Pandora Box Iran

There is a lot of chaos going on in Iran right now, when a catastrophe like that happens in the world, some of the good news gets fogged out of sight. This is certainly true of the new NASA mission that just started called Pandora. 

The pandora space probe was launched last week on the falcon 9 spaceX rocket. That is the way they're heading these days, they like to contract private companies to make the space vehicles for them, they don't want to develop it themselves; I call it space privatisation. 

The pandora space probe has been fine tuned to look at the atmospheres of planets outside of our solar system to see if there are volatile gases present. Chemicals that don't persist without being renewed by an ongoing reaction. Here on earth we have oxygen in our atmosphere, life forms need to top it up all the time because it reacts with other chemicals so it won't persist in its form.  The same is true of ammonia and things like that. They don't persist, they need to be topped up by processes or life forms. It will be interesting to see what they find. 

I like the fact that a lot of the discoveries they make are open to the public. Ordinary people like myself can look at their findings for free and learn something new every day. 

Sun Pass

One event that is outstanding during December at the end of the year is the breakthrough with the Parker solar probe sent by nasa. They managed to build up the speed of the probe to roughly 1 million kilometres per hour (430,000 miles per hour); it is the fastest moving man made object and it is going around the sun on a highly elliptical orbit, at its closest approach it is just 3.8 million kilometres from the surface; close enough to touch the edge of the sun's massive Corona atmosphere. It is the closest object to the sun that mankind has ever made. 

They made carbon foam panels to keep the spacecraft cool because the area around the sun is very hot. 

It looks like they're already able to see temporary structures on the sun created by magnetic fields. NASA seems to be curious about structures called zipbacks that can faintly be seen from earth with special powerful telescopes. 

What it was wondering was if carbon foam is so good a deflecting heat away, why don't they use the stuff to insulate houses, is it expensive to produce? 

I'll keep an eye on their findings. 

What November Means to me

November 2018 was about discovery and a huge deal. It was in November 2018 that I discovered that my unborn child was a boy and at the same time I discovered that NASA had landed a probe on the planet Mars called inSight with the intention of peering inside the planet, good luck to them.

I would be happy if my child was a boy or a girl.
It is a boy and we are thinking about possible names to give the child when he is born.

November is also about the Brexit exit deal that was prepared by our prime Minister, Therasa May and leaders of the other European Union member states. I sense that many politicians intend to reject the deal because they think it is a bad deal. They will soon vote on implementation of the deal.

There was wide spread rioting in France because Macron increased fuel tax. This event reminds me of the time I learned of Margret Fatcher's poll tax. If people live a privileged life then they may forget the ordinary people struggle to live in this world. They can increase a tax without thinking about the poorer people.