Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!

Today, US House taking up UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon -- which includes the old term "UFO") hearings, part public, part behind closed doors. The public part first time in decades.

I wont be watching so guess I'll catch up later to see what they are saying now

source: Congress holding UFO hearing today: How to watch live (and what to expect)

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The U.S. Congress will hold a public hearing tomorrow (May 17) on reports of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) skirting through our skies, and you can watch the proceedings live.

Last year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted to Congress a preliminary report regarding UAP that relayed the progress the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force has made in understanding the mysterious phenomena.

In the past few years, the term UAP has substituted for the more familiar "unidentified flying object," or UFO.)
 
When first discovered the sound was thought to be intelligent life. Starting at 1.4 revolutions per second to extremely fast. Reading up a bit on them the fastest spinning Pulsars surface was travelling over 40,000 mph per second Not per hour or close to 20% the speed of light. Pulsars!!!!


 
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super cool. I like those noises. Very unique. Very interesting to say the least.
 
Still making a little news... something may be amiss. source: Voyager - Engineers Investigating NASA's Voyager 1 Telemetry Data

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While the spacecraft continues to return science data and otherwise operate as normal, the mission team is searching for the source of a system data issue.

The engineering team with NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is trying to solve a mystery: The interstellar explorer is operating normally, receiving and executing commands from Earth, along with gathering and returning science data.

But readouts from the probe's attitude articulation and control system (AACS) don't reflect what's actually happening onboard. The AACS controls the 45-year-old spacecraft's orientation.

All signs suggest the AACS is still working, but the telemetry data it's returning is invalid. For instance, the data may appear to be randomly generated, or does not reflect any possible state the AACS could be in.
 
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I'm fascinated that 45-year-old space tech continues to operate and perform like it does. Plus, dealing with space dust, radiation, and near-absolute-zero-K temperatures, it's a testament to everything our space program stands for.
 
Heat shield works .. NOT that I thought it wouldnt, but its one of hundreds of remarkable things those folks did to put JWST up there. I gotta real good feeling about what this baby is gonna do .....

source: Where Is Webb? NASA/Webb

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Carl Sagan surely would be impressed and was of course very outspoken about the Voyager. He convinced Nasa to point the Voyager's camera one last time for the famous pale blue dot pic of the earth. He was also outspoken about climate change and many other things. I stumbled upon this statement of his he made 1995 ,the year he passed away about what this country may become for his children and grand children. Very interesting. It reads,


“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...​

​

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”​


Wow,,,,,,,
 
Old news actually but new to me .. just saw an episode of NOVA on PBS about the Milky Way.

We have something in this thread on the GAIA mission. GAIA is an earth-orbiting satellite parked out a LaGrange point (like JWST is) that did a ground-breaking 3D map of the Milky Way (a billion stars, where they are, were, and are going relative to each other).

Remarkable mission and outcomes. Before GAIA, because we live IN the Milky Way, it was challenging to understand is evolution. What does your house look like IF you cannot/never go outside and look at it? Anyway, here's what GAIA found.

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So amoung the many learnings from GAIA, is that the Milky Way has collided with smaller galaxies at least twice. Once 10 billion years ago, and once 6 billion years ago.

The Milky Way apparently is wearing the effects of the second collision like a couple of Hula Hoops (left side of pic). Graph above shows estmiates of number stars in the galaxy with a spike about six billion years ago.

Why the spike? Thats the star formation facilitated by the influx of hydrogen gas brought TO the Milky Way FROM the smaller galaxy in the collision. Its about the same time our Sun formed.

Speculation is perhaps our Sun is from gases formed in some OTHER galaxy. EOD, kinda doesnt matter since its ALL from the same Universe, and stuff has been and will be crashing into other stuff from the beginning to the end of time.

Whats next for us? Andromeda Galaxy is tear-assing toward us at 250K MPH. Since its got 15 BILLION BILLION miles to go, it'll "be a few days" (4 billion years) before it get here. But it would be something to see (simulation below, Andromeda on the left).

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Amazing what they can deduce from looking at things that took billions of years to arrive in the form they are now.
Andromeda Galaxy is tear-assing toward us for sure and we will be around in some state in 4 billion years when it happens unless we're swallowed by a black hole ,then all bets are off lol.
 
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Voyager 1 Is Sending Back Weird Data From Interstellar Space, Here's Probably Why​



 
I like that guy ... a little sad though if he (the folks running V'gers too) is right that half a century of operation, when a decade would have been most we shouhd have gotten, might be soon (in few years) come to an end.

even then though, if that happens ... Wow, what a ride.
 
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source: James Webb Space Telescope suffers 1st noticeable micrometeoroid impact just months into flight

JWST apparently got whacked by a "arger than expected" micro-meteoroid couple weeks ago. But all's good NASA says - no degradation of the images due next month is expected.

Its been hit four times already the six months its been up there .. NO suprise it would get hit with something .. just like everything else we've ever put up there (including people on spacewalks).

Aside: If you wanna nerd out on micro-meteoroids, and spacecraft design as far back as 1957, you can try Micrometeoroid - Wikipedia.

So JWST was obviously designed and can be operated to take/avoid some hits. While probablility of anything flying through space hitting JWTS that is big/fast enough to destroy it is remote, this one particular hit last month was outside what they modeled however.

"With Webb's mirrors exposed to space, we expected that occasional micrometeoroid impacts would gracefully degrade telescope performance over time," Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager ... said. "Since launch, we have had four smaller measurable micrometeoroid strikes that were consistent with expectations, and this one more recently that is larger than our degradation predictions assumed."

"We always knew that Webb would have to weather the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light and charged particles from the sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and occasional strikes by micrometeoroids within our solar system," Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager ... said.. "We designed and built Webb with performance margin — optical, thermal, electrical, mechanical — to ensure it can perform its ambitious science mission even after many years in space."

LSS, JWST still indicated to be ready for first production imaging July 12
 
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Getting my nerd on watching How the Universe Works on the Science channel. Highlighting the Cassini probe and the Voyager 1 & 2 spacecraft.
 
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Runaway Black Holes Also an up coming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope designed to detect micro lensing of these loner black holes.

 
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