What a great story. Thanks for the link!
I donât get this thing. They spent all the time/effort/money to launch it to Mars, and itâs just gonna run out of power after a couple days? They spent a bajillion dollars to send it to Mars, but couldnât spring the extra $10k or whatever for a solar panel? Just seems silly to not spend a tiny bit more money to make it capable of steadily sending back science for a much longer period of time if youâre already going through all the effort. I realize this is mostly a test run for sending an ESA rover in a few years, but again, itâs a tiny cost for invaluable dataâŠ
Well, the cost of making a solar panel is a tiny fraction of the cost of sending a solar panel to Mars. But thatâs not the real point. The bulk of the science on the ExoMars mission is in the orbiter. The lander is all about testing the landing system. A good proportion of the science instruments on the lander are meant to be used during the descent. And the surface package is obviously designed to do science that doesnât need long-term measurements.
1 minute to touchdown.
In the meantime, today in Dan Ryckert WTFery, apparently he thought until last week that the gas giants all had solid crusts. Not cores, crusts.
Ah bummer. Sounds like theyâre not getting any post landing signal. There was a short signal after the radio blackout before landing though.
Doesnât sound good for the lander, but the orbiter seems to be fine.
[quote]Early indications from both the radio signals captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), an experimental telescope array located near Pune, India, and from orbit by ESAâs Mars Express, suggested the module had successfully completed most steps of its 6-minute descent through the martian atmosphere. This included the deceleration through the atmosphere, and the parachute and heat shield deployment, for example.
But the signals recorded by both Pune and Mars Express stopped shortly before the module was expected to touchdown on the surface. Discrepancies between the two data sets are being analysed by experts at ESAâs space operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
The detailed telemetry recorded by the Trace Gas Orbiter was needed to better understand the situation. At the same time as Schiaparelliâs descent, the orbiter was performing a crucial âMars Orbit Insertionâ manoeuvre â which it completed successfully. These important data were recorded from Schiaparelli and beamed back to Earth in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The data have been partially analysed and confirm that the entry and descent stages occurred as expected, with events diverging from what was expected after the ejection of the back heat shield and parachute. This ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete.
The thrusters were confirmed to have been briefly activated although it seems likely that they switched off sooner than expected, at an altitude that is still to be determined.
âFollowing yesterdayâs events we have an impressive orbiter around Mars ready for science and for relay support for the ExoMars rover mission in 2020,â said Jan Wörner, ESAâs Director General.
âSchiaparelliâs primary role was to test European landing technologies. Recording the data during the descent was part of that, and it is important we can learn what happened, in order to prepare for the future.â
âIn terms of the Schiaparelli test module, we have data coming back that allow us to fully understand the steps that did occur, and why the soft landing did not occur,â said David Parker, ESAâs Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration.[/quote]
Dark Energy is fake?
Interesting that you should post that.
Spinning galaxies question existence of dark matter
But in work just accepted by Physical Review Letters, a team of American astronomers found a striking correlation between the visible matter (the stars and dust in galaxies) and its rotation speed. That means they can predict the rotation of galaxies â without invoking the dark stuff at all.
Wow, both of those seem like pretty big news. For some reason, I like these âback to the drawing boardâ events.
Yeah. Itâs early but they give me the feeling that a lot of whiteboards are being wiped clean right now. :)
I saw an episode of a science show where they went into some lab underground, like way underground, where some science dudes had set up this apparatus that was supposed to capture particles of dark matter. Imagine the amount of money spent on that underground base and this huge contraption all to try to capture something that doesnât exist.
In the final run from October 2014 to May 2016, at four times its original design sensitivity with 368 kg of liquid xenon, LUX has seen no signs of dark matter candidateâWIMPs.
Because itâs fake!
Thatâs still part of the scientific process, though. Sure, it seems silly now, but disproving theories is just as important as proving them. Sure, it would be nice to do it on paper rather than building huge underground bases. Doesnât always work out that way, though.
Beyond that it is the more important aspect of scientific testing. Publishing a paper that floats a new theory explaining something is the sexy âget headlines on TVâ type science. Important, yes, but only a first step. Peer reviewed experiments that check on a hypothesis and either validate, or disprove them, are so much more important.
As the, probably apocryphal, quote from Edison âI have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that wonât workâ. Disproving a theory is merely finding a way that does not work, allowing us to refocus on new ways that might.
Yep. Think of all the effort, that has gone into this theory, up until now. The Higgs Boson was like this. A theory that was ultimately proven. Good deal. If dark matter/energy is proven wrong, good deal.
I agree that experiments failing are important as well. In fact, speaking of failing experiments, they have already planned another, deeper, bigger underground base to try to capture dark matter. I wonder if theyâll rethink its funding?
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/09/26/lz-dark-matter-detector-moves-forward/
From what I understand these are two separate âregimesâ. Dark matter exists because standard models canât account for galactic rotation as observed.
Dark energy exists because of the observed accelerations of distant âquasarsâ seemed to imply a uniform scalar field which is hypothesized to be similar to one which supposedly existed during the âinflationaryâ phase of the universe.
Okay. I understand. The âdarkâ label had me conflating the two. Sloppy on my part. Thanks for the clarification.
Not exactly âhappening in spaceâ, but NASA folks having fun: #NASAPumpkin
An interactive look (link at bottom of article) at whatâs on the Voyager 1 & 2 golden records.
Needs more Chuck Berry.