Outer Space Crud

[Eric]

Don't they do this every couple of years when they want more funding?

[rick49]

"Astronomers Detect Mysterious Signal 240 Million Light-Years From Earth"

tinyurl.com/pqkayq6

[rick49]

"Mysterious 'Magic Island' appears on Saturn moon"

"Now you don't see it. Now, you do. And now you don't see it again."

tinyurl.com/mh86gtg


"Aluminum-Bearing Site on Mars Draws NASA Visitor"

"With its solar panels their cleanest in years, NASA's decade-old Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is inspecting a section of crater-rim ridgeline chosen as a priority target due to evidence of a water-related mineral."

"The solar panels have not been this clean since the first year of the mission," said Opportunity Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "It's amazing, when you consider that accumulation of dust on the solar panels was originally expected to cause the end of the mission in less than a year. Now it's as if we'd been a ship out at sea for 10 years and just picked up new provisions at a port of call, topping off our supplies."

"Opportunity is now able to pull scientific all-nighters for three nights in a row -- something she hasn't had the energy to do in years."

"The rover's signs of aging -- including a stiff shoulder joint and occasional amnesia events -- have not grown more troublesome in the past year, and no new symptoms have appeared"

tinyurl.com/nfuadsr


"Dark-Matter Galaxy (maybe) Detected: Hidden Dwarf Lurks Nearby?"

"An entire galaxy may be lurking, unseen, just outside our own, scientists announced Thursday."

"If it exists, Galaxy X isn't likely to be composed entirely of dark matter."

"It should also have a sprinkling of dim stars, Chakrabarti said."

tinyurl.com/4ud3kxq

[Eric]

"With its solar panels their cleanest in years, NASA's decade-old Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is inspecting a section of crater-rim ridgeline chosen as a priority target due to evidence of a water-related mineral."

I think that proves the Eastern Europeans have arrived on Mars, and someone must have erected traffic lights.

[rick49]

"Should Humanity Try to Contact Intelligent Aliens?"

tinyurl.com/p2zvweo


"Did Huge Impact Shape Planet Mercury?"

"The mysterious makeup of the solar system's innermost planet may be due to a massive "hit and run" collision billions of years ago, a new study reports."

"A colossal but glancing smashup with a roughly Earth-size planet could have stripped away much of proto-Mercury's rocky mantle, explaining why the tiny, sun-scorched world has such a huge iron core today, researchers say."

tinyurl.com/p8er9r4


"Are 2 Potentially Habitable Alien Planets Just Cosmic Illusions?"

"What astronomers thought were a pair of potentially life-friendly alien worlds are illusions, apparitions conjured up by a star's intense magnetic activity, a new study suggests."

tinyurl.com/onmkasj


"Success! Private Team Fires 36-Year-Old NASA Probe's Engines"

"An old NASA spacecraft under the control of a private team fired its thrusters yesterday (July 2) for the first time in a generation."

"The spacecraft hadn't fired its engines since 1987, ISEE-3 Reboot Project team members said."

"ISEE-3 needs to be moved to put it in an advantageous position to communicate with Earth. In past interviews with Space.com, Cowing has said the group will focus on what to use the spacecraft for after rescuing it. Another priority will be seeing how well its 13 scientific instruments function."

"At least one instrument, the magnetometer, is working well enough to do science. "Recent magnetometer data shows recent solar event," the team said via Twitter on Wednesday (July 1)."

tinyurl.com/ljxbsu5

[rick49]

"NASA Saturn Probe Will End Mission in Epic 'Grand Finale'"

"Starting in late 2016, Cassini will zip between Saturn and its innermost ring a total of 22 times in a mission phase now known as the "Cassini Grand Finale," which will end in September 2017 when the probe intentionally dives into the gas giant's atmosphere."

tinyurl.com/mn72twv

[rick49]

"Found! Most Distant Stars in the Milky Way Galaxy"

"The boundaries of our home galaxy may have to be redrawn."

"Astronomers have discovered the farthest-flung stars yet known in the Milky Way. The two objects — known as ULAS J0744+25 and ULAS J0015+01 — are about 775,000 and 900,000 light-years from Earth, respectively, making them both about five times more distant than a satellite galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud."

tinyurl.com/n5r2rhd

Interesting. If these stars are inside the Milky Way galaxy, which seems to be the case, then the Large and Small Magellanic dwarf "galaxies" are also actually inside our galaxy. Maybe we should stop referring to them as galaxies.

[rick49]

"Red and Dead Future for a Galaxy Running Out of Star Fuel"

tinyurl.com/qe6a69b


"Sun Sends More 'Tsunami Waves' to Voyager 1" (confirmation Voyager 1 is in interstellar space)

voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/sun_sends_tsunami.html

[rick49]

"50 Years Ago: Ranger Mission 'Slammed Into Moon' " | Video

tinyurl.com/kczuwga


"NASA Long-Lived Mars Opportunity Rover Sets Off-World Driving Record"

"NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, now holds the off-Earth roving distance record after accruing 25 miles (40 kilometers) of driving. The previous record was held by the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover."

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/newsroom/pressreleases/20140728a.html

[lala]

Jul 10, 2014 18:09:30 GMT rick49 said:

Interesting. If these stars are inside the Milky Way galaxy, which seems to be the case, then the Large and Small Magellanic dwarf "galaxies" are also actually inside our galaxy. Maybe we should stop referring to them as galaxies.

From Wikipedia:

A satellite galaxy is a galaxy that orbits a larger galaxy due to gravitational attraction.[1] Although a galaxy is made of a large number of objects (such as stars, planets, and nebulae) that are not connected to each other, it has a center of mass, which represents a weighted average (by mass) of the positions of each component object. This is similar to how an everyday object has a center of mass which is the weighted average of the positions of all its component atoms.[1]

In a pair of orbiting galaxies, if one is considerably larger than the other, then the larger is the "primary" and the smaller is the satellite.[1] If two orbiting galaxies are about the same size, then they are said to form a binary system.

So the Large Magellanic Cloud isn't part of our galaxy, as it has its own gravitational focus; but it it held in orbit by our galaxy.

[rick49]

"Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive"

"Nasa is a major player (not really,,,not any more) in space science, so when a team from the agency this week presents evidence that "impossible" microwave thrusters seem to work, something strange is definitely going on. Either the results are completely wrong, or Nasa has confirmed a major breakthrough in space propulsion."

"British scientist Roger Shawyer has been trying to interest people in his EmDrive for some years through his company SPR Ltd. Shawyer claims the EmDrive converts electric power into thrust, without the need for any propellant by bouncing microwaves around in a closed container. He has built a number of demonstration systems, but critics reject his relativity-based theory and insist that, according to the law of conservation of momentum, it cannot work."

tinyurl.com/k49v86s

If the laws of physics say it cannae work, thats good enough for me. The debate is over and it cannae work,,,even if it does. All further research into it should be halted.

[flatandy]

It's an odd one, this. If NASA says it works, it probably does. So someone needs to go and have a proper look at the physics - either the critics have it wrong, on the propulsion is coming from another effect.

[voice]

they need an infinite improbability drive

[rick49]

As to be expected, this space drive test is getting lots of hoots of derision and ridicule. Since the law of conservation of momentum can't be violated, people are saying NASA botched the experiment. Some are accusing NASA of outright fraud.

[Eric]

I think it best if the yanks steer clear of anything that they don't understand.

In the meantime the UK and China will be setting up better, cheaper satellite systems, which work, but are derided because they can't.

[rick49]

[rick49]

"Jupiter's Moon Europa May Have Plate Tectonics"

tinyurl.com/p3zodsr

[Eric]

I'd like to point out, even if its habitable, you can't have it.

We named it Europa to make that exact point.

[rick49]

lol

[rick49]

"Curiosity Arrives at Mount Sharp"

tinyurl.com/op6wgns