Porcupine Trees.

[porcupinetrees]

gondola

(one day..)

[lab-note]

[explorationimages]

Cassini: Saturn’s tiny moon Atlas, which orbits just outside the planet’s A ring. Taken April 12th 2017. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

[porcupinetrees]

zzz.

[porcupinetrees]

sorry.

[porcupinetrees]

OK.

[porcupinetrees]

a e s t h e t i c

[seaweed]

[porcupinetrees]

drive forever in your direction

[porcupinetrees]

let me take you there

[porcupinetrees]

we live in a beautiful world

[skunkbear]

This is very cool and a pretty big deal. Find out why.

[benbarness]

  “i look up at the night sky, and i know that, yes,     we are part of this universe, we are in this universe,       but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that         t h e   u n i v e r s e   i s   i n   u s.           when i reflect on that fact, i look up—many people feel small,             because they’re small and the universe is big,               but i feel big, because                 m y   a t o m s   c a m e   f r o m   t h o s e   s t a r s.”

[porcupinetrees]

[thedemon-hauntedworld]

Saturn at Equinox How would Saturn look if its ring plane pointed right at the Sun? Before August of 2009 nobody knew. Every 15 years, as seen from Earth, Saturn’s rings point toward the Earth and appear to disappear. The disappearing rings are no longer a mystery — Saturn’s rings are known to be so thin and the Earth is so near the Sun that when the rings point toward the Sun, they also point nearly edge-on at the Earth. Fortunately, in this third millennium, humanity is advanced enough to have a spacecraft that can see the rings during equinox from the side. The Saturn-orbiting spacecraft, Cassini, was able to snap a series of unprecedented pictures of Saturn’s rings during equinox. A digital composite of 75 such images is shown above. The rings appear unusually dark, and a very thin ring shadow line can be made out on Saturn’s cloud-tops. Objects sticking out of the ring plane are brightly illuminated and cast long shadows. Inspection of these images may help humanity understand the specific sizes of Saturn’s ring particles and the general dynamics of orbital motion.

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

[porcupinetrees]

take it easy ziggy

[skunkbear]

Via his very first tweet, Jeff Bezos announced that his spaceflight company has accomplished a historic first. It sent a rocket to the edge of space and then landed that rocket’s main fuselage gently on dry land.

Most things humans have sent into space are pushed up there by a disposable rocket. Once the rockets do their job, they fall back to earth, usually worse for wear. They have to be rebuilt each time (though sometimes their parts can be reused). That’s an expensive process, especially if you are a private company hoping to bring tourists to space. Virgin Atlantic, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin all want to do just that. 

And now Blue Origin has paved the way, landing its rocket on its second attempt (the propulsion module was destroyed when they first tried). Here’s the video in full:

Elon Musk responded to the news on Twitter. He pointed out that it requires much greater speed to actually reach orbit than it does to reach the edge of space. (Phil Plait has some good analysis of the exchange over on his Bad Astronomy blog.)

Still, it’s a pretty amazing accomplishment. 

[for-all-mankind]

It should be kept in mind, though, that New Shepard is a suborbital rocket whereas SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is an orbital rocket. It’s much more difficult to safely land a vehicle returning from orbital velocities than it is a short hop to high altitude. In this regard, New Shepard is the world’s first reusable suborbital rocket, and that’s an astonishing achievement!