This episode reminds you to look up, look out, and reflect on what we see around us. Stories cover a weird white dwarf that is doing things our Sun may do billions of years from now, how satellite images can now be used to measure river flows here and on Mars, and Titan, as well as the emerging field of planetary geoarcheology. And also climate change. Buckle up, the news isn’t good.
Launching satellites from Earth is counter-productive. You’ve got to make a satellite that can handle Earth gravity, then the brutal flight to space, then deployment in orbit. What if you could build your spacecraft in space?
We try to avoid thinking about it, but spacecraft are machines that break down and eventually fail. Some can last for years, others decades, but in the end they’ll be gone forever.
If you’re in dark skies and look up, you’re certain to see a satellite. Lots of them. But how can you know which one you’re seeing, and how can you improve your chances of a sighting?
So a rock is a rock is a rock. Right? Across the solar system there are giant rocky asteroids and even “gianter” rocky moons. What is the difference between these two families of objects and where do they come from?
Cheap Astronomy uncovers some of the inconvenient truths of space travel.
The effects of recent increases in the number of space objects orbiting Earth and found that the proliferation of satellites contributes to a nearly ten percent increase over natural lighting of the night sky.
Time for news update. This week @WSHCrew discuss about Tess exoplanet, SN #11 goes boom, satellite light pollution, and neutrino observatory.
Space is really far away, so when you send a satellite out into the void, that’s pretty much the last you’re going to be able to work on it. And if anything goes wrong, too bad, you’re out a satellite. But a new test has shown that it’s possible to actually visit and fix a satellite in space. Maybe we don’t have to throw them all away after all.
Earth has mini-Moon! But it’s temporary. Will the universe expand forever? Can something come from nothing?