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

Tilted Worlds, Tilted Beds, Little Green Men, And Solar Probes

Uranus - natural colour

First planet to be discovered by telescope, Uranus is a strange world.
Tilted at almost ninety degrees, it rolls around the sun like a big frozen ball
An ice giant like Neptune, it exhibits quirks which imply that unknown processes are at work. deep within.
The best images which we have date from 1986 when Voyager 2 flew by, yet no probe / lander is proposed until 2030, by which time, we'll be well established on Mars- there are already six explorers / orbiters on Mars,  (and some publicity boosts in the form of popular films) *
It has been suggested that we could inhabit lava tubes on Mars, at least at first...hmmm, what could possibly go wrong?

NASA are already looking into ways to reduce journey time to Mars - with some innovative proposals on the table .
Various tests are underway for the human response to space travel ; recently subjects emerged from eight months of isolation and bed tests are underway for a sixty day period, with subjects being tilted downwards for that whole time.
It's a busy time, but there is room for more, with a serious discussion asking why we don't have at least one orbiter around each world in our solar system.
I just wonder when we will reach the ultimate military / space crossover point - i.e. when one of our orbiters gets shot down by disgruntled extraterrestrials who don't want their world to be streamed live...

Artists impression  The binary asteroid 288P. Credit: ESA/Hubble, L. Calçada, CC BY 4.0

Regardless of the planets of our solar system, let's not forget that NASA are sending a mission to the sun.
Set for launch in 2018, the Parker Solar Probe will endure blistering temperatures of 1200 degrees centigrade: if that sounds rather trifling for a solar temperature, don't forget that the probe will be some 3million miles from the sun...hopefully, it will survive long enough to transmit its discoveries on this one-way mission.


Australia are set to have their own space agency - and why not ?
After all, there's plenty of wilderness for launches and landings.
Then again, large untamed spaces are  a rarity these days, and I wondered why we can't avoid the
monstrous amount of fuel wasted in reaching escape velocity from Earth.




* Okay, so the old little green men / alien invaders trope is hardly flattering but no publicity is bad publicity. Besides, with our robot Mars explorers, we are the alien invaders...