Deep Space and Interplanetary Exploration - Houston, we are go for launch!

[worktroll]

Concerning that no-one else has replicated the results. Remember the 'faster-than-light' signals that turned out to be faulty cables? And let's not mention N-rays.

But if replicable, then yes, mighty interesting. Wonder when they can move to making testable predictions from the observations.

[Daryk]

Very concerning... sounding too much like cold fusion at this point.  Hopefully someone else can replicate the results, even with the same atoms.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Supposedly there's experiments being run, maybe we'll get some odd news.  That there's a potential theory that helps explain the effect is interesting.

[rebs]

Very interesting read.  I hope that the attention they are grabbing helps speed along the process of proving or disproving their work. 

[ANS Kamas P81]

speed along the process of disproving their work.

In all honesty, especially this.  Nip weirdness in the bud, so that only the truly weird has any strength of getting through.

[rebs]

In all honesty, especially this.  Nip weirdness in the bud, so that only the truly weird has any strength of getting through.

...stranger than science fiction?  ^-^

[ANS Kamas P81]

Idly on that note, here's a thought that'll blow your minds:

What would Captain Picard or any of the other Trek characters classify, from their 25th century point of view, as science fiction?

[rebs]

Sith meditation that can make stars go supernova and collapse into black holes like Naga Sadow did in the Knights of the Old Republic comic.  That's sci fi that's a few orders of magnitude beyond what the Federation or the strongest Vulcan mysticism is capable of doing. 

[Wrangler]

Behold! Mapping of Titan's surface is complete. This was data captured by Cassini space probe reported by the Jet Propulsion lab.

The surface features are interesting.  Looks like most of the liquids are trapped in the north polar regions while there odd features like Labyrinths here and there, which i didn't know it was actually a feature a world could have.

[kato]

odd features like Labyrinths here and there, which i didn't know it was actually a feature a world could have.

There are plenty similar structures on Earth (across the planet) and a couple on Mars (in polar ice). The term basically describes a geography in which part of the ground has been carved out through erosion, often combining karst with canyons and plenty of sinkholes. The ones on Titan are supposedly geologically rather old, for which there is no exact explanation yet - though the unknown composition of the ground is suspected.

[ANS Kamas P81]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasas-juno-navigators-enable-jupiter-cyclone-discovery

Just wow.  Also some fascinating stuff seeing the dance of cyclones at the Jovian poles.  Fluid physics on a scale almost unimaginable.

[Daryk]

Well... the Great Red Spot has been around for quite a while, and fluid dynamics on that scale are dwarfed by what we think is going on in the sun, much less larger stars...

[hoosierhick]

That is amazing.  I wonder if something similar is responsible for the hexagon at one of the poles of Saturn?

[Sabelkatten]

We got similar wind systems on Earth's poles. As I understand it it's the most stable configuration.

[Wrangler]

Looks like the Juno Probe dodged the bullet in it's orbital swings around Jupiter and got a spectacular picture of a cluster of cyclones in the Polar Region.



The picture looks like a inferno on the Sun than Jupiter way the colors are. Wow. There new storm forming in the bottom right side of the picture.

[kato]

Shown at AGU19 for the first time:



That's the SCI impact on Ryugu as seen by the DCAM3 drone in April this year.

Presentation here on Youtube from 42:15.

SCI cratered Ryugu in a semicircular fashion around the impact point, ejecting any small-grain material within 8.8m radius and punching a 2m deep pit into Ryugu (within which a 5m-wide rock rests that it excavated and only moved slightly). In the process it created a crater rim deposit 40cm high and threw up four separate ejecta curtains that took up to 6 minutes to fall within up to 100 meters.

The experiment was threefold:

• moving subsurface material to the surface for Hayabusa to later scoop up
• excavating for the purpose of looking at sub-surface structures
• observing cratering processes in low-gravity environments

[hoosierhick]

Boeing's Starliner launched on it's first uncrewed test flight and ran into a problem.  The mission elapsed timer on the Starliner was running fast, so by the time it separated from the Centuar upper stage it thought the orbital insertion burn either was already underway or had ended.  It ended up in an orbit where it can't reach the ISS.  Last I heard they're going to bring it back down Sunday morning.  https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-oft-fails-to-reach-correct-orbit.html

[Wrangler]

Hopefully mission elapsed timer wasn't only thing wrong with the vehicle.  We will find out how well the landing systems will perform.

[hoosierhick]

I'm hoping it doesn't screw up stuff on landing like parachutes deploying or the landing airbags inflating.

[Wrangler]

Clearest picture of Saturn yet taken.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Where's that one from?

[Wrangler]

Where's that one from?

Its was originally taken 2014 during tge Cassini mission. Picture was nicknamed Ring King. How ever some one colorized image. Still trying how it was done. They did tbe coloring from the description of Saturn correctly.

[Thunderbolt]

Structure skims the rimward periphery of the IS:

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-milky-reveals-giant-stellar-nurseries.html

[Daryk]

That's a nice one!  :thumbsup:

[rebs]

See below

[rebs]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/meet-the-women-and-men-going-to-mars-thirteen-new-astronauts-join-nasa-under-the-artemis-program-making-them-candidates-for-the-first-human-exploration-of-the-red-planet-set-for-the-mid-2030s/ar-BBYQ8DH

Above is a link to an article regarding the new Artemis Program and 13 new astronauts who just joined NASA under the auspices of training to be the first human explorers of Mars.  In addition, this program will see the first female to explore the Moon.  Exciting times ahead, even if it won't be until the 2030s that we get to the Red Planet.

[Daryk]

Interesting article, but I'm pretty sure it was machine generated...  :P

[rebs]

Yeah.... I was mostly glad to see news of the Mars mission moving forward.

[Thunderbolt]

That's a nice one!  :thumbsup:

The chain of seven (7) active star-forming regions, running from the upper-right to lower-left corners, of which the Orion association is the 2^nd, is one segment of the 9000 lyr long "Radcliffe Wave" (see 2^nd image).  Do factor into account that the "first" active SFR in the UR corner (near the Vela SNR) is 500-1000 lyr below the galactic midplane, whereas the Orion SFR is near the midplane, and the "third thru seventh" active SFRs running down towards the LL corner are all well above the midplane... such that the "aqua-green circles" on the first image are only projected-onto-the-galactic-midplane positions:

[Thunderbolt]