Bank Holiday

During the Easter bank holiday, NASA launched the Orion Spaceship into orbit around the Earth, It then did an escape burn and was slung towards the moon, it went around the far side of the moon and headed back to earth. It appeared to be to test the integrity of the new technology. The four astronauts are brave souls. I wouldn't sit on a tiny capsule at the end of a large rocket like that; they can explode and vaporise the crew. 

I was wondering if a person had a heart attack and collapsed on a railway crossing and were hit by a train, what would be the cause of death? You could stay it was the train that caused the death but he wouldn't have been in the path of the train if his heart didn't stop. You could also say it was his heart that caused the death but then he may have survived the heart attack but the train ended hope for recovery. I guess both items would be considered, an accident caused by a medical crisis. I think about death every day for a short time because it is something we can't avoid. I'm not a negative person, I just accept that every being in this world dies; that's just the way it is. 

Artemis Easter

It was the Easter weekend and the Orion Spaceship performed an escape burn to slingshot itself towards the moon. It crossed the Lagrange point and entered the moons hillsphere ( an area around the moon where the moon's gravity pulls more than the Earth's). 

The four astronauts on the spaceship are going to pass around the far side of the moon and then return to Earth.  At the time of writing this post, they were very close to the moon, just some hours away from a flyby. They won't land on this mission, it's just to test out the new hardware and make sure they can reach the moon safely. The last thing I saw on the live feed was the crew asking flight control if they could tilt the spaceship to get a better view of the moon's surface. 

We are going to see a close up shot of the moon with modern cameras, that will be interesting. I was wondering if they're getting flashing in their eyes from deep space radiation? Have they found a way to deal with deep space radiation yet? I don't know. 

Interesting times.

Small and Useful

Yesterday I learnt that on the 11th of January they didn't just send the small Pandora Satellite into space, NASA also sent up two smaller cube satellites that are just 30cm across; they would literally fit into a shopping bag. 

Not only did they get the size of the space probes down, they got the transport costs down. They approached spaceX to build a reusable space rocket. SpaceX built the falcon space rockets, they go up to space, then the rocket parts land safely on docking stations to be reused again. NASA wisely approached private companies to make space vehicles so they can get the cost down. 

The pandora space probe is smaller than a person but it is capable of looking at stars when their planets transit between us and them and working out what light rays are from the planet's atmosphere and what parts are from the star. The point of pandora is to help make decisions for the James Webb space telescope because it is so busy, it is hard to decide what places to look into and what areas to neglect. If the chemicals in the planets atmosphere are interesting, they will get the very busy James Webb telescope to take a closer look. 

The two smaller cube satellites are Blackcat and sparks, they will look at black holes and also study solar flares of low mass stars. 

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. 

Searching for stuff

In Space, NASA is searching for ways to stop people from getting bad health because of space travel. Apparently being in space is very unhealthy. The lack of gravity causes bones and muscles to waste away and every part of the body is weakened by microgravity. Fluids are forced up to the head because we're designed to resist gravity. 

I think that is the main reason the International Space Station exists. The ISS is trying to find ways to keep astronauts healthy for long periods in space. I remember reading of some other experiments they were trying, they wanted to see how certain crystals grow in the absence of gravity. 

The pictures of crews always seem awkward like they're trying to keep themselves steady. It's not just NASA that is searching for something. Down here on earth, ordinary people like myself are always searching for deals. I search for short break deals, deals on used electric cars and deals on ordinary items. 

I look through all the places we can go and the hotel tariffs and see if they change for different dates and places. Then I remember places I have already been. 

I think if you had an electric car you would want to change your energy tariff so there is a time window when the electricity is cheaper so you can charge up your car without spending too much money. Perhaps there would be a 5 hour time window when your electricity is only 10 p per kilowatt-hour and it would be cheaper to heat your house with electric heaters during that time. 

I'm just amazed how quickly electric cars devalue over a short time, car gaint was selling fairly new cars for about one third of their original price. I was just looking at them the other day. 

Launcher set

According to the NASA blogs, the new launch tower for the Artemis missions is in place. A few days ago the launch tower was all set up. It solves problems I never knew existed. They have to pump lots of liquid hydrogen into the space launch system but the hydrogen starts to boil when it is injected into the rocket. When the hydrogen boils, the gas hangs around for a while and could cause an explosion when the rocket starts up so the tower pumps the excess gas away. The tower also has clamps that hold the rocket up in the wind but they have to pull away as soon as the rocket turns on, I think the whole tower leans away from the rocket during launch. The tower injects large amounts of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen into the rocket; when the rocket is loaded onto the launch tower, it is empty. It is filled up while it is mounted on the tower. 

The Space Launch system for the Artemis missions works like the space shuttle system and resembles it in some way. Large tanks filled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen are burnt and two smaller booster rockets on either side help to lift the Orion space ship at the top out into deep space. 

Very soon, people will go to the moon to keep a constant human presence there, I'm guessing they will build a space village on the moon. 

Most Distant Star

I have 4 blogs at the moment but my favourite blogs are the NASA ones and Evercade. With the chrome browser you can add a page link to your phones desktop. 

You press the three dots in the top corner of the page 

Then you click on the add to home screen menu item. 

 I have a little folder on my phone's desktop with links to all my favourite blogs presented with icons asif they were apps. 

My Favourite blogs

Evercade

NASA James Webb

NASA Artemis

I like my blog but my 3  favourite blogs are space and games blogs curated by big companies. They're very interesting to read. 

Recently I learned that then most distant star ever detected is Earendel, I'm not sure how to pronounce the name though. Is it "Ear end el"  or "air end all" or "E ren del"  I will find out later. The funny thing is the star has probably exploded already because the light we see from the star is billions of years old. They only see one pixel of the star's light so there is a chance it is actually two stars according to NASA. The star produced a lot more heat than our sun either way. I think it is only visible from that distance because it is large and bright, I'm sure there are lots of smaller stars near it. It's very hard to imagine how many stars there are in the universe. 

This is the article I saw about Earendel. 

Earendel

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. 

Boris Johnson Resigns

I learnt this morning that Boris Johnson will resign as prime minister in Autumn. This means there will be a 3rd conservative Party leadership race. The first one was when David Cameron resigned, the second one was when Theresa May resigned, now Boris Johnson will resign. I think the reason he resigned is because many of his team quit. They felt that they had broke too many rules and caused the public to not trust the conservative party. Plus they lost some recent by-elections. Integrity is always very important.

We are days away from seeing some of the oldest light transmitted in the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope, it will be a summer of insight and a political summer for the Brits. We will see into the past and wonder who will be the next leader of the UK. It will be very interesting to see what happens. What will JWST discover and who will lead the UK?

When my son was born in Spring 2019, Theresa May was the leader but she quit because her team couldn't break the Brexit deadlock, Boris took over and his team was able to break the Brexit deadlock. But now he will quit because his team broke some of the rules that they made and caused the public not to trust them. 

JWST breakthrough

Mankind has dispersed many robots into the solar system to investigate the cosmos. The NASA website is open to all, ordinary people like myself can go onto the NASA website and read through all their reports for free and learn stuff about the universe. It is nice to read through the NASA website when I go to sleep. NASA.gov

My favourite subdomain of the NASA website at the moment is JWST for the James Webb Space Telescope. jwst.nasa.gov

I noticed that they have finished cooling down the system and aligning the mirrors, the telescope looks like it is ready for viewing. They will look directly at exoplanets and see what the atmosphere is made of and also look at very old objects in the universe that were covered by dust clouds. It will be very interesting to see what they discover. 

Start of Japanese Olympics

In my view, the Japanese are very unlucky. They are the only nation in the world that was nuked. They live on Islands that often gets hit by powerful Tsunamis. They get many very strong earth quakes too often. Now they are hosting the Olympic games during a Pandemic infection. The whole world is sick and they have to be very careful. I saw the drones making a globe and thought that was cool. 

It was in the weeks preceding the Olympic games  that two billionaires built space ships and went into space. There is a debate about whether the place they went to is actually Space. If it is proven that they actually only went to the top of the atmosphere then they would be demoted from astronauts to rocketeers and their space ship would be reclassified as a surface to air penis 😆. 

People are still debating if  Covid19 came from a lab in China. If it did, I imagined it would be because they have their own equivalent to Homer Simpson working in the lab, a careless fool. I imagined him walking out of the lab with a test tube hanging out of his side pocket and throwing it out of the window while he is driving and then a kid running over it with a skateboard and breaking it open. 

Virtual Reality ISS

Earlier today I used virtual reality to visit the international space station commonly known as ISS. I noticed that it is bigger than I thought it was, it is the biggest man made object in space as far as I know. I also learned that there is no up or down in the ISS, the ceiling, floor and walls all contain intruments and consol screens. You only have up or down in a place where there strong gravity like on earth. The purpose of the ISS is to carry out experiments in zero gravity or the vacuum of space. A common experiment would be a rig or drug that may stop the human body wasting away in zero gravity; the human body deteriorates in zero gravity so long term travel to other planets is impossible at the moment because of the health issues. The modules have air locks so they can place objects in space and leave them out there for a while on a noose to see what happens. They even have telescopes on there. There are countless experiments that can be done in space that are impossible on earth. 

What was the cost to me? Nothing, I already have a phone and a generic VR phone holder with adjustable plastic lenses. I think the VR phone holder costs close to £10 (ten loafs of bread) but I can't remember the exact price I paid for it. I used the Google expeditions app to view it. 

The ISS is very spacious and full of experiments, interesting place to visit in virtual reality. 

100 planets plus

I don't know much but I know that it takes 5 hours for light to reach the edge of what we call the solar system, but... 

The gravity of our star reaches out much further, the influence of our sun's gravity goes half way out to the next star which is over 4 light years away. This means that after 2 years of light travel it is possible to find an object orbiting the sun. 

I believe we have over 100 planets in our solar system because the bit we regard as the solar system is tiny compared to the reach of the Sun's gravity. Being who I am, I did some maths on my caculator. Let's say we observe 6 hours of light travel as solar system. (1 quarter of a day of light travel). Now the gravity of our sun reaches 2 light years and beyond This means the true area of our solar system is about 3,000 times bigger the observed solar system. 

In fact after one day a light photon has travelled 4 times the distance from the sun to edge of the ort cloud. Even if there is just one planet in that space then you have to consider one week of light travel and even one month, then you realise there must be more than 100 planets, some of them would be much bigger than Earth. 

Even if some of them were bigger than Jupiter they would be almost impossible to detect because they are so far away. 

So much mystery and the mind wonders 

Black hole vision

Earlier in the week on the 10th of April, a picture of the "Event Horizon" of a giant "Black hole" called Messier 87 was revealed to the general public. April will go down in history as the month we saw a black hole. The trouble is that it is impossible to see a black hole itself because it pulls light in so all you would see is a black void. Infact the inner edge of the "Event Horizon" would also be invisible because the Event Horizon is the area of gravity that overpowers light.

It may be possible in the future to see a black hole because you don't need light to see things. I saw my unborn baby using a device that can see sound waves. Bats and dolphins can see sound. Radar machines can see radio waves, night vision cameras can see infra red light.

The only thing I know can escape a black hole is gravity itself. (I don't know what hawing radiation is).  If you could measure tiny changes in gravity around a black hole then you would be able generate a picture, however gravity always seems to crush large objects into the shape of a sphere so that is probably what we would see.

I often wonder why they didn't call it a black sphere because that is the shape it probably is.