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News – Jupiter’s North Pole

Jupiter - Juno

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has completed its first flyby around Jupiter with its instruments switched on — and it sent us back the very first up close images of the gas giant’s north pole. The high-resolution photos are stunning, and are already revealing storms and weather activity that scientists had never seen before. During the flyby, which was completed on August 27th, the probe came about 2,500 miles above the planet, with its eight science instruments switched on. It took one and a half days to download all the data Juno sent back from its 6-hour transit from Jupiter’s north pole … Read more

SpaceX Rocket Explodes On Launch Pad

SpaceX

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, meant to launch a satellite this weekend, exploded on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Reports suggest the explosion occurred during a static fire test of the rocket’s engines. The Falcon 9 was getting ready to launch the Amos 6 satellite, a communications probe for the Israeli satellite operator Spacecom. The mission was scheduled for 3AM ET Saturday morning. Prior to all launches, SpaceX conducts a static fire test, in which the rocket’s engines are turned on while the vehicle is constrained. It’s a routine procedure the company has done many times before. Full Story … Read more

News: We Might Have Neighbors

Proxima B

The search for life outside our solar system has been brought to our cosmic doorstep with the discovery of an apparently rocky planet orbiting the nearest star to our sun. Thought to be at least 1.3 times the mass of the Earth, the planet lies within the so-called “habitable zone” of the star Proxima Centauri, meaning that liquid water could potentially exist on the newly discovered world. Named Proxima b, the new planet has sparked a flurry of excitement among astrophysicists, with the tantalising possibility that it might be similar in crucial respects to Earth. “There is a reasonable expectation … Read more

Where No Gay Has Gone Before: First Tattooine, now Vulcan

NASA announced earlier it might have located Luke Skywalker’s home planet Tattooine.  For the past nine years, NASA has embarked on a planet finding mission, SIM PlanetQuest to find Mr. Spock’s home Vulcan.  Astronomers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory are searching for a planet orbiting 40 Eridani, a triple-star system about 16 light-years from Earth.  ‘Vulcan’ is thought to orbit the red-orange K dwarf star Eridani A. K-stars are orangey stars, slightly cooler than our sun.  They are hotter, brighter and bluer than M stars, but cooler, dimmer and redder than O, B, A F and G stars.  Did you get … Read more

Where No Gay Has Gone Before: Men on Mars!

  For the past fifty years, we’ve been sending spacecraft tour next-door neighbor, Mars.  Starting with Mariner 4 in 1965, which did the first flyby.  The Soviets achieved the first soft landing with the Mars 3 probe in 1971.  Long before those milestones, sci-fi authors have looked to the Red Planet with their own speculative fiction such as Mars being inhabited by aliens (Percival Lowell’s 1895 Mars) and Earthlings on Mars (Ray Bradbury’s 1950 The Martian Chronicles). Now such fiction could become reality in the next twenty years.  Although the minimum distance between Earth and Mars is roughly 35 million … Read more

Juno’s First Image From Jupiter

jupiter

This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter’s extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles. Full Story from NASA

For Writers: Astronaut Blindness

astronauts

Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer J. Scott Coatsworth: I saw this article the other day and it fascinated me: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-mysterious-syndrome-impairing-astronauts-eyesight/2016/07/09/f20fb9a6-41f1-11e6-88d0-6adee48be8bc_story.html It seems like it could be addressed eventually with rotating space stations and centrifugal force, or maybe artificial gravity? I wonder how long is “safe” to be in a weightless environment? And what other things might space do to the human body? I smell plot bunnies! Join the chat

Trailer: NASA’s Jupiter Approach

Jupiter

A spinning, solar-powered spacecraft as wide as a basketball court will arrive at Jupiter on July 4 to study the giant planet and to take the highest-resolution images of Jupiter in history. NASA’s robotic Juno probe is carrying seven science instruments designed to help scientists figure out how Jupiter formed and evolved. The planet is the most massive in our solar system — a huge ball of gas 11 times wider than Earth. Researchers think it was the first planet to form and that it holds clues to how the solar system evolved. “One of the primary goals of Juno … Read more

News: Mercury Transits the Sun – Live

Mercury, the innermost planet in our solar system, has begun a transit that only happens about 13 times every 100 years. The transit is currently underway and you can watch it LIVE below. The last transit happened in 2006, the next will happen in 2019, and there won’t be another one until 2032. Since it’s not wise to look at the Sun unless you’ve got a solar filter, you’re best to head to a planetarium or find a viewing event. See the Feed

For Writers: The Fermi Paradox

Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Jim Comer: Has anyone seen Geoffrey Landis’ intriguing answer to the Fermi Paradox? If even a very small fraction of the hundred billion stars in the galaxy are home to technological civilizations which colonize over interstellar distances, the entire galaxy should be completely colonized in a few million years. The absence of such extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth is the Fermi Paradox. You can find Landis’s arguments here. In a nutshell, though, why haven’t we found noisy galactic neighbors? Join the chat