SPACEX STARSHIP: INCREDIBLE ELON MUSK PHOTO SHOWS THE ROCKET’S TRUE SIZE

The Starship, SpaceX's under-development ship for sending humans to Mars, has been captured in a new image that reveals its sheer size.

Ahead of a planned static test fire, CEO Elon Musk shared an image on Twitter Monday of the underside of the rocket, with a single Raptor engine attached. The final ship is expected to use six engines, paired with a Super Heavy booster adding up to 37 more that's designed to help the ship leave Earth. From there, it will be set to reach the moon, Mars and beyond.

The "SN4" prototype in the image is set for a static test fire that fires the engine at a stationary position, a precursor to a potential "hop test" that would see the prototype jump in the air. That test may be postponed, however, after Musk posted on Twitter that a Monday morning static fire "seems unlikely right now."

"SN4 🔥 soon," Musk posted on Twitter. "Raptor looks so smōl."

It's the latest step toward a fully-reusable ship that can send humans to the moon, Mars and beyond, and Monday's photo also helps to demonstrate the sheer size of the ship in question. SpaceX has been upfront about the ship's size: a diameter of around 30 feet, a Starship measuring 164 feet high, a Super Heavy booster measuring around 229 feet, and a total system height of around 393 feet – figures that Musk has changed as the design has evolved.

But prototype models of the ship, under development at the Boca Chica facility in Texas, have been somewhat hard to visualize from far-away shots. Photos like these show the impressive design and indicate that it's clearly pretty big, but it's still hard to picture the exact size. This is a ship designed to transport 100 people into space – its size is one of its biggest breakthroughs.

But with this latest image of the Raptor attached to the underside, the viewer gets a clearer picture of the rocket's scale. Compare the Raptor attached there to the Raptors pictured in April, where the image shows a workspace with more common items that help visualize its size:

With the size of the Raptor in mind, the Starship's size becomes easier to understand.

Musk also revealed Monday that the Super Heavy, the booster designed to push the Starship out of the Earth's atmosphere, will pack 31 Raptor engines:

Will have 31 engines, not 37, no big fins and legs similar to ship. That thrust dome is the super hard part. Raptor SL thrust starts at 200 ton, but upgrades in the works for 250 ton.

At the firm's September 2019 event, Musk stated that the booster could use a minimum of 24 engines or a maximum of 37 engines, but 31 was likely the ideal figure. The official Starship website claims the booster will pack 37 engines, as demonstrated in an on-site mockup:

The Super Heavy booster visualized.

SpaceX

Musk's latest tweet, however, suggests the team is settling on 31 engines.

THE INVERSE ANALYSIS 

– The Starship is one huge machine, and Musk's tweet demonstrates its incredible size. The ship is expected to have around 1,000 cubic meters of cabin space, enough to send up to 100 humans into space with around two or three people per cabin. It's also designed to send over 150 tons of cargo into space with its alternate configuration. A more restricted 1,000-person version is expected to send people around the Earth within an hour. But while these numbers sound huge on paper, Monday's post brings home just how huge this ship is expected to be.µ

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

10-05-2020 om 21:17 geschreven door peter  

One of the many significant things that surfaced while I was doing research into my new book, The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy, was the connection between the military and strange, aerial phenomena. As just about everyone with an interest in UFOs will know, when the December 1980 events took place in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, U.K., they involved a significant number of military personnel. I have several other cases in my files that involve (a) a fairly large military presence; and (b) unusual things seen in the sky. Based on what I discovered during the course of that same research, I strongly suspect that Rendlesham was not the first fabricated UFO event in the U.K.

We’ll begin with the experience of Paul Greensill. His confrontation of the mystifying type happened back in 1962. He retired from the British Army in August of that year, after having served with 9 Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers. With a successful military career behind him, Greensill then enlisted in the Army Reserve. The Ministry of Defense provides background: “The Army Reserve is the largest of the Reserve Forces. The Army Reserve provides support to the Regular Army at home and overseas, and throughout its history almost every major operation has seen reservists operate alongside their Regular counterparts. Army Reserve Soldiers come from all walks of life and work part-time as soldiers for the British Army alongside full-time Regular soldiers.”

It was in August 1963 when Greensill and his comrades were taking part in a training-based military operation not too far from Ripon, Yorkshire, England. It was an exercise that was comprised of around forty personnel and that began shortly before midnight. Suddenly, a globe-like, dazzling ball of light shot across the skies and stopped over the amazed troops at a height of no more than about eighty or ninety feet. It hung silently in the sky for several minutes, after which it accelerated away at a fast speed. It then briefly returned, after which it yet again soared away into the starlit night. No official report was made, said Greensill. But, just about everyone was excitedly talking about the events the following day – which is not at all surprising. Despite the lack of official paperwork created, Greensill said that the higher-ups were keen to see what the regular troops thought of it all. Today, interestingly, 9 Parachute Squadron RE is stationed at Rock Barracks at…Woodbridge, Suffolk, where the December 1980 events occurred. What goes around certainly comes around, it would seem. With that case addressed, here’s another one for you.

Approximately two years before the dense trees of Rendlesham Forest were lit up, and lives were forever changed, something similar occurred on the U.K.’s expansive and wild Yorkshire Moors. Yes, Yorkshire, again. The witnesses were Mike Perrin and “Titch” Carvell. At the time, both men were with the British Army’s Royal Armored Corps. As the name of the RAC suggests, its role is to provide the armor capability of the Army, such as tanks. Perrin and Carvell were part of a military exercise on the moors when a decidedly strange intruder suddenly appeared on the scene – and right at the time the pair, in their Land Rover, was carefully negotiating a winding stretch of road. Suddenly, a circular, silvery thing appeared out of nowhere and hung in the air at a precarious level and at a distance of around 140-150 feet. Even at that distance they could hear a loud, “strange buzzing” coming from the object. Suddenly, the engine of the Land Rover died and the vehicle coasted to a stop. That was most assuredly not a good thing. In fact, it was a decidedly ominous thing.

Land Rover

Perrin said: “It was about the size of five Land Rovers and had portholes. Lights inside were flashing red and white. I tried to start our vehicle, but the engine was totally dead. We watched the UFO for five minutes, then it shot off and all the power returned to our engine. It’s Army policy to dismiss UFO reports, but when we went back to the area next morning with a sergeant, we found a large circle of burnt grass where the object had hovered.” The event was over. That “UFOs” should have appeared on two occasions in Yorkshire, England – and when military operations were going on – make me suspect that these events (just like Rendlesham) were deliberately hoaxed. The purpose: to determine how military personnel react when faced with strange phenomena and unforeseen events.

VIDEOS, SELECTED BY PETER2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

10-05-2020 om 20:04 geschreven door peter  

Most Extensive System of Haze Layers Ever Observed in The Solar System Discovered

A rich variety of meteorological phenomena take place in the extensive hydrogen atmosphere of the planet Saturn, a world about ten times the size of the Earth. They help us to better understand those that operate in a similar way in the Earth’s atmosphere. Featuring among them due to its uniqueness is the well-known “hexagon”, an amazing wave structure that surrounds the planet’s polar region and whose shape looks as if it had been drawn by a geometrician.

Credit: UPV/EHU

Discovered in 1980 by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, it has been observed without interruption since then, despite the planet’s long, strong cycle of seasons. A fast, narrow jet stream flows inside this gigantic planetary wave where winds reach maximum speeds of about 400 km/h. Yet, strangely enough, the wave itself remains almost static; in other words, it barely shifts with respect to the planet’s rotation. All these properties mean that the “hexagon” is a highly attractive phenomenon for meteorologists and planet atmosphere researchers.

Cassini, which was in orbit around the planet between 2004 and 2017, took a vast quantity of images from a whole range of distances from the planet and viewing angles. In June 2015 its main camera obtained very high-resolution images of the planet’s limb which are capable of solving details of between 1 and 2 km; they captured the hazes located above the clouds that shape the hexagonal wave. In addition, it used many colour filters, from ultraviolet to near infrared, thus enabling the composition of these hazes to be studied. 

To complete this study, images produced by the Hubble Space Telescope taken 15 days later and showing the hexagon not on the limb but seen from above were also used. “The Cassini images have enabled us to discover that, just as if a sandwich had been formed, the hexagon has a multi-layered system of at least seven mists that extend from the summit of its clouds to an altitude of more than 300 km above them,” said Professor Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, who led the study. “Other cold worlds, such as Saturn’s satellite Titan or the dwarf planet Pluto, also have layers of hazes, but not in such numbers nor as regularly spaced out”.

The vertical extent of each haze layer is between approximately 7 and 18 km thick, and according to the spectral analysis, they contain minute particles with radii of the order of 1 micron. Their chemical composition is exotic for us, because, owing to the low temperatures in Saturn’s atmosphere ranging between 120° C and 180° C below zero, they could comprise hydrocarbon ice crystallites, such as acetylene, propyne, propane, diacetylene or even butane in the case of the highest clouds.

Another aspect studied by the team is the regularity in the vertical distribution of the hazes. The hypothesis put forward is that the hazes are organised by the vertical propagation of gravity waves that produce oscillations in the density and temperature of the atmosphere, a well-known phenomenon on the Earth and on other planets. The researchers raise the possibility that it could be the very dynamics of the hexagon itself and its powerful jet stream that may be responsible for the formation of these gravity waves. On the Earth, too, waves of this type produced by the undulating jet stream travelling at speeds of 100 km/h from West to East in the mid-latitudes have been observed. The phenomenon could be similar on both planets, even though the peculiarities of Saturn mean that it is the only case in the solar system. This is an aspect that remains subject to future research.

Agustín Sánchez-Lavega is professor of physics at the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, head of the GCP-Planetary Science Group and holder of the 2016 Euskadi Award for Research. Teresa del Río-Gaztelurrutia and Ricardo Hueso are tenured lecturers, and Santiago Pérez-Hoyos is a permanent research doctor; they all belong to the GCP.

Contacts and sources:

• Matxalen SotilloUniversity of the Basque Country

Publication: 

• “Multilayer hazes over Saturn’s hexagon from Cassini ISS limb images” A. Sánchez-Lavega, A. García-Muñoz, T. del Río-Gaztelurrutia, S. Pérez-Hoyos, J. F. Sanz-Requena, R. Hueso, S. Guerlet & J. Peralta.Nature Communications http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16110-1

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

10-05-2020 om 18:01 geschreven door peter  

The Mystery of Giant Viruses Thawing from Beneath the Ice in Siberia and Antarctica

Giant virus

Credit: Cryo-EM facility, Michigan State University

In a new study, a team of Michigan State University scientists shed light on these enigmatic, yet captivating giant microbes and key aspects of the process by which they infect cells. With the help of cutting-edge imaging technologies, this study developed a reliable model for studying giant viruses and is the first to identify and characterize several key proteins responsible for orchestrating infection.Cartoon schematic of Samba infecting a cell.  

Credit: Cryo-EM facility

Giant viruses are bigger than 300 nanometers in size and can survive for many millennia. For comparison, the rhinovirus — responsible for the common cold — is roughly 30 nanometers.

“Giant viruses are gargantuan in size and complexity,” said principal investigator Kristin Parent, associate professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at MSU. “The giant viruses recently discovered in Siberia retained the ability to infect after 30,000 years in permafrost.”

The outer shells — or capsids — are rugged and able to withstand harsh environments, protecting the viral genome inside. The capsids of the species analyzed in this study — mimivirus, Antarctica virus, Samba virus and the newly discovered Tupanviruses — are icosahedral, or shaped like a twenty-sided die.

These species have a unique mechanism for releasing their viral genome. A starfish-shaped seal sits atop one of the outer shell vertices. This unique vertex is known as the ‘stargate.’ During infection, the ‘starfish’ and ‘stargate’ open to release the viral genome.

During the study, several roadblocks needed to be addressed. “Giant viruses are difficult to image due to their size and previous studies relied on finding the ‘one-in-a-million’ virus in the correct state of infection,” Parent said.

To solve this issue, Parent’s graduate student Jason Schrad developed a novel method for mimicking infection stages. Using the university’s new Cryo-Electron Microscopy microscope and the university’s Scanning Electron Microscope, Parent’s group subjected various species to an array of harsh chemical and environmental treatments designed to simulate conditions a virus might experience during the infection process. “Cryo-EM allows us to study viruses and protein structures at the atomic level and to capture them in action,” Parent said. “Access to this technology is very important and the new microscope at MSU is opening new doors for research on campus.”

The results revealed three environmental conditions that successfully induced stargate opening: low pH, high temperature and high salt. Even more, each condition induced a different stage of infection.

With this new data, Parent’s group designed a model to effectively and reliably mimic stages of infection for study. “This new model now allows scientists to mimic the stages reliably and with high frequency, opening the door for future study and dramatically simplifying any studies aimed at the virus,” Parent said.

The results yielded several novel findings. “We discovered that the starfish seal above the stargate portal slowly unzips while remaining attached to the capsid rather than simply releasing all at once,” Parent said. “Our description of a new giant virus genome release strategy signifies another paradigm shift in our understanding of virology.”

With the ability to consistently recreate various stages of infection, the researchers studied the proteins released by the virus during the first stage. Proteins act as workers, orchestrating the many biological processes required for a virus to infect and hijack a cell’s reproductive capabilities to make copies of itself.

“The results of this study help to assign putative — or assumed — roles to many proteins with previously unknown functions, highlighting the power of this new model,” Parent said. “We identified key proteins released during the initial stages of infection responsible for helping mediate the process and complete the viral takeover.”

Jason Schrad freezing Samba viruses in liquid ethane, which is part of preparing the grids for cryo-EM data collection. 

Photo by John A. Dover

As for future study? “The exact functions of many of these proteins and how they orchestrate giant virus infection are prime candidates for future study,” Parent said. “Many of the proteins we identified matched proteins that one would expect to be released during the initial stages of viral infections. This greatly supports our hypothesis that the in vitro stages generated in this study are reflective of those that occur in vivo.”

That many of the different giant virus types studied responded similarly in vitro leads the researchers to believe they all share common characteristics and likely similar proteins.

Whether giant viruses are capable of infecting humans ­– unlike the coronavirus ­– is an evolving topic of discussion amongst virologists.

The study, “Structural and Proteomic Characterization of the Initiation of Giant Virus Infections,” appears in Cell.

Try This Egyptian Copper Secret! You'll Never Believe What It Does Until You See the Blood Video!

Parent credits Jônatas S. Abrahão and Juliana R. Cortines, researchers at Federal University of Minas Gerais and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro respectively, for their dedication in the field to discovering and capturing giant virus specimens and their intellectual contributions for the study.

Contacts and sources:

• Kim Ward
• Michigan State University

Publication:

• Structural and Proteomic Characterization of the Initiation of Giant Virus Infection Jason R. Schrad   Jônatas S. Abrahão Juliana R. Cortines Kristin N. Parent.  
• Cell  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.032

Videos about virus, selected by peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/}

10-05-2020 om 17:44 geschreven door peter  

Alien Life Form Found On Mars In NASA Rover Photo, UFO Sighting News.

• http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/220603

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

10-05-2020 om 16:23 geschreven door peter  

UFO Shoots Slowly Over Rome, Italy On TV News! May 2020, Video, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: May 8, 2020

Location of sighting: Rome, Italy TV News.

 

This UFO was seen on Italian TV News during a broadcast coming from Rome. A blue disk is seen moving from left to right of the screen in the background. 

 

I took a screenshot and enlarged it. When I added contrast and shadow to it...it had other lights within it of different colors. What this tells me is that it was not a search light. Because a search light would have the same color throughout, but its not. Also a search light would appear circular, this however appears like a disk seen from the side. 

 

The fact that the UFO is so close to the camera, giving us a great view of the UFOs shape, speed, direction is absolutely proof that aliens are highly interested in Rome, watching over them during the  Pandemic. 

 

I wonder...was the UFO coming from Vatican City? It is its own country and the Pope has American astronomers working in Astrobiology (search for intelligent life). The pope may have called for a meeting with the aliens about ending this virus once and for all. Vatican City is its own county and as such...would have the authority to meet with aliens....thus aliens would be more likely to meet with them too.

 

Scott C. Waring - Taiwan UFOlogist

Look at the screenshot below. It shows many different colors within it which means its not a search light. Search lights beam would appear solid or one even color. This...is unique and complex. It shows some of the areas are different colors, which means this is a solid craft and the red areas might be transparent window like areas of the ship. SCW

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

10-05-2020 om 16:16 geschreven door peter  

TicTac UFO Seen Over California, Moving Slowly On Video, May 7, 2020, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: May 7, 2020
Location of sighting: Monterey, California, USA

Here is a great capture of a tactic shaped UFO over Monterey, California this week. The object appears to be a long cyclyder white craft with no tail, no wings no engine or windows. Very odd, but I do notice that there is an aura around the craft...an energy aura from the propulsion systems. This aura around the craft is all the evidence I need to confirm its an alien craft, but the fact that its shape has nothing to indicate its an aircraft of any known kind also helps. California is home to many US military bases, its possible that this craft is a US military experimental craft using alien technology. 
Scott C. Waring 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

10-05-2020 om 16:11 geschreven door peter  

Asurf webcam located at Beacons accidentally recorded a glowing USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) which suddenly appeared along the coast of Encinitas, California on May 7, 2020.

The witness, who submitted the video to Mufon, describes the remarkable UFO sighting as follows: "Around 10:30 pm my son was viewing the surf webcam video located at Beacons in Encinitas. Around the 3 min mark you can see an orange object in the lower left quadrant of the screen."

"We observed the object rises up from the ocean then submerge. All the while being able to see the orange object with an orange tail/exhaust hovering above the ocean. Then submerged, then began flashing while the light moving very fast. When it looked like it was at the horizon, ascended, flashed and then disappeared."

"The day after this particular sight had been shut down and the video was gone. Luckily my son had saved the video."

This is another proof that there is a secret underwater UFO base off the coast of California?

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

10-05-2020 om 16:01 geschreven door peter  

UFO near chemtrail over London, UK 9-May-2020

This UFO photo of a unidentified flying object or orb was taken over London, United Kingdom. Date: Saturday, 9th May 2020.

Witness report: 

I was taking a picture of a chem trail and posted that on FB, when a friend commented I looked at the picture again and noticed it… During lockdown here in the UK, the weather has been really good strangely. This morning it was a beautiful day, not a cloud in sight. I noticed a single plane flying overhead leaving a massive Chem Trail so I took a picture of it. My friends think I’m mad when I mention Chem trails as they don’t believe it or me, even though it’s obvious and not a Con trail.. I posted the picture on FB mentioning that ‘there we go another chem trail ruining this beautiful day’ type thing. My friend replied and that’s when I noticed this little silver/grey object which just seems to be observing something or the trail. I didn’t even notice it at the time, gutted about that I would have loved to see if or how it moved.. anyway, I just wanted to let you have a look and see what you think.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

10-05-2020 om 15:01 geschreven door peter  

*MUST SEE* UFO filmed over Palm Coast, Florida 9-May-2020

This really unique UFO event was taking its place on Saturday, 9th May 2020 over Palm Coast, Florida.

Witness report: 

It was 3:45 am I was out on porch having tea. Stargazing and observed bright orb that appeared to be quivering and morphing. I used my phone to observe this in Palm Coast Florida Northeast above tree line This video is after I enlarged on IPad and re-filmed it. Your thoughts?

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

10-05-2020 om 14:53 geschreven door peter  

The year 1110 CE is noteworthy for a few big events – battles of the Crusades were being fought everywhere, King Henry V of Germany married the 8-year-old Matilda, daughter of King Henry I of England, who was busy adding a chapel to Windsor Castle. Oh, and the Moon disappeared completely. Wait … what?

“On the fifth night in the month of May appeared the Moon shining bright in the evening, and afterwards by little and little its light diminished, so that, as soon as night came, it was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen.”

That eyewitness account reported in the Peterborough Chronicle — one of four Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which are records of the history of England after the Norman Conquest – might today be dismissed as a lunar eclipse … except no lunar eclipse extinguishes the light of the Moon so completely that no faint shadow or corona can be seen. A new report in the journal Scientific Reports may finally settle nearly 1,000 years of arguments about the mysterious lunar disappearance.

“Here we show that a unique medieval observation of a “dark” total lunar eclipse attests to a dust veil over Europe in May 1110 CE, corroborating the revised ice-core chronologies.”

One of the most accurate ways of determining what happened in a given ancient year or time period it to study ice cores from long-frozen, glacier-covered lands like Greenland and Antarctica. The ‘disappearing moon of 1110’ is well-known and researchers figured they had it solved when an ice core from Greenland showed a layer containing evidence of an eruption in 1004 by Iceland’s Hekla volcano, known as the ‘Gateway to Hell’ for its frequent violent eruptions. Huge deposits of sulfur in the 1110 zone and years after it indicated a heavy layer of volcanic dust floating around the world, causing climatic change and non-sun-related lunar eclipses. Case closed on the 1110 ‘really total’ lunar eclipse … right?

“A few years ago, one study concluded that a timescale called the Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005 (GICC05) was off by up to seven years in the first millennium CE, and by up to four years early in the next millennium.”

Oops. That miscalculation pushed the Hekla eruption back to 1104, meaning its clouds would have been gone by 1110. The prompted co-author and palaeoclimatologist Sébastien Guillet from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and his team to look at an ice core from Antarctica for a more accurate reading. That core sample showed evidence of a significant atmospheric event beginning in 1108 and continuing into 1110 and beyond. They then went back to historical records to see what other volcanoes might have erupted around then. That’s when they found a Japanese reference to an event in 1108.

“The sources of these eruptions remain unknown, but we propose that Mt. Asama, whose largest Holocene eruption occurred in August 1108 CE and is credibly documented by a contemporary Japanese observer, is a plausible contributor to the elevated sulfate in Greenland.”

Mount Asama

Mount Asama is the most active on Honshū, the main island of Japan. In May 1783, Mount Asama began a three-month eruption that killed at least 1,400 people and a plume that was responsible for the was responsible for the five-year “Great Tenmei Famine” that killed at least 20,000 more. While the records are not as detailed, they indicate that the eruption of Mount Asama in 1108 was twice as large.

Guillet’s research found “severe climatic anomalies” across Western Europe between 1109 and 1111 CE. This time, the ice core was accurate – it matched similar layers of sulfur in tree rings from the same period. NASA records indicate seven total lunar eclipses would have been observable in Europe between 1100 and 1120 CE. And astronomers note that clouds and haze caused by volcanoes can affect the brightness of lunar eclipses. Now we know that they extinguished one in 1110 like a candle in the wind.

You can’t hide from the core.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

09-05-2020 om 22:34 geschreven door peter  

Just days after releasing its first official recruiting video, the U.S. Space Force announced its next mission – the launch of the secret X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6) on May 16 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Yes, we were wondering the same thing — how will launching an unmanned spacecraft help Space Force recruiting?

“The X-37B team continues to exemplify the kind of lean, agile and forward-leaning technology development we need as a nation in the space domain. Each launch represents a significant milestone and advancement in terms of how we build, test, and deploy space capabilities in a rapid and responsive manner.”

U.S. Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond sounds excited about the X-37B launch while revealing as little as possible under the circumstances. The press release points out that the X-37B is currently the only ship capable of testing new systems in space and returning them to Earth. That may be true, but is that enough to meet the rallying cry to potential Space Forcers in the recruiting video? (Watch it here.)

“Some people look to the stars and ask, ‘What if?’ Our job is to have an answer.”

That’s not exactly “To infinity and beyond!” or even “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth,” but apparently that’s the best we can do in 2020 without the aid of JFK or Buzz Lightyear.

John F. Kennedy

(Credit: NASA)

This is actually the second Space Force mission – the first was the equally uninspiring launch (to us, at least) of a communications satellite in March. Russia didn’t like that, nor the announcement of the Space Force’s first new(ish) weapon – a satellite jammer to immobilize enemy communications. Not exactly a Millennium Falcon or even a flying Jeep. If you’re hoping there’s something more exciting in the works, Secretary of the Air Force Barbara Barrett lets the air out of that space balloon.

“In today’s age of electrons, space systems track storms, locate stranded motorists, timestamp credit card transactions, and monitor treaty compliance.”

Locating stranded motorists? Darth Vader would have to lift his helmet to catch his breath after laughing at that one. Barrett also pushes the reusable capability of the X-37B. Any comments, Elon Musk?

Sorry to sound disappointed, but that’s what this announcement is. While not a fan of military operations in space, this writer is a fan of space travel and exploration, and the pace of the U.S. space programs these days make a snail on glue look speedy and Tang look innovative. (Ask your grandpa.) Of course, there’s one group that is probably happy.

“This launch is a prime example of integrated operations between the Air Force, Space Force, and government-industry partnerships.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein hits the nail on the head – this is a good thing for “government-industry partnerships.” They’re not in it for the discovery … they’re in it for the economy. Unfortunately, “To profitability and beyond!” isn’t a great recruiting slogan either.

It doesn’t do much for inspiring kids to get excited about space. The same for writers.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

09-05-2020 om 22:07 geschreven door peter  

Secret Astronaut Says He Saw Grey Aliens, Who Warned Them Off the Moon

COAST TO COAST AM – Officially, NASA history timelines state that Apollo 17 was the last astronaut launch with Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt.

But according to extraordinary testimony from whistleblower Jon Harold Lavine, whom Linda interviewed over three segments, he was a “secret Apollo astronaut” brought in as a last-minute replacement for one of the Apollo 17 crew.

While on the December 1972 moon mission, Lavine says he photographed (with a Hasselblad high-resolution camera) a Grey non-human alien who was just a few feet away from him. The being telepathically conveyed to him that the astronauts should not return to the moon.

Other videos, peter2011

{ https://beforeitsnews.com/ }

09-05-2020 om 21:25 geschreven door peter  

Two Faces On Moon, Male And Female, Shows Bond, 100% Proof Of Intelligent Life, UFO Sighting News.

• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/6/60/A17_Geophone_Rock.jpg

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

09-05-2020 om 20:34 geschreven door peter  

On May 8, 2020 Mrmb333 noticed a huge radar anomaly and thought it was just a Dopler radar signature until he realized that it was over 500 miles wide moving from Northern Idaho into the Saskatchewan/Alberta border within a split second.

Given the incredible speed it jumped from South West to North East, it must have been something other than a flock of birds or a cloud of small pieces of aluminium, called chaff.

Although it remains unclear, could it be that the weather radar has reflected on something that came from space?

  

{ http://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com}

09-05-2020 om 19:57 geschreven door peter  

“Something fall from the sky” during a storm – Muskogee, Oklahoma

This strange sighting was submitted to me through our Facebook page. It was filmed over Muskogee, Oklahoma on 29th April 2020. What do you think this is?

Witness report: 

I took this video of lightening tonight and noticed something fall from the sky around the 5 second mark.

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

09-05-2020 om 18:13 geschreven door peter  

Illustration of a near-Earth asteroid, created using actual space images of Earth and the asteroid Mathilde. 

Credit: Earth: ESA/Rosetta; asteroid Mathilde: NASA/NEAR

ON MAY 4TH, A TINY ASTEROID MISSED EARTH… BUT JUST BARELY

I guess the Force was with us: In the early morning hours of the 4th of May, a small asteroid 3-6 meters^* across passed by the Earth, missing our world by a mere 7,000 kilometers — only about the radius of the Earth itself! It passed so close to us its orbit was significantly changed by Earth's gravity, too.

Before you panic, at this diameter (about the size of a car) it wouldn't have done any real damage even if it had hit us. But it would've put on a helluva show, creating an intensely luminous fireball easily brighter than the full Moon as it burned up and broke apart in our atmosphere, probably a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface. It’s also likely small pieces would’ve made it to the ground as meteorites, too. But it did indeed miss us and is now on its way out.

It was discovered just hours before closest approach by the automated Catalina Sky Survey, an observatory in Arizona. It sweeps the sky repeatedly, looking for moving objects like asteroids. The asteroid, subsequently called 2020 JJ^**, was detected in four observations taken in the minutes around 06:00 UTC. Astronomers were alerted, they checked that it was real, and then reported it to the Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts. The report was then published at 06:36.

Animation showing the path of the tiny asteroid 2020 JJ, which missed the Earth by only 7000 km on 4 May 2020. Note how the orbit changes after it passes Earth.

Credit: ESA / NEOCC

This part is amazing: An automated alert was sent out all over the world, and within minutes other observatories were turning toward the coordinates of the object (which, mind you, was so close that observatories in different parts of the planet would see it in different parts of the sky!). In less than an hour (!!) it was being observed by other telescopes in Arizona as well as observatories in Hawaii and Illinois.

This part made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: For a short time, before observations had nailed down its trajectory, there was a 5% chance of impact! I know those aren’t short odds — a 1 in 20 chance is pretty low^† — but still that’s high for an impact. Of course, like I said, even if it had hit it wouldn’t have been dangerous. Just spectacular.

As I've written before, when an asteroid is first discovered, the orbit calculated for it is pretty fuzzy, because we don't have a long enough arc to really be able to predict where it will be in the future. Small uncertainties in the position early on add up to big ones later. The analogy I like is if you're an outfielder in a baseball game, and as soon as the batter hits the ball you close your eyes. Now, predict where the ball will be when it lands. Yeah, nope. But if you keep watching it you’ll be able to see its trajectory much better.

So the projected orbit of 2020 JJ was a fuzzy cone, spreading out enough to include the Earth. But then more observatories saw it, the uncertainties shrank, the cone narrowed, and it was found it would miss us. But not by much.

The closest approach was at 12:03 UTC on 4 May, when it was about 13,400 km from the Earth’s center. Given our planet's radius is just under 6,400 km, that means it missed us by about 7,000 km. That's pretty dang close, and in fact the orbit of the asteroid noticeably changed after it passed as Earth's gravity warped its path.

It's actually amazing that it was seen at all; it's so small that it was pretty faint. It came in from a direction pretty much opposite the Sun in the sky, which was fortunate. That means it's up at night, and also we see it "full" (if it were closer to the Sun we see less of it lit, so it's a crescent like a new Moon, and therefore much fainter). Many times with asteroids this size we don't see them until after they've already passed.

In fact, once the observations were in, the trajectory of 2020 JJ was so well determined that its position was known to about 5 km perpendicular to its path. Had it actually hit us, the spot where it entered our atmosphere would've been pinpointed to that accuracy. That's damned impressive. Remember, the observations were all taken over the course of just two hours. That's actually comforting; astronomers are getting really good at this sort of thing!

It's on a roughly two-year elliptical and slightly inclined orbit that takes it from just inside Earth's orbit to out past Mars, and it's now headed back out into deeper space. But it's still on an orbit that brings it near the Earth, so it'll be back. Probably not for a long time, though. And if we do see it again, that's OK too. Space is big, and this asteroid is little. It's no threat to us. But there are bigger ones out there, and it's nice to know we have so many eyes on the sky looking out for us, and doing such a good job at it.

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09-05-2020 om 01:47 geschreven door peter  

THE SPACE FORCE IS ABOUT TO LAUNCH A MYSTERIOUS SPACECRAFT

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09-05-2020 om 01:30 geschreven door peter  

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09-05-2020 om 01:07 geschreven door peter  

Artist’s concept of the Lunar Flashlight searching for ice deposits in deep, shadowed craters near the south pole of the moon.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

NASA is moving forward with its Artemis program, whose goal is to land the first woman and next man at the moon’s south pole by 2024. See this April 2020 report. When humans return to the moon this time, they’ll likely stay longer than their Apollo counterparts in the late 1960s and ’70s; the record stay during the Apollo missions was about 75 hours.

To accomplish future longer stays on the moon, lunar astronauts might utilize some natural resources from the moon itself, in particular water ice said to have been confirmed to exist in 2018, in deeply shadowed craters at the moon’s poles. This ice can be melted and purified for drinking; it can be used for rocket fuel. Enter Lunar Flashlight – a briefcase-sized satellite, also known as a CubeSat – with a projected launch date of 2021 and a specific mission of detecting naturally occurring surface ice in shadowed craters on the moon.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) described the innovative Lunar Flashlight technology on April 27, 2020. A new peer-reviewed paper about it was published in the April 2020 issue of IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine.

What is the Lunar Flashlight and what will it do?

View larger. | Scientists directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the moon’s surface in 2018. The image shows the distribution of surface ice at the moon’s south pole (left) and north pole (right), detected by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument. Blue represents the ice locations, plotted over an image of the lunar surface, where the gray scale corresponds to surface temperature (darker representing colder areas and lighter shades indicating warmer zones). The ice is concentrated at the darkest and coldest locations, in the shadows of craters.

Image via NASA.

Basically, Lunar Flashlight acts like a spotlight. Lunar Flashlight will scan the surface with a near-infrared laser beam, shining down on the lunar surface to help scientists look for deposits of ice near the lunar south pole. Barbara Cohen, principal investigator of the mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the JPL statement:

Although we have a pretty good idea there’s ice inside the coldest and darkest craters on the moon, previous measurements have been a little bit ambiguous.

Scientifically, that’s fine, but if we’re planning on sending astronauts there to dig up the ice and drink it, we have to be sure it exists.

Mission profile and timeline for Lunar Flashlight.

Image via Cohen et al./ IEEE.

Commercial and custom-built components of Lunar Flashlight.

Image via Cohen et al./ IEEE.

From the paper:

Lunar Flashlight is a very small satellite [about 5 x 10 x 14 inches, or 12 × 24 × 36 cm], developed and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, that will search for water ice exposures and map their locations in the moon’s south polar region. The Lunar Flashlight mission will demonstrate technologies for NASA such as green propulsion and active laser spectroscopy while proving the capability of performing a planetary science investigation in the CubeSat form factor. Lunar Flashlight was selected in 2014 by the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) program … Lunar Flashlight will be one of 13 secondary payloads launched on Artemis-1, currently scheduled for 2020.

Water ice deposits have been found by orbiting spacecraft, but Lunar Flashlight would allow the exact locations of deposits to be determined, which could then be mined and used by astronauts staying on the moon for long periods of time. It will also be the first lunar mission to use lasers to find the ice. John Baker, Lunar Flashlight project manager at JPL, said:

A technology demonstration mission like Lunar Flashlight, which is lower cost and fills a specific gap in our knowledge, can help us better prepare for an extended NASA presence on the moon as well as test key technologies that may be used in future missions.

Because the moon is virtually airless, it gets very hot in the sunlight, but extremely cold in the darkness, especially within deep craters that are permanently in shadow at the poles. In those cold places, water ice molecules can accumulate and remain stable on the surface. As Cohen explained:

The sun moves around the crater horizon but never actually shines into the crater. Because these craters are so cold, these molecules never receive enough energy to escape, so they become trapped and accumulate over billions of years.

Artist’s concept of Lunar Flashlight seen from above.

Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.

Such deposits on the moon are of much interest, and necessary, for future astronauts who will want to stay on the moon for long missions, or even eventually stay there permanently in bases. It would be expensive to continually transport water from Earth to the moon, so using the available resources of the already-existing ice deposits makes sense.

Lunar Flashlight will beam its lasers into some of these craters where the ice is either known or suspected to exist. It will do this for at least two months, and will be able to map out where these deposits are with great accuracy.

How does Lunar Flashlight identify ice?

The spacecraft’s four-laser reflectometer, which incorporates spectrophotometry, will use near-infrared wavelengths in the laser beams. Those wavelengths will be absorbed by water ice, but bare rock will simply reflect them back to the spacecraft. If there is a lot of absorption in a crater, that would be evidence for widespread ice deposits. Those findings can then be compared with those from other orbiters that have previously found ice on the moon. Cohen said:

We will also be able to compare the Lunar Flashlight data with the great data that we already have from other moon-orbiting missions to see if there are correlations in signatures of water ice, thereby giving us a global view of surface ice distribution.

Lunar Flashlight will also be the first planetary CubeSat mission to use “green” propulsion, propellant that is less toxic and safer than hydrazine, which is commonly used by most spacecraft.

Barbara Cohen at Goddard Space Flight Center, principal investigator for Lunar Flashlight.

Image via NASA/ Science and Exploration Directorate.

While ice on the moon may sound rather unusual, it isn’t really too surprising to scientists. Asteroids and of course comets can also contain water ice. Even Mercury, which is much closer to the sun than the moon, has ice near its poles, found by the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2012.

There are also two other missions on the Artemis-1 launch that will complement Lunar Flashlight; Lunar IceCube and LunaH-Map will make additional measurements, looking for ice and other hydrogen deposits at the lunar south pole and on the near side of the moon. Results from all three missions will be synergistic, simultaneously exploring the nature and distribution of water ice on the moon in advance of human exploration.

Missions like Lunar Flashlight will help NASA astronauts not only continue to explore the moon, but also set the stage for long-term and then permanent human settlement on our nearest neighbor in space.

• Bottom line: NASA has designed a new CubeSat spacecraft, the Lunar Flashlight, to search for ice on the moon using laser beams.
• Source: Lunar Flashlight: Illuminating the Lunar South Pole
• Via JPL

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09-05-2020 om 00:35 geschreven door peter