With NASA announcing their streaming service NASA+ and also announcing it’s going to be free and also ad free, I’d just like to appreciate the lengths they go to make scientific knowledge and exploration as available as they possibly can.
There's more info at this link. Gosh I'm excited about this.
Hilariously funny that they let the guy known for wandering off without warning to look at birds was allowed to do this
Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by New Horizon team. Make sure you share this, because erasing women’s achievements in science and history is a tradition. Happens every day.
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70 seconds over 9 years and 3 billion miles…
…I just… Damn
Launch to Pluto flyby for New Horizons took 3,580 days, and she was off by 70 seconds. That’s like… That’s an error of 0.000000226%.
That’s fucking insane.
That’s not even a rounding error!
Thank you for putting words & numbers to my awe of her precision.
Thank you for putting
words & numbers to my awe
of her precision.
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
3 BILLION MILES
I wanna be THAT good at math 🤩
honestly i’d guess that to be a floating point precision error
Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1
The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.
So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.
So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.
Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.
And the probe is working again.
From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.
Skeletor has forever destroyed our ability to come up with voices for skeleton characters.
this is like saying NASA has forever destroyed our ability to wonder what it's like on the moon. like we can still use our powers of imagination if we want to but the question's pretty much fucking settled.
nasa: we're going to shoot three rockets directly at the sun during the total eclipse. for study and research purposes.
me: oh cool
nasa: we have named the rockets apep. this stands for atmospheric perturbations [in the] eclipse path.
me: oh cool
nasa: apep is also the ancient egyptian deity of chaos and darkness, who ceaselessly seeks to extinguish the sun. we launch these rockets directly at the sun in the name of apep.
me: oh... cool?
NASA advertising "do you want to be an astronaut" to tumblr users surely means something. What have you found out there, NASA? What have you found that you believe tumblr users, specifically, are best equipped to handle?
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will travel through Mexico, cross the United States from Texas to Maine, and exit North America along Canada’s Atlantic coast. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth, completely blocking the face of the Sun. The sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk.
Weather permitting, people throughout most of North and Central America, including all of the contiguous United States, will be able to view at least a partial solar eclipse. A partial solar eclipse is when the Moon only covers part of the Sun. People in Hawaii and parts of Alaska will also experience a partial solar eclipse. Click here to learn more about when and where the solar eclipse will be visible: go.nasa.gov/Eclipse2024Map
Not in the path of the eclipse? Join us online to watch the eclipse with NASA. Set a reminder to watch live: https://go.nasa.gov/3V2CQML
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Close up of Pluto from the New Horizons space probe.
Will be adding several more photos to this same post
After the Apollo 1 fire killed astronauts trapped inside, NASA designed the space shuttle's hatch to open easily from the inside. This is helpful if you're stuck on the launchpad and the craft has caught fire. It is less helpful if one of your crewmates decides they've had enough and opens it while you're in orbit. There have been two uncomfortable instances where mission commanders worried a crewmember under mental strain might attempt that. So, NASA added the option for the commander to lock the hatch if they feel it's necessary. While that adds some peace of mind, the tradeoff is everyone on the crew can now see that the commander doesn't trust someone on board not to space them. While the space shuttle is no longer in use, some private missions have a similar option. Personally, if I was on a space mission with a bunch of tourists, I'd want the padlock on.
While trying to get more context for a footnote, I stumbled upon an even more delightful tidbit, which is that a scientist in the 1960s decided to try to make a substance for spaceflights that could function either as building material or emergency rations. The mixture included powdered milk, cornstarch, flour, banana flakes, and hominy grits and was baked in a hydraulic press under 3000 pounds of pressure. It could be cut and drilled and was harder than Masonite. If you soaked it for several hours allegedly it tasted like breakfast cereal. To the shock of no one, this did not pan out. However I demand a scifi show where a crew gets stranded and immediately starts eating the furniture.
feeling normal about this also
That's a Questgiver Babes
The James Webb Space Telescope has just completed a successful first year of science. Let’s celebrate by seeing the birth of Sun-like stars in this brand-new image from the Webb telescope!
This is a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. At 390 light-years away, it's the closest star-forming region to Earth. There are around 50 young stars here, all of them similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. Huge red bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right. These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world. In contrast, the star S1 has carved out a glowing cave of dust in the lower half of the image. It is the only star in the image that is significantly more massive than the Sun.
Thanks to Webb’s sensitive instruments, we get to witness moments like this at the beginning of a star’s life. One year in, Webb’s science mission is only just getting started. The second year of observations has already been selected, with plans to build on an exciting first year that exceeded expectations. Here’s to many more years of scientific discovery with Webb.
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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)
as a child being told "the moon controls the tides" with no additional explanation was like. oh okay. you want me to believe in magic? you're talking about magic right now? okay. fine
sorry. only semi-related but i simply wasn't ready for "the sun is a distant gorilla". thank you NASA
Not me crying over the "Good Night Oppy" documentary on Prime.
I logged in to watch Good Omens and got completely sidetracked and now I'm having emotions over robots and Space. Again.
They engineers keep calling Opportunity "my child" and I'm 😭
Oh no. Well. I guess I'll be spending part of tomorrow crying as well, because there's no way I'm not watching that.
Listen. They played music to the rovers every "morning" to wake them up because it's a tradition to wake astronauts up with music.
And the way their voices all wobbled when they thought Spirit was dead and she came back to life listening to ABBA.
"So when you're near me, darling Can't you hear me, S.O.S.? The love you gave me Nothing else can save me, S.O.S."
I AM UNWELL.
The grief when Spirit died. Ugh. My heart.
They keep talking about Opportunity like she's human. Like her front arm had "arthritis" and her wobbly wheels and "losing her memory," and how she'd go to sleep and forget everything she'd achieved before, all of her science data and how she was still their perfect child and kept going, I'm--
"We hadn't seen her in 14 years and there she was."
The sandstorm just hit and I'm not okay.
The final song they played to her was "I'll be seeing you" sung by Billie Holiday which ends:
"I'll find you In the morning sun And when the night is new I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you"
"Good night, Opportunity. Well done" 😭😭😭😭
Oh man 100/10. Ripped my heart out my chest and put it back in with faith in humanity restored. Fuck I love space robots and the humans who build them.
