Space News thread

[harrybarracuda]

Those Martians are getting sloppy.

The image, taken by the Curiosity rover on Aug. 30, shows what appears to be an incredibly delicate geological feature -- one that resembles a spoon floating in mid-air, complete with a narrow shadow cast upon the red ground below. The strange feature was spotted by a user on the Planetary Society's Unmanned Spaceflight message board.

[Takeovers]

A new destination for the New Horizon probe has been selected. After passing Pluto and making a big splash in scientific knowledge the probe now goes farther out and can fly by another though much smaller object. Very interesting science to be had as we know really very little about Kuiper Belt objects.

NASA Finally Picked New Horizons' Next Destination | WIRED

New Horizons has a new destination! The spacecraft, as you might remember, whizzed by the former planet known as Pluto earlier this summer. NASA has now picked its next stop: a small, cold Kuiper Belt object called 2014 MU69 that is nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.
Although the trip to Pluto has been carefully planned, the trip beyond has been…less so. Kuiper Belt objects at the edge of the solar system are enticing destinations because they’re made up of primitive material largely unchanged since the solar system’s birth 4.6 billion years ago. NASA had been looking for a KBO that New Horizons could visit since 2011. But none of the ground-based telescopes turned up anything that the spacecraft could reach with its remaining fuel.
With time running out, NASA finagled observation time on the Hubble Space Telescope in the summer of 2014. Then, finally, Hubble found five potential targets—eventually narrowed down to two.
2014 MU69 was known as potential target 1, or PT1, because it is easier to reach. But the other option, PT3, looked brighter in the sky, meaning it could be bigger and more interesting. “We have to weigh the risk of something barely reachable and another one that is smaller but easily reachable,” said Hal Weaver, a New Horizons project scientist, back in July. With a multimillion dollar spacecraft on the line, NASA evidently went with the safer bet.
NASA will point New Horizons toward 2014 MU69 with four maneuvers this fall. It’ll reach the target by January 2019. Because of the bureaucratic rules that govern NASA’s budget, though, the official proposal for the 2014 MU69 mission isn’t due until 2016. Of course, it’d be too late to maneuver New Horizons by then.
For now, NASA is also teasing the possibility of an extended mission—even beyond 2014 MU69.

[harrybarracuda]

I can't believe you haven't commented on the spoon!

[Takeovers]

I can't believe you haven't commented on the spoon!

Sometimes I can resist temptation.

[harrybarracuda]

But it's a fucking spoon!

[Latindancer]

I can see some dinosaur ribs to the right of that.

[Takeovers]

But it's a fucking spoon!

Geologists can easily explain how it formed. Happens on earth too. However under earth gravity and weather they don't last.

[harrybarracuda]

There's a waffle on the right as well. Don't tell me that's a coincidence. I reckon out of frame is some maple syrup.

[BaitongBoy]

the former planet known as Pluto

Prince lives there...

[BaitongBoy]

I reckon out of frame is some maple syrup.

Fook!...Canada will be claiming that...

[OhOh]

New photos of the Occator crater phenomenon on the dwarf planet Ceres, in our solar system’s asteroid belt, sent back from NASA’s Dawn orbiter show in striking detail the mysterious lights that have baffled the astronomy community worldwide.







"Photographs taken to create the topographic animation of the crater used two components: surface imaging during Dawn’s High Altitude Mapping Orbit (HAMO), and modeling using images taken from several different angles to create an elevation map. This allowed scientists to determine that the difference in elevation from the lowermost parts of Occator in blue are four miles lower than surrounding features."

Ceres? Mysterious Bright Spots Shine in Stunning Detail in New NASA Photos

[harrybarracuda]

Am I the only one that remembers that Predator blood glows in the dark?

[Takeovers]

ew photos of the Occator crater phenomenon on the dwarf planet Ceres, in our solar system’s asteroid belt, sent back from NASA’s Dawn orbiter show in striking detail the mysterious lights that have baffled the astronomy community worldwide.

Yes wunderful photos of an amazing phenomenon. But I do wonder who writes this kind of bullshit. "Mysterious lights" they are not, they are not emitting light at all. They are bright white and reflect sunlight.

[Takeovers]

Martian weather

The three pictures were taken by the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter within 1 month from left to right. In the middle one you see a local duststorm. In the right one it is gone and has left no trace.

Malin Space Science Systems Captioned Image Release, MSSS-70

This trio of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX) images shows an area in the Icaria Planum region (near 39.5°S, 103.2°W) before, during, and after a local dust-raising event occurred in October 2008. In the middle frame, taken only five days after the left image, dust blowing from the west to the east (from the left to the right of the frame) obscures much of the image. The right image was taken after the dust-raising event subsided and shows that no apparent changes in appearance of the surface (such as formation of wind streaks) resulted from the event. The images cover an area approximately 30 km (18.6 mi) wide and 60 km (37.3 mi) long. Illumination is from the upper left and north is slightly to the right of the top of the image.
In addition to the dust storm, there are other features of note in this region. A valley enters the larger crater near the center of these CTX images from the right; sediment transported through the valley formed a fan-shaped feature at its mouth. These images were taken during southern winter, and seasonal frost can be seen as bright areas on the northern walls of the craters.

[kingwilly]

Just a few short months ago we had almost no idea what Pluto really looked like. These days we’re looking at it unprecedented detail, thanks to the New Horizons spacecraft's successful flyby in July. The team that operates New Horizons recently started the year-long download of the remainder of the spacecraft's data, and the early returns are phenomenal. Case in point — yesterday afternoon, the New Horizons team uploaded almost 40 new high-resolution images of the dwarf planet to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory website. The image you see above is a mosaic of those images that was created by The Verge, but you’re really going to want to see the epic, high-resolution version here.

While we already saw a few high-resolution images of the surface of Pluto back in July, this new mosaic gives us the most detailed look yet at the dwarf planet in its entirety. It certainly won’t be the last look, though — there's surely another one buried in that mountain of data that's still aboard the spacecraft, and there’s a very good chance that NASA (or the New Horizons team) will release its own, official version of the mosaic at some point. Until then, click, zoom, and enhance!

See a new, full view of Pluto in high resolution | The Verge

[Luigi]

The image you see above is a mosaic of those images that was created by The Verge, but you’re really going to want to see the epic, high-resolution version here.

Nice shot.

Need a 40 inch Full-HD monitor to see it properly.

[palexxxx]

Looks just like our moon.

Maybe Nasa have got their holiday snaps mixed up.

[OhOh]

^^Good job they blurred out the alien's weapons site ( the white area )

[Neo]

Yesterday at 04:12 Moscow time, the orbit of the International Space Station was corrected a bit, thanks to help from the thrusters on a Russian service module called Zvezda, or “Star.”

[harrybarracuda]

Breathtaking new images of Pluto. I see they're smart though, they've hidden their spoons.

[Luigi]

Breathtaking new images of Pluto. I see they're smart though, they've hidden their spoons.

For sure.





Dillinger was about.

[misskit]

Whirling Black Holes’ Dance to End in Cosmic Blast




An artist's simulation to help explain an odd light signal thought to be coming from a close-knit pair of merging black holes, PG 1302-102, located 3.5 billion light-years away. (Columbia University)



Some 3.5 billion light years from Earth, in the Virgo Constellation, there are two black holes (binary black hole), locked by gravity, that are madly orbiting each other.

But their orbits are continuing to close in and scientists from Columbia University expect that in about 100,000 years they will join together in one huge cosmic blast.

Right now scientists say that the distance between the two black holes is no bigger than the width of our solar system.

The binary black hole system that also hosts a quasar called PG 1302-102 and it’s pumping out an odd cyclical light signal.

The pair was discovered earlier this year after astronomers at the California Institute of Technology, (Caltech) noticed an odd light beaming from the center of a galaxy.

The Caltech scientists, who used the ground based telescopes of the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey – composed of the Mt. Lemmon Survey, Catalina Sky Survey, and Siding Spring Survey – found that the strange fluctuating light signal is probably being generated by the motion of the orbiting black holes.

It’s thought that the light in the signal probably isn’t coming from the black holes directly but rather from surrounding material.

NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and Hubble Space Telescope provided the historical data that allowed the scientists to further study the black hole duo and gain new details about the odd, cyclical light signal.

“This is the closest we’ve come to observing two black holes on their way to a massive collision,” said the study’s senior author, Zoltan Haiman, an astronomer at Columbia in a university release.

The researchers say they have been studying the close orbiting black holes so that they can get a better understanding of how galaxies and the giant black holes at their centers merge – something they say happened often in the early days of the universe.

The scientists published their findings in a recent issue of the journal Nature.

When the binary black hole, a large one and a smaller companion finally do crash into each other and become one, it’s expected to trigger such a colossal cosmological blast that will be comparable to the explosion of 100 million supernovae. It has been predicted that the blast will also send out ripples in space and time (gravitational waves).

If it were possible for us to still be here in 100,000 years, we would be in for quite a show when these two black holes collide.

Whirling Black Holes? Dance to End in Cosmic Blast « Science World

[Takeovers]

How to look like a troll doll

https://imgur.com/a/I0EI5

Astronaut Karen Nyberg combs out her hair after cleaning it with a squeeze bottle of water and rinseless shampoo. Fluffy!

[bobo746]

The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft is transported from an assembling hangar to its launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, August 31, 2015

[Takeovers]

A few more high res photos of Pluto. Amazing how diverse surface features there are. Completely unexpected for the experts. Much of the variety is due to frozen nitrogen in a state that allows glazial flows.







Most amaizing for me that last one. It shows a part of the surface of 120x120km.