Intriguingly, the two structures are at the same distance from Earth, near the constellations of Boötes the Herdsman, raising the possibility that they are part of a connected cosmological system.
Not only that, but they look suspiciously concentric when plotted out on the sky. I know that's jumping pretty far out there into speculation land, but it'd really blow our theories a new one if there are patterns in the cosmos this large. Neat stuff.
Obviously NASA engineers don't ever go to Youtube, I'm sure looking up "asteroid sampler stuck" there would have been a number of hack DIYers who showed a variety of techniques they've used.
A very cool idea, however the headline is misleading - NASA has not even remotely committed to running this mission. They’ve selected the swarm project as one of 13 projects in their innovation program and given it up to $175k to study feasibility. That’s roughly a postdoc for two years. This is far, far from committing the hundreds of millions or billions needed for the execution of this mission.
The laser array is expensive but if it’s continuous and spread out enough you could keep sending newer probes. Or if it’s not continuous you could use it for different directions!
According to Scott Manley’s video on the topic the probes would need to arrive at the correct time in order to form what is effectively a huge phased array antenna.
Only then is the combined transmission power of these tiny probes large enough to be received on earth.
As Universe Today explored in a previous post, it would take between 19,000 and 81,000 years for a spacecraft to reach Proxima Centauri using conventional propulsion (or those that are feasible using current technology)
Acceleration is a bitch. A manned flight would take longer as it would have to cap it’s thrust to 1-1.5G or risk long term effects. Not to mention having to cancel ALLL of that thrust starting at the halfway point.
Biology is frustrating. We’re built for everything except leaving the immediate area around the sea we crawled out of. Anything beyond that and our bones melt into cancer.
Peregrine 1 is not NASA’s. NASA paid for some payloads on the lander, but the lander itself is from Astrobiotic. It’s an important distinction because it seems like people are trying to blame NASA for whatever went wrong.
That’s frustrating. Anyways, SpaceX! Turnaround record of 3 hours! Something fails, learn from it and launch another one. The ULA invests so much money and time, it makes every mechanical or propulsion failure seem catastrophic.
Farming out to the lowest bidder works well when the guidelines are strict and the client (gvmnt) does good QA.
Lots of stuff was farmed out in the apollo mission and it was still ok. Strict QA was noted as a very important factor in why that mission was a success.
You can read the case study by NASA about this, and you’ll see that they have 1 article just about QA and how they did testing, and another one about testing and deadlines
astronomy
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