Mars Malfunction , Jovian Jollies , Red Rocks and Missing Links

Huge slab of ice found on Mars...        Image : American Geophysical Unit

Mars continues to reveal wonders , with the alleged discovery of a huge slab of ice beneath the surface.
It's actually been quite the week in space. I was planning to create this blog last Wednesday 19th October , in celebration of Exomars arriving at its destination , but - oops , that didn't happen.
Exomars, a two-pronged exploration mission by ESA had only partial success.
The Trace Gas Orbiter is in place, but apparently the Schiaparelli lander had issues with a parachute jettisoning too early. Given that the parachute failed, and the probe entered a freefall reaching a speed of 186mph, the expression ' touch down ' is an understatement.
Further understatement in the BBC report - ' The mood is not positive ' ...

My first response was to wonder why they didn't just aim it at one of the ice caps, letting the heat melt the ice and hopefully absorb some impact that way, but that ignores the Space Treaty and potentially endangers any as yet undiscovered life, I suppose..
That being the case, though, what about the unsuspecting martian who may have been struck by Schiaparelli?
How do we know our puported martian victim is okay ?
There he / she / it  is walking along, minding their own martian business when ka-ding! a lump of hot metal from space...and this one doesn't even have a golden disc with details of where it's from.

Identifying disc from Voyager...

Anyway , the whole Exo-mars thing was really a ' tech demo' , being a dry run for the next mission from ESA , which involves a Curiosity - style rover.
Let's just hope that goes to plan...

Staying with the idea of malfunctioning space probes, earlier in the week , Juno had an issue when two valves opened very slowly , with a resultant loss of a crucial 'window' for a closer orbit (14 days instead of  53.5) around Jupiter .
This means that Juno won't really ' science ' until  Dec 14th, almost two months from now.
If those pesky valves open fast enough.
It makes you realise just how time - sensitive these things are.

Media also tell us of the approach as New Horizons now heads out to Kuiper Belt Object MU 69. The rendezvous is not until 2019 , but we now know that the object appears to be very red.
It seems amazing that we have reached a point in our history where we look for news from an event in the future , rather than now...and quite incredibly , we already know that MU69, a rock drifting a billion miles away in space, is red.
We're not quite advanced enough to determine which particular shade of red, but ...patience is a virtue.
Speaking of space events - I almost missed the news of the two Chinese astronauts reaching their space station.
Pause for a moment - China has a space station ?
Well . yes, but it seems to have happened ' under the radar '. Hmmm
I recall the coverage of the ' Jade Rabbit' moonshot , but a space station ?
Tiangong 1 , known as the ' heavenly palace' is the station.
Anyway, well done China , and a shame on our media bias

Meanwhile back on Earth 

 Palaeontologists have discovered a cave painting that shows some form of ' missing link '- a hybrid between European cattle and the bison.
Again, I must express a little concern - since when did a cave painting become empirical evidence of a species?
I can see it now - deep in a dark cavern in the shadow of retreating glaciers, the neolithic man and his companion are daubing the walls
Hey - I'm drawing a white horse with a horn on its nose. That'll confuse them'
I'm extrapolating of course, but it is surely as likely as a new species defined by 18, 000 year old art scrawled in a dark cavern by flickering torchlight.

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...

Fungoid Zombies, Teleportation and the Monolith on a Martian Moon...

With what appears to be a slowing of development in VR ,  (it's stalling, frankly)...personally I'm greatly fond of AR (Actual Reality), although I understand the desire to experience extreme sports minus the possibility of actual death. 
It seems that people are not entirely convinced of this ground - breaking stuff.
I suspect that it will go the way of 3D, being a nice optional addition for those who don't mind the weird claustrophobia of the headgear.
Personally, I find the immersion of a good gaming world on a large screen to be more than enough.
It requires a little imagination, but then, so do good books.
Rant over...


We hear that scientists have succeeded in the quantum teleportation of data over a seven mile distance. Okay, it's not  quite ' Beam me down, Scotty' , but even so...teleportation gets closer.


As I write this post at the tail-end of September 2016, we hear tantalising news that NASA will reveal  new images of Europa taken by Hubble today (26  09 2016).
Apparently they hint at activity in a subsurface ocean.
Such an announcement has already stirred the denizens of the online conspirati *, and mutterings of the word 'aliens' are spreading far and wide, despite NASA stating categorically : Not aliens.
Still, to the Conspirati*, denial is complicity, or something like that .

Not to be outdone, word is increasing on the mysterious monolith on Martian moon Phobos.
There is a very 'maybe' Canadian orbiter / lander mooted , called 'Prime' ( Phobos Reconnaissance Imager like Mars Express ) which is to examine the monolith, but exactly when is open to speculation.

 

Given the increasing noise surrounding imminent flights to the Red Planet , I imagine it won't be long until DragonX are offering day trips to Phobos , perhaps with overpriced T - Shirts bearing the legend " I Saw The Monolith ", and on the back, " ...It Sucks "
To be worn by blasé youngsters with glazed eyes...

A recent article postulates that the dimming effect we see on ' Tabbys star', is actually just from random comets .
 In the linked article, Valeri Marakov says that deep space may be full of comets -
 '... dark and cold, and travelling from nowhere to nowhere, basically, forever.”
Just like a journey on the M25, then.

Tracks of moon buggy August 8 1971   NASA

The above image was added to this post apropo of nothing, (I just like it,) but is now almost relevant, as it transpires that Russia are planning to get a manned colony on the moon by 2030.
The slightly worrying extrapolation here is that the USA are claiming Mars, with the Soviets as sole proprietors of the Moon
A new Space Race ?
If nothing else, I suppose it redirects efforts away from the Arms Race...

Whilst we toy with the idea of becoming a multi - world species, the recent developments in genetics tell us that we'd be better off as human / animal hybrids
Why am I even saying all this ?
Surely I should be creating a dystopian fiction in which our future genetically- enhanced selves are quietly colonising the fringes of our solar system when suddenly we are attacked by giant Tardigrades who want their DNA back...



NOT SPACE RELATED...

Finally, back in February this year, I got a signed copy of the Girl With All The Gifts , a lurid dystopian sci-fi  featuring telepathic kids and murderous fungoid zombies - like a British version of ' The Last Of Us', on a budget of twenty quid.
It is filming now in gritty London suburbs like Park Royal.
Which isn't Royal.
Or a Park.
 It is dystopian edginess, though...


Don't forget to like, subscribe, share this blog and stay tuned to Invisible Words - finger on the pulse or something like that !
Cheers !


* conspirati is a word I made up to more easily group those who watch ufos on you tube and believe in mind control and robotic Yetis in a fabled land.
That sort of thing.

Meteorites, Mini Monsters and our Moon

Largest meteorite. Hobart, Namibia      60 tonnes.         

A massive 30 ton meteorite has just been excavated in Argentina , becoming the second largest meteorite in the world.
Personally, I loved the casual nature of the video - just one digger and a smattering of applause.

Staying on the subject of large objects from space, apparently the moon was born as the result of a violent collision between Earth and a wandering planet (about the size of Mars) which resulted in a huge cloud of debris five hundred times the size of Earth which eventually coalesced into the moon as we know it.
This expansion of an old theory has been facilitated by new technology allowing for more precise readings of  moon rocks gathered by the Apollo missions.
I don't want to get bogged down with talk of Nibiru and all that, so let's move on...

What may or may not be a dinosaur 'nursery' has been discovered in the Russian Steppes , but speculation is rife as to whether the little fossil dinosaurs (one metre tall ) are infact a new species of miniature raptor.
Personally, I was most impressed by the fact that the site is only accessible by kayak , being so deep in the Steppes - I doff my cap to the intrepid palaentologists involved  - deep exploration worthy of Indiana Jones.

When ' You Are Here' means nothing...

Intrepid explorers have also ventured inside a cave which has apparently been isolated from the outside world for some 5.5 million years, give or take a few hundred thousand...
The atmosphere in Movile cave, Romania,  is toxic, being very sulphurous , and the permanent darkness and harsh conditions have led to a wealth of strange creatures, proving that life can thrive in the most inhospitable environments
Remaining in the realm of intrepid exploration, a recent survey of an extinct underwater volcano off the coast of Hawaii found  a plethora of oddities...

This lends more hope for the future exploration of places like the ice-bound and possibly waterlogged Saturnian ( is that a word ? ) moon Enceladus.

Enceladus from 30km

As we near the end of Rosettas planned mission , commemorative stuff goes into overdrive , heck you can even buy a plush version of Rosetta / Philae .
The final 'resting place' of Rosetta will be on the opposite side of the asteroid to Philae, so no 'reunited' scenario .
I remain impressed by the fact that I am alive at a time when we landed a probe on a comet - even moreso by the fact that we've been photographing and tracking it in such amazing detail for over a year
Now that the Osiris rex mission to Bennu has been launched, we will soon see the next phase, when an explorer takes a sample from a comet and returns with it...
Yay, go, science !

13 -Unlucky for some....

'Astrology is not science' is a phrase NASA had to use recently following an overly keen journalistic spin on their summary of astrology, its history and origins.
In this online world of assumptions based on half truths and third - hand hearsay, it quickly became reported as fact that NASA had added a new sign to the zodiac.

People, please !


Finally, we hear the sad story of Voyager , which collided with the end of the known universe, and received some damage as a result.
Sad to know that it will become space debris in the bottom right hand corner of the universe...

Exploding Payloads, Hellish Planets, Impossible Drives and The Zombie Plague From Space

It's not a great week for Elon Musk as a Space X  Falcon 9 rocket goes up in flames on the launchpad  .
He quickly moved to quash initial reports of an explosion , saying instead that it was a ' fast flame' , which led to some wag continuing the euphemism, by stating that it was a 'fast flame leading to rapid disassembly' .
No-one was hurt, but I imagine the recruitment drive for a manned flight to Mars might suffer.
Mark Zuckerberg was also dismayed as part of the payload was a satellite aimed at bringing the internet to deprived African areas.
Fortunately, there is a 'plan B' , so all should be well.

Artist impression    Cannae

Meanwhile, that pesky Emdrive just won't go away.
Infact, not only is it still confounding many (breaking laws of physics) but it is being sent into space for a ' test drive '.
The space-bound version is known as the ' Cannae Drive ', which in Scottish slang, means it's a non-starter, but hey - that's just me being facetious - ahem.
Roger Shawyer is the engineer behind this seemingly impossible drive , which is now being crowdfunded...

Even in space, you can find urban legends.
The idea of a careless employee making a gross miscalculation by using metric instead of imperial units , or vice versa, seems to be a familiar trope -
yet even in an area defined by rigorous testing and peer group reporting, myths can take hold - the report of a failed Venus probe reminds me of something I read years ago - or did I ?
Speaking of hellish planets, further pictures emerge from Juno , currently orbiting Jupiter and attempting to survive its toxic atmosphere...

Southern lights of Jupiter  ( infrared image )   NASA

On September 8th 2016, NASA hope to launch Osiris Rex, heading out to asteroid Bennu, returning with a sample in 2023.
It will be the first ever sample return mission from an asteroid, with plenty of nail-biting moments ahead.
Of course, the media angle is the THREAT to EARTH posed by the asteroid, and comparisons are already being drawn with apocalyptic films ( cue Bruce Willis in a vest gazing into the middle distance).
I laugh at such foolishness, of course, because the REAL threat is from the asteroid sample which will contain the zombie plague from space.

Sticking with the asteroid thing, we end on a high, as they found the plucky little comet- lander Philae, our ill - fated explorer !
Sadly, it's too late in the day for any meaningful contact , as the Rosetta mission draws to a close .
A call has gone up for Rosetta to target Philae when the mission ends later this month (September 2016) so they can at least be reunited for eternity, which is almost touching.
Humanising toys and animals seems to be a fairly widespread  thing, but this is way beyond that...

Still, I'll be watching.
I'll definitely say ' goodbye'
And I'll probably say aww

Invisible Words, Exoplanets and our place in Geological history...

Dear Everyone,

Invisible Words has always been about oddities that I find interesting (and I hope that someone else does, too).
Battling with my worsening condition makes it a struggle, and the eternal angst of  'what's the point?' constantly threatens to undermine me.
Today , though, I discovered that someone has unearthed sixty years of extensive notes by Charles Hoy Fort, taken from his tireless research in the New York Library .
This puts it in perspective for me-
it wasn't so long ago that search engines were actually people surrounded by books.
Where there's life there's hope.
Rant over , thank you for listening.


Here is a little news from space...

Artist impression of planet orbiting Proxima Centauri

To be precise all eyes are now focused on the latest exoplanet , ' Proxima b ' , discovered orbiting Proxima Centauri , a mere 20 years distant , if you were travelling at 20 % the speed of light .
Which we can attain using the mooted Project Starshot technology.
The downside is don't pack your bags just yet, the payload on a Starshot is teeny.
Like one camera teeny.
Not even a selfie stick.
Besides, the fact that it's in the 'Goldilocks Zone' doesn't mean it's liveable - or worse yet, it might already be fully occupied .

 Jupiter by Juno                    pic NASA / EPA

Nearer to home, photos were recently posted from the closest approach of  the explorer Juno to the gas giant Jupiter .
Allegedly taken from a mere 2600 miles away.
Except, apparently they weren't.
Which makes me happy, because they looked a bit - meh
Apparently the good pics are yet to be processed, and these are just  ' teasers '.
 Online debate has already opened with interweb 'experts' arguing the pros and cons of Juno cam versus Hubble.
I won't get involved, but one camera I have been impressed with is the one used by Curiosity which has recently sent pictures of rock strata on Mars that makes me wonder whether there could be anything fossiliferous in there...

 Mars - Astronaut for scale !       pic NASA/ JPL / MSSS / Sean Doran

Alien molluscs - the mind boggles.
Meanwhile , in recent news from halfway up a volcano in Hawaii , the NASA  Mars simulation has just ended, with a brave team of six people being released back into the wilds of Hawaii after a year of incarceration (they were only allowed outside if wearing a space suit).
Despite the claustrophobia, no-one has gone on a rampage, so it bodes well...
Elon Musk has announced that a manned Dragon flight will be ready to leave soon , and so that next step of Earth expansion looms closer.
Which is just as well, as geologists are already debating when to add the human Holocene and Anthropocene markers into the strata of our world.
Seriously, we are officially part of geological history.


Speaking of aliens , which we weren't, but did you hear of the new radio signal causing waves (pun intended) amongst the SETI community ?
Emanating from a star some 95 light years distant, it could be hard proof of extraterrestials of a Kardashev I or II civilisation ...

Screenshot by Ella Morton

...or it could be a microlensed piece of galactic background noise; but, like the x-files poster - I want to believe.
On that note, I say farewell until next time  - stay positive !