NASA/Space thread

[PilotMan]

Here's what gets me. We have intelligent life on this planet (whales, dolphins, elephants) and not only do we not make much of an attempt to understand or communicate with them, we look down on them as much less than they really are. What makes anyone think that we would have any success at figuring out something not from this world?

[NobodyHere]

I'm in the camp that if there is intelligent life then I hope we never meet them lest be walk into a 'To Serve Man' situation.

[NobodyHere]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

Here's what gets me. We have intelligent life on this planet (whales, dolphins, elephants) and not only do we not make much of an attempt to understand or communicate with them, we look down on them as much less than they really are. What makes anyone think that we would have any success at figuring out something not from this world?

Hey, we just taught some rats how do drive cars. Isn't that enough?

Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels - BBC News

[PilotMan]

It's not really the same as two way communication.

[NobodyHere]

Well we do need to communicate with whales, Star Trek has taught us that much at least.

But what kind of conversations do you expect to have with a Dolphin or an Elephant?

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by NobodyHere

Well we do need to communicate with whales, Star Trek has taught us that much at least.

But what kind of conversations do you expect to have with a Dolphin or an Elephant?

I would think any sort of higher lever communication might, at the very least, give me optimism that we might be able to do the same with aliens.

We know elephants have a very sophisticated social and emotional system, learning how to communicate that, on their level, using their methods seems like a place to start.

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by Kodos

There's probably other intelligent life out there, but the space between us makes it hard/impossible for them to come to us.

Timing also. They may have existed 50,000 years ago just like us but died off 40,000 years ago. Millienia is nothing in the age of the universe.

[cartman]

And in with the timing thing, it has been less than 200 years since radio was discovered on this planet.

[NobodyHere]

[Thomkal]

cool

[Edward64]

In playing Stellaris, you are essentially roleplaying and trying to conquer a galaxy. There are M/Billions of galaxies in the Universe (great DLC expansion if we can do multiple galaxies) and a random question came up -- are there stars/solar systems between galaxies just floating around intergalactic space.

Apparently there are:

Lost in Space: Half of All Stars Drifting Free of Galaxies | Space

Instead, this finding of bright, blue light unexpectedly reveals these fluctuations may come from something called "intrahalo light," which is created by stars flung into intergalactic space during titanic collisions and mergers of galaxies. The researchers found that there was as much light from these intergalactic stars as there was from stars located in galaxies.

Then the next follow-up question is ... are those orphaned stars like solar systems and still have planets going around it? My guess is, in some cases, yes (but have not been able to find anything that specifically addresses planets)

[NobodyHere]

Uranus has started leaking gas, NASA scientists confirm

I didn't need a scientist to tell me that.

[Edward64]

Okay, so there is water on the moon.

Let's go find those bugs!

[Edward64]

SpaceX launch happening today. Cool stuff.

In the middle of watching Disney's The Right Stuff. It's kinda amazing to me that the US is the only country that had men on the moon vs landers/orbits so far. I do wonder if that is because of the technical challenges or other countries just don't consider it worthwhile. You would think China and USSR had the skill.

[Edward64]

Cool lift-off. T+5 min now on CNN.

Didn't see much other than engine burn (sun had set in FL). Go Elon!

[Brian Swartz]

I think the answer to your question is it's not worth it. Being able to have launch/production facilities on the moon, asteroid mining, etc. will change things eventually but we're still a ways away from that. Just too expensive to get large payloads to orbit and beyond without a really good reason to do so.

[Edward64]

Almost ... but still impressive IMO. Check out the video.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/09/spac...t-flight-.html

[Edward64]

Great month for space & Mars. UAE, China and US visiting.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

About an hour left until landing! Fingers crossed. I want to see that helicopter drone work.

[JPhillips]

Tremendous work.

[albionmoonlight]

Watching NASA folks celebrate still gives me goosebumps

[JPhillips]

That first picture is so cool.

[albionmoonlight]

I've enjoyed being a lawyer.

But, man, if I had it to do again, working for NASA would be a pretty cool life.

[tarcone]

My daughter is going to college to be an aerospace engineer, focusing on the space side. I hope I get to see her one day celebrating something like this.

[PilotMan]

That was so much fun to watch. All the engineering pieces that had to come together to make it all work, and it was flawless. Big smiles on the years of work it took to get to this moment. Great job all around.

[Edward64]

Congrats to NASA on the landing.

Now find me an alien bacteria, amoeba etc. I hope there are years of pics and science experiment results.

[Edward64]

Ingenuity detached from rover Perserverance and first flight planned on Apr 11. This will be pretty cool if it works!



NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity touches down on the Red Planet | Space

Weighing in at just 4 lbs. (1.8 kilograms), Ingenuity is a tiny, solar-powered helicopter that relies on a rechargeable battery to keep its systems warm during the harsh Martian night. Until today, Ingenuity has been attached to Perseverance's belly, feeding off the rover's nuclear-powered system to stay warm.

Now, the helicopter is using its internal battery to power a vital heater.

"This heater keeps the interior at about 45 degrees F through the bitter cold of the Martian night, where temperatures can drop to as low as -130 F (minus 90 degrees Celsius)," NASA's Bob Balaram, chief engineer for the Mars Helicopter project, wrote in a status update Friday (April 2). "That comfortably protects key components such as the battery and some of the sensitive electronics from harm at very cold temperatures."

Ingenuity is expected to make its first flight on April 11, with the data from that test reaching Earth on April 12, NASA officials have said.

[pantera]

^^^ Is this the first time ever that one man-made object has taken a photo of another man-made object on another planet?

[Edward64]

Originally Posted by pantera

^^^ Is this the first time ever that one man-made object has taken a photo of another man-made object on another planet?

I don't think so. Think there has been orbiting modules taking pics of man-made stuff on the surface.

I do think this is the first time one man-made object on a surface has taken photo of another on the surface.

[Edward64]

Tomorrow is the day! Hope this works

How to watch the Mars helicopter Ingenuity's first flight online | Space

The first helicopter is expected to attempt the first-ever flight on Mars on Sunday (April 11), with NASA unveiling the results a day later, and you can follow it all online.

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity flight coverage actually begins today (April 9) with a preflight press conference at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT). You can watch that live on Space.com and on this page, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly from NASA Television, the NASA smartphone app, the agency's website and several social media platforms (such as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's YouTube and Facebook channels.)

[Edward64]

Tomorrow is the day! Hope it works (this time)

[pantera]

It flew! Amazing stuff.

[Edward64]

The video I saw was more like it went up, hovered and came back down. Was hoping for more but guess I get it as this was the first "flight".

[Thomkal]

neat

[pantera]

Originally Posted by Edward64

The video I saw was more like it went up, hovered and came back down. Was hoping for more but guess I get it as this was the first "flight".

Haha, I know. But it's still pretty cool. I haven't read enough about it to understand how it can actually stay off the ground if there's not an atmosphere like we have?

[GrantDawg]

What is the time delay for video from the surface to Earth? I imagine any flight (as well as any movement for the rovers) have to be programmed and sent. They are not really in live control, right?

[Brian Swartz]

Correct. There's about a 15-minute communications delay.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by pantera

I haven't read enough about it to understand how it can actually stay off the ground if there's not an atmosphere like we have?

Short version is that it has much larger, faster-spinning blades. Mars has an atmosphere, it's not a vacuum that near the surface, it's just very thin compared to ours.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

What is the time delay for video from the surface to Earth? I imagine any flight (as well as any movement for the rovers) have to be programmed and sent. They are not really in live control, right?

Depends on how far the planets are apart at any given time. Right now in their orbits, Earth and Mars are ~289 million km apart, so light (and communication) takes 16 minutes to go from one planet to another. So if they send a command to Mars, they wait 32 minutes to get a response back.

[Edward64]

This is pretty cool. Looking forward to decades of great pics and findings.

With private sector SpaceX and like, I wonder if they could (or would want to risk) to pull this off. Seemingly with limited commercial appeal but vast potential for science.

Hubble's enormous, ambitious successor is poised to change our understanding of the universe | Salon.com

Folded like a $9.7 billion piece of metal origami and nestled into the nose of an Ariane 5 rocket, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will, in late December, be sent nearly one million miles from the surface of the Earth. Once it reaches its destination — a region of space with open views, where the sun and Earth's gravity counterbalance each other — the Hubble telescope's bigger, grander successor will spend the next decade answering questions that are as scientific as they are existential.

"How did we get here? What is the universe? And how did it come into being?" said David Hunter, a project manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute. "With something like the JWST, you actually have a tangible way of finding answers."

Over two decades of work — totaling 100 million hours of labor from more than 1,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians — went into the development of this next-generation space telescope. For their efforts, Webb will be able to peer into distant corners of the universe, using infrared detection to penetrate clouds of dust, survey the atmospheres of potentially habitable exoplanets, and look backward in time over 13 billion years, picking up faint light emitted by galaxies formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

[Edward64]

Zhurong and Perseverance are both still going strong. Examining boring rocks.

Not sure if both teams are sharing data and collaborating. Probably some but limited. They should get together in a room and watch second half of Martian together.

[Brian Swartz]

The Webb telescope will be remarkable assuming it works. I say that because it's been delayed multiple times, and if it doesn't work properly it will be hard to impossible to fix once it's out there, so worst-case scenario is it's a big space paper-weight. Plus side of course is being this generation's Hubble, showing us parts of space that we haven't seen before, increased detail, etc.

[Brian Swartz]

Looks like Webb is going to be a big Christmas present to all astronomy & similar enthusiasts. Launches tomorrow 7:20 AM EST. Of course we won't get any actual imagery till next summer, but just knowing that it's up there, and - hopefully - getting the setup & unfolding process going properly will be really cool.

I've been looking into more of the how it was made, engineering of the thing, etc. I was pretty well gobsmacked as they say. I think it's remarkable that we managed to produce it, even in the worst-case scenario where it goes completely wrong and fails which would be horrible, I'm still very impressed that we managed to build it in the first place.

[PilotMan]

Yeah, it makes me excited to think about the progress we could make, knowing the next level progress that we made with Hubble. It would be crushing if something happened that kept us from using it.

[Edward64]

About $10B. If it works as expected, well worth it IMO.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expected to cost NASA $9.7 billion over 24 years. Of that amount, $8.8 billion was spent on spacecraft development between 2003 and 2021; $861 million is planned to support five years of operations. Adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars, the lifetime cost to NASA will be approximately $10.8 billion.

That is only NASA’s portion. The European Space Agency provided the Ariane 5 launch vehicle and two of the four science instruments for an estimated cost of €700 million. The Canadian Space Agency contributed sensors and scientific instrumentation, which cost approximately CA$200 million.

This places the James Webb Space Telescope among the most expensive scientific platforms in history, comparable only to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

[Edward64]

Just watched the launched. A little disappointing, could see it for first 20-30 seconds, then it went into the clouds and NASA showed a "simulation".

Launched from French Guiana. So assume the telescope and rockets had to shipped from US and Europe, and then reassembled (?).

They have live views of telescope now. All in all, pretty cool.

[Brian Swartz]

Originally Posted by Edward64

Launched from French Guiana. So assume the telescope and rockets had to shipped from US and Europe, and then reassembled (?).

Yep. Launching from near the equator allows the rocket to utilize the earth's rotation to aid in getting the telescope going in the proper vector. So far so good. The most likely failure points begin tomorrow or the next day from what I understand.

Edit: Tuesday, when they start unfolding the sunshield.

[Brian Swartz]

For anyone interested in following it, they've got regular tracking here: Where Is Webb? NASA/Webb. Speed appears to update hourly. Temps will update daily starting in a day or two. What I'm looking forward to seeing is the growing temperature difference when the sunshield gets into place hopefully starting about a week in.

[Brian Swartz]

On target so far. Pucker time begins tomorrow, as sun shield deployment starts.

[Brian Swartz]

There were a couple of delays for rest of the mission team and some non-critical issues, but the sunshield finished deploying today. Most of the potential failure points have now been surpassed. Getting the mirrors deployed correctly is next, and then the long process of cooling and calibration.