Lifeboat Foundation

The most distant known object in the Solar System is now confirmed. FarFarOut, a large chunk of rock found in 2018 at a whopping distance of around 132 astronomical units from the Sun, has been studied and characterised, and we now know a lot more about it, and its orbit.

It’s about 400 kilometres (250 miles) across, which is on the low end of the dwarf planet scale, and initial observations suggest it has an average orbital distance of 101 astronomical units — that’s 101 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Since Pluto has an average orbital distance of around 39 astronomical units, FarFarOut is very, well, far out indeed. It has been given the provisional designation 2018 AG₃₇, and its proper name, in accordance with International Astronomical Union guidelines, is still pending.

The giant Martian sandstorm of 2018 wasn’t just a wild ride — it also gave us a previously undetected gas in the planet’s atmosphere. For the first time, the ExoMars orbiter sampled traces of hydrogen chloride, composed of a hydrogen and a chlorine atom.

This gas presents Mars scientists with a new mystery to solve: how it got there.

“We’ve discovered hydrogen chloride for the first time on Mars,” said physicist Kevin Olsen of the University of Oxford in the UK.

The UAE’s first interplanetary mission could help solve the mystery of what happened to the Martian atmosphere.

Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb thinks the astronomical research community needs to get with the program and refocus its efforts on finding and identifying intelligent life in the cosmos.

Researchers said Wednesday they had observed water vapour escaping high up in the thin atmosphere of Mars, offering tantalising new clues as to whether the Red Planet could have once hosted life.

In this special episode of Hello World, best-selling author and Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Ashlee Vance goes on a RV road trip through California in the midst of a pandemic and sweeping forest fires. Along the way, he hangs out with a Tesla co-founder who wants to recycle all the world’s batteries, some robotic farmers, a test pilot who almost lost his life and desert space-geeks building a lunar lander.

#HelloWorld #BloombergBusinessweek #California.

Continue reading “Pioneers in the Desert: A Tech-Infused Road Trip” »

NASA’s rover must plow through Mars’ atmosphere at supersonic speeds, deploy a parachute to slow itself, then fly to safety with a jetpack.

A Chinese spacecraft appears poised to enter orbit around Mars, one day after an orbiter from the United Arab Emirates did so and about a week ahead of an American attempt to put down another spacecraft on the surface of the red planet.

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The UAE’s orbiter reaches Mars on Tuesday, followed less than 24 hours later by China’s orbiter-rover combo. NASA’s Perseverance rover is due to land on February 18.

Continue reading “Next stop Mars: Three spacecraft arriving at Red Planet from tomorrow” »