space stuff

[SoM]

i know some of you are into this stuff but this is awesome

[Whiskey 7]

Yes, read about it today. Amazing stuff

... and from your source

Only about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, in the direction to our constellation Aquarius, TRAPPIST-1 – classified as an ultra-cool dwarf. It’s so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun. According to a NASA statement:

The planets also are very close to each other. If a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.

[Transient]

Also worth noting is that most of the light given off by the star is in the infrared end of the spectrum, which is what the James Webb Space Telescope sees in. It launches in 2018 and should be able to give us some really good images of the system.

[lars63]

Pretty cool stuff you have to admit, thanks for the share

[Eraser]

Kind of makes me realize how disappointing it is that no other planets in our solar system are habitable the same way Earth is.

If current day Mars had a more friendly atmosphere, with oxygen and water in abundance, then we'd already be walking around on there.

[shaft]

If current day Mars was the same as Earth maybe it would've already been inhabited?

[Eraser]

Yeah that's what I meant when I said we'd be walking around on there.

[shaft]

oh, what I meant is that it might've already been inhabited with indigenous aliens.

[seremtan]

i know some of you are into this stuff but this is awesome

those 'artist impressions' are hoot too

[losCHUNK]

looks lovely. we should move there and fuck it all up (°_°)

[Eraser]

lol, someone started a petition to name these planets after the planets in Kerbal Space Program.

[losCHUNK]

What do you do when Voyager 1's engines start showing their age ?, you fire up the ones that havn't been used in 37 years.

Since 2014, engineers have noticed that the thrusters Voyager 1 has been using to orient the spacecraft, called "attitude control thrusters," have been degrading. Over time, the thrusters require more puffs to give off the same amount of energy. At 13 billion miles from Earth, there's no mechanic shop nearby to get a tune-up.

The Voyager team assembled a group of propulsion experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to study the problem. Chris Jones, Robert Shotwell, Carl Guernsey and Todd Barber analyzed options and predicted how the spacecraft would respond in different scenarios. They agreed on an unusual solution: Try giving the job of orientation to a set of thrusters that had been asleep for 37 years.

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/news/detai ... cle_id=108

They were supposed to be heated too.

[Doombrain]

If that hurts your head don't watch this:

[youtube]5BNDzj47Ad8[/youtube]

Edit: I tried to find a good video about it but could only find cunty yanks over dramatising the subject or bellwhack nutjobs talking about god, like above.

[Whiskey 7]

I was just reading about this the other day losCHUNK

Billions of miles from Earth, at the edge of interstellar space, a long-dormant part of a far-flung spacecraft came to life this week.

After 37 years of disuse, a set of thrusters aboard Voyager 1 activated on Wednesday, firing up humanity's farthest-flung spacecraft and hopefully giving it a longer life than it had before.

"With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," Suzanne Dodd, project manager for Voyager, said in a statement.

Wait, here’s the link
PS: I've never been to this Mashable site previously