The Space Stuff thread

Inspect? At first I thought, is that code for a salvage mission? but reading further I found:

On the 45^th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 17, the last mission to take humans to the surface of the Moon, commercial space company PTScientists formally pledges that it will respect this site of incredible historical interest. Announcing a partnership with For All Moonkind, Inc., PTScientists is making a public pledge of support for their initiative to safeguard sites of historical and cultural significance on the Moon and elsewhere in outer space.
http://ptscientists.com/ptscientists...-landing-site/

There is also interest in preserving the Russian and Chinese sites. My apologies for my cynicism.

Then I wasn't sure if it's a manned mission but that would be difficult if the payload is only a 100kg.

PTScientists has developed a spacecraft capable of delivering two rovers, or up to 100 kg of payload, to the lunar surface. We offer companies and academic institutions the opportunity to transport payload and experiments to the Moon at affordable prices.
http://ptscientists.com/about/

It's good to see anyone public or private going back. I often wonder; What would life be like if the powers that were had not stopped sending people to the Moon or deep space.

Thanks Borg.

Surprises in signal from cosmic dawn also hint at presence of dark matter.

Astronomers have for the first time spotted long-sought signals of light from the earliest stars ever to form in the Universe — around 180 million years after the Big Bang.

The signal is a fingerprint left on background radiation by hydrogen that absorbed some of this primordial light. The evidence hints that the gas that made up the early Universe was colder than predicted. This, physicists say, is a possible sign of dark matter’s influence. If confirmed, the discovery could mark the first time that dark matter has been detected through anything other than its gravitational effects.

“This is the first time we’ve seen any signal from this early in the Universe, aside from the afterglow of the Big Bang,” says Judd Bowman, an astronomer at Arizona State University in Tempe who led the work, which is published in Nature1 on 28 February. “If it’s true, this is major news,” says Saleem Zaroubi, a cosmologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Other teams will need to confirm the signal but, so far, the finding seems to be robust, he says. “It’s very exciting stuff. This is a period in the Universe’s history we know very little about.”

Astronomers detect light from the Universe’s first stars

Live in 7hrs 7minutes. Bad weather at the recovery area off the FL coast so their not planning on recovering the 1st stage.

Hispasat 30w-6 is on its way just showing trajectory now should have views for awhile yet. If you click the time bar at -35:05 you can see the launch, tap Live to return to the Live broadcast.

You'll have to go back to -35:05 as the time value grows the more the broadcast runs.

Payload deployed at 1:06am EST shows over.

NOTE: I gave up trying to track the time to show the start of the launch now it's at 17:00 something if you want to see it just run the mouse cursor on the time bar and click where you see it.

Good night, clear skies!

Stephen Hawking Dead: Famed Scientist Dies At 76 Scientist, Physicist (1942–2018)

“We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe,” Hawking once remarked, “and for that, I am extremely grateful.”
Stephen Hawking died Wednesday after complications due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. He was 76.

The world-renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist was best known for his work on black holes. Hawking theorized that, contrary to the prevailing scientific belief that black holes were inescapable for all forms of matter and energy, they actually emitted a form of radiation ― now known as Hawking radiation. He also played a key role in the mathematical effort to unify Einstein’s general theory of relativity with the emergent field of quantum physics.

Life is full of coincidences...

Stephen was born on January 8, 1942, on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death.

He died on the same day Albert Einstein was born March 14, 1879

And today is pi day (3/14).