Cassini Arrives at Saturn
Finally after 4 years in transit Cassini has successfully inserted itself into Saturn orbit. Check out the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerations (CICLOPS) for all the pictures. Saturn is probably the most photogenic planet in the solar system, from a distance anyway (a distance far enough back to see those gorgeous rings.)
The next really big event on Cassini's schedule comes in December when it releases the Huygens Probe which will desend down into Saturn's mysterious large moon Titan in January 2005. Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. The atmosphere is also so hazy we can't even see the moons surface.... stay tuned
Followup: The Current Race to Mars
The Beagle 2 Management Board met in London on Friday 6 February and, following an assessment of the situation, declared Beagle 2 lost.
- European Space Agency, Paris, 11 February 2004, Press Release
Every 26 months or so Earth swings around and passes Mars in the cycle of the orbits. We earthlings have been using this close-as-we-get flyby to send probes to the dusty red planet. This time (last year) was no exception, with three of the four flights arriving successfully and two of the three landers actually landing intact. Historically we have had about a two-thirds failure rate with Mars missions so maybe we are improving.
Though the poor Beagle 2 didn't have a cushy landing the Mars Express mother ship (which carried the Beagle 2 to Mars) did make it into mars orbit. "The mission's main objective is to search for sub-surface water from orbit and deploy a lander onto the Martian surface" - ok so scrap the lander part, but it has a cool 3D carmera and is taking some excellent pictures from orbit. It has even discovered ammonia in the Martian atmosphere. Oh... but about that search for sub-surface water thing, seems they are having a problem deploying the instrument that is supposed to search for this water... so deployment of this device has been delayed until sometime later.
NASA's Mars Exploration rovers have had much better luck though. Both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have not only landed successfully but have now more than doubled their primary objective of 90 days. There is even talk of trying to get them to survive the coming long martian winter and wake them up again next year. Opportunity has even discovered strong evidence that it's part of Mars was wet in the distant past. And both Spirit and Opportunity have found blueberries.
Space Science/Astronomy Links
- MESSENGER
- That's MEcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging to the rest of us (I guess it must be hard to sell a mission to NASA these days without a catchy acronym.) Anyway, this space ship is on the way to Mercury, we haven't had a mission go there for like 30 years so we really don't know much about the planet... its small, rocky, has no atmosphere and looks like a moon (in fact Jupter's moon Ganymede is bigger.) Its gonna take almost 7 years to get there though, ETA is March 2011. On the way is makes a flyby of Earth (August 2005), two of Venus (October 2006 and June 2007) and three of Mercury (January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009.) See also NASA's mission page
- Orbits
- This is part of a very well done NASA site, The Near Earth Object Program. On the Orbits page you can search for your favorite asteroid or comet (Say asteriod Eros, or Comet Borrelly) and see a small cool 3D simulation of it's orbit. They also have a list of a few hundred Potentially Hazardous Asteroids you can just click on, in case you don't have their numbers handy.
- Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking
- NEAT is looking for NEO's (Near-Earth Objects) just to make sure that none are about to hit us. They haven't found any that are about to hit us (yet), but they have found some PHA's (Potentially Hazardous Asteriods) tht maybe will hit us sometime. Are you looking for that perfect asteroid to start your new mining operation on? Get the scoop here before it even get's an official designation, but you better hurry, lately the number of estimated NEO's in the solar system has been reduced... or was in increased... or was it reduced again... well they'll get a good count of them eventually.
- The Spacewatch Project
- NEAT isn't the only group looking for NEO's, Spacewatch is another.
- PERMANENT: Asteroid mining, space colonies, commercialization
- So what do you do with all those asteroids? This web site advocates Permanent Manned Enterprises in space. I guess we want to live in space to mine the mineral rich asteroids so that we can make the stuff needed to support all the people living in space, mining the mineral rich asteroids. (This is simular to Earths economic system). There's lots of info here about how to go about doing that, which asteroids to mine, where they are, what they are made of, how to mine them, where all these people will be living, and things like that. I don't think I'll buy the book yet though, but an interesting site.
- Deep Space 1
- This spacecraft was retired on December 18, 2001 after an extremely successful extended mission. It encountered comet Borrelly and returned the best images and other science data ever from a comet, long after it's successful primary mission was over in September 1999. Comets are turning out to be the darkest things in the solar system, it's like a Dove Bar the size of Mount Everest. said one DS1 team member.
- Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission (aka. NEAR)
- This highly sucessful mission ended back Feburary 2001, after it touched down on asteroid Eros, (ie. crash-landed) and survived to send back data for an additional 10 days! Now all that data, ten times more than originally planned, is being analyzed... why all the boulders? why does it's soil make ponds? what is this 4+ billion year old rock really made of? Anyway, here you can find some of the answers, or theories, and of course the only real close up pictures of an asteriod. There's also more background infomation at the NEAR Information site.
- The WWW Virtual Library: Astronomy and Astrophysics
- A well maintianed (?!) collection of links to astronomy-related information available on the Internet. For when you want the data... well if the links don't work I google it and find the new page.