Astronomy & Space Exploration

Invictus said:
Japetus in 2001 - A Space Odyssey and Europa in 2010 - Odyssey 2 maybe ? That's all I got..
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Correct! Complete lack of continuity in the books but forgivable due to Europa having sea monsters.

Charon does get a bit of an unfair deal being always seen as a moon, they're really a binary planet so deserves more limelight than it's likely to get.
 
4 days till arrival

Triton
triton-voyager.jpg

Triton is presumed to have originally been a planet in the Kuiper Belt like Pluto until it was Schweinsteigered into being one of the best moons around by Neptune, which is of course very much the LVG of the outer solar system. Looks like a melon and is a bit bigger than Pluto, but has sadly only been briefly visited once, in 1989 by Voyager 2. It has cryovolcanoes.

EDIT

Just seen this new Pluto photo with extra surface features and didn't want to triple post so editing it in:


nh-7-10-15_pluto_image_nasa-jhuapl-swri_0.png
 
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Today's Pluto image:
nh-pluto-7-11-15.jpg

3 more days to flyby, here's Enceladus:
Saturn-Moon-Enceladus-photo-credit-NASA-JPL-posted-on-SpaceFlight-Insider.jpg
Europa's younger Saturnian cousin, jets from Enceladus' cryovolcanoes have been both sampled and imaged by the Cassini orbiter and it's now believed to have its own ocean of liquid water beneath the riven ice.
 
Ubik said:
Saturn-Moon-Enceladus-photo-credit-NASA-JPL-posted-on-SpaceFlight-Insider.jpg
Europa's younger Saturnian cousin, jets from Enceladus' cryovolcanoes have been both sampled and imaged by the Cassini orbiter and it's now believed to have its own ocean of liquid water beneath the riven ice.
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There's got to be life there surely(The same with europa moon). It can only be tiny microscope life but still life.
 
Sweet Square said:
There's got to be life there surely(The same with europa moon). It can only be tiny microscope life but still life.
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Water is only one element of an ecosystem, surely?
 
Sweet Square said:
Oh yeah. I was just going off from this article http://www.space.com/29334-enceladus-ocean-energy-source-life.html and also the idea that space is so bigthat it really can't just be us lot. Be a bit shit if it is.
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Honestly think there's no chance that we're alone in the universe. The question is whether there's other life close enough that we could conceivably find it. And whether we'd recognise its intelligence if we did - we don't seem to consider sentient species as intelligent, no doubt we'll treat any aliens we meet exactly the same unless we stumble upon one as technologically orientated as we are. :rolleyes:
 
Sweet Square said:
There's got to be life there surely(The same with europa moon). It can only be tiny microscope life but still life.
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I think it all depends on how often life can spark of its own accord. Earth's been around for 4.5bn years, and it took up to a billion of those for life to get going in pretty much ideal conditions. As far as we know that only happened once, but who's to say it hasn't happened much more often than that and all the other times it just vanished without trace due to the pre-existing competition? I reckon that where it's physically possible and given enough time, it'll happen. So yeah if there's enough heat and the right chemistry, given all those billions of years, you'd say there's a least a decent chance of it (other moons like Ganymede are also thought to have massive subsurface oceans too, so each of those is another set of 4.5bn years in which the spark could occur).
 
666714main1_pluto-5th-moon-673.jpg


The next few days will be really interesting. Should get more images of not just Pluto and Charon, but the four co-planar satellites of the binary system as well. Including P5/ Styx/ S/2012 (134340) 1 that is an estimated 6-15 miles across, and was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope as recently as 2012. P4/ Kerberos was discovered in 2011.
 
This is seriously amazing. Can't stop watching it.

A Japanese satellite 22,000 miles up taking a picture of the earth every ten minutes. It also shows two typhoons that were headed towards China - you may have read about them in the news.

http://i.imgur.com/4OzBubd.gifv
 
JamesB__ said:
This is seriously amazing. Can't stop watching it.

A Japanese satellite 22,000 miles up taking a picture of the earth every ten minutes. It also shows two typhoons that were headed towards China - you may have read about them in the news.

http://i.imgur.com/4OzBubd.gifv
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That's cool! I'm also hoping the smallest Pluto-Charon moon is actually a derelict starship, but we'll have to wait and see on that one. Meanwhile, another day, another couple of awesome new pictures...

Pluto:
071215_pluto_alone_0.png

Charon:
071215_charon_alone.png

They look like actual worlds now.

Less than 2 days to go, may as well go with Titan in honour of the Woody the colossus.
titan-8.si.jpg
Seen here (with the aid of Cassini's radar) through its almost opaque hazy atmosphere, the sun glints on lakes of liquid methane in a manner akin to the way it glints off Duncan Castles' bald little head
 
I'm just reading about all of this as an absolute numpty - can anyone explain in a sentence how the thing flies? I know it has plutonium onboard, but how does that translate into speed?

Don't laugh at me, I'm no scientist. :D
 
Penna said:
I'm just reading about all of this as an absolute numpty - can anyone explain in a sentence how the thing flies? I know it has plutonium onboard, but how does that translate into speed?

Don't laugh at me, I'm no scientist. :D
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As soon as the thing is moving through space it doesn't require a lot of propellant, it's only needed for corrections like tilt and stuff.
The propulsion system on New Horizons is used for course corrections and for pointing the spacecraft. It is not needed to speed the spacecraft to Pluto; that was done entirely by the launch vehicle, with a boost from Jupiter’s gravity.

The New Horizons propulsion system includes 16 small hydrazine-propellant thrusters mounted across the spacecraft in eight locations, a fuel tank, and associated distribution plumbing. Four thrusters that each provide 4.4 newtons of force (1 pound) are used mostly for course corrections. Operators also employ 12 smaller thrusters – providing 0.8 newtons (about 3 ounces) of thrust each – to point, spin up and spin down the spacecraft. Eight of the 16 thrusters aboard New Horizons are considered the primary set; the other eight comprise the backup (redundant) set.

At launch, the spacecraft carried 77 kilograms (170 pounds) of hydrazine, stored in a lightweight titanium tank. Helium gas pushes fuel through the system to the thrusters. Using a Jupiter gravity assist, along with the fact that New Horizons does not slow down or go into orbit around Pluto, reduced the amount of propellant needed for the mission.
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Source.
 
Penna said:
I'm just reading about all of this as an absolute numpty - can anyone explain in a sentence how the thing flies? I know it has plutonium onboard, but how does that translate into speed?

Don't laugh at me, I'm no scientist. :D
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The energy for running New Horizons comes from an RTG (type of electrical generator) that converts the exothermic energy or heat from the decay of the Plutonium-238 isotope onboard into electrical current (Seebeck effect) that powers the whole probe. This kind of generator was used in the Apollo 14 mission that put humans on the moon too, and is fairly reliable in terms of radioactive contamination.

As for the flying mechanism, its original trajectory was set in part when it detached from the launch vehicle. This gif kind of explains that, as it's later hurled out from earth's orbit :

4Io0Fun.gif


Because space is essentially a vacuum with ~0 friction, New Horizons can maintain starting speed for a while without retardation or use coordinated gravity boosts from other planets if it slows down significantly. Even though it does have 28 thrusters on board, they don't really propel the probe as such in space (16 big ones are for very minor propulsions/ course corrections, and 12 smaller ones for altitude correction maneuvers).
 
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Its mental all this...I'm not like a big science nerd or anything, but stuff like this fascinates me...

The best thing about all this Pluto flyby is the sheer amount of work it's taken to get New Horizons into position...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33524589

Just getting the probe in position to make the flyby has been a monumental feat.

Because the observations are all run on an automated command sequence, New Horizons must fly a perfect path past Pluto, and with perfect timing - otherwise its cameras will shoot empty sky where the dwarf or its moons are expected to be.

This has necessitated aiming New Horizons at a "keyhole" in space just 100km by 150km (60miles by 90 miles), and arriving at that location within a set margin of 100 seconds.

All this has been achieved after a multi-billion-km flight across the Solar System lasting nine and a half years.
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All these gifs are urging me to play kerbal space programme.
 
Will Absolute said:
This may be the first and last picture we ever take of Pluto. Some ET archaeologist may dig it up a million years from now and say, "So they made it out that far. I wonder what happened to them?"
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We're already further out (Voyager 1). New Horizons will also keep going and is expected to send back data from the heliosphere until 2026 (assuming it survived the fly-by of Pluto of course!) and possibly longer. Also, I don't really understand the reason behind your post - are you assuming that we stop exploring space now?
 
Will Absolute said:
This may be the first and last picture we ever take of Pluto. Some ET archaeologist may dig it up a million years from now and say, "So they made it out that far. I wonder what happened to them?"
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It won't be the last time, that's silly to say that.
 
Could be the last time we visit, unlikely to get another mission there in the next few decades and there's always a non-zero chance our civilisation decides to kerpow itself. Although, New Horizons should be heading off to meet another Kuiper Belt Object in about 2020.
 
Speaking of Voyager 1, just hope no one intercepts this.. :nervous:

golden_record_cover.gif
 
Charon well resolved:

a67b8630-beba-4b7e-a0d7-24b476b79303-bestSizeAvailable.png


Big close up of Pluto's ice mountains:

5580f17a-9585-4b5c-9b50-5fff5bab58b4-bestSizeAvailable.png


Unbelievable Geoff.
 
For one, Pluto has virtually no craters. Pluto and Charon should be pockmarked, like the Earth's moon. They sit at the edge of the solar system, near the Kuiper Belt, which is filled with rocks, ices, and other materials left over from the formation of the solar system. By contrast, a smooth surface is one that's been refreshed, somewhat recently, and perhaps continuously.

And that means that Pluto is a geologically active planet.
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Hmm...that's interesting.

via Bloomberg
 
Apologies if this had already been posted but out of everything that has happened with this, THIS has impressed me most. ..

gKScaCW.jpg


Pluto.

On pluto.

You could not make that up
 
I'd love to see more of Hydra, but I don't think we'll get any clear images from this trip.
nh-hydra_1_0.jpg
 
Wowi said:
I'd love to see more of Hydra, but I don't think we'll get any clear images from this trip.
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Apparently there are some higher def ones coming. Second press conference tomorrow so should get a bundle more of everything.
 
Ubik said:
Apparently there are some higher def ones coming. Second press conference tomorrow so should get a bundle more of everything.
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Ah, great! I thought they couldn't get it clearer from the distance they were at. Looking forward to that then!
 
Looks like there's going to be some exciting news all round over the next few days - possibly cryovolcanism confirmation on Ceres (from those bright spots), an Earth-sized planet in a habitable zone of a Sun-like star discovered by Kepler, and more Pluto shenanigans.
 
Nikhil said:
Apparently Nasa want to bring an asteroid to the moon's orbit and send a manned mission to study the asteroid as it orbits the moon.
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I look forward to the announcement.

'NASA here, folks. Afraid there's been a slight hiccup with our software - programmed for feet instead of metres. Unfortunately, this means our asteroid will miss the moon and come down somewhere on the European continent. Our present best guess is France - probably the Paris area.

We believe the public will understand that, due to the intrinsic difficulty, great projects in space exploration have a high failure rate. Luckily there's another, almost identical, asteroid we've got our eye on..'
 
Do people think we will find life on another planet before another planet discovers Earth? Considering our solar system is probably one of the youngest in the galaxy, surely there would be other planets out there who have had a lot more time to develop and advance than ours.
 
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