General / Off-Topic What's interesting in space today.

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
I had debated putting this in the Astronomy forum, but it will likely contain links and info that might not fit exactly into that category, so for now this seems as good a place as any.

I love Space (thanks Elite :) ), always have, and while not a professional in the sphere have a layman's interest in much of what we do that ends up in space or exploring it, and this is the purpose of this thread, so we can all share interesting snippets of cool space info and news.

First up a new method of detecting gravitational waves has been launched and is successful:

'New gravitational wave detector almost immediately spots black hole merger':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2...r-almost-immediately-spots-black-hole-merger/
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Elon Musk: SpaceX can colonise Mars and build moon base' :

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...pacex-can-colonise-mars-and-build-base-on-oon

Elon Musk has unveiled plans for a new spacecraft that he says would allow his company SpaceX to colonise Mars, build a base on the moon, and allow commercial travel to anywhere on Earth in under an hour.

The spacecraft is currently still codenamed the BFR (Big Rocket). Musk says the company hopes to have the first launch by 2022, and then have four flying to Mars by 2024.

Last year Musk proposed an earlier plan for the spacecraft, but at the time had not developed a way of funding the project.

Speaking at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide Australia on Friday, Musk said the company had figured out a way to pay for the project.

The key, he said, was to “cannibalise” all of SpaceX’s other products.

Instead of operating a number of smaller spacecrafts to deliver satellites into orbit and supply the International Space Station, Musk said the BFR would eventually be used to complete all of its missions.
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In this age of an elite rich leaving the rest of us to wallow and wither, it is refreshing to see someone with a plan for humanity that goes beyond the next century or so. Elon Musk is one of the rare CEO's i'd be happy to sit down with and shake his hand (and i've sat with a few in my time).
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
And here is the talk about 'Making life Multiplanetary' that was linked in the guardian article (but is probably better viewed directly):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdUX3ypDVwI

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in other news, there is another delay to the awesome James Webb space telescope that is due to be the next generation of 'hubble' like tech we can use to scan exo-planets etc:

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/09/james-webb-space-telescope-delayed-again/

With the current political climate in the usa, i really hope this does not get scrapped!
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'It’s official: Trump administration turns NASA back toward the Moon':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2...ministration-turns-nasa-back-toward-the-moon/

For close observers of space policy, a likely human return to the Moon has been one of the worst-kept secrets of the new Trump administration. First, new space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Bigelow Aerospace started to introduce plans that involved lunar exploration. Then, Vice President Mike Pence picked Scott Pace to serve as executive director of the National Space Council—a Moon-first guy. Finally, the Trump administration nominated Jim Bridenstine, an Oklahoma representative who sees the Moon as the critical next step in human exploration, to serve as NASA administrator.

Now, the Trump administration has finally made its lunar ambitions official. In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal on the eve of the first National Space Council meeting, Pence has set returning to the lunar surface at the forefront of human exploration.
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Better than a poke in the eye, so fingers crossed this goes places.
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Citing safety, NASA panel advises building a new, costly mobile launcher':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2...dvises-building-a-new-costly-mobile-launcher/

Last week during a meeting in Houston, NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel raised concerns about such a long break between the first and second flights of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. The panel was in agreement about the need for a second mobile launcher, and it encouraged Congress to consider and fund such an initiative.

"That represents a pause in the program that we think could involve safety difficulties because the experience that’s being built up by people falls down, people have to relearn their jobs, et cetera, et cetera," said a member of the advisory board, engineer Donald McErlean. "We think it would be much more efficient for the continuation of the program if it were possible to construct a second mobile launcher and start that construction now."
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True that. In this quiet period for NASA, this must be a huge concern for many aspects they work in?
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Odd, potato-shaped dwarf planet has ring, may not be a planet':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2...ed-dwarf-planet-has-ring-may-not-be-a-planet/

Thanks largely to the improvements in our instrumentation, we've started to get a picture of what the far reaches of our Solar System look like. Beyond the orbit of the outermost planet, there is a large collection of icy dwarf planets called trans-Neptunian objects, or TNOs. Pluto may have been the founding member of the TNOs, but there are now more than 1,200 known bodies in the list; only 270 of those have even been observed well enough to have their orbits characterized. It's a safe bet that there will be some surprises among them.

In a paper being released today, researchers are reporting on one such surprise, courtesy of the dwarf planet Haumea: it's got a ring. The observations that spotted the ring also suggest that Haumea is larger than we thought it was, which means that gravity hasn't yet pulled it into a stable, rounded shape. Awkwardly, this means that Haumea may not fit the definition of dwarf planet set down by astronomers.
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Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'New frontier for science as astronomers witness neutron stars colliding':

https://www.theguardian.com/science...tars-collide-global-rapid-response-event-ligo

The collision of a pair of neutron stars, marked by ripples through the fabric of space-time and a flash brighter than a billion suns, has been witnessed for the first time in the most intensely observed astronomical event to date.

The extraordinary sequence, in which the two ultra-dense stars spiralled inwards, violently collided and, in all likelihood, immediately collapsed into a black hole, was first picked up by the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo).

As its twin detectors, in Louisiana and Washington state, picked up tremors in space-time that had spilled out from the merger 1.3m light years away, an alert went out to astronomers across the globe. Within hours, 70 space- and ground-based telescopes swivelled to observe the red-tinged afterglow, making it the first cosmic event to be “seen” in both gravitational waves and light.

.......

Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves a century ago, but the first experimental proof that space itself can be stretched and squeezed took until 2015, when Ligo scientists detected a collision of black holes. But this dark merger, and the three detected since, were invisible to conventional telescopes. As the stars collided, they emitted an intense beam of gamma rays and the sky was showered with heavy elements, resolving a decades-old debate about where gold and platinum come from.
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Nice.
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Enceladus heats up because its core is like a sponge':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2017/11/enceladus-heats-up-because-its-core-is-like-a-sponge/

On Earth, the heat that drives geology is partly leftover from the planet's formation and partly the result of radioactive decay. For the smaller bodies of our Solar System, neither of these should be big factors. Yet many of them are geologically active, thanks to heat generated by gravitational interactions. Uneven gravitational forces throughout a moon's orbit leads to internal flexing, generating enough heat to power geysers and volcanoes.

Or we think. In the case of Enceladus, Saturn's geyser-riddled moon, calculations suggest that the heat generated by orbital torques would only be enough to keep the moon's internal ocean liquid for about 30 million years. And, once its sub-surface ocean freezes, the moon's ability to flex goes down, which means less internal friction to warm it back up again. So why does Enceladus have an ocean at all, billions of years after it formed?

According to new research published in Nature Astronomy, that ocean survives because the core of the moon isn't a solid sphere of rock and metal; instead, it's a porous, loosely aggregated hunk of rock. Its sponge-like nature allows tidal heating to warm up its water to roughly 90°C.
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kinda cool.
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
'Astronomers find another Earth-size world relatively close to the Sun':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2...earth-size-world-relatively-close-to-the-sun/

Astronomers have discovered a planet 35 percent more massive than Earth in orbit around a red dwarf star just 11 light years from the Sun. The planet, Ross 128 b, likely exists at the edge of the small, relatively faint star's habitable zone even though it is 20 times closer to its star than the Earth is to the Sun. The study in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics finds the best estimate for its surface temperature is between -60 degrees Celsius and 20 degrees Celsius.

This is not the closest Earth-size world that could potentially harbor liquid water on its surface—that title is held by Proxima Centauri b, which is less than 4.3 light years away from Earth and located in the star system closest to the Sun. Even so, due to a variety of factors, Ross 128 b is tied for fourth on a list of potentially most habitable exoplanets, with an Earth Similarity Index value of 0.86.

In the new research, astronomers discuss another reason to believe that life might be more likely to exist on Ross 128 b. That's because its parent star, Ross 128, is a relatively quiet red dwarf star, producing fewer stellar flares than most other, similar-sized stars such as Proxima Centauri. Such flares may well sterilize any life that might develop on such a world.
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So a 'cool' world, kinda like Scandinavia? And on that last bit about Proxima Centauri, does that mean all the planets (that might be habitable - small rocky ones etc) in the whole system are no good? What about that Project Starshot attempt that wants to send near speed of light probes to it, is their much point if it is simply an irradiated hell?
 

Zieman

Zieman
Zak Gordon said:
'Astronomers find another Earth-size world relatively close to the Sun':

https://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2...earth-size-world-relatively-close-to-the-sun/



So a 'cool' world, kinda like Scandinavia? And on that last bit about Proxima Centauri, does that mean all the planets (that might be habitable - small rocky ones etc) in the whole system are no good? What about that Project Starshot attempt that wants to send near speed of light probes to it, is their much point if it is simply an irradiated hell?
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Yes there's a point. To study the planet(s) at close range, can't be sure if they're irradiated hell(s) otherwise?
 

Zak Gordon

Zak Gordon
Ah yes off course, i was just in my 'colonise space' mode. Well, fingers crossed we find some bodies in our closest system that might work as permanent bases for humans, if not larger full scale habitation. It's why i'm a big supporter of getting bases on the Moon and Mars, we need to work all that out in our backyard first, and while we are still around!

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In other space 'news', this sounds very interesting:

'The mission to learn everything we always wanted to know about the Universe':

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...ap-the-hardware-that-brought-us-the-universe/
 
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