Space In General

Yard_Sale
Any of you guys follow this channel on YouTube.com?




Latest vid they just cane out with:





Came across it a couple years ago in bumper to bumper traffic. I feel like their explanations do a good job at splitting the baby between overly-complicated, and overly dumbing it down to teach to 4th graders.
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Well it is PBS, so there is a likelihood that these videos may find their way into classroom use (do they still do that anymore, or did that die out with the end of the VHS era? Oh god I'm old).

That said, it's a damn sight better than the recent flood tide of clickbaity, AI voiced "science" channels that are presenting information incompletely or just straight up incorrectly for the sake of driving up viewcounts and ad impressions.
 
EngieDiesel
Well it is PBS, so there is a likelihood that these videos may find their way into classroom use (do they still do that anymore, or did that die out with the end of the VHS era? Oh god I'm old).

That said, it's a damn sight better than the recent flood tide of clickbaity, AI voiced "science" channels that are presenting information incompletely or just straight up incorrectly for the sake of driving up viewcounts and ad impressions.
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Agreed. I don't do social media, but that crap always comes through on my YouTube.com page.

I was catching up on missed episodes only way home from work this morning, and the science behind this is rather thought provoking. I really enjoy Geography and Geology, but I never stopped to think how the "turnover" of Earth's crust would virtually eliminate all fossilized and sedimentary records of whatever was going on with Earth at the time.

 
The 3 Body Problem/Dark Forest/Death's End trilogy is worth reading if you're into this sort of stuff. There are a lot of very interesting ideas with regards to space, civilisational progress and conflict.
 
NASA's engineers have gotten Voyager 1 working again after it got stuck for some three months spouting gibberish. Which is quite the task, considering...

The time lag is a problem. A command from Earth takes 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and the same period is needed again for a response. This means a 45-hour wait to see what a given command might have done.

The availability of skills is also an issue. Many of the engineers who worked on the project - Voyager 1 launched in 1977 - are no longer around, and the team that remains is faced with trawling through reams of decades-old documents to deal with unanticipated issues arising today.
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nasa_voyager_probe.jpg
 
Imari
The 3 Body Problem/Dark Forest/Death's End trilogy is worth reading if you're into this sort of stuff. There are a lot of very interesting ideas with regards to space, civilisational progress and conflict.
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Per your recommendation, I went and ordered the set from Amazon. If it’s as good as I expect it to be, I’ll reorder in hardback like I’ve done most of my Stephen King collection 😎

Also, per the recommendation of my pals in the COTW thread, I downloaded the Doki Doki Literature Club title to my personal computer, since I hear it also has good writing too. Hopefully these 2 things will help me accomplish two of my Birthday Resolutions of starting to read actual real-life books again, and writing more 👍🏼
 
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I know this thread is dedicated to space, but I like earth’s history too.



Must be a slow news day when one of the mainstream media outlets decides to post an article about the Mt Toba eruption






I remember doing a deep dive into natural catastrophes on earth a few years back, and I came across another eruption that also knee-capped the human race’s rise to dominance. But I forget the name of the eruption, and I can’t seem to find anything about it via a quick 5 minute google.com web search
 
The coolest thing for me with the last total eclipse, was how unbelievably sharp my shadow was when walking about, as well as just the eerie color of the sky
 
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I got some shots of the eclipse last November, partial where I was. I'd love to experience totality again. I've been through one total solar eclipse in my life, but I just can't justify traveling, spending the money, and risking getting blown out by bad weather. It's too much effort for a maybe.
 
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I travelled from the UK to Austria to see a solar eclipse in 1999, luckily enough we had great weather and some spectacular views... well worth seeing, but also, it was a great little 3 day holiday too, even if we'd not seen the eclipse it would have been worth it, which made it easier to justify.
 
NASA is going to shoot some rockets at the eclipse. No, not to try and blow it up, silly. The purpose of this is to study how solar eclipses can affect the planet's ionosphere, which in turn affects radio signals and things that rely on them.

By cutting the Sun's energy off, an eclipse can disrupt communications – even after a short duration of daytime darkness – affecting radio waves, GPS signals, and satellite communications. Relying on satellites to detect ionosphere changes from an eclipse isn't practical because satellites may not be in the right place at the right time, so rockets are the best bet, says NASA.
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What was initially thought to be a meteorite that hit a home in Naples, FL on March 8, turns out to be part of a pallet of trashed batteries discarded from the ISS back in '21. NASA fully expected the pallet to burn completely, but a piece of it survived.
 
Ingenuity, the solar system's most awesome little copter, is unfortunately done flying. After some unknown event damaged its rotors, it's permanently grounded. The rest of it is still functioning though, so as long as it still has power it'll function as a "stationary testbed" to keep collecting data about Martian weather, which should prove very useful... whenever we manage to send someone up there to physically retrieve it, that is. Perseverance is still doing its thing though, so the mission to keep invading the little green men's privacy continues.

But in better spacecopter news, the mission to send the Dragonfly rotorcraft to Saturn's moon Titan has been confirmed, and is expected to launch around 2028. The last time we sent something out that way was the Cassini orbiter, which arrived all the way back in 2004.
 
Apparently a geo-magnetic storm is expected today so do whatever you need to in the event of one.
 
We have people here posting northern lights images last night from northern Florida!!! Local TV station is collecting contributed images. I didn't even try because nothing said they'd get this far south, but I'll have a look tonight for sure! I've never had the chance to see them, probably never will again, as I'm in my upper 60s and live in... well, Florida.
 
Mission Control in the '60s:
1717690570383.png


Mission Control today:
1717690589863.png


Technology aside, I think all the visible ashtrays in the first picture are the real indicator of how much times have changed.
 

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