able to change position by hopping - although it appears that the surface is far more rugged than first thought - so fingers crossed for safety - the previous Hayabusa mission accidentally deployed the first MINERVA  module into the depths of space, missing its target.

In a previous blog-post , I mentioned the relatively new field of autonomous weapons ( i.e. robots)*. Far from being the stuff of sci-fi, the European Parliament has just passed legislation outlawing such things.
A previous UN resolution was halted, with some saying that ' The benefits of autonomous weapons should be explored...'
Call me old fashioned but I can't see any benefits to being killed by an army of robots.
The only benefits to autonomous weapons that I can think of, are instances where they can be used to create controlled explosions to clear areas of rockfall, etc, during natural disasters


Rumours abound that Jeff Bezos is embarking on a new space venture, possibly in the field of commercial satellite launches  - I wonder if it's anything to do with ...

Artist rendition of ' Marsbase Alpha' with BFR

Elon Musk has unveiled a vision for a Mars Base which looks pretty nifty, although I worry about the long hike from the BFR to the transit terminal...and I bet the luggage still gets lost in transit...

Whether Messrs Musk and  Bezos are at loggerheads in their plans for cosmic exploration  is immaterial - it's all good, if it advances the cause - to which end, the announcement of the first passenger for the SpaceX orbit around the moon is good news; Yusaku Maezawa intends to take a group of creatives from different fields, with a view to creating multimedia art of the journey - which strikes me as very positive, and philanthropic of Mr Maezawa .
After such a life-affirming thing, I almost feel guilty for saying that the downside of this is that the rocket has not yet been built for the journey...still, 2023 is enough time to take the BFR from a CGI render, to moon-orbiting reality !








* I included drones initially, but they are not really autonomous, being remotely controlled ...unless they were remotely controlled by robots, which is just too scary...

Rendezvous with Ultima Thule, Rogue Satellites, Underwater Explorers, And Sabotage In Space

SUBSEA:  Nautilus explorer                image : NASA

NASA are using an underwater robot to examine signs of life around a volcanic vent off the coast of Hawaii . Known as the SUBSEA project, it is a test for similar probing on Enceladus , one of the most likely places to harbour* life beyond Earth. It's exciting stuff, much more ' hands on' than previous NASA proposal ' ELF', which rather delicately proposes to search for amino acids and methane traces in the plumes of water at the Souh pole of Enceladus. The heat is on, though, with  billionaire Yuri Milner proposing a commercial explorer to launch much sooner - after all, the prize for first place may be a place in the history books, for the discovery of life on other worlds...

The hole in the Soyuz ferry- ship MS 09

The world of space is normally free of espionage (except in film and scienti - fictions),but recent news  has set conspiracy theorists into overdrive - there is a tiny hole in the hull of the Soyuz capsule docked at the I.S.S.  Is it sabotage by a political enemy? Damage from a micro-meteorite ? A warning shot fired by an invading force of microscopic aliens ? My personal feelings are that there is a very embarrased maintenance person somewhere, (who realises that using chewing gum to cover the hole might have been the better option) , but I'm just glad that we don't have a trigger - happy 'space - force' up there...ahem.

Speaking of objects orbiting the Earth, the Aeolus satellite is now in place, and has begun taking critical readings to increase our accuracy when reporting stormy weather - to do this, the satellite fires an ultraviolet laser beam earthwards ( full details in the link ) . Currently, the satellite is in ' test' mode, so no advance warnings or news on the current barrage of typhoons / hurricanes, sadly.

Typhoon Mangkhut                                       image ©2018 EUMETSAT

Meanwhile, there is allegedly a rogue satellite conducting odd manoeuvres overhead, causing concern to both France and the USA . Perhaps we are heading for an active ' ...space situational awareness', to use the new gobbledy-gook.

Further out in space...(the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, to be precise),
the Dawn explorer is now swooping down to give us closer images (24 miles high instead of 240) of
the intriguing dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt.

Much closer shot of the salts around Occator on CERES                      image NASA/ JPL/Caltech/MPS/DLR/IDA

Speaking of objects floating in space, the Japanese craft Hayabusa 2 is preparing to release its 'hopping rovers' for touchdown on asteroid Ryugu on the 21st September 2018
Also, the first image of ' Ultima Thule '  has been taken by New Horizons in advance of its New Years Day flypast 2019 . Formerly known as MU69, the kuiper belt object was renamed in a public vote , although the highest ranked suggestion was 'mjolnir' ** - Thor's hammer.

Thors hammer won the public vote, but Tiramisu ranked highly, too

The decay of the Higgs Boson particle into 'bottom quarks' has been observed which confirms the model of  standard physics, and leads us closer to the elusive world of quantum physics. Just reading the article has given me a headache, but I'm sure it is perfectly rational to someone ...similarly, the news that entanglement of 18 qbits has been achieved, which strikes me as a very important development, but my pea-brain closes down when expressions like 'Hilbert Space' are used. If you are at all interested in the idea of the quantum multi-verse, then you may like this piece on how the brain allegedly visualises in 11 dimensions...



Thanks For Reading My Waffle !

G

* See what I did there ? Feeble, I know, but times are hard
** Sorry, my keypad won't let me add the umlaut Alt 0246

Silkworms On The Moon, The Asteroid That Broke The Bank, And A Hybrid Called Denny

Radar image Bennu   Goldstone / JPL

What has a small chance of impacting the Earth, but we're going there to collect samples anyway ?
Asteroid Bennu, of course !

Asteroid Bennu  first pic      NASA/Goddard /University of Arizona

The first image of asteroid Bennu is both exciting and underwhelming, but let's not forget that this mission to return with a sample of material from an asteroid is a first - and the photogaphic subject is 1.4 million miles away from the lens...
The spacecraft Osiris -Rex will first  'encounter' Bennu on Dec 3rd, and fall into orbit around the asteroid on Dec 31
This will (almost) coincide with New Horizons  flypast of object MU69, (January 1st 2019) to which it has been travelling since the historic flypast of Pluto and its moons in July 2015
The actual sampling (a robotic arm will scoop a sample* from Bennu) is planned for 2020, with the returning sample recovery capsule of Osiris REx making landfall in Utah in 2023.
As for the impact with our world, it is not a possibility until 2175, according to the very useful Near Earth scale from NASA, so breath a sigh of relief !

In Other News - there's still time to name the ESA ExoMars rover...it is scheduled for a spring 2021 landing.

ExoMars rover needs a name !

 The James Webb Telescope has now slid to a launch date in 2022 - making it 11 years late and seven billion dollars overbudget...being an old cynic, my personal theory is that it will be obsolete by the time it actually launches, as cutting edge lenses on smartphones will allow us to see into deep space...

China have a communication satellite already in place for Chang'e-4

China promise a mission involving two robot explorers for the dark side of the moon , launching in December 2018. Named Chang e 4. it will conduct numerous experiments including examining the immediate aftermath of the ' big bang', and the feasibility of growing potatoes and nurturing silkworms !

Aeolus recently launched (23rd August) from Guiana with the remit of gathering information on wind speeds around the globe.
Extremes of weather can have both good and bad effects...the recent heatwave here in the u.k., has resulted in the imprints of  previously hidden ancient settlements being visible from the air.-on the other hand,The Northern Arctic Sea route is becoming ' feasible' again, as a shortcut due to global warming.
At this point, I take a deep sigh, and return to space news...


The unique all-metal asteroid 16 Psyche is to get a NASA deep space mission heading its way soon.
 The jaw-dropping evaluation of its assets ( I saw a figure of 10 quadrillion dollars ), puts it way out there- and I don't mean its position in the Asteroid Belt.  My dogged attempts to research credible sources for more information on this, however, were met with media hysteria, paywalls and dodgy links.  I suppose the idea that one asteroid could potentially trigger a new 'goldrush' and cause the global finance markets to flatline, has triggered mass hysteria already.
At this point, I take a deep sigh, and return to Earth news...

  A 90,000 year old bone fragment found in a Russian cave comes  from the only known first generation hybrid hominid. now known as Denny...



* Apparently the sample will weigh 4.4lbs, which is quite hefty...

Touching The Sun, Mission To Alpha Centauri, For Whom The Signals CHIME

This blog was hurriedly assembled to mark the launch of the historic Parker Solar Probe

Delayed lift-off ...

24 hours later 

The probe finally launches  aboard Delta IV Heavy

Today saw the re-scheduled* launch of the Parker Solar Probe, as it now bravely heads for the sun on a one - way mission to gather new information about our mighty star .
It is hoped that a working knowledge of the mysterious 'solar wind' can be gained - not least an understanding of why the temperature four million miles away is approximately 200 times hotter than the surface temperature of  the sun itself (a mere 5700 degrees C).
The mission is a vindication of scientist Eugene Parker, who first proposed the idea of the solar wind many decades ago (in the 1950s), but was refuted - until 1962, when the Mariner 2 craft reported a strong solar wind on its journey to Venus.
The solar wind extends beyond the end of our solar system , and was only recently breached by Voyager 1, which became the first human-built craft to enter interstellar space in 2012...
 The Parker Solar Probe will be the closest ever human - made object to the sun, dwarfing the previous record of approx 28 million miles.
Four million miles may seem like a considerable distance from the heat of the sun, but don't forget that the nearest planet, Mercury, is an average of 35 million miles away , and still gets daytime surface temperatures of 450 degrees celsius...
The Parker Solar Probe will become the fastest moving human built object ever, when it reaches a blistering (literally) 430,000 miles an hour at its fastest and closest approach to Sol in December 2024  , aided by a gravity 'slingshot' from Venus.
Part of its payload is a list of over one million names of people who applied to 'travel' - being superstitious, I thought it smacked of 'solar sacrifice', so my name is only on a boarding pass on the Insight craft...

Artist impression of the Parker Solar Probe                 image: NASA

In Other News...

 A meteorite that dates from a mere 2.5 million years after the ' Big Bang' has potentially changed the understanding of the formation of volcanic rock throughout the galaxy.

NASA has chosen the nine astronauts who will fly the next crewed missions to launch to the I.S.S. beginning next year. It feels like the next logical step, as all eyes look to the stars - well, Mars. Personally, I think it more likely that we are practicing for the eventual mining of asteroids, an untapped market worth an estimated three trillion dollars.; but then, I'm just an old cynic...

Staying with NASA, plans are afoot to send a mission to an exoplanet by way of marking the hundredth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, which landed the first humans on the moon.
The exoplanet candidate for this mission is part of the Alpha Centauri system, a mere four light years from here.
Hopefully, by the anniversary date of 2069, the small technical hitches (speed of light travel, deceleration, etc) will have been eradicated. The idea was mooted at a conference by Anthony Freeman of JPL, who then said the plans were " Nebulous" (laughter emoji)

                                                       Andre Renard / Dunlap Institute, CHIME

In other news, a brand new radio telescope in British Columbia, Canada has detected an FRB (180725A ) emanating from some 3 billion light years away.  The amount of energy required to send a radio signal over such a distance is phenomenal; one source equated it with moving a load weighing a million tons - okay, that means it's probably a couple of black holes colliding, or a pulsar, but even so...
What also makes this FRB so unique is that it has a low frequency of 580 mhz, rather than the standard 700 mhz. Exactly what this implies, I'm not sure, but I hope that the aliens using the signal as a carrier beam are friendly...
On this note, I repair to my safe room, and take my medications...
Until next time, I hope all is well in your corner of the multi-verse !


* These things happen - flocks of birds, meteors, Godzilla, that sort of thing

Water On Mars, Resurrected Roundworms , And A Fiery Fate For Parker

There's been a blistering heatwave in the U.K. recently, so the discovery of a body of water that's ice cold (-68c) is a great relief - unfortunately, however, it's buried beneath the South Pole of Mars.
The logistics involved in travelling 34 million miles to get there, then drilling down through over a kilometre of ice are challenging, but already hordes of excited people are jumping for joy  - liquid water on Mars !
Not that I want to rain on the parade, but the other unknown is just how much water there is - it may be a large, shallow, puddle...
Closer to home, but staying with the idea of frozen discoveries, scientists have re-awakened nematodes from a 40, 000 year slumber in Siberian permafrost.

                   Revived roundworm !                                                          Doklady Biological Sciences

Attempts are already underway to discover the mechanism that allows the ancient nematodes to ' de-activate' for so long. The feat itself is impressive (previous record for re-animation* is thirty years )

and has implications for cryogenic freezing and possibly generational travel.
Speaking of spacecraft*, the ISS has a live 'webcam' feed, as part of an ongoing experiment . I find it quite relaxing to watch, almost like meditation...

Recent activity in the heavens included the 'blood moon' , the longest lunar eclipse of this century, lasting over an hour and forty minutes, and by all accounts from around the world, pretty special (he says through gritted teeth) - yes, our long run of clear skies in the u.k. was briefly ended by cloud cover , just in time for this once-in-a-lifetime occasion.
Sighs, shrugs

The 'blood' moon, visible from most places - except here.

From the moon to the Sun, we learn of the new date for the Parker Solar Probe (now scheduled for launch sometime around August 11th 2018). The ' touching the sun' hype is a tad wrong, given that the probe will get no closer than four million miles or so - but don't forget that part of the Parker Probes purpose is to solve the mystery of 'coronal heating', attempting to find out why the outlying coronal area is 200 times hotter than the surface of the sun itself . When I read of the coronal temperature ( 2 million degrees Farenheit ), I just thought - good luck, little probe...


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Thanks to you for being there, thanks to Glenn for the heads up on nematodes, and cheery bye , but hopefully not so long this time till next - did I tell you about my creative endeavours, no ?
Another time, then...

* Tardigrades were used ...I'm wary of the term ' re-animation', actually...I blame Herbert West...
* Tenuous link , but times are hard...

Complex Organics and Heli-Drones on Mars

Some time ago, a noise arose from the depths of the internet, telling us that octopi were probably alien creatures introduced via panspermia , thus delighting fans of the Cthulhu mythos...but wait ! Hold that mocking laughter - the Curiosity explorer has just discovered complex carbon molecules in an ancient lakebed on Mars.
Whilst not proof of direct organic lifeforms, it would certainly be evidence of foodstuffs for putative organic lifeforms
As I write, NASA are planning a press conference to make public the exciting discovery which has already been leaked to the voracious denizens of the internet.
This is NOT evidence of life, but it certainly adds a great deal of potential to the upcoming Mars missions, especially the ESA Exo Mars rover, which will deploy a drill allowing subsurface exploration to a depth of two metres, where fossil evidence may be found, safe from the degenerative radiation of the depleted Mars atmosphere.

The upcoming NASA mission to Mars will include a drone - except that it is being called a helicopter,but it won't have a pilot...so, a drone, then...

Artist impression of  Mars Helicopter/ Drone  / Flying Box                NASA/JPL

With the pending rendezvous with Bennu in December, and New Horizons encounter with MU69 on Jan 1 2019, it's quite a hectic time in space - I just hope the planned protest by the cruelly neglected movement 'SeaHorses Are Alien, Too ,You Know !' - finally gets the recognition they deserve !

Are Seahorses Aliens ?

This teeny little blog will probably update, so  - be prepared for further ramblings...

Mars Quakes, Clippers And Alien Krill

Gullied wall on Mars    NASA  HI -Rez image processed  byKevinMGill 

Today saw the launch of the Atlas-V rocket from Vandenburg, carrying the NASA Insight lander on its journey to Mars, touching down in six months, and sending us new subsurface data of 'Marsquakes' to enable us to build a clear picture of the seismic internal workings of both Mars, and ultimately, our own planet .

Insight follows on from Viking 2 and Phoenix               image NASA  / JPL

 Let's hope that it proves fruitful, as it appears that NASA have nixed the idea of human journeys to Mars due to costs. In the greater scheme of things, the commercial field is burgeoning, and I'm surre that bookings are healthy for Mars 'trips'
Lets not forget the space hotel, Orion span, which is due in 2021,

Personally I don't think that Mars even has the best resources available for fruitful exploration, ( no atmosphere, precious little water, major terraforming necessary) - although, if there are any cheap smallholdings available, let me know ; I'll pack the factor 2000 Suncream

I am excited about the proposed Europa Clipper, although it has huge considerable problems ahead - funding, the feasibility of a rocket big enough for the 60 tonne probe, successful navigation of the complex gravitational fields of Jupiter and its many moons, etcetera. The potential pay-off , however, could be (pardon the pun) astronomical - alien krill !
Okay, so that was a lame joke that downplays the potential of such a historic voyage - but if I've learned one thing about space exploration, it's not to get over - excited (as I was about the huge sodium deposits of Ceres, and the fiery fate* of Cassini)
The launch of Europa Clipper is currently set at 2022 , and should take about three years to reach the icy Jovian moon
 Although it has already done the viral thing online, I am still hugely impressed by this gif collated by Twitter user Landru 79...using many pictures taken by the errant lander Philae: Landru intends to remake the gif in full colour, no less !
The sheer fact that it shows imagery from the surface of a comet hurtling through space leaves me overawed and humbled. It may be a cliché , but what a time to be alive !




* I think this may have had more to do with the Absinthe I drank in commemoration)

Eyes on Exoworlds, Microbes in Clouds, and Hopping Robots on Asteroids

T.E.S.S. final picture before being prepped for launch

The Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Surveyor will be launched on Monday 16th April (Tomorrow as I write this, but who's counting ?)
Launching from Cape Canaveral, it will add to the search for Earth-like exoplanets currently being scoped by Hubble and Keppler.
It will bridge the (ever-increasing) gap between now and the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope

I find it both commendable but also a good deal of why?
Exoplanets are already bountiful, but the hopes of ever reaching one are painfully slim.
I suppose it helps to identify chemical composition, and make comparisons with our own backwater world. In that respect, it may further our ability to i.d. various chemical signatures in the atmosphere of impossibly distant worlds.
Recently though, Proxima B, a strong exoworld contender, has apparently been subjected to a potentially lethal dose of radiation from its parent star.

Exoplanet transit

Closer to home, we are finding tantalising possibilities of life in our own universe  - the water plumes of Enceladus and the submerged oceans of  Europa to name but two possible contenders; and now there is also the potential of microbes in the clouds of Venus.

The inhospitable surface of Venus has claimed many probes and led to the place being dubbed a hellish world, but the upper atmosphere has potential for further exporation - a floating ' cloud station' has even been mooted. There is also a pending joint America / Russia sortie ( the much delayed Venera -D)

Still remaining in our vicinity - the Japanese explorer Hayabusa 2 is on schedule to collect and return with samples from asteroid Ryugu, having already found and imaged the target - if I'm not mistaken, this is the mission with hopping robots !

Minerva - hopping robot     ISAS

The return of Hayabusa 2 is scheduled for 2020, leaving Osiris- rex lagging behind (it won't get a visual of the target asteroid Bennu until August 2018, and return is scheduled for 2023 ) - but in the spirit of international co-operation, samples will be shared between the two missions.

Apropos of nothing, here is a link to a piece I was going to use as an illustration of spacetime travel, but I ran out of time...

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It's not just birds that can ' see' the Earths magnetic field - ESA have Swarm on the case, too


The discovery of a galaxy lacking the elusive ' dark matter' has become a contentious issue...