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. 

The Moon Again

I learnt just today that NASA and a private company had sent a probe to the south pole of the moon. The probe called Odysseus was carrying several instruments. 

I wonder if it can survive one moon night, 2 weeks of darkness and super frigid temperatures below -100 °c. I think the moon night often kills probes, some of them can't turn back on at sunrise. 

Every nation is obsessed with the moon now. It is like a stepping stone to deep space, or possible second home for people to live on. 

Red Dwarf Habitat

We are going around a star known as a yellow dwarf. Our sun star lasts for about 10 billion years then it will die but it is half way through its life already. Red Dwarf stars are smaller than our sun star but they last a lot longer because they use up their fuel at a much slower rate, they are a lot more dim so planets need to be a lot closer to the star to be warm enough for water to be a liquid on the surface. The problem is the planet would need to be so close to the Red Dwarf Star that it would be tidally locked to the star so one side of the planet faces the star and the other side faces away into deep space continuously, like the far side of the moon does with the earth. 

I thought to myself that if the planet was going around a gas giant like Jupiter then it would be tidally locked to the gas giant planet instead of the star and be protected by the planet's magnetic field from powerful solar storms. 

The planet sized moon could be the size of Mars and not even have its own magnetic field. It would have a few days of the month of darkness. But the planet would be a very safe place to live I think.