Octopus Overlords

As expected, but now official, NASA has announced the decision to redo the Green Run Hot-Fire test of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) Core Stage at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The Core Stage was fired for 67 seconds on January 16 in the B-2 Test Stand at Stennis before the test was ended early.

The SLS Program, Core Stage prime contractor Boeing, and RS-25 engine prime contractor Aerojet Rocketdyne are continuing to refurbish their vehicle hardware and Stennis is recycling their ground systems for a second attempt to fire the stage for a full eight minute flight duration near the end of February.

A second Hot-Fire test gives the agency a chance to conduct three special gimbaling experiments that weren’t completed in the first attempt, which would gather data on the interaction and interdependence between the four RS-25 engines and the stage’s mechanical systems.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Wed Feb 03, 2021 8:08 pm Im starting to think these are designed to launch, fly up, flip over, fall, and explode.

Last month we brought you the news that dinosaurs probably beat us to the Moon. This month, golf balls have been found up there, which isn't quite as exciting but bear with us.

Fifty years ago, on February 5, 1971, Apollo 14 touched down on the Moon. As well as equipment for attempting to determine the internal structure of our satellite, and to measure the composition of the lunar atmosphere, the astronauts took with them a six-iron golf club head and some golf balls.

"We can now fairly accurately determine that ball number one travelled 24 yards [22 meters]," Saunders wrote for the US Golfer's Association (USGA), "and ball number two travelled 40 yards [36 meters]."

Daehawk wrote: ↑Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:38 pm We Just Got The First Photo of Mars From China's Tianwen 1 Probe, And It's Breathtaking

The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a rival US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around February 10.

Holman wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 9:43 pm Something that irks me about that article:

The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a rival US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around February 10.

Parallel scientific endeavors are not "rivals." One doesn't succeed at the expense of the other. Ideally, each adds to our common store of knowledge.

Framing it this way is a relic of the Cold War, when space science was treated as a race for status and an adjunct to military technology. This is not that.

Different countries have different development models when it comes to space, so the new space race is partly a competition for having the best approach. This reflects the specific character of the so-called Space Age 2.0, which, compared to the first one, looks more diverse, and where non-US actors, public and private, feature prominently, especially Asian ones. If China leads the pack, so does its vision.

But there are bigger things at stake. The development effort behind China’s space sector is still largely government funded and military led. According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressional commission of the US government, China considers space as a “tool of geopolitical and diplomatic competition”. It is clear that, together with cyberspace, the cosmos has become a fundamental new warfighting domain, where the US are the main – but not the only – adversary. That means commercial considerations come second for many countries, even though they have become increasingly important in the overall scheme of things.

China has already enacted five-year plans for its space activities, the latest of which ended in 2020 with more 140 launches. More missions are planned: a new orbital space station, the retrieval of martian samples and a Jupiter exploratory mission among them.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 11:41 pmTim Curry

Paingod wrote: ↑Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:16 am

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Feb 10, 2021 11:41 pmTim Curry

I could honestly watch that man do anything, all day long. I can't recall a single role I didn't enjoy. My favorite, though, was his take on The Lord of Darkness in Legend with Tom Cruise.

What astronomers believed to be the most distant object in the Solar System, “Farout,” has lost its title after just two years. That crown now goes to “Farfarout” (zero points for creativity, you guys), a planetoid that is more than 130 times farther from the Sun than Earth is.

As spotted by Inverse, after years of observations, astronomers have confirmed that the planetoid designated by the Minor Planet Center as 2018 AG37, nicknamed Farfarout, is the farthest known Solar System object at 132 astronomical units away from the Sun.

A single AU is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, aka about 92 million miles or 148 million kilometers. (For reference, the previous titleholder Farout, officially designated 2018 VG18, is “just” 120 AU away.) That means Farfarout is roughly 12.3 billion miles or 19.7 billion kilometers away, or for context, about four times farther away from the Sun than Pluto. At that distance, the planetoid completes a single orbit around the Sun just once in a millennium.

The day is here. After years of hard work and labor, NASA has completed all possible steps and sequencing for the most complex landing ever attempted on another planet. It is now up to the technology built and cared for over years by engineers and technicians on Earth to work exactly as planned.

If all goes well, Perseverance will safely touchdown at Jezero Crater at an actual time on Earth of 15:43:42 EST (20:43:42 UTC) — with confirmation of landing received 11 minutes 22 seconds later through the Madrid, Spain facility of the Deep Space Network at 15:55:04 EST (20:55:04 UTC).

To pronounce "Jezero" correctly, think of the letter "J" as sounding more like the letter "Y."

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:02 pm OK THAT is some hilarious shit.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:06 pm Its Ted Cruz if that helps.

If the first audio they downlink is from the descent, we probably won't be able to hear anything over the sound of the rover screaming.

jztemple2 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:22 pm Pretty cool stuff. This photo of Perseverance was taken from the decent stage just a few meters above the ground.

In new research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday, scientists detail the detection of a subatomic particle -- known as a neutrino -- at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. Using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility at California's Palomar Observatory, researchers were able to trace the origins of the subatomic bullet back to an extreme event some 700 million years ago: the cataclysmic destruction of a star as it was shredded by a black hole.

It's the first time such an event has been linked to a neutrino detection.