How fucking cool is this? As much as the news tries to drag you down into the "deep state big mask" debates, it's nice to see some actual real progress and motivating shit happening.
Any guess into what those white things were in the background at 0:40? I’ve been trying to figure it out
Do you mean the debris that looks like Walmart shopping bags? My guess is pieces of discarded protective shrouding.
If I had to guess I'd say it might be some sort of internal strap/retention device that was released to facilitate the fin movement or something like that... and because it was so small it was just left to burn up on re-entry. It looked too specific/strange to me to be a random piece of shroud that broke off.
Mars is not practicing Solar Distancing, and is VERY visible right now. If you have a telescope, or even decent binoculars, you’ll get a view of it like you’ve never seen. Go outside now, look for the large bright red dot.
Pretty solid TL;DR from Reddit: Astronomer here! Here is what is going on! Didn't we already know there was water on the moon? Short answer: yes. Water on the moon in the form of ice has been known for decades, but in very specific circumstances of some craters in the south pole that never get sunlight. The trick is the daytime temperatures on the moon (remember, a day lasts two weeks there- as in, sunrise to sunset) reaches above the boiling temperature of water, so until now it was thought the water outside these regions would have evaporated long ago. What's new this time? Scientists used a cool instrument called SOFIA, the world's only flying observatory, which is a telescope on a modified Boeing 747 and flies above 99% of the water vapor in the atmosphere and thus can make this measurement even though you can't from Earth's surface. (Full disclosure, one of the coolest things I've done was get to ride on SOFIA last year, as far south as Antarctica! I wrote about it here if you're interested in what it's like.) They basically demonstrated using its unique observation capabilities that water is also present in the sunny areas, not just the southern craters, so will hopefully be way easier for future astronauts to access. SOFIA is basically capable of mapping the molecular existence of water at Clavius crater (fun coincidence: where they had the lunar base in 2001: A Space Odyssey!), and found it a lot of those sunlit places where no one was really expecting it. It's also not literally water droplets or chunks of ice, mind, but a fairly low concentration, likely from micro-meteorites or the solar wind- they say it's the equivalent of a 12 oz bottle over a square meter of soil, and NASA on the press conference right now can't confirm how useful that'll be and how prevalent this is all over. What gives? Is this that big a deal if we already knew there is water? I mean, on the one hand, yes. Water is obviously super important for future explorations and is really expensive to send up, so it'll be really useful for future lunar astronauts if it's more accessible. Also, it is intriguing in terms of how prevalent water might be in other areas in space that are currently thought to be harsh environments incapable of having it. On the other hand... this is my personal opinion, but NASA does like to sometimes get a splash in the press because they are a government agency that is currently looking at a lot of budget cuts for a lot of their science. Specifically, SOFIA was canceled in the most recent proposed NASA budget, and it's not a cheap instrument. (I actually had a random astronomer I've never met chastising me for my article about how cool SOFIA was last year, which was weird, so this is a not-insignificant sentiment.) Obviously, a lot of scientists really disagree with this assessment of how important SOFIA is, as it's the best way to do infrared astronomy right now that we have, so it's good to have a press conference that will inevitably have a bit more press coverage than just a press release to highlight the cool things only SOFIA can do. TL;DR- looks like there's more water than we expected on the moon, and hopefully that'll be useful for future astronauts!
Youtube of the announcement (it was a conf call). Audio starts off at "death to headphones" level, so be warned
Not a real wild topic, but my job has me starting each day at 6:30, so I've gotten firsthand education about sunrise times, and the moon phases. November 15th is the new moon, which means tomorrow morning (the 14th) is gonna be a little sliver of a waning crescent, with the rest of the moon still visible from reflected light. and will probably be pretty close before sunrise. It isn't fancy or new, but it's interesting to me. I'm gonna set an alarm and check it out.
When the Flat Earth folks see this, what is their position? That these videos are fake? So confusing. https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1328422934377943042?s=20
Piece of the asteroid Ryugu. Spaceship travelled 5240 million kilometres to go grab that sample. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55201662 The "EOD" outfit is apparently to protect him from any residual pyrotechnics due to explosive bolts, etc.
Pssh, just collect asteroids the old fashioned way: wait for one to smash into Mexico and wipe out the dinosaurs.
Get ready for the Christmas Star! Jupiter and Saturn getting pretty damn close together. https://www.pilotonline.com/news/vp...0201205-2xvxthdlzzeahh7idpbg5aavl4-story.html Still gotta wait a little bit for Jupiter to align with Mars.
The closeness of the alignment this year is an 800 year phenomenon. And it's going to happen on the solstice. In 2020. You shouldn't discount the significance. There is a reason that astrologers were an important part of every king/emperor's court. Signs and seasons. We're all gonna die.