Outer Space Crud

[happyhammerhead]

The earliest I recall this being the issue, was in an episode of UFO (1969!).

Space junk fine

[marechal]

Excellent source for finding out all the latest space explorations and findings (much more than I would have guessed) and what to look for in the night sky for the coming month. (This month we have a lunar eclipse and Jupiter at its brightest among other events.)
She's very good at explaining it all and has a new video every Thursday.

youtu.be/rTGNX_C3-tU?si=22BZ1xvKCpK3ALpz

[rick49]

Oct 11, 2023 13:22:40 GMT happyhammerhead said:

The earliest I recall this being the issue, was in an episode of UFO (1969!).

Space junk fine

yup. they saw it coming a long time ago.

[rick49]

good youtube site.

[perrykneeham]

Space: gay.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68388695

Brings Hardy to mind ....

"In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches stilly
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres .....

.....


Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ..."

[happyhammerhead]

"The Odysseus Moon lander is likely lying on its side with its head resting against a rock."

Poor thing. Likely it's merely taking a nap after such a long journey.

[perrykneeham]

It is pretty rubbish, isn't it?

I'm reasonably confident that some clever adults have made rational choices to get to this point. I confess that I find the topic so dull*, that I don't know what the objectives were.

*the scale and grandeur of the universe is literally awe-inspiring. It's the human titting around that I find wanky. Sci-fi is just lazy.

[happyhammerhead]

It's still working, to an extent. It also provides humour...

The only payload on the "wrong side" of the lander, pointing down at the lunar surface, is a static art project.

WTAF?!

[voice]

Most everything we send to the moon and mars ends up as static art projects

[perrykneeham]

Much like the Royal Navy.

[happyhammerhead]

Voyager 1, which is currently floating past the generally-defined edge of the solar system some 15 billion miles away, is looking worse for wear these days.

Most recently, scientists became worried after the lonely probe started sending nonsensical messages back to Earth — as if its senility was catching up with it.

Sad as this is, there is something amusing about a geriatric probe wandering through the Oort Cloud, gazing around and randomly shouting 'I remember when this was all fields!'

[marechal]

Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.

This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.

Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.

"With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe," lead study author Adam Riess, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, said in a statement.

www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/james-webb-telescope-confirms-there-is-something-seriously-wrong-with-our-understanding-of-the-universe

Few things more weirdly wild than what is found out in space.
Last year astronomers used quasars to find gravitational waves with frequencies greater than a light year in length.

[mids]

Cool.

"Some time soon we will have to say farewell to our most distant emissary – the Voyager 1 spacecraft. After almost 50 years in space, it’s 15 billion miles away and showing signs of wear and could soon stop transmitting.

Late last year, Voyager 1 began to decline, sending back spools of gibberish to its handlers on this planet. A few days ago, Nasa engineers finally traced the problem back to a single chip but it’s clear that Voyager 1 will shortly have to cut contact and make its way out across the universe on its own. It’s strange to think that it will be exploring on out into deep space long after its makers – humans – have become extinct.

Voyager’s isolation is impossible for us truly to comprehend. Light – the fastest possible traveller – takes just over a second to reach the moon, and about four hours to pass the most distant planet, Neptune. Yet to reach Voyager it takes more than 22 hours.

Along with its sister probe, Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 to take advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets. The Voyagers found wonders, particularly on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. They sent back staggeringly detailed photographs of the planets as they passed. But once sent outwards there was no turning back. The Voyagers, along with two previous spacecraft, Pioneers 10 and 11, and the subsequent New Horizons probe that reached Pluto in 2015, are, along with a handful of ancillary objects, the only ones ever to leave our solar system.

From where Voyager is now, the sun is still the brightest star in the sky, though nowhere near as bright as it is from Earth. The planets and the Earth are barely visible at all. It’s outside the sun’s extended influence, but not yet free from its gravity. For thousands of years it will continue to pass the orbits of the debris that circle the sun in its cold, dark outer reaches. But soon it will pass even them, and head out into the galaxy.

Voyager 1 has on its side a message from us: a golden disc of images, sounds and words from planet Earth. Here are the songs of humpback whales, the sound of a kiss, a thunderstorm, Bach and Beethoven, an Indian raga and the songs of the first people on Earth who had enough to eat. Carl Sagan was involved in its compilation and wanted to include ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by the Beatles who he said were all for it. But the copyright belonged to EMI, who asked for too much.

Perhaps most telling is that the disc includes only a silhouette of a naked man and a woman. This is because of objections to a message plaque placed on the Pioneer spacecraft, which showed a more detailed outline of a naked man and woman. Incensed politicians said there should be no further ‘smut in space’. Nasa caved in because it was a government body and followed official rules ordering that nothing should be included that was remotely erotic.

It was a last-minute decision to put president Jimmy Carter on the disc, on which he says: ‘This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe… we are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.’ We are still trying.

Voyager’s 1970s vintage computers are still working, though almost all of its instruments have been turned off. It’s remarkable that scientists can still contact it, let alone reprogram it to compensate for memory damage caused by the impact of harmful cosmic rays. Its power source will work for several years but engineers worry most about its computers’ health. It recently struggled but recovered. One day it will not answer back.

In 50,000 years, less than the blink of a cosmic eye, our sun will no longer be the brightest star in its sky, having been replaced by Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky.

In Voyager’s life the first footprints on the moon are as fleeting as are the Rings of Saturn. Long after the pyramids have crumbled into sand and the Earth has become uninhabitable, it will be just starting its odyssey.

It will move through different constellations and spend its life far from the warmth of stars but who knows what alien skies it might traverse during some distant eon and what alien eyes will look upon its golden disc and wonder about us. If so Voyager 1 could be one of our last marks on the cosmos and the measure mankind is judged by."

www.spectator.co.uk/article/farewell-voyager-1/

[voice]

Boeing's about to launch its first manned mission, hope the doors stay on.

[wetkingcanute]

I've begun to decline, sending spools of gibberish to my handlers.

[voice]

Boeing just can't get it up.

[perrykneeham]

Some bloke's stuck on a spacestation, apparently. It's his spaniel I feel sorry for.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy47w9yndpo

[flatandy]

Boeing really f**k*d this one up. They keep f**k**g up. At some point the US government is going to have to start backing out of being utterly dependent on them, just so the US can allow Boeing to fail rather than having to spent hundreds of billions bailing it out when it fucks up again.

[voice]

too big to fail I suppose, the gov will want to keep one of the major airline builders American. What's really needed is a review and strengthening of the regulations covering them, while holding their shambolic performance of late as being the example of why regulations are actually a good thing and bad things happen when they are relaxed and done away or given over to the corporations to just self regulate.

[perrykneeham]

Ooh, get me - contributing to a space astronomy thread.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dvxgrmk95o

I wonder if it will affect the tides.