Image (Credit): View of the KPLO above the lunar surface. (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)
The grainy image above may remind you of some of the UFO images that circulated years ago. However, in this case, the image is from the Moon as captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
What you are seeing is a Korean spacecraft going thousands of miles per hour (hence the blurred, elongated image). Named the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), or the Danuri, the spacecraft is part of South Korea’s first lunar mission launched in August 2022. Korea is the seventh nation to send an orbiter to the Moon.
Below is an image of the KPLO minus the blurring speed. The spacecraft was designed to orbit the Moon for one year collecting data, though it is still going strong after hitting its year anniversary back in December. As part of its mission, it is carrying a NASA camera, the ShadowCam, to observe shadowed areas on the Moon.
The Moon is a busy place these days.
Image (Credit): Illustration of the KPLO. (The Korean Economic Daily)
For months now, the most distant spacecraft to Earth – Voyager 1 – has been talking gibberish on the interplanetary ‘radio’. The repetitive jumble of 1s and 0s it’s sending back to our planet, 24 billion kilometers (15 billion miles) away, has made no sense to scientists until now. Turns out, officials at NASA just needed to give the oh-so-distant craft a bit of a ‘poke’ to ask it how it was feeling. The system returned a software readout to Earth that scientists have now used to confirm about 3 percent of its memory is corrupted. Which is why turning the FDS on and off didn’t resolve the issue back in November of 2023.
Along with funding the commercial development of new rockets, Artemis moon landers and new spacesuits, NASA is pressing ahead with plans to buy an unpressurized moon rover that can carry astronauts, science payloads — or both — across the rugged terrain of the lunar south pole, officials said Wednesday. The agency announced contract awards to three companies to develop competing designs for a Lunar Terrain Vehicle, or LTV, similar in concept to the rovers that carried the last three Apollo crews across the moon’s surface more than 50 years ago.
After two decades of work, scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their collaborators are celebrating the completion of the LSST Camera. Once mounted on Vera C. Observatory’s Simonyi Survey Telescope, the 3200-megapixel camera will help researchers observe our Universe in unprecedented detail. During its ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, the LSST Camera will generate an enormous trove of data on the southern night sky that researchers will mine for new insights into dark energy, dark matter, the changing night sky, the Milky Way and our Solar System.
Image (Credit): TheTotal Solar Eclipse as seen in Houlton, Maine. (David Bowman of NASA Langley Research Center)
If you missed the Total Solar Eclipse or just want to see what it looked like in other parts of the country, NASA and other observatories have you covered. Check out the NASA video, “2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA (Telescope Feed),” showing the eclipse from Texas to Maine.
No good astronomical event happens without accompanying pain, or so it would seem given all of the news stories about tomorrow’s eclipse. We are hearing plenty of stories about overpriced hotels, traffic jams, and even the intervention of FEMA. Just wait until you hear all of the stories about people who paid a fortune to find the eclipse blocked by clouds.
Here are a few of the crazy headlines from the areas impacted by the pending eclipse:
As far as hotel rooms, The Guardian news story above states:
Amid the clamor for accommodation, one travel agency said it had been forced to rearrange lodging for more than 150 people after bookings made two years earlier at two Buffalo hotels were canceled. Rooms that had cost $129 to $159 were canceled and resold at $450 or more, according to Sugar Tours, owner, Chris Donnelly, who said it was “total price gouging”.
It is all pretty silly, but no one wants to be left out. NASA will have the better pictures and eclipse details, given its planned rocket launches, yet these folks need something for Facebook or Instagram.
I do not really care for the crowds, so I will await the press stories and NASA images. Nonetheless, for those who feel the need to be on the front lines, I wish them a safe trip with clear skies.
Image (Credit): Promotion for season two of For All Mankind. (Apple TV+)
While awaiting the return of the Star Trek and Star Wars televisions series (by the way, do not forget that the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery is slated to start tomorrow), I started to watch For All Mankind on Apple TV+. I am only halfway through season two, but I have enjoyed every minute so far. I am just surprised there has not been more press about this impressive series.
I was somewhat skeptical to start the series because I knew it was an alternate reality to our actual space program. Yet what I saw as a weakness was actually the show’s strength. The series re-imagines the space race with the Russians, having the U.S. set up a Moon base after the Russians are the first to step foot on the Moon. It just shows us what could have been if we did not stop the Apollo program 50 years ago and dither around until the Artemis program.
And while the series has plenty of action – almost as though your are watching multiple Apollo 13 movies – what makes it different is that it has heart. It is almost the Mad Men of NASA, showing the good and bad of that period in terms of human lives.
For All Mankind is honest about the period from the 1960s through the 1980s, showing that the real drama was right here on Earth as we dealt with Vietnam, racism, immigration, marital and family issues, and even a lesbian astronaut.
I did not expect all of this in one show, nor the superb acting that makes it all come to life. I am now hooked on the series, finding it strange that I already have nostalgia for an American lunar space program that never existed even though it could have.
The series continues with a Mars program in seasons 3 and 4, but I do not want to get ahead of myself. Let’s just say this other America gets to the Red Planet long before we do.
We are creating plenty of drama today with the real lunar program currently under way, as well as an eventual Mars program. It may in fact lead to some great television series down the line. I just hope we stick to the script and keep the current drama going for years to come.
