The thread for space cadets!

[PlutonianEmpire]

Here's something interesting: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-406

For seven years, a mini-fridge-sized instrument aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft reliably investigated weather patterns swirling around Saturn; the hydrocarbon composition of the surface of Saturn's moon Titan; the aerosol layers of Titan's haze; and dirt mixing with ice in Saturn's rings. But this year the instrument -- the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) - has been testing out some new telescopic muscles.

This Friday, Dec. 21, the spectrometer will be tracking the path of Venus across the face of the sun from its perch in the Saturn system. Earthlings saw such a transit earlier this year, from June 5 to 6. But the observation in December will be the first time a spacecraft has tracked a transit of a planet in our solar system from beyond Earth orbit.

Cassini will collect data on the molecules in Venus's atmosphere as sunlight shines through it. But learning about Venus actually isn't the point of the observation. Scientists actually want to use the occasion to test the VIMS instrument's capacity for observing planets outside our solar system.

Pretty cool.

 

[peter grimes]

Scientists actually want to use the occasion to test the VIMS instrument's capacity for observing planets outside our solar system.

Whoa - they're planning on directly imaging extra-solar planets? They must be talking about putting this on Webb, right? I mean, there's no way they can image other planets with that specific instrument, right?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Whoa - they're planning on directly imaging extra-solar planets? They must be talking about putting this on Webb, right? I mean, there's no way they can image other planets with that specific instrument, right?

I think they mean for transits, radial velocities, or infrared, or something like that. (Edit: Re-read it; apparently, I think they were going to attempt to see how well they can study exoplanet atmospheres, if they can at all, via transit method with the instrument.)

(Edit 2: Deleted links, I got overhyped over absolutely nothing. Again.

)

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So they say that Venus went through a major resurfacing event ~500m years ago. The whole surface of Venus exploded in an orgy of volcanism and repaved everything. They think this contributed much to the atmosphere through outgassing and so on.

Do you think that it's possible Venus didn't used to be such an extreme hotbox before that? Do you think maybe it had oceans or possibly even life before everything went to hell? Or do you all think it was always a veritable hellhole?

 

[warpus]

It's just inside the goldilocks zone, right? I think a small part of its orbit isn't, but..

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

It does coincide with the rise of complex life here on Earth.....

Although I think I heard it was a recurring event, happening every 500 thousand years or so, and therefore, was always a hellhole.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I've heard that it's just inside the goldilocks zone and that it's just outside it, so I don't really know. I think that at the extremes of the zone, the planet's own make-up has much to do with whether or not it qualifies as in the zone. Mars, for instance, is probably just too small to be in the zone where it's at, but if it were bigger, it probably would have been habitable even today. If that makes any sense.

 

[peter grimes]

I would be very surprised if Terran life didn't inoculate some of the other bodies of our solar system.

Whether that whatever-it-was-that-was-alive managed to survive for any length of time is, I fear, unlikely. For one thing, this avenue of spreading is only available to the things that occupy the chemosynthetic base of a food chain. And they'd have to withstand the initial ejection event, travel vicissitudes, and final impact on, say, Venus.

And then be lucky enough to find itself in an environment similar enough to the rock it's been travelling on to not exhaust its supply of raw ingredients.

Very very unlikely, but given the nature of impacts and the very long stretch of time available (2,500,000,000 years at least!) I think the odds are actually good that it's happened at least once.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It does coincide with the rise of complex life here on Earth.....

Although I think I heard it was a recurring event, happening every 500 thousand years or so, and therefore, was always a hellhole.

Well I don't think it's happened since the last one 500m years ago...but I'll have to check on whether that was 500k or 500m years ago. I have heard people theorize that however often it happens, that it is cyclical. The thinking is that due to a lack of plate tectonics, the mantle has no way of releasing heat and thus it just builds and builds until the surface cracks open everywhere all at once. I do think it's just a hypothesis though, I can't imagine anyone having direct evidence to prove or support that but I could be wrong.

I would be very surprised if Terran life didn't inoculate some of the other bodies of our solar system.

Whether that whatever-it-was-that-was-alive managed to survive for any length of time is, I fear, unlikely. For one thing, this avenue of spreading is only available to the things that occupy the chemosynthetic base of a food chain. And they'd have to withstand the initial ejection event, travel vicissitudes, and final impact on, say, Venus.

And then be lucky enough to find itself in an environment similar enough to the rock it's been travelling on to not exhaust its supply of raw ingredients.

Very very unlikely, but given the nature of impacts and the very long stretch of time available (2,500,000,000 years at least!) I think the odds are actually good that it's happened at least once.

I agree with you, but I'd find it much more interesting if life arose entirely seperately on other planets within the solar system. That's neither here nor there though.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

I've heard that it's just inside the goldilocks zone and that it's just outside it, so I don't really know. I think that at the extremes of the zone, the planet's own make-up has much to do with whether or not it qualifies as in the zone. Mars, for instance, is probably just too small to be in the zone where it's at, but if it were bigger, it probably would have been habitable even today. If that makes any sense.

Oh yeah, that reminds me of a personal add-on I made for celestia* a while back, depicting a "what-if" scenario of Mars being much bigger - about the size of Earth - and having its own biosphere and sapient civilization at about the same tech stage as us.

Complete with Phobos and Deimos being about Luna-sized.

*I didn't make it a link this time because I expect you guys to not make a pony reference.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I had no idea the word celestia was in any way associated with MLP until your post.

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

I had no idea the word celestia was in any way associated with MLP until your post.

Yeah, because apparently, there's a character with the same name on the show.

And some of the bronies here decided to make a little joke out of it. Resulting me in applying a link to the space software for the word.

 

[peter grimes]

Oh yeah, that reminds me of a personal add-on I made for celestia* a while back, depicting a "what-if" scenario of Mars being much bigger - about the size of Earth - and having its own biosphere and sapient civilization at about the same tech stage as us.

Wait, I think I may not understand exactly what Celestia is.

I thought it was sort of like a Google Sky map visualizer. But you can customize things?

Then what?

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

Wait, I think I may not understand exactly what Celestia is.

I thought it was sort of like a Google Sky map visualizer. But you can customize things?

Then what?

Ooh, advertising time. ( )

Celestia.

 

[Winner]

So they say that Venus went through a major resurfacing event ~500m years ago. The whole surface of Venus exploded in an orgy of volcanism and repaved everything. They think this contributed much to the atmosphere through outgassing and so on.

Do you think that it's possible Venus didn't used to be such an extreme hotbox before that? Do you think maybe it had oceans or possibly even life before everything went to hell? Or do you all think it was always a veritable hellhole?

AFAIK the theory is that Venus was originally (3-4 billion years ago) an ocean planet (though the disagreement is whether it was an ocean of hot pressurized water, or a more tepid Earth-like one), which later lost most of its water due to its dissociation by the more intense UV radiation.

It is possible that while it still had water, it also had plate tectonics. If it had had it, it ceased when it lost the oceans. Since then, if the resurfacing theory is correct, the heat periodically keeps building up inside the planet and being released in a cataclysmic volcanic periods.

There may still be geological evidence in some places on the Venusian surface which can answer these questions. I suggest we send probes to find it.

I've heard that it's just inside the goldilocks zone and that it's just outside it, so I don't really know. I think that at the extremes of the zone, the planet's own make-up has much to do with whether or not it qualifies as in the zone. Mars, for instance, is probably just too small to be in the zone where it's at, but if it were bigger, it probably would have been habitable even today. If that makes any sense.

Yes. The habitable zone (I really hate the other term for some reason) is probably far more sharply limited on the inward side - it's easier to deal with the lack of insolation that an excess of it. Moreover, the habitable zone boundaries are moving outward due to the growing energy output of our Sun. It is very possible in my opinion that when Earth and Venus formed, both were within the zone. As the solar output grew in the first 3 billion years of the planets' existence, the inner edge of the habitable zone moved past Venus' orbit and the planet lost its water.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Thanks for the info.

I suggest we send probes everywhere to find everything. Why don't we nationalize every major league sports industry, cannablize them and sell of their assets and use it to fund space exploration? Sounds like a plan if I say so myself.

 

[Winner]

Thanks for the info.

I suggest we send probes everywhere to find everything. Why don't we nationalize every major league sports industry, cannablize them and sell of their assets and use it to fund space exploration? Sounds like a plan if I say so myself.

I am with you on that. Especially football (both the European and the American variety).

Sampling Venus' rocks will be hard as hell, though (literally). I'd say the degree of complexity will be at least an order of magnitude greater than with the Mars probes. I've seen proposals to send rovers to Venus, but they'd have to be extremely sturdy to survive the surface conditions for more than a few hours, which is of course entirely insufficient to make any decent survey.

 

[Syno]

You can now apply to a Mars Colony Pioneer.

If you think you have the right stuff to help colonize Mars, you'll soon get your chance to prove it.

The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One, which hopes to put the first boots on the Red Planet in 2023, released its basic astronaut requirements on Jan. 8, setting the stage for a televised global selection process that will begin later this year.

Mars One isn't zeroing in on scientists or former fighter pilots; anyone who is at least 18 years old can apply to become a Mars colony pioneer. The most important criteria, officials say, are intelligence, good mental and physical health and dedication to the project, as astronauts will undergo eight years of training before launch.

"Gone are the days when bravery and the number of hours flying a supersonic jet were the top criteria," Norbert Kraft, Mars One's chief medical director and a former NASA researcher, said in a statement. "Now, we are more concerned with how well each astronaut works and lives with the others, in the long journey from Earth to Mars and for a lifetime of challenges ahead."

Mars One plans to launch a series of robotic cargo missions between 2016 and 2021, which will build a habitable Red Planet outpost ahead of the arrival of the first four colonists in 2023. More settlers will arrive every two years after that. There are no plans to return the pioneers to Earth.

My health wouldn't let me do this. This entire operation will probably be a bust. But I am... Very interested in this.

 

[warpus]

I would go on such a mission and would right away try to get everyone to form ideologically-based groups.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'd go too and I'd join whatever ideologically-based group that warpus leads. Then I'd push to disenfranchise the other groups and possible exterminate them for bad behavior.

But seriously, I'd go right now in a heart beat. How do you prove you are 'smart' to them?