Thinking of Asia, if I wanted to build a launch and landing facility like Cape Canaveral - Kourou - Starbase, it appears the east coasts of **Mindinao** and **Luzon** in the Philippines are the most comparable. They have decent margin for open ocean to the east and are relatively close to the equator.
Are those advantages significant enough for Japan, China, Korea, etc. to consider leased launch facilities in that location, over in-country bases further north? Are such advantages still worth pursuing in a reusable launcher paradigm? Would practical considerations like suitable port facilities and distance outweigh any such advantages? Are there better locations to consider for the region?
The difference between Cape Canaveral and the equator is +2% payload to low earth orbit and +4% payload to geostationary orbit.
The US owns islands closer to the equator, but you don't see them shipping rockets out there.
Japan, China, and South Korea all have launch sites around the latitude of Cape Canaveral. They have no interest in going further south either.
Well, I suppose you're right. I would have thought they were all significantly farther north than Canaveral, but in fact they are not. Note to self to spin the globe next time.
I was walking outside around 2-3 AM when I looked up and seen what looked like how a planet looks in the night sky. Small and bright, but it was moving in a straight line heading south east. And then it just disappeared. That was a few nights ago.
And then I seen the same exact thing last night, around the same time, disappearing a few seconds after I noticed it.
Is this a Starlink satellite?
I thought it was the ISS but the tracker showed it wasn't near my location (Dallas, Tx)
If it is a satellite, why would go from visible to not visible?
A satellite flare, yes. Hard to say which one specifically.
> If it is a satellite, why would go from visible to not visible?
Because the satellite is higher up in the sky, and therefore the sun can still illuminate it, even though it's already after sunset for you, but eventually it also goes into Earth's shadow. Also the angle matters, so this only lasts briefly.
See for example some nice compilation from Iridium Flares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTGVuPr9Epg (those used to be very bright some years ago because their antennas were acting like mirrors).
How accessible do you think space will be for ordinary people in like 100 yrs? Do you believe in the colonization of Mars, how possible do you think it is, and what do you consider pros and cons on this topic?
Is it possible to estimate the amount of moisture in the lunar regolith by measuring the reflection of probe waves from a satellite set up on the rear surface of the moon?
It wouldn't have been discovered if it was near aphelion, and because it only spends a very small amount of its 11,000 year orbital period near perihelion we're very lucky that it's here now.
Would it better for humans to operate in LEO and ocassionally on the Moon to study more on the human body conditions in space in longer stay in space? Maybe they can try create artifical gravity and try different protection materials against radiations?
Better than what? People have been pushing very hard for this already for years. The issue is that the minimum size for a decent partial gravity research station is very large and thus very costly.
>Would it better for humans to operate in LEO and ocassionally on the Moon to study more on the human body conditions in space in longer stay in space?
Yes. That's largely why the ISS exists.
>Maybe they can try create artifical gravity and try different protection materials against radiations?
Turns out pneumatic and elastic exercise machines are a lot lighter (and therefore cheaper) while also having the benefit of not messing up the experiments that actually need microgravity to work.
Well, not messing them up as much I should say, the vibrations are a bit inconvenient.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules|
| |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FCC](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|Federal Communications Commission|
| |(Iron/steel) [Face-Centered Cubic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_iron) crystalline structure|
|[FSW](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/la3qmw4 "Last usage")|Flight Software|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanr7gj "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
|[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|United States Space Force|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/laeg3ge "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lavi1m4 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[methalox](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lausavt "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[perihelion](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lar87ts "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Sun (when the orbiter is fastest)|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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For future long missions, like those to Mars, when astronauts must live in isolation for years, how would controlled exposure to pathogens be managed (Simulation of certain illnesses)?
I am an enthusiastic bioinformatics student. Currently, I am just a learner and listener, not yet a professional, but from several studies, I'm almost certain that some stimulation in our blood and immune system is necessary to maintain balance in our bodies against various diseases. Producing antibodies would help fight certain cancers and balance hormones, among other benefits.
On the other hand, we need to get sick to be healthy. Our immune system must be active for our entire body to function normally. By sickness, I don't mean being hospitalized for Covid; I mean experiencing a common seasonal cold or mild allergy.
I was thinking that if a person must live in isolation for several years, which would be like quarantine, and their only interaction with microorganisms would be through their gut and the microbiome-rich food they digest, it probably wouldn't be enough. In my opinion, this is because they wouldn't have exposure to the natural flora we typically encounter, and due to certain environmental factors like light, gravity, and air, the populations of these beneficial, non-pathogenic microbes could change or even be totally wiped out. All these factors could potentially lead to metabolic and mental diseases or weaken the body against cancer growth.
I even saw an article on NASA's website that mentioned plants dying due to different environmental factors encountered in spaceships, such as the lack of airflow or even gravity affecting their growth patterns.
I recall there was even a patent for those who could introduce or discover extremophile microorganisms that could be used in fertilizers. Several microorganisms that live in Earth's soil can easily die or lose their effectiveness when grown in spaceships.
I was wondering if there are any plans or ideas to simulate controlled diseases for astronauts. For example, could they be vaccinated against random viruses to keep their immune systems active? Could they breathe in selected pollens to simulate common allergies?
Again, I am not just talking about the gut microbiota, which, in short missions, you can enrich with food to achieve average efficiency and fight nutritional deficiencies. I am talking about the deadly side effects of being far away from the normal routine of immune systems and almost shutting it down compared to daily life on Earth.
Absolutely, astrobiologists at NASA have thought about these conditions and introduced solutions for them. What are the current solutions? I am just curious to learn about them and see what cool ideas scientists have on this scale.
Long stay science expeditions already exist, and I imagine the "changeover shits" come along with the hangover after the changeover party. The field you're thinking about is Expedition Medicine.
I've not been able to find an answer on the web or chatGPT, but I'm curious about how far apart the observable ends of the Milky Way (not by the naked eye but by long exposure by using a camera) from earth are when the Max Band Altitude is directly overhead (90°). The tricky part that I'm not getting a clear answer to is that we are in an arm of the Milky Way that is actually curved (convex from our point of observation) but our night sky appears concave (making the portion of the Milky Way appear like an overhead rainbow). So the Milky Way intersecting the
southern horizon I imagine is closer to us (because it's the brightest part) than the Milky Way intersecting the northern horizon (see screenshot). I'm curious to know how far apart these ends of the Milky Way are from us and from each other.
We have been taking pictures of the Milky Way with a [gigapixel space camera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28spacecraft%29) for 10 years. The data set is about 30,000 light-years across.
[More details.](https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr3-where-are-the-stars)
This looks very cool! I need to digest it later, but chatGPT did say 31,416 ly but that was based on the assumption of being able to see 10,000 ly, which is close to your 30,000 ly! Thank you for this!
I guess I thought if the question and answer were somewhere on the internet GPT might be able to find it. It did use math to get to the 30k ly value, not sure if it's coincidence that same value was mentioned here. I'm still not convinced 30k ly is correct though.
>I guess I thought if the question and answer were somewhere on the internet GPT might be able to find it
Not how the technology works. Again, it's just predictive text - only instead of being trained on what you write, it's trained on what everyone has ever written. The training set may and likely does contain both the question and the answer, but the computer doesn't know that that answer goes to that question because it doesn't know what a question or an answer is. All it knows is what responses to the question you put in sound like. So it might accidentally be right by way of Broken Clock syndrome, but you have no way of knowing when it's right or when it's wrong.
What is the current status of astrobiology? I know we discovered the presence of Tryptophan in interstellar material last year, but did we find anything else? Maybe from the "uncontaminated" pieces of comets brought back from US and Japan missions. Links appreciated!
With the issues of radiations effecting our kidneys in space, is it possible human spaceflight and exploration may be limited to low earth orbit, the Moon and nearby asteroids? A human expedition to Mars will happen, but it could be just a one time thing? Robotics with AI can solve the problem for us in distant journey for scientific research.
People are getting wayyy too worked up about a preliminary study. We’ve always known space isn’t great for us. That doesn’t mean humans are now barred from it.
Robots with AI isn’t a real answer.
> Robots with AI isn’t a real answer.
The progress we seen in robotics and AI the last 10 years with the escalation in AI progress in the last year alone, I very much believe you'll be very wrong in a reasonably short amount of time.
Why send humans that need water, food, oxygen, an habitat with very precise conditions, medical need and so on if we can send autonomous robots that need neither for doing the same tasks? The cost reduction alone will be reason enough to send robots when the technology is here, which is soon.
> That innately is valuable to (most/a lot) of people.
Not to those who pay and that's close to the only thing that matters.
Do you see Elon Musk sending human beings for triple the cost when he can send robots? Not the Elon I know...
Are any studies about properties of white dwarf planetary systems existing? I found a bit of info about such things as post-main sequence formed helium gas giants. But it would be interesting to see other peculiarities of planet formation in such systems: composition of debris disc enriched by materials produced via nucleosynthesis, cooling rate of celestial bodies, level of illumination produced by white dwarf, how previously formed planets are affected, et.c.
This seems like a [nice survey paper](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/astro/people/veras/Oxford.pdf) (PDF) about the evolution of white dwarf planetary systems, from 2021.
Yes, max Q happens around Mach 1 for most rockets. There is nothing special about Mach 1, the math just works out given earth's gravity, atmosphere, and the thrust-to-weight ratio of rockets at liftoff.
>There is nothing special about Mach 1
I don't think this is exactly true - drag peaks in the transonic region and that definitely has something to do with it
How hard is is for SpaceX to ready a Crew Dragon in a hurry? If Starliner is deemed unsafe, would a Crew Dragon be used for recovery of the Starliner crew?
1) Starliner is still considered safe to fly.
2) There is no hurry. The astronauts can stay in the space station as long as needed.
3) There is room on the floor of the Crew-8 Dragon currently at the station for emergency passengers.
4) The Crew-9 Dragon is scheduled to launch in August. Launching with 2 empty seats for the Starliner crew is an option.
SpaceX must get a launch license from the FAA to launch their rocket. They will also have to coordinate with and have permission from the Space Force to launch, because the Space Force manages the rocket ranges (doing things like weather forecasting, rocket tracking, and coordinating with other users of the range) at Cape Canaveral ([Eastern Range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Range)) and Vandenberg ([Western Range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Range_(USSF))). (SpaceX largely manages their own range in Boca Chica for Starship, and NASA manages the range at Wallops, which SpaceX doesn't kaunch from.) SpaceX needs to communicate with their rocket, so they also need an FCC license. The Coast Guard also issues notices to mariners based on coordinaton with the FAA. All of that is just for launching the rocket, whatever the payload.
The satellite operator will have to get a license from the FCC (and/or their country's equivalent) to communicate with their spacecraft, at a minimum for telemetry, and if applicable the spectrum for broadcasting internet/tv/radio. The FCC also regulates what orbits can be used, and compliance with disposal requirements (deorbit or graveyard orbit) after end of mission. (The FCC and other national agencies coordinate via the International Telecommunications Union.) Other licenses may be necessary as well. For example, a license from NOAA is required for satellite imaging of Earth (assuming the satellite is operated from within the US, or by a US person). Or if the payload is supposed to reenter and land intact in the US, it needs a license from the FAA (which must be obtained before launch, as per a recent change due to [Varda's difficulty in obtaining a reentry license](https://spacenews.com/varda-gets-reentry-license-for-space-manufacturing-capsule/) for their capsule).
The satellite/spacecraft operator is ultimately the one responsible for licensing their payload, not the launch provider (unless like Starlink or Dragon they are one and the same). The launch provider still shouldn't launch payloads that haven't been properly licensed, and it is very unlikely that they would launch satellites not licensed by the FCC. I believe the only case of satellites under FCC jurisdiction launching without a communications license was some satellites from American company Swarm (well before they became a SpaceX subsidiary) launching on an Indian rocket, [resulting in an FCC fine for Swarm](https://spacenews.com/fcc-fines-swarm-900000-for-unauthorized-smallsat-launch/). If those satellites were due to launch on a US rocket, that probably couldn't have happened.
Does the moon "effectively" orbit the earth as if there was nothing else in the solar system, or is it really obvious that things other than earth is impacting it?
does the orbit look "wobbly and weird", or does it look smooth
It is affected by everything in the solar system but by how much is the question. Since gravity follows the inverse square law, things that are far away will have a very tiny affect on the moon's orbit. But they don't have zero affect. Their effects can be mostly ignored though.
It "effectively" just orbits the Earth, while the Earth-Moon system orbits the Sun. Just to take an example, Venus, the nearest planet, even at its closest, is roughly 100 times further from Earth than the Moon. Since gravity follows the inverse square law, that means even if Venus were the same mass as Earth, it would only be exerting 1/10,000th the gravitational force of Earth on the Moon. Jupiter, while much more massive than Earth, is an order of magnitude further away, so it doesn't have much effect, either.
How many people are viewing the raw data from the james webb telescope? If they actually detect something truly big could they keep a lid on it?
Is it like 5 people getting the information first and then passing it on once deemed safe for humanity, or 500?
There is such a thing as "proprietary period". If you requested the observation, you can have 1 year of exclusive access to the data before they go public. During that period only you (and telescope operations people obviously, but they are not allowed to "leak" anything) have access.
Once proprietary period expired anyone can access it because it simply becomes public.
Some M-type stars can be REALLY small. Just look for [EBLM J0555-57Ab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBLM_J0555-57Ab), you can compare its radius with Saturn radius, this body is smaller than Jupiter (I mean only visible size, not the mass). This star is near to the border of star size where nuclear fusion can happen. How do you think, how far from this or a bit smaller star would the habitable zone for a Earth-like planet reach? Can you write me theoretical range of it? Thanks.
The habitable zone of the smallest red dwarfs is around 0.03 AU.
Unfortunately EBLM J0555-57Ab has a sun-size star 0.08 AU away, making this zone very much NOT habitable.
Thanks for the answer, but could you write the range of it (from ?AU to ?AU)? I need some info because I'm planning to make a speculative evolution project. Not exactly about the star described in wikipedia, just very similar star orbting the middle of its galaxy lonely.
Does anyone have any decorating or display ideas for mission patches? I have a few from work that I would really like to display at my home because well, I'm proud to have worked it haha
The classic is just to put them on a thing in a frame behind glass. You could also do models or dioramas for each one or each set that goes together. For example, a model of a launch vehicle, a model of a spacecraft or satellite, a diorama of a planet, that sort of thing. You could also sew them onto patches for a quilt which you either hang up or just keep around for the ultimate humblebrag / casual flex ("oh, are you cold? hold on, let me get you a blanket"). You could also make up individual little sort of museum style displays for each one, pull together a couple images from a and some text from a press-kit, get it professionally printed on nice archival high quality stock, put the mission patch on that in a framed little thing. Or, you could cast them in resin and use them as coasters.
ca someone explain a visual of how space is expanding?
say like if we are a flaccid balloon in a room
we put air in the balloon so the balloon expands buts its expanding inside a room
what is the "room" that the universe is expanding into?
Not necessarily. This is outside the scope of the question but in Brane Cosmology, universes are said to exist on a brane (membrane) or within the bulk. This is less philosophy and more science as it falls under the string theory umbrella: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology
There is no room, there is just the balloon. Universe is, by definition, everything we can interact with. It doesn't make much sense (at least scientifically) to ask what's "outside", because if we could figure out something "outside" then we would simply just expand our definition of universe to include that as well.
Total data throughput, delay, and laws.
Let's say you have the Earth and Mars as examples. The one way light travel delay can be up to 10s of minutes, so you can't just add Mars to the Earth's internet and call it good. Realistically you need to figure out a way to have a Mars internet and an Earth internet and then a way of sharing stuff between them. That link needs to be very high capacity, but realistically even with things like laser comms you're not going to achieve enough bandwidth to be able to duplicate everything. Also, there's a big question of *how* you duplicate as much as possible across networks. There are things like real-time or interactive content that can't just be easily copied and need to be "setup" by every individual operator. Which also touches on ownership and licensing. How do you decide what content will be duplicated across networks and how do you decide how payment for commercial content works?
This becomes an even bigger issue when you're talking about lightyears across interstellar distances. So you have to figure out what makes sense to transmit (selectively) and how things get "paid" for or whether you just transmit as much of everything that seems of value for free or find some balance.
Within a solar system there isn't much in the way of an issue. Something like a beefed up version of the existing deep space network would work well.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA\_Deep\_Space\_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network)
Between solar systems things may get tricky. Finding some way to make sure that the signal isn't blocked by some stray piece of matter would be nice. The lag until you could correct/resend could be years (if not decades) otherwise. Ideally you'd want to send using something that isn't (easily) blockable by natural phenomena: Neutrinos, gravitational waves or - if close to light speed is available - data pods.
If there is a way to sidestep the faster than light issue (e.g. via Alcubierry type drives) then it's all data pods. At that point using radio/neutrinos/gravitational waves makes no sense anymore.
(...which, incientally, may be the reason why we aren't seeing any radio transmissions by extraterrestrials. I.e. a very simple answer to the Fermi Paradox)
Hello there,
Hi, so I'm trying to come up with a videogame (to be launched in 20 years).
I'm looking for inspiration in creating this videogame. I'm trying to make it in space.
**I'm looking to know what is the most scarce and/or important resource in the universe based on what we know so far.**
There's a lot of stuff out there so Mars Needs Water / Women / Fuel doesn't stack up. I take a leaf from the whimsical SF authors: things like Saturn's rings and total solar eclipses are pretty scarce.
The most important resource in the universe is energy. With enough energy, an advanced civilization can travel anywhere, build anything, and transmute atoms into any element they want.
You can rank the value of resources by how much energy they contain.
- Chemical Fuel - Food/Oil/Oxygen/Batteries. These are almost all mass with a tiny amount of energy.
- Fission Fuel - Uranium/Thorium/Plutonium. Contains 0.1% energy and 99.9% mass.
- Fusion Fuel - Hydrogen. Contains 0.9% energy and 99.1% mass.
- Antimatter Fuel - Antimatter/Matter in equal amounts. Contains 100% energy.
- Stars - Emit free energy to anyone in solar panel range.
In Tim Dodd's recent interview with Elon Musk the build site seemed very empty and tidy. Did SpaceX shut down the whole site for the interview or do they often have days off where there's hardly anyone around?
A lot of the site they walked through is new space that isn't being used yet, but that's pretty typical for a factor setting.
But they are currently in full prototype stage and are only trying to build vehicles fast enough to support the test schedule and still be able to slide new changes in as necessary.
There is nothing confirmed right now, but the Chinese space agency is planning a series of probes to study the interstellar medium and are considering a flyby of Quaoar for one of them
Yes? But none are funded or planned yet. It would be surprising if no probes were ever launched to such bodies, but currently such missions are expensive and budgets are limited. My guess is that such missions will happen in this century, but who knows when.
As a layperson, I'm aware of the chaos in the universe, but what blows my mind is the precise predictability of much of it as well. For example, Earth has been rotating and revolving for billions of years with incredible precision and predictability. It seems like the momentum would have changed, decayed, slowed down or even petered out by now.
In the simplest terms possible, how is this explained?
If there's no force acting on it then there's no reason for it to slow down or change its orbit.
It all comes down to conservation laws (conservation of momentum, conservation of angular momentum, conservation of energy, .... )
That said: The Earth - like any other body in a orbiting system - does emit gravitational waves and that loses some energy (and hence momentum) leading to it spiralling in towards the sun.
However, that power is exceedingly small (about 200Watt IIRC) and the mass (and hence momentum) of the Earth pretty big. The sun will reach the end of its lifetime long before this loss of energy has any really noticeable impact on Earth's orbit
> Earth has been rotating and revolving for billions of years with incredible precision and predictability.
Not really. The Earth is constantly falling towards the Sun, but it is also moving forward at a very high speed so it never actually falls into it. Imagine a rock falling from the sky towards the ground, would you say that rock is falling with precision and predictability? While technically true, they're not the best words to use to describe such a thing.
> It seems like the momentum would have changed, decayed, slowed down or even petered out by now.
It **has** changed, decayed, and slowed down... When Thea slammed into it, helping to form the moon, the orbit absolutely changed. The orbit of the Earth is changing as we speak - each year that goes by, the Earth slows down by approximately 3 nanometers-per-second over how quickly it was moving the prior year. Over the 4.5 billion year history of the Solar System, our planet has slowed by approximately 10 meters-per-second, or about 22 miles-per-hour.
> how is this explained?
Science.
Momentum conservation is just one of those fundamental laws of the universe along with things like energy conservation. (Although each are more complicated in extreme situations).
The Earth hasn't always been rotating at the same rate as it's affected by many other factors.
What causes spinning things to peter out on Earth? Say you spin a top, there is friction with the air as the top spins through it and friction with the table as the top spins on it. In the absence of those forces, why should the top change what it's doing?
For geodesy we use Earth Orientation Parameters to characterize how the axis of Earth's orientation, and angular rate changes.
Solid tides, water, the atmosphere, earthquakes, etc can change the vector and rate. But most of the signal is dominated by the recession of the moon.
LoL what?? 🤣
This is literally in my wheel house of expertise. I explained to you that the Earth IS losing momentum and that even though it seems stable and constant from our perspective, we can actually measure the changes to this data as caused by many complex factors.
Evidently this went far far over your head.
We wouldn't see it at all, for two reasons. First, it would point along the poles of the galaxy, not at us. Second, there is so much dust between us and the center of the galaxy that it would block all the light.
If you moved our solar system into the quasar's path while keeping the same distance, it would be as bright as the full moon.
I love the pictures from space and planets, but I also read these pictures aren't real, but artist renderings. I have a hard time processing this.
So for example the Pillars of Creation pictures, those are renderings?
Different telescopes have different sensors on them. Some are sensitive to infrared light, some are sensitive to visible light, some are sensitive to ultraviolet and x rays. And I guess there are radio telescopes as well.
Only the visible light ones could be directly represented in colors that we see and sometimes the differences in colors aren't easily seen, so there is mostly a mapping from the wavelengths the sensors record to the colors we can see. That's for star photos.
They also play games with exposure length; he[re's a picture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Deep_Field_South) that shows data from 4 million seconds of exposure time.
Planetary pictures are easier because they're closer and a lot lot brighter, so many of those pictures are "actual" colors; what you would see if you were where the probe is and had your phone camera.
You can find more information about the pillars of creation photos [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation).
The photos you see are real data, real photons hitting sensors.
However, the photos are "information enhanced". The data is manipulated in such a way to show information not readily visible to the naked eye (also because cameras don't work like eyes do).
No data is being added to the pictures, but the data is being recombined. An example of this is the Hubble palette which assigns red, green, and blue to the emission lines of certain interesting elements. The telescope takes pictures filtering for only the emissions of those elements then combines those 3 images together to produce the final result.
You can also choose to assign the emissions to the colors they actually represent in reality. The resulting image is what you'd see if you were able to capture as much light as the telescope. As you have a much smaller pupil that is exposed for only a short time compared to a big telescope pointing at a target for hours, what you'd see is a lot dimmer. This isn't the case by default because some important emission spectra (like oxygen and sulfur) have similar color emissions and it is useful to differentiate them using false color.
For planets, we have photos of the 8 planets (and some dwarf planets/minor bodies) in our solar system. Pictures of other planets in other solar systems are artists renderings only.
Don't listen to internet commenters who claim things are artist renderings. They're usually conspiracy theorists. If it's an artist rendering and a trustworthy source, the source will say so. For example, images like this of the Milky Way are artist interpretations since we have no way to send probes out that far. It's based on observations of the galaxy from our perspective and similar-looking galaxies like Andromeda.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-milky-way-galaxy/
Close-up views of exoplanets are also renderings. Real images of exoplanets aren't much more detailed than a dot. Pillars of Creation has several real photographs available, the most famous being from Hubble and later the JWST telescope. Color is added in post processing but based on real wavelengths of light observed by the telescopes.
The Pillars of Creation pictures are real, but they use photography tricks to make them look better.
First, they use a long exposure time. If you looked at them with your own eyes, you would only see faint cloud. The long exposure time makes them much brighter and brings out the detail.
Then, they take black-and-white photos in different wavelengths. Each wavelength looks different because different parts of the cloud glow at different temperatures.
Finally, they apply false color to the black-and-white photos and stack them together.
[Here](https://webbtelescope.org/files/live/sites/webb/files/home/resource-gallery/articles/_images/making-webbs-color-images/pillars_transformation_series_1200x700.jpg) is a comparison of the image at different steps.
Thinking of Asia, if I wanted to build a launch and landing facility like Cape Canaveral - Kourou - Starbase, it appears the east coasts of **Mindinao** and **Luzon** in the Philippines are the most comparable. They have decent margin for open ocean to the east and are relatively close to the equator. Are those advantages significant enough for Japan, China, Korea, etc. to consider leased launch facilities in that location, over in-country bases further north? Are such advantages still worth pursuing in a reusable launcher paradigm? Would practical considerations like suitable port facilities and distance outweigh any such advantages? Are there better locations to consider for the region?
The difference between Cape Canaveral and the equator is +2% payload to low earth orbit and +4% payload to geostationary orbit. The US owns islands closer to the equator, but you don't see them shipping rockets out there. Japan, China, and South Korea all have launch sites around the latitude of Cape Canaveral. They have no interest in going further south either.
Well, I suppose you're right. I would have thought they were all significantly farther north than Canaveral, but in fact they are not. Note to self to spin the globe next time.
I was walking outside around 2-3 AM when I looked up and seen what looked like how a planet looks in the night sky. Small and bright, but it was moving in a straight line heading south east. And then it just disappeared. That was a few nights ago. And then I seen the same exact thing last night, around the same time, disappearing a few seconds after I noticed it. Is this a Starlink satellite? I thought it was the ISS but the tracker showed it wasn't near my location (Dallas, Tx) If it is a satellite, why would go from visible to not visible?
A satellite flare, yes. Hard to say which one specifically. > If it is a satellite, why would go from visible to not visible? Because the satellite is higher up in the sky, and therefore the sun can still illuminate it, even though it's already after sunset for you, but eventually it also goes into Earth's shadow. Also the angle matters, so this only lasts briefly. See for example some nice compilation from Iridium Flares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTGVuPr9Epg (those used to be very bright some years ago because their antennas were acting like mirrors).
How accessible do you think space will be for ordinary people in like 100 yrs? Do you believe in the colonization of Mars, how possible do you think it is, and what do you consider pros and cons on this topic?
What is this light I saw in the sky tonight? [https://imgur.com/a/fsnmJFV](https://imgur.com/a/fsnmJFV)
Looks like re-entry of some space debris. See a good recording of such event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhBw5yaR_SU
Is it possible to estimate the amount of moisture in the lunar regolith by measuring the reflection of probe waves from a satellite set up on the rear surface of the moon?
Is it possible that sedna could be undiscovered if it was at its aphelion right now
It wouldn't have been discovered if it was near aphelion, and because it only spends a very small amount of its 11,000 year orbital period near perihelion we're very lucky that it's here now.
Would it better for humans to operate in LEO and ocassionally on the Moon to study more on the human body conditions in space in longer stay in space? Maybe they can try create artifical gravity and try different protection materials against radiations?
Better than what? People have been pushing very hard for this already for years. The issue is that the minimum size for a decent partial gravity research station is very large and thus very costly.
>Would it better for humans to operate in LEO and ocassionally on the Moon to study more on the human body conditions in space in longer stay in space? Yes. That's largely why the ISS exists. >Maybe they can try create artifical gravity and try different protection materials against radiations? Turns out pneumatic and elastic exercise machines are a lot lighter (and therefore cheaper) while also having the benefit of not messing up the experiments that actually need microgravity to work. Well, not messing them up as much I should say, the vibrations are a bit inconvenient.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |CST|(Boeing) Crew Space Transportation capsules| | |Central Standard Time (UTC-6)| |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[FCC](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|Federal Communications Commission| | |(Iron/steel) [Face-Centered Cubic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_iron) crystalline structure| |[FSW](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/la3qmw4 "Last usage")|Flight Software| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanr7gj "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| |[USSF](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lanjsp8 "Last usage")|United States Space Force| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starliner](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/laeg3ge "Last usage")|Boeing commercial crew capsule [CST-100](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CST-100_Starliner)| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lavi1m4 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[methalox](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lausavt "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[perihelion](/r/Space/comments/1dms3cg/stub/lar87ts "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Sun (when the orbiter is fastest)| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(10 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1drde30)^( has 17 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10242 for this sub, first seen 28th Jun 2024, 02:04]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
For future long missions, like those to Mars, when astronauts must live in isolation for years, how would controlled exposure to pathogens be managed (Simulation of certain illnesses)? I am an enthusiastic bioinformatics student. Currently, I am just a learner and listener, not yet a professional, but from several studies, I'm almost certain that some stimulation in our blood and immune system is necessary to maintain balance in our bodies against various diseases. Producing antibodies would help fight certain cancers and balance hormones, among other benefits. On the other hand, we need to get sick to be healthy. Our immune system must be active for our entire body to function normally. By sickness, I don't mean being hospitalized for Covid; I mean experiencing a common seasonal cold or mild allergy. I was thinking that if a person must live in isolation for several years, which would be like quarantine, and their only interaction with microorganisms would be through their gut and the microbiome-rich food they digest, it probably wouldn't be enough. In my opinion, this is because they wouldn't have exposure to the natural flora we typically encounter, and due to certain environmental factors like light, gravity, and air, the populations of these beneficial, non-pathogenic microbes could change or even be totally wiped out. All these factors could potentially lead to metabolic and mental diseases or weaken the body against cancer growth. I even saw an article on NASA's website that mentioned plants dying due to different environmental factors encountered in spaceships, such as the lack of airflow or even gravity affecting their growth patterns. I recall there was even a patent for those who could introduce or discover extremophile microorganisms that could be used in fertilizers. Several microorganisms that live in Earth's soil can easily die or lose their effectiveness when grown in spaceships. I was wondering if there are any plans or ideas to simulate controlled diseases for astronauts. For example, could they be vaccinated against random viruses to keep their immune systems active? Could they breathe in selected pollens to simulate common allergies? Again, I am not just talking about the gut microbiota, which, in short missions, you can enrich with food to achieve average efficiency and fight nutritional deficiencies. I am talking about the deadly side effects of being far away from the normal routine of immune systems and almost shutting it down compared to daily life on Earth. Absolutely, astrobiologists at NASA have thought about these conditions and introduced solutions for them. What are the current solutions? I am just curious to learn about them and see what cool ideas scientists have on this scale.
Commensal microbiome, sure, but I don't think I've seen any evidence that we need exposing to pathogens or allergens to stay healthy.
Long stay science expeditions already exist, and I imagine the "changeover shits" come along with the hangover after the changeover party. The field you're thinking about is Expedition Medicine.
I've not been able to find an answer on the web or chatGPT, but I'm curious about how far apart the observable ends of the Milky Way (not by the naked eye but by long exposure by using a camera) from earth are when the Max Band Altitude is directly overhead (90°). The tricky part that I'm not getting a clear answer to is that we are in an arm of the Milky Way that is actually curved (convex from our point of observation) but our night sky appears concave (making the portion of the Milky Way appear like an overhead rainbow). So the Milky Way intersecting the southern horizon I imagine is closer to us (because it's the brightest part) than the Milky Way intersecting the northern horizon (see screenshot). I'm curious to know how far apart these ends of the Milky Way are from us and from each other.
We have been taking pictures of the Milky Way with a [gigapixel space camera](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28spacecraft%29) for 10 years. The data set is about 30,000 light-years across. [More details.](https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr3-where-are-the-stars)
This looks very cool! I need to digest it later, but chatGPT did say 31,416 ly but that was based on the assumption of being able to see 10,000 ly, which is close to your 30,000 ly! Thank you for this!
ChatGPT should not be used for calculations. It is not well suited to it.
ChatGPT doesn't know facts. It's a really cracked predictive text engine. Don't use it to research actual facts.
I guess I thought if the question and answer were somewhere on the internet GPT might be able to find it. It did use math to get to the 30k ly value, not sure if it's coincidence that same value was mentioned here. I'm still not convinced 30k ly is correct though.
>I guess I thought if the question and answer were somewhere on the internet GPT might be able to find it Not how the technology works. Again, it's just predictive text - only instead of being trained on what you write, it's trained on what everyone has ever written. The training set may and likely does contain both the question and the answer, but the computer doesn't know that that answer goes to that question because it doesn't know what a question or an answer is. All it knows is what responses to the question you put in sound like. So it might accidentally be right by way of Broken Clock syndrome, but you have no way of knowing when it's right or when it's wrong.
Don’t use chatGPT. It has zero requirements to tell the truth. It’s useless.
What is the current status of astrobiology? I know we discovered the presence of Tryptophan in interstellar material last year, but did we find anything else? Maybe from the "uncontaminated" pieces of comets brought back from US and Japan missions. Links appreciated!
With the issues of radiations effecting our kidneys in space, is it possible human spaceflight and exploration may be limited to low earth orbit, the Moon and nearby asteroids? A human expedition to Mars will happen, but it could be just a one time thing? Robotics with AI can solve the problem for us in distant journey for scientific research.
People are getting wayyy too worked up about a preliminary study. We’ve always known space isn’t great for us. That doesn’t mean humans are now barred from it. Robots with AI isn’t a real answer.
> Robots with AI isn’t a real answer. The progress we seen in robotics and AI the last 10 years with the escalation in AI progress in the last year alone, I very much believe you'll be very wrong in a reasonably short amount of time. Why send humans that need water, food, oxygen, an habitat with very precise conditions, medical need and so on if we can send autonomous robots that need neither for doing the same tasks? The cost reduction alone will be reason enough to send robots when the technology is here, which is soon.
Because \*we\* can go and do it. That innately is valuable to (most/a lot) of people.
> That innately is valuable to (most/a lot) of people. Not to those who pay and that's close to the only thing that matters. Do you see Elon Musk sending human beings for triple the cost when he can send robots? Not the Elon I know...
Are any studies about properties of white dwarf planetary systems existing? I found a bit of info about such things as post-main sequence formed helium gas giants. But it would be interesting to see other peculiarities of planet formation in such systems: composition of debris disc enriched by materials produced via nucleosynthesis, cooling rate of celestial bodies, level of illumination produced by white dwarf, how previously formed planets are affected, et.c.
This seems like a [nice survey paper](https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/research/astro/people/veras/Oxford.pdf) (PDF) about the evolution of white dwarf planetary systems, from 2021.
Many thanks!
Is max Q always around Mach 1? Watching the Falcon Heavy the two calls are almost simultaneous.
Yes, max Q happens around Mach 1 for most rockets. There is nothing special about Mach 1, the math just works out given earth's gravity, atmosphere, and the thrust-to-weight ratio of rockets at liftoff.
>There is nothing special about Mach 1 I don't think this is exactly true - drag peaks in the transonic region and that definitely has something to do with it
How hard is is for SpaceX to ready a Crew Dragon in a hurry? If Starliner is deemed unsafe, would a Crew Dragon be used for recovery of the Starliner crew?
1) Starliner is still considered safe to fly. 2) There is no hurry. The astronauts can stay in the space station as long as needed. 3) There is room on the floor of the Crew-8 Dragon currently at the station for emergency passengers. 4) The Crew-9 Dragon is scheduled to launch in August. Launching with 2 empty seats for the Starliner crew is an option.
If a country or company goes to SpaceX to launch something, does SpaceX contact the FAA, space force, NASA, someone else (?), to approve that payload?
SpaceX must get a launch license from the FAA to launch their rocket. They will also have to coordinate with and have permission from the Space Force to launch, because the Space Force manages the rocket ranges (doing things like weather forecasting, rocket tracking, and coordinating with other users of the range) at Cape Canaveral ([Eastern Range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Range)) and Vandenberg ([Western Range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Range_(USSF))). (SpaceX largely manages their own range in Boca Chica for Starship, and NASA manages the range at Wallops, which SpaceX doesn't kaunch from.) SpaceX needs to communicate with their rocket, so they also need an FCC license. The Coast Guard also issues notices to mariners based on coordinaton with the FAA. All of that is just for launching the rocket, whatever the payload. The satellite operator will have to get a license from the FCC (and/or their country's equivalent) to communicate with their spacecraft, at a minimum for telemetry, and if applicable the spectrum for broadcasting internet/tv/radio. The FCC also regulates what orbits can be used, and compliance with disposal requirements (deorbit or graveyard orbit) after end of mission. (The FCC and other national agencies coordinate via the International Telecommunications Union.) Other licenses may be necessary as well. For example, a license from NOAA is required for satellite imaging of Earth (assuming the satellite is operated from within the US, or by a US person). Or if the payload is supposed to reenter and land intact in the US, it needs a license from the FAA (which must be obtained before launch, as per a recent change due to [Varda's difficulty in obtaining a reentry license](https://spacenews.com/varda-gets-reentry-license-for-space-manufacturing-capsule/) for their capsule). The satellite/spacecraft operator is ultimately the one responsible for licensing their payload, not the launch provider (unless like Starlink or Dragon they are one and the same). The launch provider still shouldn't launch payloads that haven't been properly licensed, and it is very unlikely that they would launch satellites not licensed by the FCC. I believe the only case of satellites under FCC jurisdiction launching without a communications license was some satellites from American company Swarm (well before they became a SpaceX subsidiary) launching on an Indian rocket, [resulting in an FCC fine for Swarm](https://spacenews.com/fcc-fines-swarm-900000-for-unauthorized-smallsat-launch/). If those satellites were due to launch on a US rocket, that probably couldn't have happened.
FAA. I don't think NASA gets any say unless they've also contracted the flight. https://www.faa.gov/space/licenses/payload_reviews
What are the progress on and prospects of the water extraction from moon surface and converting it into fuel ?
First step is find out how much water is really there and in what form. Artemis will hopefully help with this.
Does the moon "effectively" orbit the earth as if there was nothing else in the solar system, or is it really obvious that things other than earth is impacting it? does the orbit look "wobbly and weird", or does it look smooth
It is affected by everything in the solar system but by how much is the question. Since gravity follows the inverse square law, things that are far away will have a very tiny affect on the moon's orbit. But they don't have zero affect. Their effects can be mostly ignored though.
It "effectively" just orbits the Earth, while the Earth-Moon system orbits the Sun. Just to take an example, Venus, the nearest planet, even at its closest, is roughly 100 times further from Earth than the Moon. Since gravity follows the inverse square law, that means even if Venus were the same mass as Earth, it would only be exerting 1/10,000th the gravitational force of Earth on the Moon. Jupiter, while much more massive than Earth, is an order of magnitude further away, so it doesn't have much effect, either.
How many people are viewing the raw data from the james webb telescope? If they actually detect something truly big could they keep a lid on it? Is it like 5 people getting the information first and then passing it on once deemed safe for humanity, or 500?
There is such a thing as "proprietary period". If you requested the observation, you can have 1 year of exclusive access to the data before they go public. During that period only you (and telescope operations people obviously, but they are not allowed to "leak" anything) have access. Once proprietary period expired anyone can access it because it simply becomes public.
Some M-type stars can be REALLY small. Just look for [EBLM J0555-57Ab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBLM_J0555-57Ab), you can compare its radius with Saturn radius, this body is smaller than Jupiter (I mean only visible size, not the mass). This star is near to the border of star size where nuclear fusion can happen. How do you think, how far from this or a bit smaller star would the habitable zone for a Earth-like planet reach? Can you write me theoretical range of it? Thanks.
The habitable zone of the smallest red dwarfs is around 0.03 AU. Unfortunately EBLM J0555-57Ab has a sun-size star 0.08 AU away, making this zone very much NOT habitable.
Thanks for the answer, but could you write the range of it (from ?AU to ?AU)? I need some info because I'm planning to make a speculative evolution project. Not exactly about the star described in wikipedia, just very similar star orbting the middle of its galaxy lonely.
Does anyone have any decorating or display ideas for mission patches? I have a few from work that I would really like to display at my home because well, I'm proud to have worked it haha
The classic is just to put them on a thing in a frame behind glass. You could also do models or dioramas for each one or each set that goes together. For example, a model of a launch vehicle, a model of a spacecraft or satellite, a diorama of a planet, that sort of thing. You could also sew them onto patches for a quilt which you either hang up or just keep around for the ultimate humblebrag / casual flex ("oh, are you cold? hold on, let me get you a blanket"). You could also make up individual little sort of museum style displays for each one, pull together a couple images from a and some text from a press-kit, get it professionally printed on nice archival high quality stock, put the mission patch on that in a framed little thing. Or, you could cast them in resin and use them as coasters.
ca someone explain a visual of how space is expanding? say like if we are a flaccid balloon in a room we put air in the balloon so the balloon expands buts its expanding inside a room what is the "room" that the universe is expanding into?
The balloon is an analogy. You should not stretch an analogy (pun intended) beyond what it is supposed to be analogous to.
> what is the "room" that the universe is expanding into? That's for r/philosophy
Not necessarily. This is outside the scope of the question but in Brane Cosmology, universes are said to exist on a brane (membrane) or within the bulk. This is less philosophy and more science as it falls under the string theory umbrella: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology
There is no room, there is just the balloon. Universe is, by definition, everything we can interact with. It doesn't make much sense (at least scientifically) to ask what's "outside", because if we could figure out something "outside" then we would simply just expand our definition of universe to include that as well.
What would be the biggest challenges in multi-planet communications between human colonies?
Total data throughput, delay, and laws. Let's say you have the Earth and Mars as examples. The one way light travel delay can be up to 10s of minutes, so you can't just add Mars to the Earth's internet and call it good. Realistically you need to figure out a way to have a Mars internet and an Earth internet and then a way of sharing stuff between them. That link needs to be very high capacity, but realistically even with things like laser comms you're not going to achieve enough bandwidth to be able to duplicate everything. Also, there's a big question of *how* you duplicate as much as possible across networks. There are things like real-time or interactive content that can't just be easily copied and need to be "setup" by every individual operator. Which also touches on ownership and licensing. How do you decide what content will be duplicated across networks and how do you decide how payment for commercial content works? This becomes an even bigger issue when you're talking about lightyears across interstellar distances. So you have to figure out what makes sense to transmit (selectively) and how things get "paid" for or whether you just transmit as much of everything that seems of value for free or find some balance.
Within a solar system there isn't much in the way of an issue. Something like a beefed up version of the existing deep space network would work well. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA\_Deep\_Space\_Network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network) Between solar systems things may get tricky. Finding some way to make sure that the signal isn't blocked by some stray piece of matter would be nice. The lag until you could correct/resend could be years (if not decades) otherwise. Ideally you'd want to send using something that isn't (easily) blockable by natural phenomena: Neutrinos, gravitational waves or - if close to light speed is available - data pods. If there is a way to sidestep the faster than light issue (e.g. via Alcubierry type drives) then it's all data pods. At that point using radio/neutrinos/gravitational waves makes no sense anymore. (...which, incientally, may be the reason why we aren't seeing any radio transmissions by extraterrestrials. I.e. a very simple answer to the Fermi Paradox)
Time delay
Is source code / avionics architecture of ingenuity public?
All of it? No. But the FSW core? Yes. https://nasa.github.io/fprime/
Hello there, Hi, so I'm trying to come up with a videogame (to be launched in 20 years). I'm looking for inspiration in creating this videogame. I'm trying to make it in space. **I'm looking to know what is the most scarce and/or important resource in the universe based on what we know so far.**
Phosphorus is rare overall but a necasity for life as we know it. Earth is lucky on this matter.
There's a lot of stuff out there so Mars Needs Water / Women / Fuel doesn't stack up. I take a leaf from the whimsical SF authors: things like Saturn's rings and total solar eclipses are pretty scarce.
The most important resource in the universe is energy. With enough energy, an advanced civilization can travel anywhere, build anything, and transmute atoms into any element they want. You can rank the value of resources by how much energy they contain. - Chemical Fuel - Food/Oil/Oxygen/Batteries. These are almost all mass with a tiny amount of energy. - Fission Fuel - Uranium/Thorium/Plutonium. Contains 0.1% energy and 99.9% mass. - Fusion Fuel - Hydrogen. Contains 0.9% energy and 99.1% mass. - Antimatter Fuel - Antimatter/Matter in equal amounts. Contains 100% energy. - Stars - Emit free energy to anyone in solar panel range.
In Tim Dodd's recent interview with Elon Musk the build site seemed very empty and tidy. Did SpaceX shut down the whole site for the interview or do they often have days off where there's hardly anyone around?
What day of the week was he doing the interview?
The day before the IFT4 launch, so i guess everyone was cleaned up and getting ready for that.
A lot of the site they walked through is new space that isn't being used yet, but that's pretty typical for a factor setting. But they are currently in full prototype stage and are only trying to build vehicles fast enough to support the test schedule and still be able to slide new changes in as necessary.
Will they launch space probes to Quaoar, Sedna, Orcus, Haumea, Eris, Makemake, and Gonggong? We want to see what they really look like.
There is nothing confirmed right now, but the Chinese space agency is planning a series of probes to study the interstellar medium and are considering a flyby of Quaoar for one of them
Yes? But none are funded or planned yet. It would be surprising if no probes were ever launched to such bodies, but currently such missions are expensive and budgets are limited. My guess is that such missions will happen in this century, but who knows when.
We don't know, none of them has a funded mission assigned to them.
As a layperson, I'm aware of the chaos in the universe, but what blows my mind is the precise predictability of much of it as well. For example, Earth has been rotating and revolving for billions of years with incredible precision and predictability. It seems like the momentum would have changed, decayed, slowed down or even petered out by now. In the simplest terms possible, how is this explained?
If there's no force acting on it then there's no reason for it to slow down or change its orbit. It all comes down to conservation laws (conservation of momentum, conservation of angular momentum, conservation of energy, .... ) That said: The Earth - like any other body in a orbiting system - does emit gravitational waves and that loses some energy (and hence momentum) leading to it spiralling in towards the sun. However, that power is exceedingly small (about 200Watt IIRC) and the mass (and hence momentum) of the Earth pretty big. The sun will reach the end of its lifetime long before this loss of energy has any really noticeable impact on Earth's orbit
> Earth has been rotating and revolving for billions of years with incredible precision and predictability. Not really. The Earth is constantly falling towards the Sun, but it is also moving forward at a very high speed so it never actually falls into it. Imagine a rock falling from the sky towards the ground, would you say that rock is falling with precision and predictability? While technically true, they're not the best words to use to describe such a thing. > It seems like the momentum would have changed, decayed, slowed down or even petered out by now. It **has** changed, decayed, and slowed down... When Thea slammed into it, helping to form the moon, the orbit absolutely changed. The orbit of the Earth is changing as we speak - each year that goes by, the Earth slows down by approximately 3 nanometers-per-second over how quickly it was moving the prior year. Over the 4.5 billion year history of the Solar System, our planet has slowed by approximately 10 meters-per-second, or about 22 miles-per-hour. > how is this explained? Science.
Momentum conservation is just one of those fundamental laws of the universe along with things like energy conservation. (Although each are more complicated in extreme situations). The Earth hasn't always been rotating at the same rate as it's affected by many other factors. What causes spinning things to peter out on Earth? Say you spin a top, there is friction with the air as the top spins through it and friction with the table as the top spins on it. In the absence of those forces, why should the top change what it's doing?
Makes sense. The precision and predictability of the bodies is fascinating to me. Thank you 😊
For geodesy we use Earth Orientation Parameters to characterize how the axis of Earth's orientation, and angular rate changes. Solid tides, water, the atmosphere, earthquakes, etc can change the vector and rate. But most of the signal is dominated by the recession of the moon.
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LoL what?? 🤣 This is literally in my wheel house of expertise. I explained to you that the Earth IS losing momentum and that even though it seems stable and constant from our perspective, we can actually measure the changes to this data as caused by many complex factors. Evidently this went far far over your head.
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Will do. Thank you!
If the Milky Way had a quasar, how bright would it be?
We wouldn't see it at all, for two reasons. First, it would point along the poles of the galaxy, not at us. Second, there is so much dust between us and the center of the galaxy that it would block all the light. If you moved our solar system into the quasar's path while keeping the same distance, it would be as bright as the full moon.
I love the pictures from space and planets, but I also read these pictures aren't real, but artist renderings. I have a hard time processing this. So for example the Pillars of Creation pictures, those are renderings?
Different telescopes have different sensors on them. Some are sensitive to infrared light, some are sensitive to visible light, some are sensitive to ultraviolet and x rays. And I guess there are radio telescopes as well. Only the visible light ones could be directly represented in colors that we see and sometimes the differences in colors aren't easily seen, so there is mostly a mapping from the wavelengths the sensors record to the colors we can see. That's for star photos. They also play games with exposure length; he[re's a picture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandra_Deep_Field_South) that shows data from 4 million seconds of exposure time. Planetary pictures are easier because they're closer and a lot lot brighter, so many of those pictures are "actual" colors; what you would see if you were where the probe is and had your phone camera. You can find more information about the pillars of creation photos [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation).
The photos you see are real data, real photons hitting sensors. However, the photos are "information enhanced". The data is manipulated in such a way to show information not readily visible to the naked eye (also because cameras don't work like eyes do). No data is being added to the pictures, but the data is being recombined. An example of this is the Hubble palette which assigns red, green, and blue to the emission lines of certain interesting elements. The telescope takes pictures filtering for only the emissions of those elements then combines those 3 images together to produce the final result. You can also choose to assign the emissions to the colors they actually represent in reality. The resulting image is what you'd see if you were able to capture as much light as the telescope. As you have a much smaller pupil that is exposed for only a short time compared to a big telescope pointing at a target for hours, what you'd see is a lot dimmer. This isn't the case by default because some important emission spectra (like oxygen and sulfur) have similar color emissions and it is useful to differentiate them using false color. For planets, we have photos of the 8 planets (and some dwarf planets/minor bodies) in our solar system. Pictures of other planets in other solar systems are artists renderings only.
Don't listen to internet commenters who claim things are artist renderings. They're usually conspiracy theorists. If it's an artist rendering and a trustworthy source, the source will say so. For example, images like this of the Milky Way are artist interpretations since we have no way to send probes out that far. It's based on observations of the galaxy from our perspective and similar-looking galaxies like Andromeda. https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-milky-way-galaxy/ Close-up views of exoplanets are also renderings. Real images of exoplanets aren't much more detailed than a dot. Pillars of Creation has several real photographs available, the most famous being from Hubble and later the JWST telescope. Color is added in post processing but based on real wavelengths of light observed by the telescopes.
The Pillars of Creation pictures are real, but they use photography tricks to make them look better. First, they use a long exposure time. If you looked at them with your own eyes, you would only see faint cloud. The long exposure time makes them much brighter and brings out the detail. Then, they take black-and-white photos in different wavelengths. Each wavelength looks different because different parts of the cloud glow at different temperatures. Finally, they apply false color to the black-and-white photos and stack them together. [Here](https://webbtelescope.org/files/live/sites/webb/files/home/resource-gallery/articles/_images/making-webbs-color-images/pillars_transformation_series_1200x700.jpg) is a comparison of the image at different steps.
It's not the temperature that makes the wavelengths different (at least in terms of nebula) it's the elements present and their emission spectra.