Other Than Mars Thread

Quote: Pacomartin

So if we can't figure out how to feed the starving billions, we could figure out how to humanely sterilize them so we could get a population we could feed.

Quote:

As NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft zips past a small, distant icy world early on New Year’s Day, at 12:33 a.m. Eastern time, there will still be a nagging question for people working on the mission: Did the spacecraft’s cameras get the shot?
New Horizons collected a wealth of fascinating pictures and data on Pluto when it flew by in 2015. Now it is set to speed past another object in the solar system’s mysterious Kuiper belt region, nicknamed Ultima Thule, which should yield clues about the early days of the solar system.

Getting the flyby right at a speed of 31,500 miles per hour is a challenging task that has taken years of planning. Despite the best efforts, Ultima Thule remains almost a complete mystery to the New Horizons’ managers and everyone else less than a day before the flyby.

“We don’t know a thing about MU69,” said S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator for the mission, referring to 2014 MU69, Ultima Thule’s official designation here at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is operating the mission. “We’ve never in the history of spaceflight gone to a target we knew less about. It’s remarkable that we are on the verge of learning a great deal about it.”

Getting the shot will require taking many pictures of empty space. That’s necessary to ensure that at least some of the photographs do include the target the scientists are aiming to study.

Imagine driving along the New Jersey Turnpike, hoping to take a picture of the Manhattan skyline. But you don’t get to look through the camera viewfinder. In fact, you have to decide days in advance when you’re going to press the shutter button. Worse, you’re not exactly sure where Manhattan is.

Quote:

Next Wednesday, at several press briefings around the world, scientists will apparently unveil humanity's first-ever photo of a black hole, the European Space Agency said in a statement. Specifically, the photo will be of "Sagittarius A," the supermassive black hole that's at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

Quote: same article

the black hole at the center of our galaxy is "shrouded in a thick cloud of dust and gas"

Quote: first link

100 bags of feces and urine [were] left behind by American astronauts during the Apollo lunar landings from 1969-1972

Quote: odiousgambit

Naturally the stuck-as-teenager part of my brain latched on to the poop thing.