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Recent unscripted video from Cody Reeder of Cody'sLab.

I don't agree with several of his points, but he raises some interesting issues nonetheless.

Any thoughts on the optimal ways to balance human space exploration with planetary protection?

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cross-posted from: https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/1341668

A satellite belonging to multinational service provider Intelsat mysteriously broke up in geostationary orbit over the weekend.

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Next Gen Starship (chrisprophet.substack.com)
submitted 3 months ago by marsokod to c/space
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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/space
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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Bitswap to c/space
 
 

Europa Clipper is NASA’s mission to explore one of Jupiter’s four large Galilean satellites. Europa has an icy outer crust that covers an ocean world. It holds twice as much water as Earth’s oceans. So, Scientists want to know more about the habitability – the ability for some form of live to exist – on this large moon.

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Update:

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Mission engineers at NASA have turned off the plasma science instrument aboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft due to the probe’s gradually shrinking electrical power supply.

Traveling more than 12.8 billion miles (20.5 billion kilometers) from Earth, the spacecraft continues to use four science instruments to study the region outside our heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun. The probe has enough power to continue exploring this region with at least one operational science instrument into the 2030s.

Mission engineers have taken steps to avoid turning off a science instrument for as long as possible because the science data collected by the twin Voyager probes is unique. No other human-made spacecraft has operated in interstellar space, the region outside the heliosphere.

The plasma science instrument measures the amount of plasma (electrically charged atoms) and the direction it is flowing. It has collected limited data in recent years due to its orientation relative to the direction that plasma is flowing in interstellar space.

Both spacecraft are powered by decaying plutonium and lose about 4 watts of power each year. After the twin Voyagers completed their exploration of the giant planets in the 1980s, the mission team turned off several science instruments that would not be used in the study of interstellar space. That gave the spacecraft plenty of extra power until a few years ago. Since then, the team has turned off all onboard systems not essential for keeping the probes working, including some heaters. In order to postpone having to shut off another science instrument, they also adjusted how Voyager 2’ voltage is monitored.

Monitoring Results

On Sept. 26, engineers issued the command to turn off the plasma science instrument. Sent by NASA’s Deep Space Network, it took 19 hours to reach Voyager 2, and the return signal took another 19 hours to reach Earth.

Mission engineers always carefully monitor changes being made to the 47-year-old spacecraft’s operations to ensure they don’t generate any unwanted secondary effects. The team has confirmed that the switch-off command was executed without incident and the probe is operating normally.

In 2018, the plasma science instrument proved critical in determining that Voyager 2 left the heliosphere. The boundary between the heliosphere and interstellar space is demarcated by changes in the atoms, particles, and magnetic fields that instruments on the Voyagers can detect. Inside the heliosphere, particles from the Sun flow outward, away from our nearest star. The heliosphere is moving through interstellar space, so at Voyager 2’s position near the front of the solar bubble, the plasma flows in almost the opposite direction of the solar particles.

The plasma science instrument consists of four “cups.” Three cups point in the direction of the Sun and observed the solar wind while inside the heliosphere. A fourth points at a right angle to the direction of the other three and has observed the plasma in planetary magnetospheres, the heliosphere, and now, interstellar space.

When Voyager 2 exited the heliosphere, the flow of plasma into the three cups facing the Sun dropped off dramatically. The most useful data from the fourth cup comes only once every three months, when the spacecraft does a 360-degree turn on the axis pointed toward the Sun. This factored into the mission’s decision to turn this instrument off before others.

The plasma science instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working in 1980 and was turned off in 2007 to save power. Another instrument aboard Voyager 2, called the plasma wave subsystem, can estimate the plasma density when eruptions from the Sun drive shocks through the interstellar medium, producing plasma waves.

The Voyager team continues to monitor the health of the spacecraft and its available resources to make engineering decisions that maximize the mission’s science output.

For more information about NASA’s Voyager missions, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager


Note: Whole article available in post as it from a US government agency and is not bound by copyright.

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Mars' missing atmosphere may be locked up in the planet's clay-rich surface, a new study by MIT geologists has suggested.

According to the researchers, ancient water trickling through Mars' rocks could have triggered a series of chemical reactions, converting CO2 into methane and trapping the carbon in clay minerals for billions of years.

Billions of years ago, Mars was a very different place—likely wet, with rivers flowing across its surface and a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2) insulating the planet. However, around 3.5 billion years ago, the red planet's atmosphere thinned and its water dried up, leaving behind the cold desert we see today.

A central mystery in planetary science has been: where did all that carbon dioxide go?

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The universe’s hidden mass may be made of black holes, which could wobble the planets of the solar system when they pass by

Black holes the size of an atom that contain the mass of an asteroid may fly through the inner solar system about once a decade, scientists say. Theoretically created just after the big bang, these examples of so-called primordial black holes could explain the missing dark matter thought to dominate our universe. And if they sneak by the moon or Mars, scientists should be able to detect them, a new study shows.

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If primordial black holes are responsible for dark matter, they probably zip through the solar system about every 10 years, a new study found. If one of these black holes comes near a planet or large moon, it should push the body off course enough to be measurable by current instruments. “As it passes by, the planet starts to wobble,” says Sarah R. Geller, a theoretical physicist now at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of the study, which was published on September 17 in Physical Review D.* “The wobble will grow over a few years but eventually it will damp out and go back to zero.”

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