Latest Space Missions (& Other Science Stuff)

What makes less sense is that there are no Mare on the far side, which are ubiquitous on the near side. It’s an indication that the formation of the Mare is linked to the tides, but we really don’t know how or why yet…

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There are a number of missions to the moon in the works. Hopefully lots of discovery soon.

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New website launched at NASA to track various Webb data in real-time:

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Really nice! Oh my those mirrors take a long time to deploy. My nerves couldn’t take it. :woozy_face:

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Happy New Year!
This year was full of ups and downs. Fortunately it is being ended up with JWST launch, and this is wonderful!

There is a video from the ISS Roscosmos astronauts

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Brilliant! So exciting to see what JSWT is going to show us after 10 years!

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Such a thought came to mind: sometimes we complain about how slow time runs. But when you realise that you have to wait 6 months to get first photos, that thing makes your brain just :fire:

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Its sunshield is finally deployed!

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This is comet Leonard;

This was one way to see it, STEREO Ahead HI2
https://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2021/12/16/ahead/hi2/1024/
This is some info on the craft.

Here is a gif (edit- compressed to be under 4 MB cause size restrictions)

What is that creeping up? It looks like it deploys something eh

This Youtube Channel has a report on it too and raises some huge questions. I have seen this kind of anomaly before and it had to do with Venus reflections.

I can speculate to no end… Maybe it can collect and deconstruct raw physical matter into its smallest forms to (surf like Silver Surfer or The Power Rangers do) along the energy waves and beams (teleport) back towards a receiver where its reconstructed into a physical object. Something like a crude Replicator from Star Trek that requires huge inefficient tech.

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The secondary mirror is now extended, waiting for the main mirror’s wings to come out

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While helping my son with his homework I discovered that Mars’ Gravity is 3.721 m/s^2. I’m interested in how future Mars’ colonizers will manage it :thinking:
What are your thoughts on it?

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Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to see the comet :pensive:
Has anyone of you seen it?

Thanks for sharing info about STEREO

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Well, there won’t be much overweight issues. :grin:

But seriously, Earthling scientists have been wondering about this since it was discovered that Mars has about 37% Earth’s gravity or so. It’s less of an issue than zero G in space, but still a matter to deal with when Human bodies are used to the full 1.0 G. Bone density and muscle mass are just the beginning of the issues the new Martians will be facing. Over time, they will be learning all kinds of things about how our bodies respond to the new environment. The way tennis and golf will be played on Mars is going to be radically different, not to mention hockey! :sweat_smile:

For something a bit more scientifical, I stumbled onto something. As with many of my scientific finds, they end up being happy accidents. Here, I present to you - assuming this hasn’t been covered in the nearly 400 posts - one of the first glimpses of planets orbiting another star. All of three seconds, but I’m amazed we have this at all. Gleaned from observation of the star HR8799 with the Keck Telescope over seven years, one frame a year.

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Gravity should’nt be a big trouble for people if they die with the radiations. During the journey and on mars they will receive between 200 and 400 times the dose we receive on earth during the same period. (2.4 mSv/year on earth and between 500 and 1000 mSv in space or on Mars).
In just one trip, an astronaut could be exposed to at least 60% of the total radiation dose limit recommended for his entire career.

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Well, Mars astronauts would not, per se, drop dead due to radiation, that’s not what they are worried about. But they are expected to develop sensor/motor issues, bad eyesight, radiation sickness, and overall impaired performance (and that does not even mention psychological issues yet) — all things that you do not want during such a tough trip. And long term, their tumour risk increases drastically which lowers their life expectancy.

The crews on the ISS and Mir were testing methods how to keep muscles trained in low gravity. But these stations are still within the magnetic field, so they didn’t have the radiation to deal with.

Lead provides good protection but is too heavy for our propulsion systems. An artificial magnetic field has not been built yet at the necessary size, I think. What they currently look into is using water tanks somehow (water is needed by the Mars crew anyway, and it can also deflect radiation somehow).

Currently some pretend that a Mars mission is around the corner. It probably isn’t, we obviously haven’t solved all the open questions yet. On the other hand, visualising that you will do something “tomorrow” is an old human trick to get into gear… We don’t have to actually meet the deadline — no Mark Watney on Mars waiting for us. :wink: But without a deadline we won’t ever start looking into solutions. In that context, I’m fine with the unrealistic timeline, even if I don’t expect that the people currently training for it will be the actual crew in the end.

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That’s just the thing… we don’t know. We know that these are all issues in microgravity, but we have no idea how it the decay of bone density scales proportionally (it’s a pretty save guess that muscle atrophy will be proportional to the load they are bearing, since we actually can observe muscle atrophy on earth, but where bones are concerned, we simply don’t know). We’ll know more about that once we get a moonbase going and the first people spend a couple of months there…

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I know this was from that haha thread, but it fit better in here. This is a link I’m fond of, which is slightly out of date, but it provides a terrific overview of our universe from very close to Earth to as far as we can see pre-James Webb.

An Atlas of the Universe

I’m wondering if you meant brown dwarfs. I’m not sure how typical our local neighborhood is, but within 20 light years from the Sun, there are roughly 117 stars, and most of them are red dwarfs. There are two A Class white stars, six G Class and one F Class yellow dwarf stars like our Sun, sixteen K Class orange dwarfs, six D Class white dwarfs, eight L, M and T Class brown dwarfs - as of 2006, and the remaining 78 stars are M Class red dwarfs.

So, two thirds of our closest neighbors are red dwarfs. This may remain true for the whole of the Milky Way, but it may require Star Trek warp travel to confirm. :wink:

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Nope, JW with its IR camera should be able to confirm or deny that assumption. Might also be able to spot a couple brown dwarfs along the way, of course…

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It depends what Webb can see through in our galaxy. It’s rather cluttered with some rather opaque dust clouds, not to mention a mess of stars obscuring other stars. If JW can peek through a lot of that, it would be a godsend to astronomy. Which makes me wonder if it can help find more local dwarf galaxies near our own. They may have found all the detectable ones, but more is always merrier. We used to think there were one or two hundred million stars in the Milky Way, and we upped that a thousand times. :wink:

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Successful final unfolding. Now on its way to L2

James Webb Space Telescope has transformed into its final form. Now the greatest telescope of all time is on its way to Lagrange point 2.

First images are being waited in June, 2022.

A short video about Lagrange points for those who are interested in:

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