The Space Stuff thread

We've lost a great mind with Stephen Hawkings. He will be missed.

After just over nine years in flight, looking deep into the Milky Way Galaxy, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is nearing its end. Having survived numerous potential knockouts, from cosmic ray blasts to mechanical failures, Kepler is almost out of fuel and is expected to only have a few months worth left, marking the end of an extremely successful mission.

During its nearly decade-long operation, the Kepler Space Telescope has found over 2,500 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars, with over another 2,500 more still waiting to be confirmed. 30 of these confirmed exoplanets are within habitable zones, where liquid water could exist like on Earth.

Let’s take a look back at some of the amazing discoveries made using the Kepler Space Telescope over the past 9 years.

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope is almost out of fuel : theCHIVE

We Still Don’t Know How to Deal With Moon Dust

If we’re going back to the moon, we’re going to need to learn how to deal with the dust.

The dust is so frustrating, in part, because its so small. Lunar dust measures in at just 70 micrometers, or 0.07 millimeters, in diameter on average. That’s around the size of the very finest grains of sand, or silt. To add to the annoyance, lunar dust carries a slight electric charge, a result of solar radiation stripping electrons away, and that property serves to make the dust even stickier. Its structure doesn’t help, either. Due to the lack of wind-swept erosion, the grains are barbed and jagged, which helps them stick to everything.

We Still Dont Know How to Deal With Moon Dust

Borg 386 said:

We Still Don’t Know How to Deal With Moon Dust



We Still Dont Know How to Deal With Moon Dust

Bring Tony Montana along to clean it up?

“My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air and sea,” Trump said. “We may even have a space force — develop another one, space force. We have the Air Force, we’ll have the space force.”

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Tiangong-1 launched in 2011. Now it's coming home at very high speeds without a steering wheel in the next week or two.

We now have a better idea of when China's space station known as "Heavenly Palace 1" will slam into Earth's atmosphere and perhaps make it, in part, all the way to the surface of our planet.

The latest updates from multiple orbit watchers -- including the European Space Agency, the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies and academic researchers -- have narrowed the window for Tiangong-1's entry to somewhere around April 1, plus or minus about four days.

Chinese space station Tiangong-1 could crash to Earth next week - CNET

The yellow bands indicate the areas where Tiangong-1 is most likely to re-enter the atmosphere. Green is less likely and blue is unlikely.

An amateur rocket-maker finally launched himself off Earth. Now to prove it’s flat …

Flat-earther Mike Hughes launches his homemade rocket above the Mojave Desert - The Washington Post

A Guy

Better watch out for him in your next state election. LOL

A Guy said:

An amateur rocket-maker finally launched himself off Earth. Now to prove it’s flat …

Flat-earther Mike Hughes launches his homemade rocket above the Mojave Desert - The Washington Post

A Guy

His story pops up whenever he does something new, in my News & Interests bar at the bottom of Bing homepage.

2018 and he believes the earth is flat, Darwin would be proud

Everybody knows the Earth is a ball, and it's the universe that is flat(mathematically, not physically).