Space In General

Epic timelapse footage from the launch a couple nights ago:



Also, someone in the SpaceX group put this together which is awesome usage of the logo.

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Not so good news for Opportunity Rover on Mars. Huge dust storm right now and they have it pretty much completely shut down to ride it out. Hopefully it pulls through.

 
Danoff
https://qz.com/1310539/nasa-cant-find-most-asteroids-that-might-hit-earth/

So frustrating that we can't put more money into detecting and predicting dangerous asteroids. It is a real issue, and more important than so many things that we spend money on. Its importance should sit above the entire manned space program.
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Meh. Between the current technical difficulties in actually detecting said asteroids and our general inability to do much about them it seems like an implicit admission of the truth that we're currently riding on luck. Which isn't a terrible thing, the odds are very much on our side that we continue to exist for another few hundred years at which point humans will likely either be able to detect/deflect or simply not be confined to the surface of a single planet.

Honestly, I'd probably keep the manned space program going and just cross my fingers. Getting to colonisation tech quicker is probably as good a way of avoiding asteroids as telescopes and Bruce Willis.

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Imari
Meh. Between the current technical difficulties in actually detecting said asteroids and our general inability to do much about them it seems like an implicit admission of the truth that we're currently riding on luck. Which isn't a terrible thing, the odds are very much on our side that we continue to exist for another few hundred years at which point humans will likely either be able to detect/deflect or simply not be confined to the surface of a single planet.

Honestly, I'd probably keep the manned space program going and just cross my fingers. Getting to colonisation tech quicker is probably as good a way of avoiding asteroids as telescopes and Bruce Willis.

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We could do something about them. What we need is lead time, which is why we have to know where they are. We have the technology to do all kinds of things, earth trailing telescope on the other side of the sun? Yup. Telescope orbiting inside Venus's orbit radius? Yup. The big problem with asteroid detection is the sun, we can't look that direction, which means the huge number of asteroids that are near Earth are hard to find because they're also near the sun from our perspective. That's no so much of a problem if you can put your telescope away from Earth or closer to the sun. Basically we have to be able to look outward at asteroids near Earth.

If you find an asteroid early enough, even a gigantic one, it can be diverted or broken. We have very efficient ion propulsion engines that are capable of delivering enormous amounts of energy over a long period of time, but they require a long period of time. We can land one (or more) of those on the surface of an asteroid and steer it, time is the big lever arm for that.

The program funds itself... "oh you don't want us to steer this asteroid so that it lands on your country? That's gonna cost you". Just kidding, nukes are better for that.


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Exceeeept, Nukes are easier to see coming. An asteroid that is classified, being directed by a classified mission, could land on a country that doesn't know it's coming and nobody would know it was malicious. Heck for all we know that program already exists in all the major countries of the world and none of us know about it.

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Hmmm... also no radiation fallout from asteroids.
 
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TenEightyOne
There doesn't need to be. The amount of dust in the atmosphere would be as devastating to life.
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Depends on the size of the rock and how long you're willing to wait. I'd guess that you could direct a rock large enough to flatten a big portion of a small country, wait a few years, and move in. The crazy part is that nobody might even know that it was an attack. Moving in could look like a humanitarian effort.
 
Danoff
The program funds itself... "oh you don't want us to steer this asteroid so that it lands on your country? That's gonna cost you". Just kidding, nukes are better for that.
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Obviously you start by steering it towards the country (secretly) and then announce that you spotted an asteroid and ask them to “co-fund” the operation to divert it. That way you’d even look like the good guy ;)
 
eran0004
Obviously you start by steering it towards the country (secretly) and then announce that you spotted an asteroid and ask them to “co-fund” the operation to divert it. That way you’d even look like the good guy ;)
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You'd have to be careful with the timing though. If the asteroid suddenly changes direction as soon as their check clears they might start asking questions.
 
Minty
You'd have to be careful with the timing though. If the asteroid suddenly changes direction as soon as their check clears they might start asking questions.
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You would of course send a fake mission to the asteroid, to not raise suspicions. But don’t send astronauts - they are too expensive. Send something cheaper, maybe blue-collar deep-core drillers or something?
 
eran0004
You would of course send a fake mission to the asteroid, to not raise suspicions. But don’t send astronauts - they are too expensive. Send something cheaper, maybe blue-collar deep-core drillers or something?
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Your fake mission would go to the next one that you're about to send on a collision course for the next country. This way you're not wasting resources faking everyone out.
 
Wow...everyone's letting their inner Bond villain out to play. I'm not that creative, so while everyone else is focused on all the targeted asteroids, I'll just hit up Fort Knox.
 
It would be polite to describe the image you're posting, as opposed to us having to go out and find it.

The Philae lander on comet 67P, seen by the OSIRIS imager on the Rosetta spacecraft.
 
wfooshee
It would be polite to describe the image you're posting, as opposed to us having to go out and find it.

The Philae lander on comet 67P, seen by the OSIRIS imager on the Rosetta spacecraft.
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uh... I thought I left the description... I'm sorry. :/
 
Amusing sky phenomena from today's edition of spaceweather.com:

NOCTILUCENT TORNADO: In recent nights, noctilucent clouds (NLCs) have rippled across Europe from Scandinavia to the south of France. "We have been observing NLCs every night here in N. Ireland," reports Martin McKenna of Maghera in Co. Derry. "Their brightness and complexity have been getting more advanced since the solstice, with whirls and knots glowing electric blue above a yellow midnight sunset horizon." He observed this 'noctilucent tornado' on June 25th:
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"It was amazing to watch," he says. "This area then morphed into an succession of dynamic shapes--a wedge, a funnel, angel wings, an electrified smoke ring, then a long rope tornado which reached towards the horizon."

What creates these forms? The answer is "gravity waves."

Gravity waves are, essentially, waves of pressure and temperature spawned by powerful storm systems. Gravity does not vary inside the waves; they get their name from the fact that gravity acts as a restoring force that tries to restore equilibrium to up-and-down moving air. Gravity waves can propagate all the way from Earth's surface up to the mesosphere, where they imprint themselves on the the forms of noctilucent clouds. When a sufficient number of gravity waves meet, they can interfere to produce all of the structures McKenna saw--plus many more.

Summer is the season for NLCs. Summertime wisps of water vapor rise to the top of Earth's atmosphere where they wrap themselves around specks of meteor smoke. Mesospheric winds gather the resulting ice crystals into noctilucent clouds

Realtime Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery

MYSTERIOUS TWINNED RAINBOW: Scientists have been studying rainbows for hundreds of years, since the 17th century when Isaac Newton first explained the colorful arcs. Yet after all these years, there is one rainbow scientists do not fully understand--the "twinned bow." Jan Curtis photographed this specimen on June 21st from Cheyenne, Wyoming:
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"This rare 'twinned rainbow' was perhaps the brightest rainbow I've ever seen," says Curtis. "It followed on the tails of a extremely severe thunderstorm that fortunately passed just a few miles to my north."

"Several twinned bows have been imaged, mostly during heavy showers, but currently there is no agreed explanation for them," says atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. "They might form from a mixture of water drops and ice spheres." Indeed, Curtis reports intense hail around the time of his sighting.

"A stronger possibility is that non-spherical raindrops produce one or both bows," Cowley adds. "Surface tension forces keep small raindrops fiercely spherical but as they fall large drops are flattened by air resistance or might even oscillate between flattened and elongated spheroids."

Another striking aspect of Curtis's image is the overall double structure of the rainbow--one rainbow on the inside, another on the outside. Such double rainbows are often seen and well understood. The splitting of the inner bow into twins added a dash of mystery to this otherwise common occurance.
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Imari
Meh. Between the current technical difficulties in actually detecting said asteroids and our general inability to do much about them it seems like an implicit admission of the truth that we're currently riding on luck. Which isn't a terrible thing, the odds are very much on our side that we continue to exist for another few hundred years at which point humans will likely either be able to detect/deflect or simply not be confined to the surface of a single planet.

Honestly, I'd probably keep the manned space program going and just cross my fingers. Getting to colonisation tech quicker is probably as good a way of avoiding asteroids as telescopes and Bruce Willis.

space.jpg
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Which Civilization is that? 6?
 
Anyone care to speculate as to the processes that caused this object to form in the way it does? In some ways it seems similar to both Phobos and especially Iapetus. Amazingly, it seems to have an octahedral crystal habit.



Ryugu, as seen from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft (Image Credit: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, Aizu University, AIST.)
 
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R1600Turbo
I can't be the only one that sees the Death Star.
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Ah, yes. But that would be Iapetus!
Ryugu translates variously as "magic undersea dragon palace".




Iapetus equatorial ridge.


Hexagonal crater with central mound


Dragon turtle, bearer of Ryugu
 
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