Space News

nivek

As Above So Below

Japanese satellite made out of timber is set to launch this summer to combat space pollution

Carpenters might be just as important as engineers to the future of space travel as scientists prepare to launch the world's first wooden satellite. Japanese scientists have swapped aluminium for timber in a new satellite design planned to launch this summer.

The satellite, named Lignosat, will be made of Magnolia wood and will be about the size of a mug. And, while it might not sound futuristic, using wood might help the space industry cut out harmful pollution. If successful, the microsatellite could allow researchers to branch out to more eco-friendly building materials.

Japanese scientists plan to branch out from traditional materials to use wood in a new satellite to be launched this summer


Lignosat will essentially be a small wooden box with solar panels on the outside and electronic equipment on the inside. It will either launch on an Orbital Sciences Cygnus supply ship to the ISS or a similar mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon later in the year. Once in orbit, Lignosat will operate for about six months before being allowed to burn up in the atmosphere.

The researchers plan to include a number of experiments onboard designed to see how well wood holds up to the harsh conditions of space. In low-Earth orbit, satellites experience temperatures ranging from -85°F (–65°C) to +257°F (125°C) depending on their altitude and exposure to the sun. The worry is that the wooden panels in the satellite might warp or crack as the temperature shifts.

However, early research showed that wood kept in space-like conditions in the lab showed no measurable mass loss, signs of decay, or damage. Encouraged by these results, the researchers sent samples of different kinds of wood up to the International Space Station where they were held in space for almost a year. Once again, the wood showed very little sign of decay even after being exposed to extreme temperatures for twice the intended operating period of the satellite.


Samples of wood sent to the ISS (pictured) were exposed to space for an entire year but showed no significant signs of damage or decay


Samples of wood sent to the ISS (pictured above) were exposed to space for an entire year but showed no significant signs of damage or decay
Koji Murata, head of the project attributed this to the fact there is no oxygen or living creatures in space that could decompose the wood.

'Wood's ability to withstand these conditions astounded us,' Mr Murata told the Observer. After reviewing the results of the ISS tests, the scientists decided to make the final satellite from Magnolia wood. In comparison to other woods tested, such as the Japanese Cherry tree, Magnolia proved to be the ideal wood for creating a satellite. In a statement, Kyoto University wrote Magnolia showed 'high workability, dimensional stability, and overall strength.'

(More on the link)

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nivek

As Above So Below

Something unprecedented happened on the Sun

An incredibly huge plume of plasma was ejected into space from the sun’s south pole, where eruptions almost never occur. The explosion captured in the image is a sign that the Sun is on the verge of its most active phase – solar maximum, writes LiveScience. The rare phenomenon occurred during a solar flare from a sunspot located near the south pole of the Sun.

A giant column of gas or plasma was thrown into space, which rose 15 thousand km above the surface of the star. The plasma then broke away from the surface and flew into space as a coronal mass ejection (CME). The process was captured by astrophotographer Eduardo Schaberger Pupo.

The image was taken before the plasma plume broke away from the solar surface. “The resulting column of plasma was so huge that I had to change the position of the camera to fit the object into the frame,” says the astrophotographer.




The uniqueness of this explosion lies in the fact that it occurred in a very unusual place – it occurred at the South Pole of the Sun. Most sunspot explosions occur at or around the star’s equator—near the magnetic poles, where the magnetic field is strongest.

Due to the location of the flare, the coronal mass ejection was not directed towards Earth or other planets in the solar system.

Experts believe that this unusual eruption is due to what science knows to be the filament of the polar corona. It is a loop of magnetism that revolves around the magnetic poles of the Sun. The plasma plume ejected by the flare is known as a polar corona prominence.

Such prominences become common during solar maximum, which is the most active phase of the 11-year solar cycle. At this stage, the loops of magnetism tighten like a noose around the poles. When such loops compress, they choke nearby magnetic fields, increasing the likelihood of explosions.

According to experts, solar maximum will occur in the next few months, earlier than expected.


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pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Somehow Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon keeps wandering through my mind. Substitute Musk and Bezos in there .......

Plot Summary for The Man Who Sold the Moon:

D.D. Harriman is a billionaire
entrepreneur who decides that his next project should be a space flight to the moon. He
persuades his partner, George Strong, and another businessman, Daniel Dixon, to join in.
His wife Charlotte objects, however, when he announces that he is selling all their assets
to invest in his new venture. Harriman recruits a former rocket scientist, Bob Coster, to
be the chief engineer to build the space ship and the only world’s only experienced space
pilot, Leslie LeCroix, to pilot it. His original plan called for a three astronaut crew of
Harriman, Coster, and LeCroix for the first trip to the moon, but in order to launch before
they run out of money, he has to scale back the mission to a one astronaut crew of
LeCroix alone. The first attempt is successful, so Harriman includes himself as a
member of the crew for the second mission. This trip would carry seven people with the
intention of leaving at least four to start a lunar colony. However, Dixon and Charlotte
Harriman force Harriman to remain behind, because Harriman is too important to the
whole endeavor to risk his life traveling in space.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Wolf Blitzer interviewed The Shatner last night on CNN about the lunar landing. I fear he has crossed his personal Rubicon. The points he was trying to make were fine but his ability to make them is sketchy. I don't even really remember what the hell he said as I was in a sort of pillow clutching horror looking at him not be the person we're used to. That said, I hope to be doing half as well at that age.
 

nivek

As Above So Below

Are aliens already in Earth's backyard? Incredible graphic reveals the moons in our solar system that could be hiding life

There's only eight planets in our solar system, but amazingly there's a just under 300 moons known to orbit around them all. And scientists recently revealed that they'd found two more to add to the list - one around Uranus (bottom right) and two around Neptune. But, amazingly, there are still 'thousands' more moons likely awaiting discovery in our solar system, according to NASA. What's exciting is that moons could be home to alien life, potentially just a few years away from being discovered. But which ones are the most promising candidates? MailOnline's dazzling new graphic reveals more.

Are aliens already in Earth's backyard? Incredible graphic reveals the moons in our solar

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nivek

As Above So Below

Massive Pallet of Old Batteries Re-Enters Earth’s Atmosphere, Marking Heaviest ISS Trash Return Yet

After three years of uncontrolled descent, the 2.9-ton cargo pallet has finally fallen to Earth.

The cargo pallet after being tossed by the by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in 2021.

On Friday, March 8, a pallet of used batteries from the International Space Station (ISS) reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico following an unpredictable journey through orbit.

The pallet contained nine batteries and weighed in at 2.9 tons. It had been tossed by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in March 2021 and and has since been tumbling towards Earth in an uncontrolled reentry. The chaotic fall through orbit finally came to an end last week when the cargo pallet reentered on March 8 around 3:29 p.m. ET somewhere above Cancun and Cuba, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who has been tracking the piece of ISS trash.

It’s not clear, however, whether the entire pallet burned up upon reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, or if some parts of it survived the heat. The European Space Agency (ESA) was also monitoring the pallet’s reentry and estimated that some parts may reach the ground but that the likelihood of a person being hit were very low. There have been no reports of injuries or damage since the object returned to Earth.

The pallet is the largest object ever thrown out from the ISS. It was launched to the space station in May 2020 by a Japanese cargo ship to help astronauts replace the old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. These batteries store energy collected by the station’s solar arrays.


(More on the link)

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J Randall Murphy

Trying To Stay Awake

Massive Pallet of Old Batteries Re-Enters Earth’s Atmosphere, Marking Heaviest ISS Trash Return Yet

After three years of uncontrolled descent, the 2.9-ton cargo pallet has finally fallen to Earth.

The cargo pallet after being tossed by the by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in 2021.

On Friday, March 8, a pallet of used batteries from the International Space Station (ISS) reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico following an unpredictable journey through orbit.

The pallet contained nine batteries and weighed in at 2.9 tons. It had been tossed by the Canadarm2 robotic arm in March 2021 and and has since been tumbling towards Earth in an uncontrolled reentry. The chaotic fall through orbit finally came to an end last week when the cargo pallet reentered on March 8 around 3:29 p.m. ET somewhere above Cancun and Cuba, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who has been tracking the piece of ISS trash.

It’s not clear, however, whether the entire pallet burned up upon reentry through Earth’s atmosphere, or if some parts of it survived the heat. The European Space Agency (ESA) was also monitoring the pallet’s reentry and estimated that some parts may reach the ground but that the likelihood of a person being hit were very low. There have been no reports of injuries or damage since the object returned to Earth.

The pallet is the largest object ever thrown out from the ISS. It was launched to the space station in May 2020 by a Japanese cargo ship to help astronauts replace the old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. These batteries store energy collected by the station’s solar arrays.


(More on the link)

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So they're using the Canadarm to toss garbage at the planet now :rofl4:
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Nobody? I love a good blow-up (as long as its unmanned)

Commercial rocket trying to put a satellite into orbit explodes moments after liftoff in Japan

Commercial rocket trying to put a satellite into orbit explodes moments after liftoff in Japan​

BY YURI KAGEYAMA
Updated 3:05 AM EDT, March 13, 2024
Share
TOKYO (AP) — A commercial rocket trying to put a satellite into orbit was intentionally exploded shortly after liftoff Wednesday morning in central Japan following a problem that’s still under investigation.
Space One was aiming to be Japan’s first private sector success at putting a satellite into orbit.
Online video showed the Kairos rocket blasting off in a mountainous area filled with trees then exploding five seconds later. A huge plume of smoke engulfed the area, and flames shot up in some spots. Spurts of water were shown trying to put out the blaze.
Live footage on public broadcaster NHK showed debris scattering from the sky and later charred pieces were shown strewn about on the ground.
Space One's Kairos rocket explodes after liftoff from a launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama prefecture, western Japan, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. The rocket touted as Japan’s first from the private sector to go into orbit exploded shortly after takeoff Wednesday, livestreamed video showed.(Kyodo News via AP)

Space One’s Kairos rocket explodes after liftoff from a launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama prefecture, western Japan, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)
No injuries were reported and the fire was brought under control, according to the fire department for Kushimoto city in Wakayama prefecture.
The launch was halted five seconds after liftoff but the problem that was detected by the rocket’s automated system was unclear and still under investigation, according to Space One.
It occurred during step two of the launch, with the first step being liftoff, and all the pieces of the rocket landed on Space One’s property, the company said.
“We are taking what happened in a positive way and remain prepared to take up the next challenge,” President Masakazu Toyoda told reporters.
The rocket was supposed to have sent a government-made satellite into orbit around Earth to gather various information, including monitoring possible dangers from rocket launches from neighboring North Korea.


But one of its main purposes was for Japan to play catch-up as rocket launches here have fallen behind that of the U.S. and China. The launch has been delayed several times.
Toyoda and other officials stressed that space travel succeeds only after multiple failures. He even refused to call the aborted launch a failure, and declined to reveal the costs or when the investigation might be completed.
Tokyo-based Space One was set up in 2018, with investments from major Japanese companies, including Canon Electronics, IHI, Shimizu and major banks. It’s hoping to eventually offer space services and travel.
Japan’s main space exploration effort has been led by the government under JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which has developed various rockets, sent a spacecraft to the moon and brought back asteroid samples for research.
Japan’s companies are aiming to become a larger part of the growing global space business, as exemplified by ventures abroad like Elon Musk’s Space X.

___​

 

J Randall Murphy

Trying To Stay Awake
Nobody? I love a good blow-up (as long as its unmanned)

Commercial rocket trying to put a satellite into orbit explodes moments after liftoff in Japan

Commercial rocket trying to put a satellite into orbit explodes moments after liftoff in Japan​

BY YURI KAGEYAMA
Updated 3:05 AM EDT, March 13, 2024
Share
TOKYO (AP) — A commercial rocket trying to put a satellite into orbit was intentionally exploded shortly after liftoff Wednesday morning in central Japan following a problem that’s still under investigation.
Space One was aiming to be Japan’s first private sector success at putting a satellite into orbit.
Online video showed the Kairos rocket blasting off in a mountainous area filled with trees then exploding five seconds later. A huge plume of smoke engulfed the area, and flames shot up in some spots. Spurts of water were shown trying to put out the blaze.
Live footage on public broadcaster NHK showed debris scattering from the sky and later charred pieces were shown strewn about on the ground.
Space One's Kairos rocket explodes after liftoff from a launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama prefecture, western Japan, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. The rocket touted as Japan’s first from the private sector to go into orbit exploded shortly after takeoff Wednesday, livestreamed video showed.(Kyodo News via AP)'s Kairos rocket explodes after liftoff from a launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama prefecture, western Japan, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. The rocket touted as Japan’s first from the private sector to go into orbit exploded shortly after takeoff Wednesday, livestreamed video showed.(Kyodo News via AP)

Space One’s Kairos rocket explodes after liftoff from a launch pad in Kushimoto, Wakayama prefecture, western Japan, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)
No injuries were reported and the fire was brought under control, according to the fire department for Kushimoto city in Wakayama prefecture.
The launch was halted five seconds after liftoff but the problem that was detected by the rocket’s automated system was unclear and still under investigation, according to Space One.
It occurred during step two of the launch, with the first step being liftoff, and all the pieces of the rocket landed on Space One’s property, the company said.
“We are taking what happened in a positive way and remain prepared to take up the next challenge,” President Masakazu Toyoda told reporters.
The rocket was supposed to have sent a government-made satellite into orbit around Earth to gather various information, including monitoring possible dangers from rocket launches from neighboring North Korea.


But one of its main purposes was for Japan to play catch-up as rocket launches here have fallen behind that of the U.S. and China. The launch has been delayed several times.
Toyoda and other officials stressed that space travel succeeds only after multiple failures. He even refused to call the aborted launch a failure, and declined to reveal the costs or when the investigation might be completed.
Tokyo-based Space One was set up in 2018, with investments from major Japanese companies, including Canon Electronics, IHI, Shimizu and major banks. It’s hoping to eventually offer space services and travel.
Japan’s main space exploration effort has been led by the government under JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which has developed various rockets, sent a spacecraft to the moon and brought back asteroid samples for research.
Japan’s companies are aiming to become a larger part of the growing global space business, as exemplified by ventures abroad like Elon Musk’s Space X.

___​



Here's a vid . . .

 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
How 13 Different News Outlets Covered Elon Musk’s Successful SpaceX Launch

How 13 Different News Outlets Covered Elon Musk’s Successful SpaceX Launch
Mar 14, 2024 · BabylonBee.com

Article Image


A new step toward the future of mankind was taken this week following another successful launch from SpaceX. As with other major news stories, it can be interesting and informative to see how it was covered by different media outlets.
Here is a rundown of how 13 major news sources covered Elon Musk's latest successful launch:
  • CNN: Musk Chooses Space Exploration Over Ending World Hunger
  • Salon: I Lived It: I Inhaled Musk's Rocket's Fumes And They Killed Me
  • Snopes: Fact check: did Elon Musk's rocket successfully launch? Mostly false.
  • Not the Bee: EEEEK! ELON MUSK LAUNCHED A ROCKET INTO SPACE AND WE ARE HERE FOR IT HIT THE DAB!
  • MSNBC: Musk Attacks Ocean With Rocket
  • DailyWire: Help Elon Musk Conquer Outer Space By Subscribing To DailyWire+!
  • HuffPost: Why Going To Space Is Rooted In Racism And Misogyny
  • Fox News: What The Latest SpaceX Launch Means For Trump's Chances In November
  • Vox: We Speak With The Indigenous Alcoholics Who Could've Been Given Free Healthcare With The Money Spent On Elon's Latest Launch
  • TMZ: ELONgate: Check Out The Size Of This Rocket!
  • New York Times: Musk Launches Rocket In Bid To Spread Hate Speech To Other Planets
  • InfoWars: SpaceX Rocket Makes Contact With Aliens On Orders From Deep State Gay Frogs
  • Deadspin: 404 ERROR
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
NASA Communicates with Ailing Voyager 1 Spacecraft

MARCH 14, 2024
10 MIN READ

Voyager 1’s Immortal Interstellar Requiem​

NASA is reaching across more than 15 billion miles to rescue its malfunctioning Voyager 1 probe—but this hallowed interstellar mission can’t live forever
BY NADIA DRAKE
Voyager spacecraft leaving Solar System. The spacecraft is in silhouette with the light from the distant sun shining through

An artist's concept of NASA's Voyager 1, the space agency's venerable and farthest-flung interplanetary probe.

Credit:
Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library
Space Exploration

In the fall of last year, one of NASA’s most venerable spacecraft started beaming home nonsense. Its usual string of 1’s and 0’s—binary code that collectively told of its journey into the unknown—became suddenly unintelligible.
Some 15 billion miles from Earth, beyond the protective bubble blown by the sun and in interstellar space, Voyager 1 was in trouble.

“We’d gone from having a conversation with Voyager, with the 1’s and 0’s containing science data, to just a dial tone,” says Linda Spilker, Voyager project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Spilker joined JPL in 1977, the same year that NASA launched Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, on what, in a way, was an endless odyssey: from Earth, to the outer solar system and ultimately to interstellar infinity. Today there are several billion people on Earth who have never taken a breath without the Voyagers in our sky, people who, like me, have only ever existed in a cosmos shared with these talkative twin spacecraft. But like people, spacecraft get old. They break down.
And all good things—and even great ones—must come to an end. After days, and weeks and then months of nothing but indecipherable binary babbling, Voyager 1’s earthbound stewards had to reckon with the idea that maybe, after more than 46 years, its time had at last run out.

The Voyager 1 team at JPL had traced the problem to the spacecraft’s Flight Data System, an onboard computer that parses and parcels engineering and science measurements for subsequent radio transmittal to Earth. One possibility was that a high-energy cosmic particle had struck Voyager 1 and caused a bit flip within the system’s memory — something that has happened more frequently as the craft navigates the hostile wilds of interstellar space. Normally, the team would simply ask the spacecraft for a memory readout, allowing its members to find and reset the errant bit.
“We’ve recovered from bit flips before. The problem this time is we don’t know where the bit flip is because we can’t see what the memory is,” says Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at JPL, who, like Spilker, began her long career with work on the probes. “It’s the most serious issue we’ve had since I’ve been the project manager, and it’s scary because you lose communication with the spacecraft.”
Yesterday, the team announced a significant step in breaking through to Voyager 1. After months of stress and unsuccessful answers they have managed to decode at least a portion of the spacecraft’s gobbledygook, allowing them to (maybe) find a way to see what it has been trying to say.

“It’s an excellent development on Voyager,” says Joe Westlake, director of NASA’s heliophysics division, which oversees the mission.
In the time it will take you to read this story, Voyager 1 will have traversed approximately 10,000 miles of mostly empty space; in the weeks it took me to report it, the probe traveled some 26 million miles. And since its communication first became garbled last November, the spacecraft has sailed another 10 light-minutes away from home. Voyager 1 and its twin are slipping away from us as surely as the passage of time itself. Sooner or later, these hallowed space-age icons will fall silent, becoming no more than distant memories.

And even among the space community, which of course loves all of its robotic explorers equally, the Voyagers are special. “They are incredibly important and much beloved spacecraft,” says Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “Voyager 1 is a national treasure, along with Voyager 2.”

As envisioned, the Voyager mission would exploit a once-in-175-year alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune to slingshot through the solar system’s sparsely charted hinterlands. Legend has it that NASA’s administrator sold the project to President Richard Nixon by noting that the last time the planets were so favorably arranged, Thomas Jefferson was living in the White House. Outfitted with nuclear power sources, the Voyagers were built to last—in utter defiance of the adage that what must go up, must come down. Neither was ever intended to make planetfall again; instead they were bound for the stars. And now, nearly a half-century later, the pair have become the longest-lived and farthest-flung probes ever dispatched by humankind. (Voyager 1 is the front-runner, with its sibling trailing close behind.)

Spilker was straight out of college when she started working on the Voyagers, eager to see the outer solar system through their robotic eyes as they surfed the rare celestial alignment. “I had a telescope in third grade that I used to look at Jupiter and Saturn,” she says. “I wanted to get up really close and get a look at what these planets look like.”
Between 1979 and 1981, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 zipped by the gas giants, returning stunning images of banded Jupiter and buttery Saturn and their bewildering collection of moons. Voyager 2 went on to scrutinize the ice giants: Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. These were the first and only times anyone had seen each of these bluish ringed worlds up close.
“They were small little pinpoints of light, and now you’re flying close,” Spilker says. “And you see the cliffs of Miranda”—a bizarre Uranian moon—“and Triton, with active geysers going off.” (Nobody had expected to see an active icy world in orbit around Neptune, and even now Voyager’s 35-year-old image is still the best we have of that strange little moon.

When the Voyagers left the realm of the known planets, each followed a different path into darkness: Voyager 1 arced up and out of the plane of the solar system, and Voyager 2 looped downward. Spilker also followed her own path: she went to graduate school and earned her doctorate in planetary science using Voyager data—not knowing that several decades later, after leading NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, she’d again be part of the mission that started it all.
“The chance came to go back to Voyager,” she says. “And I said, ‘Of course. I’d love to go back.’”
In the interim, as the Voyagers sailed farther from their Earthly harbor, teams shut down many of the onboard instruments, including the cameras. But the pair kept studying the space that they alone were visiting. Their main job was now to characterize the heliosphere—the solar-system-encompassing, cosmic-ray-blocking bubble formed by our sun’s wind and magnetic field. They would document the alien mix of particles and fields that pervade near nothingness. And maybe, if they got lucky, the twins would each escape the protective solar caul entirely to be reborn as true interstellar wanderers.

In 2012 Voyager 1 transcended this boundary, known as the heliopause, where the sun’s influence wanes. Before that scientists could only guess at what lay beyond this barrier and could only model how it shielded Earth from the harshness of the void. Now Voyager 1 could tell us directly about the stuff between the stars. Voyager 2 followed in 2018, and Fox—then the new chief of NASA’s heliophysics division—was in the midst of the action.
“You’re looking at the cosmic rays going up and the solar wind going down, and it was one of those ‘oh, my god, this is so exciting’ moments,” Fox recalls. “I think of the Voyagers as one mission,” she says. “We’re putting all the data together, but they’re the ones that are out there. They’re the brave spacecraft that have left the protective bubble of the heliosphere and are out exploring interstellar space. It’s hard not to be excited by them.”

This wasn’t the first time Voyager 1 had started speaking an unintelligible language. In 2022, when the probe suffered an earlier bout of garbled telemetry, JPL engineer Bob Rasmussen was shaken out of retirement. The lab wanted to know if Rasmussen, who’d joined the spacecraft’s systems engineering team in 1975, was willing to have a think about the situation.

“I’d been happily retired for a bit more than a year at that point, with plenty else to keep me busy,” Rasmussen says. “But I like solving puzzles, and this was a tough one that I just couldn’t pass up. Cracking it took a few months, but the puzzle stream hasn’t slowed since then.”
Afterward, he stayed on-call. So last November, when Voyager 1 again started transmitting nonsense, Rasmussen was ready for more problem-solving. He was joined by a hand-picked team of specialists, and together they dove into the details for getting the ailing spacecraft back in action.
The problems were at least three layers deep. First, it takes a long time to communicate with Voyager 1. Traveling at the speed of light, the radio signals used to command the spacecraft take 22.5 hours to travel 15 billion miles—and 22.5 hours to come back. Second, the Voyagers are not exactly modern technology.
“Most things don’t last 46 years. Your clock radio and toaster aren’t going to last 46 years,” says Dodd, who started on the Voyager project straight out of school, then worked on other missions and is now back on this one.

Plus, many of the people who built and developed the spacecraft in the 1970s aren’t around to explain the rationale behind the designs.
And third, unluckily enough, whatever had mangled the spacecraft had managed to take out Voyager 1’s ability to send meaningful communications. The team was in the dark, trying to find the invisible source of an error. (Imagine trying to revive a stalled desktop computer with a frozen screen: you can’t see your cursor, and your clicks risk causing more problems—except in this case each input carries a multiday lag and could damage a precious, misbehaving artifact that is more than 15 billion miles away.) Perhaps the most vexing part was the team’s knowledge that Voyager 1 was otherwise intact and functioning as it should be.
“It’s still doing what it’s supposed to be doing,” Westlake says. “It just can’t quite figure out how to send the correct message home.”

Rasmussen and his colleagues set out to understand the spacecraft in as much detail as possible. That meant poring over the original design schematics, now yellowed and pinned to various walls—an effort that resembled “a bit of an archaeology dig,” Dodd says—and studying how past teams had addressed anomalies. That was tricky, Dodd says, because even though the team members could figure out how engineers solved a problem, they couldn’t necessarily discern the rationale behind various solutions. They’d send commands to Voyager 1 about once a week—usually on Fridays—and by Sunday, they’d hear back from the spacecraft.
“There’s suspense after each cautious move, hope with each piece that falls into place, disappointment if our hunches are wrong,” Rasmussen says.
Progress was slow. And as time crept on, the team grew more concerned. But no one was giving up, at any level of leadership.
“I will rely on the Voyager team to say, ‘Hey, Nicky, we’ve done everything,’” Fox says. “We wouldn’t make any decisions until we knew that every single thing had been tried and tried again because we really do want to get Voyager 1 back talking to us.”
And then, in early March, something changed. In response to a command, instead of beaming back absolute gibberish, the spacecraft sent a string of numbers that looked more familiar. It proved to be a Rosetta stone moment. Soon an unnamed engineer at NASA’s Deep Space Network—the globe-girdling array of radio dishes that relays information from Earth to spacecraft—had learned how to speak Voyager 1’s jumbled language.

After translating that vaguely familiar portion of the spacecraft’s transmission, the team could see that it contained a readout of the flight data system’s memory. Now they face new questions: Can they find and correct the source of the mutated code? Can they learn whether the spacecraft is sending useful science data? Can they restore Voyager 1’s lexicon to its original state—or will they need to continue speaking in the probe’s new postheliopause patois? “The hope is that we’ll get good science data back,” Westlake says. “Thinking about something that’s been a constant throughout my entire career going away is really tough to think about.”

But either by glitch or time’s slow decay of radioactive power sources, the Voyagers will, of course, eventually fade away. Each year they lose four watts of power, and they grow ever colder. “Whether it’s this particular anomaly that gets us or one downstream, or the spacecraft gets old enough and cold enough —one day you’ll go to look for it and it has just stopped working,” Spilker says.

Like silent ambassadors or wordless emissaries, the Voyagers will keep sailing outward, still carrying us with them into the stars—“sort of like a message a bottle,” Spilker says.
Besides their science payloads, a fraction of each spacecraft’s mass was devoted to casting a cosmic message into the interstellar ocean from a lonely island called Earth. Mounted to each probe is a golden record etched with grooves encoding a selection of sights and sounds from our small corner of space and time. An accompanying stylus is positioned to play the record from the beginning, alongside a pictographic and arithmetic instruction manual.
The records are gold because gold is stable for eons, and they’re records because that was the best way to store a lot of information in the 1970s. Should they ever be recovered and decoded, the message will tell the stories of we humans—at least as envisioned (and in some cases performed) by a small group of folks that included my parents (the late astrophysicist Frank Drake and his surviving spouse Amahl Shakhashiri Drake), astronomer Carl Sagan, documentary producer Ann Druyan and science writer Timothy Ferris. Those stories are imperfect. They’re filled with lopsided optimism and scrubbed of references to war, famine, poverty and most any other Earthly failing—a deliberate decision to hide the defects of our broken world. I know this because my dad, the record’s technical director and a pioneer in the scientific quest to find cosmic civilizations, told me about the hard choices he’d made in selecting the photographs. And I know it because my mom, who recorded the message’s Arabic greeting (“Greetings to our friends in the stars. We wish that we will meet you someday”), helped, too.

For me, as the Voyagers travel through space, they’re not only helping us understand the cosmic context in which we exist; they’re also bearing a memento of my parents into the stars. These spacecraft—and their gleaming paean to Earth—will survive for billions of years. Long after our world, our sun and everything we hold dear becomes unrecognizable, the Voyagers will remain, resolutely speeding ever farther from a home that no longer exists and containing artifacts of a civilization that once was.
That’s why, over nearly half a century, the Voyagers and their interstellar tidings have come to be bigger than the already audacious mission they were designed to accomplish. Their reach is broader. And their inevitable silence will be profound.
“The thought that they’re out there on their own and you can no longer communicate with them—it’s traumatic,” Fox says. “It’s sad. It’s really sad.”
 

nivek

As Above So Below
How 13 Different News Outlets Covered Elon Musk’s Successful SpaceX Launch

How 13 Different News Outlets Covered Elon Musk’s Successful SpaceX Launch
Mar 14, 2024 · BabylonBee.com

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A new step toward the future of mankind was taken this week following another successful launch from SpaceX. As with other major news stories, it can be interesting and informative to see how it was covered by different media outlets.
Here is a rundown of how 13 major news sources covered Elon Musk's latest successful launch:
  • CNN: Musk Chooses Space Exploration Over Ending World Hunger
  • Salon: I Lived It: I Inhaled Musk's Rocket's Fumes And They Killed Me
  • Snopes: Fact check: did Elon Musk's rocket successfully launch? Mostly false.
  • Not the Bee: EEEEK! ELON MUSK LAUNCHED A ROCKET INTO SPACE AND WE ARE HERE FOR IT HIT THE DAB!
  • MSNBC: Musk Attacks Ocean With Rocket
  • DailyWire: Help Elon Musk Conquer Outer Space By Subscribing To DailyWire+!
  • HuffPost: Why Going To Space Is Rooted In Racism And Misogyny
  • Fox News: What The Latest SpaceX Launch Means For Trump's Chances In November
  • Vox: We Speak With The Indigenous Alcoholics Who Could've Been Given Free Healthcare With The Money Spent On Elon's Latest Launch
  • TMZ: ELONgate: Check Out The Size Of This Rocket!
  • New York Times: Musk Launches Rocket In Bid To Spread Hate Speech To Other Planets
  • InfoWars: SpaceX Rocket Makes Contact With Aliens On Orders From Deep State Gay Frogs
  • Deadspin: 404 ERROR

These so-called 'news outlets' are insane, full of activists and radicals...They hate on Elon Musk because of his outspoken views against the federal government's actions or inactions...These media goons aee showing their true colours but there's a lot of gullible ignorant people who will believe what they churn out without question...

...
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
These so-called 'news outlets' are insane, full of activists and radicals...They hate on Elon Musk because of his outspoken views against the federal government's actions or inactions...These media goons aee showing their true colours but there's a lot of gullible ignorant people who will believe what they churn out without question...

...
agreed .... but that's a Babylon Bee article :)
 
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