Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
In hopes of inspiring younger
generations, NASA created this series
of gorgeous retro travel posters that
encourage you to imagine a future
where common space travel is a
legitimate possibility. Source
It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.
I have no idea when this was originally posted, but NASA is working on their Europa mission RIGHT NOW to look for alien life! But get this, they theorize that because of the depth, gravity, and composition of the oceans, any organisms that lived there would be waaay bigger than aquatic life on Earth. So far everything’s going well with regards to their Europa mission so they should have a spacecraft on its way to look for giant sea monsters in space in only a few years. (The planned date is in the early 2020s.)
Looks like my negotiations worked. You’re welcome, humanity.
I’ve never been gripped with such cold terror and pure delight in my LIFE
explaining to an 18th century sailor that we’re looking for sea monsters in space.
the 18th century sailor would understand this perfectly well i feel. like honestly ‘there are oceans on celestial bodies and they have giant monsters in them’ feels like the normal assumption we all had to unlearn as space turned out to be mostly kinda boring.
next transformers continuity i want the autobots to accidentally out themselves to earth when they realize the probe they just shook the dust off of has cameras and one day NASA wakes up to find that opportunity rover’s back online and the first thing it recorded was a giant robot saying “well, fuck”
I want this to be Ironhide. But alternatively
Optimus
Gentle Dad Bot just wanted to wipe off that poor abandoned rover. The first thing humanity sees of Optimus is this bigass robot lightly patting Opportunity and saying “There you go, all clean. Oh, it started working? Ratchet look, he’s alive! :D”
this is so cute ówò
Optimus becomes a meme long before he ever reaches earth.
The leaked video becomes widely known as Metal Jesus welcomes Oppy to robot heaven or something similar.
If there is a Decepticon attack and Oppy is damaged, Megatron will be globally known as Metal Satan, and the millennials and gen Z’s will be mobilized against him before he ever sets foot on the planet.
ALTERNATELY
The Autobots bring Oppy onto their ship to help take care of him. He’s a curious little guy! Always rolling around and picking up random objects to examine.
He quickly captures everyone’s sparks.
Meanwhile the techs back at NASA are freaking out because they get to virtually explore an alien spaceship and EVERYTHING IS AMAZING!
I’m love this
“Metal Jesus” - there has never been a better description of Optimus ever
@theotherguysride
The little rover is so fragile, to a being who is used to the cold void of space, to the hostile radiations and dust clouds and ice storms between worlds.
What’s curious about this little machine is that it’s *built*. A civilization prodding gently at the secrets of their own solar system.
Optimus is *charmed and delighted* by the little thing, sending all it’s data back. Curious and gentle and it’s not really a *pet* so much as a companion. He speaks to it in its language all the time, as if it *is* a pet yes, but also.
Optimus Prime is a politician and a master of diplomacy. He’s absolutely gleefully monitoring all the internet data traffic that he can get his servos on, about this little robot and the joy of the people who built it.
This is his chance to be soft, and gentle with a fledgling species. To learn about them and their great history, no more than a single blink of Primus’ eye.
The Autobots tend to think that Optimus is kind of strange sometimes, but they do indulge him because more often than not, he’s *correct* in his strange actions.
And when they do make contact with Earth. It’s via that little robot and its friends, the ones they’ve plucked out of the dirt and ice, to be gently restored to functionality, their power sources rebuilt and their instruments retuned and their data transmission clearer than ever.
And they sing the little robot happy birthday, because it’s tradition and because this little ambassador deserves to be honored. Hello, Earth, Optimus says, his voice deep and gentle as he kneels before the little thing. “We’re the Autobots, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.”
(It’s not gentle, there’s plenty of bullshit in politics, but Optimus understands the politics and the people and how the two are not the same. The politicians are offered cool professionalism. The public is offered their honesty and personality and joy.)
Nasa, collectively, loses its shit.
And Opportunity sings itself Happy Birthday to a deep chorus of voices raised in the same kind of giddy exploratory love as the people who built the little drone.
(Someday, Opportunity and Curiosity will wobble their shaky way to their feet, beeping and squeaking and figuring out their voices, to say “I love you” to the people who have loved them first.)
Excuse me while I quietly implode from the wholesome
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg is a self proclaimed crafter. A week ago she made a stuffed dinosaur from scraps on the space station. The little T-rex is made form the lining of Russian food containers and the toy is stuffed with scraps from an old T-shirt. While many toys have flown into space, this is the first produced in space.
For bonus context, the actual quote they’re citing for this protest comes from Edgar Mitchell (1930-2016), who flew in Apollo 14 and was the sixth person to walk on the Moon.
The full quotation, referring to the experience of observing Earth from the Moon surface, is thus:
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’
Ronald Erwin McNair was born in 1950
in Lake City, South Carolina. He was
an American physicist and NASA astronaut and a man of many accomplishments. His favorite activities were running, boxing, football, playing cards, and cooking. When he was a 9-year-old boy he refused to leave
the segregated Lake City Public Library without being allowed to check out his books. When the police knew about the incident, they let him keep those books and 26 years later, after his death, Lake City Public library was named after him.
McNair had a bachelor degree of Science in Engineering Physics and a Ph.D. degree from MIT, in Physics. He gained national notoriety for his work in the field of laser physics. Above that, he was a 5th-degree black Karate instructor and jazz saxophonist.
Dr. Ronald E. McNair memorial in his hometown, Lake City, South Carolina.
Ronald McNair was killed on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded.
Don’t let people forget about such dedicated and notable Black men like Ronald Erwin McNair. His name deserves to be in all History books.
Our Spitzer Space
Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets
around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area
called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a
rocky planet.
Assisted
by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of
these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of
known planets in the system to seven.
This is
the FIRST time three terrestrial
planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure
both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.
All of
these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under
the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in
the habitable zone.
At about
40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is
relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located
outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as
exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are
planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.
In this
animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area
representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the
star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant
liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of
the star.
Using
Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and
developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh
and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.
For
comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would
be the size of a golf ball.
Based on
their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further
observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but
also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.
The sun at
the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool
that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer
than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1
planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.
The
planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was
standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see
geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes
appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.
The
planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of
the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual
day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those
on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and
extreme temperature changes.
Because most
TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one
another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto,
Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also
tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than
Jupiter, yet much warmer.
How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?
Spitzer,
an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited
for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light,
whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely
positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the
planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the
system.
Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some
light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can
determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long
it takes for the planet to orbit the star.
The
TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to
study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will
help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space
Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be
able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and
other components of a planet’s atmosphere.
At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like:
