General science thread

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Ceres unlike other solar bodies such as Europa and Earth has no source of internal heat. [not] from the decay of radioactive materials in the core [and not] Tidal heating. [The presence of liquid water] emphasizes the power of salts in sustaining the presence of liquid water and reveals a wealth of activity on a cold desolate proto-planet.

Quote: rxwine

I watch Dr. Becky. She got real excited at the launch and first pic from James Web telescope. Waiting to see her first analysis of the first focused pictures from Webb



There's another astronomy related channel with a guy I click on when I see it in the side bar, but I'm not even sure who it is.

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To handle all these challenges, the Voyagers, each about the size of an old Volkswagen Beetle, needed some onboard intelligence. So NASA's engineers equipped the vehicles' computers with 69 kilobytes of memory, less than a hundred thousandth the capacity of a typical smartphone. In fact, the smartphone comparison is not quite right. “The Voyager computers have less memory than the key fob that opens your car door,” Spilker says. All the data collected by the spacecraft instruments would be stored on eight-track tape recorders and then sent back to Earth by a 23-watt transmitter—about the power level of a refrigerator light bulb. To compensate for the weak transmitter, both Voyagers carry 12-foot-wide dish antennas to send and receive signals.

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Airbus Zephyr S is a high-altitude uncrewed aerial drone, currently undergoing tests in the stratosphere over the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Every hour it sets a new record for the longest uncrewed flight. The Army’s Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space Cross-Functional Team–the experimentation wing of Army Futures Command–is currently flying the drone in a study on its power system, overall endurance and its capabilities in the stratosphere.\

The current record setting flight has nearly doubled its 2018 record test flight where it stayed in the air for 25 days and 23 hours. The Army’s APNT/Space CFT most recent statement on the tests was on July 21, when the drone had already set a new record.

The current, extremely long flight is full of first, including flying outside of the Yuma Proving Ground space and international territory, soaring over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, even making it all of the way to Belize. The War Zone reported on its aerial routes, noting it’s making some interesting patterns in the sky. The drone’s operators are drawing mathematical symbols and even spelling out letters with its flight paths.

Quote: odiousgambit

As Voyager II exited the Heliopause, about 11 billion miles from Earth, the temperature of space there surprised scientists.