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Spaceprobes

93JC

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Look at this photograph.



Can you see the white dot in the middle? Open the photo in another window or tab of your browser if you have to.

Know what it is? It's the Curiosity rover. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took that photograph in April.
 

93JC

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Today NASA announced that Mars has liquid water on its surface.

Photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken since the start of the mission showed evidence of water flow, but the NASA scientists were very reticent to attribute it to actual liquid water. Using a spectrometer on the MRO they have now proven that the flow is briny water, still liquid at temperatures as low as -23 °c because of the concentration of salts in the mixture reducing the freezing point.

Water on Mars: Nasa reveals briny flows on surface - as it happened | Science | The Guardian

220px-Warm_Season_Flows_on_Slope_in_Newton_Crater_%28animated%29.gif


This is the first time liquid water has ever been conclusively proven to exist on another planet.
 

Virtual ghost

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Humans are idiots it seems, by now we should have landed at least one probe on every object with diameter above 200 kilometers in the solar system. Instead, we continue wasting time. :doh:
 

93JC

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Neat design, hard to read even with the zoom, but after all, they are trying to sell posters. I wish it really was all of humankind's spaceprobes.

It might not be all of humankind's spaceprobes but it's definitely more than just NASA's. Most of the Venusian probes were Soviet; starting from the bottom left I see many of the Venera probes are pictured, as well as the Japanese IKAROS. Among the pictured lunar probes I see the Soviet Luna probes and the Lunokhod rover, the Japanese SELENE, the Chinese Chang'e and the Indian Chandrayaan. I can see some of the European probes, like Huygens (which went to Titan) and Rosetta & Philae (studying Comet "67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko").

:)
 

93JC

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"Matter of fact, it's all dark."

Okay, so technically this isn't from a space probe, but I thought it was kind of neat anyway.

DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) is a weather satellite located in an orbit between the sun and Earth at what's called a Lagrangian point. I'll let you peruse the Wikipedia article if you want to know the math; the gist is it's in an orbit about a million miles from us, at the point where the gravitational pulls from the sun and from Earth are the same. It's always seeing the sunlit half of Earth. Being in an orbit between us and the sun, it's equipped with magnetometers to let us know when solar winds and other '"space weather" might cause geomagnetic storms on Earth (which will not only cause very visible aurorae but can also screw up communication satellites, ground radio and even the electrical power grid). It's also equipped with a camera that can take images in UV and IR, which can be used to measure things like the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. That same camera can also take pictures in the visible light spectrum. The following was taken July 16th:

epicearthmoonstill.png


A couple times every year the moon's orbit passes between Earth and DSCOVR, and DSCOVR will take pictures in the red, blue and green parts of the light spectrum every few minutes. The image above is a composite, to show what it looks like over the entire visible spectrum; you can see a little bit of a green artifact on the right side of the moon if you enlarge the picture because the green picture was taken last and the moon had shifted a little compared to when the other pictures were taken.

What I think is most fascinating about this view of the moon is something you might not even realize at first glance. Think about it for a second: what looks 'off' about this picture of the moon? Figured it out?






It's "the dark side of the moon". The far side that we never see from Earth. It's all DSCOVR ever sees of it though.

 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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[MENTION=9273]Vasilisa[/MENTION], according to that they launched Voyager 2 before Voyager 1. That don't make no sense.
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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[MENTION=9273]Vasilisa[/MENTION], according to that they launched Voyager 2 before Voyager 1. That don't make no sense.
How close to light speed are they going? :thinking:
 

Vasilisa

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the interstellar mission timeline

@Vasilisa, according to that they launched Voyager 2 before Voyager 1. That don't make no sense.

I have no idea, but it says Voyager 2 was launched in August, 1977 and Voyager 1 was launched in September, 1977.

Voyager - The Interstellar Mission

Voyager - The Interstellar Mission Timeline

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.
On September 5, Voyager 1 launched, also from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System, Voyager 1 launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Voyager - The Interstellar Mission

Voyager - The Interstellar Mission Timeline

Voyager 2 launched on August 20, 1977, from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.
On September 5, Voyager 1 launched, also from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977. Part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System, Voyager 1 launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2.

But what's bugging me is why they didn't call the first one they launched Voyager 1? The order is wrong. I wasn't doubting the accuracy, only suggesting that the naming scheme didn't make sense.
 
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