That’s what they said about Hiroshima.
If you’re not sick of eclipse photos yet, here’s one – taken from the perspective of the moon
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Nah, it’s because of a badly installed ball joint on a Russian Soyuz rocket booster stage something like five years or more ago. Remember the launch abort? The battery pallet wasn’t supposed to be just tossed overboard, it was intended to make a controlled deorbit aboard a Japanese HTV. But the astronaut/cosmonauts trained to do the space walk needed for the transfer of the pallet from the ISS main truss to the HTV were stuck back on the ground.
It’s almost crazy how far in advance something seemingly as simple as taking out the trash has to be planned, and how a relatively small error can have multiple, significant consequences years later.
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Yes, and Hiroshima wasn’t an accident.
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Now this sounds really exciting. NASA is planning to send a drone-like craft to explore the surface Saturn’s moon Titan .
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I’m a little confused. The Huygens probe lasted a very short time on Titan. Around four hours from the initial descent, I believe. Why would this last longer? Or would it not?
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The Cassini/Huygens mission was to study Saturn and Titan. Plunging it into Tian’s atmosphere at the end was always the plan. They knew it would burn up (also part of the plan).
It looks like this drone is being designed to withstand the harsh atmosphere (that we only know about thanks to Huygens) and do more and better research.
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So what made it last such a short time on the surface was more about how it fared on the way down?
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Mostly. If I’m remembering that mission right, the idea was the probe was tethered while it studied Titan’s atmosphere, and then they cut the tether so it would “land”. The hope was it would maybe ‘see’ the surface during descent and last a few minutes once on the surface. The fact it lasted a little over an hour was amazing.
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Huygens was only moving 17km/h when it touched down - it bounced a little (see the first video here), but that was expected.
Its main limitation that meant it only lasted four hours was that its batteries gave out (it was built with mid-1990s technology after all).
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Here’s a better explanation of what’s going on. I always trust NASA over other random sites (especially one that has a disclaimer that the info they share may not be accurate).
https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2024/02/27/view-nova-explosion-new-star-in-northern-crown/
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Huygens was primarily an atmospheric descender probe. After atmospheric entry it deployed a series of parachutes to slow itself and just float down on the last one, taking measurements and pictures as it went. Its data was streamed live to Cassini as long as it had line of sight, which was then relayed back to Earth. Though there was a radio carrier for Earth to observe directly for radiometric measurements. Landing was always going to be bonus science.
Huygens had traditional chemical batteries, and was never intended to operate more than the few hours it spent descending through Titan’s atmosphere.
Dragonfly, on the other hand, will be a flying lander powered by a radiothermal electric generator (RTG). The RTG can’t generate enough power for flight, so will instead charge batteries, very much like Ingenuity did with its solar panel. Its first flight will be a nailbiter — it will drop from its aeroshell after entry and parachute descent to land under its own power!
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NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
After receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in five months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).
I’m making a note here, “Huge success!”
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Some more good news; Dragonfly has been fully funded unless Congress pulls the rug out from under it.
One open question: what will it launch on? Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, Ariane 6, New Glenn, Starship, or SLS (not holding my breath on that last one)?
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I can’t wait for the headlines.
Dragonfly discovers Titanic plankton!
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In the (paraphrased) words of Mike from The Incredible Melting Man, “Just blow up and go supernova!”
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Oh cool i didnt know about this thread. I wonder what it would look like for us
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Overall about as bright as the moon at first/last quarter, but concentrated into a single point so a lot more intense. It’d cast shadows in daylight.
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