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Spaceprobes

93JC

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It should be noted that the artists chose to depict only the probes that are still in contact with Earth. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are still transmitting and are the farthest probes from Earth but while New Horizons is travelling far faster than any probe built before it it's still nowhere near as far from Earth as two probes not depicted here: Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11.

Both Pioneer probes were launched in the early-'70s; NASA's last contacts with Pioneer 11 and Pioneer 10 were in 1995 and 2003 respectively. Pioneer 10 was the first probe to ever pass through the asteroid belt and fly by Jupiter, and Pioneer 11 was the first past Saturn. Though their power systems no longer function (they ran out of fuel, as both Voyager probes will in about 10 years) they still silently carry on part of their mission. They were the first probes designed to achieve escape velocity from the solar system, and as such were the first to carry a message from Earth to whomever may find them:

 

93JC

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A picture of Neptune and Triton taken by Voyager 2 in 1989:

D9eowom.jpg


(I saw this picture on reddit yesterday.)
 

93JC

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EvTSgF3.gif


This is the dwarf planet Ceres, located about 3.4 AU from Earth right now. It's the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the probe Dawn will begin orbiting it on Friday after its seven-year-long journey to get there. This animation was created by NASA from a composite of several images Dawn's camera took last month.

No one's really sure what the two bright dots are. About eleven years ago the Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of Ceres and the bright spots were distinguishable but it wasn't until Dawn began approaching that it was discovered the one blurry spot in the Hubble photograph was really two discernible spots. Some believe it may be cryovolcanic activity: volcanoes spewing water, ammonia and methane rather than magma.
 

93JC

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As of 5:39 PST this morning (13:39 GMT; almost eight hours ago) Dawn has been orbiting Ceres. It will carry out scans and take photographs of Ceres's surface for another year or so, eventually running out of fuel for its thrusters to point its antenna at Earth. It will orbit Ceres for the foreseeable future, long after it runs out of fuel.
 

93JC

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Give yourself a moment to think about what's pictured below.

oxUg2cU.jpg



Figured it out? Curiosity took the picture on the left about a year ago: it's a picture of Earth, from Mars. The picture on the right is a picture of Mars from Earth.
 

93JC

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MRqOkEG.jpg



Spacecraft Data Suggest Saturn Moon's Ocean May Harbor Hydrothermal Activity

Things to know:
• Cassini finds first evidence of active hot-water chemistry beyond planet Earth
• Findings in two separate papers support the notion
• The results have important implications for the habitability of icy worlds

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first clear evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus exhibits signs of present-day hydrothermal activity which may resemble that seen in the deep oceans on Earth. The implications of such activity on a world other than our planet open up unprecedented scientific possibilities.

"These findings add to the possibility that Enceladus, which contains a subsurface ocean and displays remarkable geologic activity, could contain environments suitable for living organisms," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The locations in our solar system where extreme environments occur in which life might exist may bring us closer to answering the question: are we alone in the universe."

Click here for the full article

Enceladus is Saturn's six-largest moon.

As taken by Voyager 2 in the early '80s:

mWpHVUX.jpg


A more recent portrait taken by Cassini:

rZ4ksuE.jpg
 

93JC

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chubber

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New Horizons will fly by Pluto this summer, after its nine-year journey to get there. It will be the first time a probe has ever passed close to Pluto. As such it will be the first time relatively clear photographs will be taken of Pluto, and of its largest moon, Charon. Click here to help the New Horizons team name the geological features of Pluto and Charon!

I had to laugh at the artist's representation of "What will we do when this: Pluto and Charon at the best resolution obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope"
montage-before-560w.jpeg

"looks more like this?"
montage-after-560w.jpeg


I for some reason thought that pluto looked like a nugget.
 

93JC

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MESSENGER, the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging probe, ended its mission on Thursday (about 141 million km from Earth, and not represented in spaceprob.es's illustrations). It ran out of fuel and crashed on the surface of Mercury. Among its many discoveries about the planet Mercury was the presence of ice at the Mercurian north pole.

 

Frosty

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Evidence of briny water on Mars -- ScienceDaily

Though the briny water on Mars may not support life, it does have implications for future manned missions that would need to create life-sustaining resources such as water and oxygen on the planet, Chevrier said. There is also the possibility that life once existed on ancient Mars.

"We need to understand the earliest environment," he added. "What was happening 4 billion years ago?"
 

93JC

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ROSETTA’S LANDER PHILAE WAKES UP FROM HIBERNATION


Rosetta's lander Philae is out of hibernation!

The signals were received at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt at 22:28 CEST on 13 June. More than 300 data packets have been analysed by the teams at the Lander Control Center at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

"Philae is doing very well: It has an operating temperature of -35ºC and has 24 Watts available," explains DLR Philae Project Manager Dr. Stephan Ulamec. "The lander is ready for operations."

For 85 seconds Philae "spoke" with its team on ground, via Rosetta, in the first contact since going into hibernation in November.

...

Philae shut down on 15 November 2014 at 1:15 CET after being in operation on the comet for about 60 hours. Since 12 March 2015 the communication unit on orbiter Rosetta was turned on to listen out for the lander.

Rosetta’s lander Philae wakes up from hibernation | Rosetta - ESA's comet chaser


CHdTHfSWoAABBkB.jpg
 

93JC

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New Horizons will fly by Pluto this summer, after its nine-year journey to get there. It will be the first time a probe has ever passed close to Pluto. As such it will be the first time relatively clear photographs will be taken of Pluto, and of its largest moon, Charon. Click here to help the New Horizons team name the geological features of Pluto and Charon!

New Horizons will make its closest approach to Pluto tomorrow morning, about seven-and-a-half hours from now.

Prior to New Horizons this was humanity's clearest photograph of Pluto ever taken, by the Hubble Space Telescope:


This is New Horizons' photo of Pluto from a week ago:


That was from about 8,000,000 km away from Pluto. Tomorrow it will be about 12,500 km (about one Earth diameter).
 

93JC

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New Horizons transmitted a signal back to Earth last night confirming it survived the trip past Pluto (its instruments were too busy collecting data to keep in constant contact with ground control). Over the next 16 months it will transmit the data it recorded in the fly-by—photographs in the visible, infrared and ultralight parts of the spectrum, atmospheric measurements, solar wind measurements—back to Earth at 1 kilobit per second.

So far it has sent back the following black-and-white photograph:



Pluto has mountains. Scientists were not expecting mountains. It raises all sorts of questions about the geology of Pluto and of many other celestial bodies too, particularly some of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune's moons. Pluto is an icy world, with a surface composed mostly of nitrogen 'ice'. It's cold, averaging between 30 and 55 K (-243 and -218 °c). If it's so cold how does it have the tectonics to form mountains the size of the Rockies? We'll have to wait and see what the rest of New Horizons's instruments have to say.
 
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