Red Planet, Red Dragon And The Red KBO

Since the Pluto flypast on July 14 2015, New Horizons has been hurtling through space at approximately 32,000 mph, heading for its next rendezvous - Kuiper Belt Object MU69.
The report I linked is a tad speculative, as recent attempts to observe the object drew a blank - it remains uncertain whether it is a single object, or a cluster of smaller space rocks - all that is known for sure is that it is red.
Although which particular shade remains uncertain...

Artist impression               ©NASA/JHUAPL/SwRi

Regardless, New Horizons powers onward through the bleak vastness of space, aiming for a rendezvous on New Years day 2019
I must set my alarm...
Seriously though, I'm still trying to get my head around the sheer distance being covered.
That's another year and a half at 32,000mph.
Travelling 24 / 7
Without even a pitstop.
Damn

Speaking of things that move quickly...
Elon Musk may or may not have permission to build a hyperloop between Washington D.C. and New York.
Transporting people at 700 mph  would certainly ease the pressure of road traffic and the carbon footprint of flights...
staying with the innovative Elon Musk, his Dragon outfit are reworking their Mars landers.
This was reported widely as a complete withdrawal from commercial landings, but apparently it's just a re-design...

Meanwhile, those pesky alien signals...

The latest on the signal from Ross 128, is that it comes from a geostationary satellite.
However, there are still uncertainties .
At least it's not the microwave oven , this time...

Meanwhile, on Mars...   ©NASA/JPL

It has been asked of NASA, whether there were ancient civilisations on Mars.
Personally I hope the answer is yes, and the atmosphere vanished due to unchecked global warming...

Apologies for that outburst.
No more politics, or conspiracy theories...I promise !
Well, that's what the martians said...

  ©A mapaday.com

Gas Giants, Helium Balloons and the Arrow of Time

Apparently the hole in the ozone layer is healing, after the virtually global ban on CFCs was introduced some thirty years ago, so yay!
We did something right...
I think the end of the Eighties trend for ' big hair ' probably made a difference, too...

pic: Mary Sue.com

More Good News...

In Tanzania, they have discovered a huge underground source of Helium, so clowns making balloon animals  and stoners talking in funny voices can rejoice !
Seriously though - Helium occurs in abundance throughout the universe, but sadly it is lacking on Earth,  generally only occuring as a byproduct of radioactive decay...so the discovery of a secret stash is good news!

In other news...

Scientists have discovered a new nucleus that points to a certain place in space, which indicates that time is linear, only ever moving forward.
So, no time travel, then.
I find this oddly deflating (certainly for fans of Back To The Future) , but don't forget - it may only be true in our universe!
Which leads me to wonder whether time even exists in other universes.

Mars has Manganese   pic MSS /  NASA

Recent discovery of oxygen whch was once plentiful in the Martian atmosphere paints a picture of a more Earth-like world , especially with its evidence of ancient oceans and lakes.
Speaking of oceans , it seems there may be one beneath the surface of Pluto, following visual cues from New Horizons data ...and vying for recognition in the possible ' water-world' stakes is another dwarf planet, namely Ceres.

Soon to be at a gas giant near you...

Speaking of long distance travel ( do you like the smooth flow of links here?) , after launching way back in 2011, Juno finally arrives at Jupiter on Monday July 4th 2016 ( auspicious date for some ), to begin a survey of  the atmosphere of the gas giant, helping us better understand the mysterious world .
It's a pretty extreme and turbulent ride ahead for the little explorer, so fingers crossed...

Finally, another piece of good news is that funding has been secured for further missions for New Horizons and Dawn , as well as other craft involved in exploration of space .
Positive steps into the unknown !

Clouds on Pluto, Distant Galaxies and Radio Signals

Following the recent announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves, you can help in the further discovery of more signals - link here.
In news from the New Horizons team, something is eating away at Pluto, creating a huge gouge in the Western hemisphere.
Don't panic though, it 's probably just material evaporating ...
Another recent discovery is what appear to be actual clouds on Pluto - caveat, I say actual clouds, but these are nitrogen with traces of methane, not water clouds.
Smelly acid rain then, don't forget your brolly.
Or breathing apparatus, obv.

Impossibly hard to see  wispy clouds on Pluto.  pic NASA

This discovery is possible through the ongoing downloads of material from the September flypast by New Horizons.

The downloads will continue until near the end of this year.
It's a slow process - after all, New Horizons is getting further away, heading for a rendezvous in the Oort cloud in 2019, so it is putting serious miles between us , travelling at approximately 30,000 mph in the opposite direction .
Don't forget the download speed is pathetically low; at an underwhelming 2000 bits a second - there are no Wi - Fi relay / booster stations out there !
Clouds on Pluto are exciting news because they could help in the reclassification of Pluto as a planet (remember it was downgraded in 2006) .
This would create a whole new set of problems with the ongoing search for the mysterious Planet X , which would then become a tenth planet in our solar system.

On its way out of service, Hubble has just imaged the most distant object in the known universe at 13 billion light years distant, which makes it just  aspproximately 400 hundred million years from the Big Bang.

JWST artists impression    pic NASA

Anyway, the incoming James Webb Telescope should easily surpass that, perhaps even revealing the finger of The Supreme Being hovering over the button marked ' Start .'

But I digress...

In other news, the source of the mysterious signal FRB 121102 has been pinpointed (approximately) -but they are none the wiser as to what exactly it is .
The actual signals seem to be clustered irregularly, which implies an artificial nature, perhaps designed to be noticed.
Beyond that, there is only speculation at present - but the 'alien megastructure' theory is no longer viable.
To add to the confusion, doubts have already been cast on the validity of the report - the internet is no slouch when it comes to raining on parades !
Despite this, the internet can also have its uses - for instance, here's a link to many Russian films, including the only horror film made in the old USSR 'Viy', and the mesmerising ' Stalker' - pointless and strange ? Exactly, that's why we're here !

From the lights of Ceres to the plains of Pluto

Ceres Occator crater - closest view yet...

The indefatigable Dawn explorer is dropping (slowly, the Ion engines are fragile) to its closest point in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, and hopefully a final solution to the true nature of those baffling lights.
We are told it will be in place for mid-December, so anytime now
From an orbit of 915 miles, it will drop to 230 miles , hopefully providing us with a final definitive moment when we can collectively nod knowingly, saying -'So that's what it is, hmmm'.
I suspect we'll still be none the wiser, but even so, it is a truly fascinating thing.
And to think it's on our nearest dwarf planet.
The closer we get, the more I am convinced that they are subsurface, molten sources, probably of intense heat, too.
If you check out the other images of Ceres, you can see many examples of similar, brightly coloured ejecta around the cratered surface.
I think it's a natural phenomenon of some kind - if it is an alien city, it's the equivalent of putting on every light in the city and shouting ' Here we are! Come and get us!'.
Which would be foolish on a cosmic scale.
Of course it could be a double bluff, and they want us to explore what appears to be a dead city...


Whilst entertaining such wild ideas, scientists have apparently proven that our reality is not a hologram, so - yeah, sorry to all the Matrix-philes and existentialists out there, but apparently reality is not an illusion.
Well, not a holographic illusion.

Meanwhile, Pluto continues to surprise with the latest high definition image downloads from New Horizons...

I'm amazed that this is a strip of land on a planet over 3 billion miles away...


Back on Earth...

'Nudol', Russian anti-satellite system

Russia has successfully tested its first anti- satellite missile.
The image above allegedly came from a Russian site - I especially like the blending of the hardline military vehicle with fluffy clouds and golden crops.
Seems almost peaceful...
This is proof that we are in a new era of space war - or at least the paranoid defence of our satellite capabilities.
This article makes for sobering reading.
For myself, I tend to think of satellites as GPS and mapping and such things - of course it's far more than that. Many nations are dependent on satellite functionality - business, military, communications, weather - so this is the beginning of overhead powerplay...groan.
Okay, so it's not the beginning - the U.S. already have ASAT, their own missile system ready - it's just that Russia and China have entered the fray.

This being the case, I just hope that the joint US / Russian Venus mission goes ahead, along with the proposed ESA/ Roskosmos moon mission - just to remind us all that we can work together and do constructive, forward looking things...

In other revelations this week, it is mooted that there was no Big Bang, and infact the Universe has existed forever . Whether I find this cheering or depressing is uncertain at present - the illustration of the man blowing up the expanding balloon / universe says it all , I think.

  So the universe expands, like a balloon - but who's inflating it - and what's out there?

Tractor Beams and Space Junk

Did you know that we 'Earthlings' are surrounded by a 'bubble' of our own sounds / t.v. / radio transmissions?
Apparently it stretches 200 light years around us, which is pretty big, but on a cosmic scale, is tiny.
And yet no aliens have been in touch.
Perhaps they saw X Factor.

In Other News...
Scientists in the uk have successfully manipulated a physical object  using only sound waves.
Okay, so it's only a tiny bead, but it's a start.
Tractor Beams are real
The Future is now!

I was thinking of this the other day - the bewildering exponential curve of everything.
Is it me or is the curve of science and discoveries going through the (virtual) roof ?
In tihs blog, I tend to focus on a narrow band where my personal interests lie, which is mainly all things related to space travel and exploration.
In that field alone, we've seen some astonishing advances in this year - the first close up images from Pluto and its moons, ongoing examination of Mars by the Curiosity rover, now yielding details of ancient rock strata and riverbeds : we landed an explorer on a comet, whilst maintaining the benign presence of an orbiting mothership. Another explorer, (Cassini), which was tasked with mapping the moons of Saturn is now testing water plumes from Enceladus, Maven has just entered orbit around Mars, joining the Mars Express and Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter and moves are afoot to send initial human missions to Mars as well as further moon exploration  - a mooted joint venture between the ESA and Roscosmos.
'Dawn' is entering a lower orbit for final close passes of planetoid Ceres in December .
And meantime, one of our furthest explorers, New Horizons is heading for rendezvous with KBO 2014MU69
Keppler is searching for exoplanets in the 'habitable zone' of distant stars.
Voyagers one and two are heading into deep space.
It's busy out there...

  It's a busy solar system! No parking at any time...                     pic by Olaf Frohn . 

Then there's the ISS
As well as an endless band of satellites in a ring around us.
And space junk.
Officially known as 'Orbital Debris'.
At the last count 50,000 pieces orbiting planet Earth, ranging from tiny flecks of paint to objects the size of a family car

Speaking of which - did you know that an unknown object will fall to Earth on Friday 13th November ?
Unlucky for some.
Apparently it's hollow space junk, and whilst this is fairly common, this one is being monitored for reasons unknown.
It has even been given a classification : WT1190F (or WTF in popular parlance).
The 'WTF' is accurate really, as they actually don't know what it is - cue spooky music - (theremin)
Theories range from an alien vessel to the Biblical millstone cast into the sea by God, thus fulfilling Revelation 13- ahem.
Anyway, they are pretty sure it will land in the Indian Ocean, approximately 5 km south of Sri Lanka - and woe betide any local fisherman in that triangulation.

            Landing area of WT1190F  (approx 5 km)                      Pic © Bill Gray   Project Pluto

Spaceship Graveyard

What happens to robot explorers when they die ?

There is no fabled final resting place like the elephants graveyard yet.

Curiosity landing site on Mars. 

Following the Pluto flypast which gave us a plethora of new information (still being assessed / downloaded),

New Horizons is now heading for the Kuiper belt, and with further funding,  possible analysis of another object - before it powers down , leaving us with a hunk of junk drifting in space, billions of miles away.

I personally hope that it continues for many years, but the truth is that we're lucky New Horizons didn't get struck already by space debris - and given the prevalence of random stuff in the Kuiper Belt, the odds are stacked against it.

Image taken from here:

Powered by Plutonium (ho-ho, almost funny), New Horizons is currently set to rendezvous either PT1 or PT3, (PT2 was eliminated).
The difference is that PT1 is smaller, but closer, therefore requiring less fuel, whereas PT3 is bigger but further away.
If the latter is chosen then the flyby is scheduled for 2019, at which point the fuel onboard should expire, and New Horizons will be freefloating.

Sadly for New Horizons, unlike the explorer Cassini, it will not be given a final blast of glory .

Cassini is currently tasked with photographing the moons of Saturn.

Cassini , should it last , will be repeatedly thrust through Saturns rings before plummeting down into its atmosphere at an incredible speed.,
A fiery send off in a blaze of glory, then.

Philae, the much beleagured lander on comet 67P may similarly go out in a blaze as the comet reaches its perihelion with our sun in August, erupting in a halo of ice and flame.

But New Horizons will just become smaller and smaller on the cosmic horizon, until, like Voyagers 1 and 2 before it, it's gone.

At this point, I should say that it qualifies as the first ever craft to approach Pluto system on a flypast, and its discoveries have been unrivalled.


And oh yes, I almost forgot - oops

There's also Curiosity, the Mars lander.
.
Still trundling around the hostile dust-bowl of the Martian surface, dutifully identifying different geological phenomena.

No spectacular ice flows or suchlike for Curiosity, no.

Just strata of quartz and such.

Curiositys progress.

Perhaps Curiosity is harbouring a robot dream of becoming a museum piece, when Mars is colonised.
And people will come to visit,
With their bored children in tow.

 There it will be, Curiosity, shiny and proud, if a little battered and worn.

Part of an exhibit showing the earliest unmanned pioneers of Mars.

Alongside Spirit, Opportunity, Sojourner and the wreckage of Beagle 2.

 Mars Rovers to scale...image from ExtremeTech.com

In fairness, quite a lot of wreckage, as Mars proved almost unassailable for many years.

But I digress.

Beneath that terraformed dome with its buzzing lights and hushed crowd,

I wonder whether anyone will wonder how things are,

back on Earth.

Earth from Mars.

Watch The Skies

I'm getting all fired up with astronomy here, thanks to the recent Pluto flypast.
One piece of trivia that excited me was the fact that the brain of New Horizons is powered by the same CPU as the Playstation1*

The mind boggles - this might explain why its  download rate is a mere 1kb / second.
Apparently it will take up to 16 months to completely download the info from Pluto / Charon, etc.
Don't forget though, the transmission point is over 3 billion miles away - and getting more distant all the time.

Ps One Evan Amos CC Licensed

Even so, we already have a wealth of stuff to mull over about this distant corner of our solar system.
We learned that there are mountains of water ice some 11,000 feet high on Pluto.
We even got a 3D gif ...

The icy mountains of Pluto...*

We have discovered a mountain in a weird moat - like depression on Charon, and evidence of chasms up to seven miles deep.
Also the relatively youthful geology of both Pluto and Charon indicate that they are very much active - this in itself, despite the lack of any obvious heat source, is peculiar.

Before I plunge headlong into the depths of tinfoil helmet - land...

* I mentioned the CPU of the PS one which powers the brain of New Horizons. - well, the thruster controls etc...
The craft itself is powered by an RTG, specifically Plutonium, an element named after - guess.

As well as the gadgetry for readings and suchlike, New Horizons also contains some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered Pluto.
Enroute to the Kuiper Belt now, he becomes  the first human whose mortal remains have travelled beyond our solar system.

 Clyde Tombaugh was also one of the highest profile astronomers to report a ufo sighting.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930

Not only that , but he spotted unusual activity on the surface of Mars in 1941, in the form of bright flashes of light.

Curious ?

How about the bright lights recently spotted in craters on Ceres , which even NASA are puzzled over?

The mysterious lights of Ceres...

Yes, Ceres, remember that little blip of excitement ?

Another dwarf planet, some 250 million miles away, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It's gone oddly quiet on that front lately , and the only real news which I could glean was that in early August the Dawn craft should get closer, as it enters an orbit of around 900 miles above the surface for hopefully more  in - depth photos.

Speculation already abounds - not least because we are seemingly being teased with almost but not quite detailed closeups.

The previous link above leads to a piece on the mysterious hazes which occasionally appear above the reflective patches.
there is debate as to whether these patches are composed of ice or salt - more importantly why don't we have Spectrometer analysis ?

Apparently the Spectrometer is otherwise engaged ...

Speaking of which, an animation of Ceres rotation has been released, which has missing footage.
Footage which may reveal the true nature of the lights...

Some say the haze is linked to an area of 'mini - atmosphere'...

Another theory is that it is an abandoned space base.

As the Dawn probe spirals closer, we can only wait.

Watch The Skies





* Pluto mountains GIF by MattiasMalmer , all other images Creative commons educational please thank you

From Pluto with Love

I wonder if there's someone on Pluto wondering this
Whether mass extinction or a pandemic could result from an asteroid
colliding with their world...
...and whether early warning systems exist to prevent such a thing.
They probably have an early warning system.
With many heroic types ready to scramble at a moments notice.
In defence of the realm.

Would they have realms on Pluto ?

After all, Pluto is so small it was declassified for a while.
But who's to say it's not inhabited by Lilliputian people ?
To them it could be infinitely large.

Tardigrades could be their biggest threats.

They survive in space...

The reason for this ramble is the imminent flypast -
New Horizons, after an epic journey of nine years
will hurtle past Pluto, taking snapshots as it goes
at approximately 32000 miles an hour.

Not even slowing down for a pit-stop.

Drive-by mapping.* ( now is a livelink to New Horizons app )

But I digress, I was discussing the possibility of someone on Pluto watching a shooting star cross the heavens.
Would they make a wish for luck ?
What would they think if they knew it was us ?
It makes me aware that we are the aliens...

New Horizons, the Google street - mapping car of the heavens?

Not quite, but you get the idea.
It's one thing that Google are not involved with.
Speaking of which,
the latest tinkering Google-wise seems to stem from software known as Deep Dreams*
essentially virtual neural networking which can produce dream - like images.
 Do computers dream of electric sheep, and all that.
They've even made it open source , so everyone can get strange...

I tend to be wary of this sort of thing as it makes me question - why are they so intent on showing us their new toy ?
Do they really want people feeding endless images into it ?

Monkeys, dogs and insects are common Deep Dream warps...

Personally, I think the end results are interesting / nightmarish, but ultimately, rather dull.
Exactly what you'd expect from a virtual attempt at dream simulation;
Beyond the initial 'oh that looks trippy like 'shrooms or acid',

Images that look ' a bit weird ' but are ultimately repetitive in content.
Morphing and convoluting into endless permutations of increasingly outlandish oddities.

So, yes, it's a bit trippy -  if every trip was a bad one.

It's as though the machinery freaked out and went into meltdown, obsessing one element of the 'trip'.

The images are only really interesting when you realise they have been made by a device with no cognitive awareness.
The ongoing attempt to emulate humanity by machine is absorbing huge amounts of money and producing - not much.

Give it up, I say.
Or show us ground-breaking advances in medical technology.
Just stop tinkering with this sub - Terminator world of Skynet that doesn't exist.
Although recent news involving a death at a German car factory indicates otherwise.

Perhaps we could combine the two -

Let's make Pluto a Penal colony for murderous robots !

I'm sure there's a film there

If so , please remember where you read it first - intellectual property and all that.

I want a percentage on the merchandise.

Thank you!


This post contains a link to a sequence created  by Johan Nordberg , using Deep Dream .
Please exercise caution if viewing under the influence of psychedelics.
Actually, you won't need any...
I accept no responsibility for disturbance / flashbacks induced...

A Backyard Full of Flybys

Apparently there was flowing water on Mars until about 500,000 years ago.
Evidence is visible in images taken by Curiosity -
It's also what the orbiting craft Maven is looking for :
What caused the atmosphere to dissipate and the water to dry up ?


Was the planet inhabited ?
Did they leave suddenly because of drought ?
Did they come here ?
Are we the descendants of Martians ?

And why so many questions ?

Evidence of waterflow on Mars  Newton crater pic by NASA

Anyway, this idea has moved from the tin - foil realm into 'maybe' territory.
Actually it hasn't - but I like to speculate.

'Speculative fiction' seems to be a new category, although the term was allegedly coined in 1941.
This may have happened in a strange parallel multiverse, and has only now come to light.

I suppose that if the future is now, (as we frequently seem to hear ),
then speculative fiction is closer to now than science - fiction.
It sounds more plausible.
With events being 'Just around the corner'.

500,000 years ago was the last evidence of flowing water on Mars.
About the same time here on Earth, we see evidence of interbreeding in the human fossil record,
As modern man develops from diverse archaic threads...
...food for thought ?

Or just the premise for a hokey sci-fi ?

- Deep breath -

Dr David Miller, chief technological officer at NASA, says we are aiming to colonise Mars now, not
just go for a  visit.

This being the case , are we  returning en - masse to the old homeworld ?
I say 'en -masse', but it will probably be a lottery.
Or like the Hunger Game of Thrones, a fierce challenge
Winner Takes All
Survival of the fittest.


I was going to include a time-line diagram of the development of flight, but I'm no good at technical details, so -

2,400 years ago, kites were invented by the Chinese.

1783 was the year of the first hot air balloon flight (courtesy of the Montgolfier brothers).

The Wright brothers made the first manned aircraft flight in 1903.

The first moon landing was 46 years ago.

Now we are on Mars - well, a couple of robot explorers are.
Also, the lander Philae is riding a comet out there somewhere.
Our first ever landing on a comet

Comets were once considered omens, harbingers of news...

I still find it amazing to think:

We have exploration spacecraft wandering amongst the planets.
As well as Rosetta (Philae mothership),
we have the Mars Orbiter (Curiosity mothership) and Maven
Also Dawn which is orbiting Ceres
Cassini is exploring Saturn and its moons
New Horizons heading to Pluto and beyond .
And Voyager 1 & 2 which are already in the beyond...

Cassini anim using Gimp copyright NASA ?

Pictures from our very first flypast of Pluto will be here imminently.
Whilst New Horizons has been travelling,
Pluto was downgraded from Planet to dwarf planet
and upgraded to Planet again.

Whilst New Horizons has been travelling, we have seen the birth of Facebook and Twitter.

When New Horizons began its trek to Pluto, the International Space Station was not a thing.
Think about that for a moment.
The object orbiting the world with spacemen inside
Now such an everyday accepted fact,
was still in its infancy - the scheduled completion date was 2010.

In 2010, having passed Jupiter,
the New Horizons craft went into hibernation mode.
Finally, after a five year journey, it is awake again
Travelling at 32,000 mph (approximately)
We are mere days away from our first ever proper close-up sight of a world so small and so far away, that it was only discovered by its effects on other bodies.

We are closing in on the heavenly body formerly known as Planet X  (and almost named Percival )

What Pluto actually looks like will no longer be in the realms of Speculative Fiction.

So I'm quite excited...

Latest image  from Ceres showing a couple of bright spots...

P.S. Here is a link to lots of new NASA images
P.P.S. I have forgotten to mention Keppler in my rundown of explorercraft , for which I am sorry .
Keppler is drifting on a wobbly path having lost 2 of its 4 stabilisers.
It continues in its mission to detect potential habitable exoplanets in the 'goldilocks zone'.
It is now on a second mission, known as K2.