Other Than Mars Thread

Quote: Ayecarumba

It would be cool to have the Moon buggy, or the flag Neil Armstrong left there in my backyard.

I'm afraid it's a French flag now =/

Quote: Face

I'm afraid it's a French flag now =/

Hehe... Is this confirmed? Even better that I bring it home. I'll replace it with something more durable.

I thought it was made of foil or something built to last?

Quote:

Add this to the list of reasons Venus is a blistering hellscape: not only is the surface hot enough to melt lead, not only will the sulfuric acid rainstorms burn gaping holes in your partially-melted spaceship, it’s got a monstrous electric wind that appears to have helped strip all the water out of the atmosphere.

Electric wind? Well, that's the last straw. We are not welcome.

http://gizmodo.com/the-atmosphere-of-venus-is-more-terrifying-than-we-imag-1782173357

Quote: rxwine

Electric wind? Well, that's the last straw. We are not welcome.

Well, you take the Moon and move it to Venus. You use its mass to 1) strip away some (A LOT!!) of the atmosphere and 2) speed up it's rotation (I think. I'm not sure that can actually be done). All this assuming there is no fresh source of atmosphere, say like ongoing volcanic action.

It would take centuries, but we might wind up with a large, habitable world.

Of course you also need to terraform it and perhaps bring water in (there's plenty in Saturn's rings), which would take anywhere from decades to centuries, btu it can overlap with some of the other work required on Venus.

Oh, Earth cannot be left without the Moon. So before you move the Moon, you take Europa, assuming there's no life on or in it, and move it towards Earth. You'd have to balance the two satellites so as not to disturb the Earth's tides and axis, of course. Europa is bigger and more massive, so it would have to orbit somewhat farther away. The upside is you'll have a waterlogged satellite, perhaps with some kind of atmosphere, which won't boil away for a few centuries. Longer if you can shield the oceans from the Sun. The downside is we may no longer enjoy total Solar eclipses (but that was a temporary condition anyway).

Removing Europa would affect Jupiter and its satellite system, but who cares about that?

As to how one can move two massive satellites around for a remodeling job, well, that's another matter altogether. Some form of direct propulsion, I think, as a gravitational tug would be even more massive.

Quote:

NASA's Juno probe is only one week away from its arrival at Jupiter, where it will execute a daring maneuver in order to get closer to the giant planet than any other spacecraft in history.

Getting up-close and personal with Jupiter is a serious challenge for space probes, because the Jovian giant is surrounded by a belt of very intense radiation that can quickly fry most spacecraft electronics. So rather than orbiting the planet, Juno will make a series of 37 loops between Jupiter and the radiation ring.

July 4th, in case you're not doing anything that day.

http://www.space.com/33275-one-week-juno-arrives-at-jupiter.html

Quote: Ayecarumba

Hehe... Is this confirmed? Even better that I bring it home. I'll replace it with something more durable.

I thought it was made of foil or something built to last?

No atmosphere on ze moon. 'Fraid the sun done bleached it completely white.

Granted, I did nothing resembling research to confirm it, but I have plenty of evidence here under our own protective shell that stuff still bleaches pretty quickly. 50yrs with no protection checks out according to my own logic.

I dunno. If you can foot the bill, I'll go with to find out for sure.

"Conspiracy theory" Someone or something does not want us sending microcalorimeters into Space.

Quote:

Before Hitomi, there were two other attempts to send a microcalorimeter into space—and both ended in strange accidents. In 2000, a rocket mission that would have sent the first microcalorimeter into space exploded upon launch. In 2005, a microcalorimeter actually made it into space, but was destroyed by a coolant leak. It wasn’t until 2016 with Hitomi that a microcalorimeter was successfully launched long enough to take take measurements—only to be lost along with the entire satellite shortly after.

http://gizmodo.com/this-is-the-last-thing-japans-lost-black-hole-satellite-1783200724

Quote: rxwine

"Conspiracy theory" Someone or something does not want us sending microcalorimeters into Space.

No probe that ever reached Mars successfully has ever carried a microphone. Doesn't that sound sinister? :)

On other news, Juno made it safely to Jovian orbit.

What's not so well-known is that many of Jupiter's satellites are named after the one true god's Jupiter's/Zeus' mistresses. Juno was Jupiter's wife. Uh, oh!

Quote: Nareed

What's not so well-known is that many of Jupiter's satellites are named after the one true god's Jupiter's/Zeus' mistresses. Juno was Jupiter's wife. Uh, oh!

Further on that idea.

Quote:

Jupiter is said to have drawn a veil of clouds around himself to hide his, ah, transgressions. Only the goddess Juno could peer through the clouds to learn what Jupiter was up to. In the same vein, NASA's Juno spacecraft will give us our first good look below Jupiter's thick shroud of clouds this summer. We probably won't find a philandering deity down there, but the findings are sure to be astounding.

Makes perfect sense.

http://www.popsci.com/

Jupiter and other gas giant planets are said to be "failed stars" in that they just needed to be bigger and they would then have ignited and generated light.

Oops, I should have put that into "trivia you'll try hard to forget"