Our time with Pluto may have come to end for now, but NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft still has a few parting shots for us. The probe sent back these breathtaking photographs of Pluto in even higher resolution, as well as one final image of the planet in silhouette. These are the last images we’ll get from Pluto until September, as it will take NASA a few months to downlink the bulk of the data gathered by the spacecraft.
One thing you don’t expect when planning a nine-year mission to the most distant planet in our solar system is the eventuality that Pluto might not be a planet once you got there.
Yet that’s exactly what went down in 2006. That January, NASA launched its unmanned New Horizons probe, a baby grand piano-sized, 1,054-pound spacecraft, on the first-ever route to Pluto. Then, in August 2006, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to the diminutive status of “dwarf planet.”
The Leap is a short film from Karel van Bellingen that takes place decades from now, where interstellar travel has opened up access to a new world, but only for a select few who can afford the journey. This is a film that packs a lot in to just half an hour.
After a journey of over nine years, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is finally close enough to discern surface features on the cold, dwarf planet.
By studying bears’ months-long lethargy, scientists may have stumbled on a way to prevent astronauts’ bone loss.
Posted in space travel
We have no choice BUT to become an interstellar species if we want to survive, even into the near future.
“The first marketable, personal computers in the late 70s came about after almost 40 years of research and development, which created the technology at public expense. One of the peculiarities, if you’d like, of our system of innovation and development is that it’s radically anti-capitalist in many ways…People who paid taxes in the 50s and 60s may not have known it, but they were creating what was ultimately marketed by Apple. But they don’t get any of the profit. I think that’s a social pathology and the same carries over into space.” Read more
“We (“we” meaning robots, at least at first) need to do lots of lunar experiments. What’s the nature of the Moon’s poles? Where is the water stored? We can answer those questions using robots—a couple of surface rovers, like Curiosity on Mars. These rovers can measure temperatures, slopes, surface properties, and the measurements of existing ice. Once we figure out a way to locate this vital resource on the Moon, the real progress can begin.” Read more
