#Galileo Kuiper

[multi-universal-muses]

👃 (Gildas)

🌊 (Galileo)

👃 Being a longtime resident of Stone Hill, Gildas has always been partial to the ocean breeze's smell, although the coffee scent of Gavin's cafe is a close second. 🌊 Despite what others expect, Galileo takes to the water like a tiger, being a proficient swimmer and all. Heck, if he weren't so busy with work, he'd be spending his free time taking a dip at the Waterfalls.

[brucesterling]

https://www.esa.int/Newsroom/Press_Releases/Call_for_media_ESA_seeks_new_astronauts_-_applications_open_31_March_2021

N° 3–2021: Call for media: ESA seeks new astronauts - applications open 31 March 2021

8 February 2021

For the first time in 11 years, ESA is looking for new astronauts. These recruits will work alongside ESA’s existing astronauts as Europe enters a new era of space exploration.

Media representatives are invited to a virtual press event on Tuesday, 16 February, to learn more about the vacancies that are intended to initiate a real generational change for ESA.

The starting point for this is 31 March 2021, when the vacancies for new astronauts open. ESA is strongly encouraging women to apply, because we are seeking to expand gender diversity in our ranks.

ESA Director General Jan Wörner says, “Thanks to a strong mandate from ESA Member States at Space19+, our Ministerial Council in 2019, Europe is taking its place at the heart of space exploration. To go farther than we ever have before, we need to look wider than we ever have before. This recruitment process is the first step and I look forward to watching the agency develop across all areas of space exploration and innovation, with our international partners, in the years to come.”

"Representing all parts of our society is a concern that we take very seriously,” says David Parker, ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration. “Diversity at ESA should not only address the origin, age, background or gender of our astronauts, but also perhaps physical disabilities. To make this dream a reality, alongside the astronaut recruitment I am launching the Parastronaut Feasibility Project – an innovation whose time has come."

The vacancy runs from 31 March to 28 May 2021 and ESA will only consider applications submitted to the ESA Career website within those eight weeks. After that, the six-stage selection process will start, which is expected to be completed in October 2022.

The press event on 16 February marks the start of the communication campaign for the application phase.

Conference programme per language

English (Tuesday 16 February, 13:00–14:00 CET)

Participants

Jan Wörner, ESA Director General

Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA astronaut

Tim Peake, ESA astronaut

David Parker, ESA Director of Human and Robotic Exploration

Frank De Winne, ESA Low Earth Orbit Exploration Group Leader, Head of the European Astronaut Centre

Jennifer Ngo-Anh, ESA Research and Payloads Programme Coordinator, Human and Robotic Exploration

Lucy van der Tas, ESA Head of Talent Acquisition

The press conference will be moderated (in English) by Ninja Menning, Communication Department  

French (Tuesday 16 February, 13:00–14:00 CET)

Participants

Claudie Haigneré, ESA astronaut

Luca Parmitano, ESA astronaut

Ersilia Vaudo-Scarpetta, Chief Diversity Officer

Guillaume Weerts, Space Medicine & European Astronaut Centre Management Support Team Lead

Didier Schmitt, Strategy & Coordination Group Lead, Human and Robotic Exploration

Zineb Elomri, Human Resources Officer

The press conference will be moderated (in French) by Jules Grandsire, Communication Department  

German (Tuesday 16 February, 14:30–15:30 CET)

Participants

Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA astronaut

Alexander Gerst, ESA astronaut

Josef Aschbacher, future ESA Director General

Chiara Manfletti, Head of Policy and Programme Coordination Department

Rüdiger Seine, Space Training Team Leader

Dagmar Boos, Head of Human Resources Competence & Policy Centre

The press conference will be moderated (in German) by Jules Grandsire, Communication Department  

Dutch (Tuesday 16 February, 14:30–15:30 CET)

Participants

André Kuipers, ESA astronaut

Frank De Winne, Low Earth Orbit Exploration Group Leader, Head of the European Astronaut Centre

Angelique Van Ombergen, Science Coordinator for Human Research, Human and Robotic Exploration

Lucy van der Tas, Head of Talent Acquisition

The press conference will be moderated (in Dutch) by Ninja Menning, Communication Department  

Italian (Tuesday 16 February, 15:30–16:30 CET)

Participants

Luca Parmitano, ESA astronaut

Ersilia Vaudo-Scarpetta, Chief Diversity Officer

Josef Aschbacher, future ESA Director General

Sara Pastor, I-HAB Team Leader

Antonella Costa, Human Resources Business Partner

The press conference will be moderated (in Italian) by Fabrizio L’Abbate, Communication Department  

Spanish (Tuesday 16 February, 15:30–16:30 CET)

Participants

Matthias Maurer, ESA astronaut

Fabio Favata, Head of Strategy, Planning & Coordination Office

Sergi Vaquer Araujo, Senior Flight Surgeon

Rosario Martin-Sanchez, Head of Social Security & Related Policies Unit

The press conference will be moderated (in Spanish) by Emmet Fletcher, Communication Department

Media registration

The press conference will take place online.

Please register online at: https://www.esa.int/Contact/mediaregistration by 15 February 2021.

The press conference will be streamed at esawebtv.esa.int, but only registered media will be able to ask questions.

Upcoming events are posted on the launch calendar and events calendar at www.esa.int/newsroom.

Contact

If you have further questions or interview requests, please contact media@esa.int.

Social media

Follow ESA on

Twitter: @ESA Instagram: Europeanspaceagency Facebook: EuropeanSpaceAgency YouTube: ESA LinkedIn: ESA

Images

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images

Terms and conditions for using ESA images: www.esa.int/spaceinimages/ESA_Multimedia/Copyright_Notice_Images

For questions or more information related to ESA images, please contact directly spaceinimages@esa.int.

Videos

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos

Terms and conditions for using ESA videos: https://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Terms_and_Conditions

For questions or more information related to ESA videos, please contact directly spaceinvideos@esa.int.

About the European Space Agency

The European Space Agency (ESA) provides Europe’s gateway to space.

ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.

ESA has 22 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Slovenia and Latvia are Associate Members.

ESA has established formal cooperation with six Member States of the EU. Canada takes part in some ESA programmes under a Cooperation Agreement.

By coordinating the financial and intellectual resources of its members, ESA can undertake programmes and activities far beyond the scope of any single European country. It is working in particular with the EU on implementing the Galileo and Copernicus programmes as well as with Eumetsat for the development of meteorological missions.

Learn more about ESA at www.esa.int

For further information:

ESA Newsroom and Media Relations Office – Ninja Menning

Email: media@esa.int

Tel: +31 71 565 6409

[madrigal2000]

Hello

Madrigal here.  First of all, I apologize for the lack of content as of lately. A lot has happened, art block, assignments, professional training, you get the thing... I do appreciate people still like my Oristion posts, despite they are like a year old or so. 

Anyways. Now with the newest OW character Sigma, whom I already taken a liking to, I might start posting new stuff, maybe even fan art, who knows.

In b4 he gets released to the game, here are the mandatory new hero questions (he’s got me way too curious, I tell you). The list will be updated regularly.

What interesting lore tid-bits we’ll see in his sprays? Update: he enjoys eating a raw herring with onions which is a Dutch delicacy, and apparently he is left-handed (unlike the origin trailer)?

Who will he interact with, besides the Talon dudes?

Memes and/or references? Update: we have scientific theories and experiments like the black hole, Spaguettification, Schrödinger’s cat, and Galileo’s gravity experiment, Dutch art motives like Escher and Van Gogh.

What will his Halloween costume/alter ego be?

Dance emote?

“Sitting” emote. -Zennyata style? -Crossing legs and reading like Symmetra? -Reclining? -Rubbing his chin while doing mental calculations? The Thinker of Rodin? Update: relaxation it’s already added and I gotta say it looks cute af!

Comic appearance or animated short?

Miscellaneous skins? Update: a Hannibal Lecter-esque, Subject Sigma and fantasy oracles which have some WoW/Oasis vibes.

Who is he calling “lekker stroopwafel”? XD

What will his other emotes be like? I.e. Laugh, toast, other seasonal? Update: they gave him the laugh and some interesting ones like clapping

Origin skin? Science uniform and the quirky eyebrows, or a much younger version? Update: there’s Dr. de Kuiper and Talon which are the closest. But a much younger version would be great

Does he also have “kids these days...” moments?

Edit: Now, about the barefoot thing, the sexuality and that type of stuff, I’m actually neutral about those, so I’ll leave those out. Okay?

[galileo-kuiper-archive]

Greetings!

Ah, good! I’m glad to see human social media is scarcely different from ours. Now then, I am Galileo Kuiper, trusted right hand to Asgore! Feel free to ask me anything, but please, don’t make a mess of anything. Thank you.

[spaceexp]

History of Airborne Astronomy at NASA

NASA - Armstrong Flight Research Center patch / NASA & DLR - SOFIA patch. Sept. 26, 2018 Sixty years ago, in 1958, NASA was founded as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The agency has a long history of using airplanes to study space. Flying at high altitudes puts telescopes above the water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere that blocks certain types of light, like infrared, from reaching ground-based telescopes. Airborne observatories can also go anywhere to conduct observations, enabling researchers to study transient events, such as the eclipse-like events called occultations to learn about distant planets and objects. When airborne observatories land after each flight, the telescope instruments, such as specialized cameras, can be upgraded or serviced, and new ones can be built to harness new technologies — which is not possible on most space-based telescopes.

Image above: NASA’s Galileo I aircraft during a flight to study a solar eclipse in 1965. The modified Convair-990 aircraft had multiple observations windows in the top left side of the aircraft. Image Credit: NASA.   NASA paved the way for airborne astronomy in 1965 by flying a modified Convair 990 aircraft to study a solar eclipse from inside the path of totality. In 1968, astronomers used 12-inch telescopes in the cabins of Learjet aircraft to study objects like Venus using infrared light.

Images above: Left: The Learjet Observatory (Learjet 24B aircraft) flying above California in the early 1970’s. The telescope was just in front of the wing. Right: Scientist Carl Gillespie using a 12-inch infrared telescope while flying aboard the Learjet 23 aircraft at 50,000 feet in 1968. Image Credit: NASA. The work on the Learjet Observatory led to the development of NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory, or KAO, a converted C-141 cargo aircraft that carried a 36-inch reflecting telescope. Named after the planetary scientist Gerard Kuiper, it operated from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California from 1975 to 1995. Scientists used the KAO for solar system research, galactic and extra-galactic observations, and even studied the space shuttle’s heat shield in infrared light as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. Discoveries made from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory included: - Pluto’s atmosphere - Rings around Uranus - ​A ring of star formation around the center of the Milky Way - Complex organic molecules in space - Water in comets and in Jupiter’s atmosphere

Images above: Left: The Kuiper Airborne Observatory flies with its telescope door open in 1980. The converted C-141 aircraft had a 36-inch telescope just in front of the wing. Right: Inside the KAO, where the mission crew sat during flight. These consoles were positioned along the side of the aircraft's cabin. The portion of the telescope system that was inside the cabin can be seen at the back of the image. The open telescope cavity was separate from the pressurized cabin. Image Credit: NASA. The Kuiper Airborne Observatory was decommissioned in 1995 to enable the development of a flying observatory with a larger, more powerful infrared telescope — the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) jointly operate SOFIA. They chose a Boeing 747SP aircraft to carry the largest airborne telescope to date, at 106 inches (2.7 meters) in diameter. NASA modified and maintains the aircraft — which once flew for both Pan American World Airways and United Airlines — that now carries the telescope, its support systems, and the mission crew. The DLR designed, built and maintains the telescope which operates while flying at altitudes up to 45,000 feet at more than 650 mph.

Images above: Left: SOFIA soars over the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountains with its telescope door open during a test flight. Right: Inside SOFIA during an observing flight at 40,000 feet. The mission crew, including telescope operators and scientists, sit facing the telescope at the back of the aircraft. The portion of the telescope that is inside the cabin is the blue round structure. The beige wall around the blue telescope structure is a pressure bulkhead that separates the open telescope cavity from the pressurized cabin, so the cabin environment feels similar to a commercial aircraft. Images Credits: Left: NASA/Jim Ross Right: NASA/DLR/Fabian Walker. Aircraft modifications included cutting the hole for the telescope cavity, adding a new pressure bulkhead to separate the pressurized cabin from the cavity, and adding airflow ramps around the cavity that allow the plane to fly normally while the telescope door is open. Inside the cabin, mission control systems required for the observatory replaced the seats from the aircraft’s days as a passenger plane. The modifications and test flights took place in Waco, Texas and at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Hangar 703. About 20 people are aboard each flight to operate the aircraft, control the telescope and collect astronomical data.

Image above: SOFIA’s telescope, as seen during construction before its reflective aluminium coating was applied, reveals the honeycomb design that reduces its weight by 80%. Image Credits: NASA/Ron Strong. The German-built telescope is made of a unique glass material that has almost zero thermal expansion, so the mirror is unaffected by the temperature changes between the warm ground-level air and the cold stratosphere. The back of the telescope has a honeycomb design to make it approximately 80 percent lighter than most telescopes of this size. An intricate stabilization system isolates the telescope from the aircraft’s movement, keeping it fixed on its observing target during overnight flights. SOFIA reached full operational capacity in 2014 and flies three or more times per week for 10 hours at a time.  Astronomers are using SOFIA to study many different kinds of astronomical objects and phenomena, including: - Star birth and death - The formation of new solar systems - Identification of complex molecules in space - Planets, comets and asteroids in our solar system - Nebulae and the ecosystems of galaxies - Celestial magnetic fields - Black holes at the center of galaxies

Image above: NASA’s airborne infrared observatories — the Learjet Observatory, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and SOFIA — are pictured next to illustrations showing how the size of each telescope approximately compares to an adult. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/L. Proudfit. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program, science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is operated and maintained from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Hangar 703, in Palmdale, California. Add-on for Flight Simulator X:

Image Credit: Orbiter.ch Aerospace

NASA & DLR Boeing 747/SP SOFIA Observatory repaint for FSX https://simulators.jimdo.com/ Related links: Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/index.html NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/watchtheskies/kuiper.html NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/home/index.html Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/SOFIA Science Center/Kassandra Bell. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

[spinningblueball]

Astronomers discovered 10 new moons of Jupiter!

Jupiter is often described as a solar system in miniature. The gas giant is made out of the same basic ingredients as the sun — hydrogen and helium — and is surrounded by an array of geologically diverse moons.

Today, the Jupiter system grows even more impressive. The International Astronomical Union has confirmed the discovery of 10 new moons, bringing the grand total to 79. This discovery includes one very odd moon that helps explain why there are so many others.

Where have these moons been all this time? How could 10 moons just go unnoticed, you ask?

The short answer: These moons are relatively tiny, just a couple miles across or smaller. And even with high-powered telescopes, it can be very hard to spot small, dim objects next to something as massive and luminous as Jupiter.

“As our technology gets better and better, we’re able to look fainter and fainter, so we’re discovering smaller and smaller moons,” said Scott S. Sheppard, the Carnegie Institution for Science astronomer who led the discoveries.

These new moons were discovered using a 520-megapixel camera attached to the huge Victor M. Blanco Telescope in Chile. (For reference: The latest iPhone has a 12-megapixel camera.) The camera not only has a dense resolution, it’s also specially calibrated to find faint objects.

Also, Jupiter’s gravity is so strong, it can keep objects in orbit up to 18.6 million miles away. (Recall that our moon is just 239,000 miles away.) This means there’s a lot of space around Jupiter for astronomers to examine that could possibly contain moons.

Sheppard and his team weren’t actually looking for the new moons when they discovered them — they were looking for other far-flung and hard-to-spot objects out past Pluto.

When their telescope scans the sky, it takes in objects at all distances. It can spot stars millions of light-years away. It can spot Kuiper belt objects near the edge of the solar system. And it can see objects closer to home, like the eight planets. All of those objects could be in the same image.

It’s the motion of these objects over a period of time that tells astronomers what and where they are. “It’s like when you’re driving in your car,” Sheppard explains. “When you look out the side of the road, the street signs are flying by really fast as you are driving, and the mountains in the background are moving very slow.” Slower objects are farther away. And if an object is moving at the same speed as Jupiter, it’s likely in the same location.

The team first noticed the moons in 2017, but they needed a year of follow-up observations to chart the shape of their orbits and to confirm they weren’t actually asteroids or comets orbiting the sun.

Here’s what the telescope actually captured. Most of the white dots in the photo are stars. But you can see a moon, marked with orange lines on either side, moving ever so slightly from one frame to the next. This was the big clue it was a moon of Jupiter. It was moving against a background of static stars.

Humans have been discovering moons of Jupiter since Galileo spotted the first four large ones — Callisto, Io, Europa, and Ganymede — in 1610.

It’s not exactly a shock that we’re still discovering them, considering how our telescopes are getting better and better at making out the faintest of objects. Two moons were announced just last year. And Sheppard suspects there are still more to find.

Only one of the moons has a name for now. Introducing Valetudo.

Nine of the moons remain nameless (for now). But one special one has been named.

It’s called Valetudo, named after the Roman goddess of health and hygiene. New Jupiter moons are named after Roman gods related to Jupiter. Valetudo is Jupiter’s great-granddaughter. And adorably, Sheppard chose Valetudo as a nod to his girlfriend, whom he describes as a “very cleanly person.”

Moons close to Jupiter tend to orbit in a “prograde” motion, meaning in the same direction as Jupiter’s rotation. Those farther away rotate in a retrograde motion. But Valetudo is an odd duck. It’s orbiting in a prograde motion in the retrograde region.

“It’s like driving down the highway the wrong way,” Sheppard says. “It’s going around Jupiter in one direction, and there’s, like, 40-something objects going around Jupiter in the other direction.” This means it’s “very likely to have some sort of head-on collision over time,” he says.

And that’s actually an important clue to why there are so many moons around Jupiter. Sheppard explains that a long time ago, there were probably fewer, larger moons orbiting Jupiter in this retrograde region. But over time, they were broken into pieces.

It’s possible that Valetudo — or a larger previous version of it — was the destructive force behind the collision. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if a tractor-trailer was driving against traffic on a highway; that’s Valetudo. And that possibly “gives us this whole swarm of objects we see today,” Sheppard says.

There’s still a lot that’s unknown about these moons, like what they exactly look like or what they’re made of. NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Jupiter, is not in a position to image them. It will take a future mission to

Jupiter to get a clearer view of the moons. The only things we know about them are their approximate sizes and the shape of their orbits.

But if we do investigate them further, they might also reveal clues about the origin of our solar system. The outer planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — were formed by vacuuming up smaller objects in their paths. And the objects that weren’t consumed were captured in their orbits.

“These outer moons,” Sheppard says, “are like the last remnants of the planetesimals, the first objects that formed our solar system.”

[rxpper-roo]

|| Continued from here ||@galileo-kuiper

{💣}—; Roo was concerned he didn’t mean to cause harm and now he was restrained even more than usual and because of it, now it would be difficult to get free at this point. “My name is Ripper Roo, but I go by Dr. Roo now and before I say anymore, I didn’t intend any real harm...what do you plan on doing with me for trespassing?”

The experiment was glad that the well dressed cat didn’t appear to angry, if he was it would be telling that he’d lost control and flew into another episode and things could have been a lot worse in that case.

[mushroommonarchypeach]

"Ah, Princess Peach!" The feline scholar greeted the young royal with a deep bow. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you." (via @galileo-kuiper)

Peach smiled at the feline and curtsied to him. “The pleasure is all mine, good Sir. What brings you to the castle? Is there something I can help you with?”

[multi-universal-muses]

what does your soul smell like?

Alex the Lion, Bubba, Harley Quinn, Present Mic, Spinel

Angus, Corporal, Gildas, Po, Takuto Maruki

Aqua, Asgore, Mr. Hyunh, Nathaniel Hopson (OC)

Bergamo, Bunnymund, Keanu Jameson (OC), Long, Mystery

Galileo Kuiper (OC), Hector Peabody, Lindar, Nestor, Ozzie, Peridot, Professor Ratigan

Gregg, RJ

tagged by: @nihoneshi

tagging: @rxpper-roo @aslyfcx @sicklewxlf @yoshibo-studios @elderfrogboy @northwindagent @timekeeperlindar @fiery-ambitions @moritaka-inuduka @mushroommonarchypeach

[bunnyburrow-pie-fox]

📚 (via @galileo-kuiper)

Send “📚” and I will flip to a random page in a book and use the first line of dialogue I see as a starter. [...]

“Great. We’ve eliminated the lime, and that leaves us with the banana...”

Jay, Joshua. “Chapter 3: Dinner Deceptions.” Magic: the Complete Course, Workman Publishing Company, Inc., 2008, pp. 67.

[daronheralqet42]

European GNSS Agency Funding RUAG Space to Develop a GNSS Receiver for LEO Satellites

European GNSS Agency Funding RUAG Space to Develop a GNSS Receiver for LEO Satellites RUAG Space has received funding from GSA, the European GNSS Agency, to develop a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receiver for Low Earth Orbit satellites. The project aims to develop a GNSS receiver for Low Earth Orbit (constellation) satellites in the 50–500 kg class for space applications with Precise Point Positioning (PPP) capability. The receiver will be based on Galileo’s E6 High Accuracy Service (HAS). The service provides real-time positioning accuracy in the low decimeter or even centimeter range.

Galileo’s HAS is expected to be a game changer for real-time navigation in space. With the advent of HAS it will be possible to perform PPP processing without relying on services so far exclusively offered by commercial PPP providers.

The project intends to close a significant technology gap for GNSS receivers through:

Leveraging the unique Galileo high accuracy service Precise positioning and precise and robust timing using wide bandwidth E-GNSS signals Dual and triple frequency operation of the GNSS receiver Satellite-based real-time Precise Point Positioning (PPP) without commercial correction services The project’s goal is to develop a GNSS receiving system that is also geared towards the New Space market. The system should be capable of the Precise Point Positioning (PPP) technique utilizing Galileo’s High Accuracy Service (HAS) transmitted on the Galileo E6 signal. “New Space” is this context mainly refers to a major trend in space to change from large, expensive satellites to constellations of smaller, cost optimized satellites. This trend is seen in telecommunication applications, where hundreds or even thousands of satellites are planned to replace the large GEO satellites used in previous decades. The most well-known examples of such constellations are OneWeb, Telesat, Amazon’s Kuiper and SpaceX’s Starlink, but there are also several other telecom constellations planned.

To the Benefit of Humankind

Satellite (constellations) enabled by PPP navigation allow for a number of applications that have a major benefit for humankind. Those include climate research, numerical weather prediction, safety of life services, satellite collision avoidance and in-orbit satellite servicing:

Earth observation: will be done by constellations at much reduced re-visit time. PPP navigation therefore supports not only high spatial resolution but also much improved time resolution, which is increasingly judged by scientists to be at least as valuable as higher spatial resolution. Climate (change) monitoring: depends on the fusion of a lot of earth observation sensor data that is distributed on ground, at sea, in the air and space. Even if these sensors provide sufficient accuracy and stability for long time climatological monitoring, data fusion is only possible if the time and position of the data takes are accurately determined. For that common reference frames are needed as supported by the proposed Galileo receiver. Improved Efficiency: By elevating navigation to previously unreachable accuracy, LEO orbit (position) resources can be used with much higher efficiency by many small satellites, for example in constellations. This leads to lower operation cost and significantly reduced collision risk. Economic Development: Telecom constellations providing communication on a global scale foster local business thanks to global connectivity. This provides work and income and generally drives economic growth in otherwise underdeveloped regions of the world. Saving Lives: beforehand unavailable communication with emergency services will allow to reduce lead time of first responders. Even in densely settled areas with good telecommunications infrastructure, satellite communication systems with low latency as offered by LEO constellations will be beneficial to back terrestrial 5G networks. They allow for the interconnection of all the foreseen services. In-Orbit Servicing: High-performance GNSS receivers are used also on board of satellites designed for in- orbit servicing of other satellites.

[sciencespies]

Europe making progress on sovereign LEO constellation as OneWeb and Starlink race ahead

https://sciencespies.com/space/europe-making-progress-on-sovereign-leo-constellation-as-oneweb-and-starlink-race-ahead/

Europe making progress on sovereign LEO constellation as OneWeb and Starlink race ahead

TAMPA, Fla. — The industry consortium devising a satellite network to keep the European Union from falling too far behind the megaconstellation goldrush is weeks away from nailing down key criteria.

The group has already made initial proposals on elements including frequency and orbital characteristics, according to Dominic Hayes, frequency manager for the EU space program at the European Commission’s Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS) department.

“They’re presenting those as firm deliverables in the course of the next few weeks,” Hayes told SATELLITE 2021’s EMEA + Asia Digital Forum May 18.

The European Commission picked a group of European satellite makers, operators, service and launch providers — and a terrestrial telecoms company — in December to study the feasibility of a European-owned space-based communications system.

Europe’s new low Earth orbit (LEO) flagship program aims to provide secure connectivity for citizens, commercial enterprises and public institutions, focusing on covering rural regions and areas without adequate communications services. 

It will look to complement networks that European satellite operators are already providing in geostationary and medium Earth orbits (GEO and MEO).

Consortium members are Airbus, Arianespace, Eutelsat, Hispasat, OHB, Orange, SES, Telespazio and Thales Alenia Space.

The yearlong study contract, worth 7.1 million euros ($8.6 million), was announced about a month after the British government and Indian telecoms company Bharti Global bought LEO broadband venture OneWeb out of bankruptcy. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. Space Force is asking satellite operators for updates on the performance and capabilities of their networks, to help it decide how to go about buying LEO broadband services.

China, which last year added satellite internet to a list of infrastructure it aims to accelerate with government support, is developing plans for two LEO constellations totalling 13,000 spacecraft. It recently created state-owned China Satellite Network Group to coordinate the effort.

Hayes said Europe’s study is closing in on a LEO constellation that will also include MEO and GEO elements.

Marc-Henri Serre, executive vice president of the telecommunications business line at satellite builder Thales Alenia Space, said one option it is considering involves using the company’s LEO filings with the International Telecommunication Union for the project.

In parallel to the industry study, the European Commission is also reviewing potential options for a multi-orbit communications network.

Ensuring broadband can be available everywhere across the EU is a key priority, Hayes said, adding that providing secure connectivity for government services is also increasingly crucial for European digital sovereignty.

“[W]e see that there are constellations out there now being developed, but they’re not European, and that does present potentially a challenge for European member states when we’re thinking about providing secure connectivity to places in Europe, but also outside Europe,” Hayes said.

Once the initial study completes by the end of this year, discussions will begin with member states and European Parliament legislators over the initiative.

Hayes expects other industry players, including those from Europe’s growing newspace startup scene, to join the talks.

“[Newspace] needs to be factored in,” he said.

“We cannot build our constellation based upon thinking that’s been around essentially for 50 years.”

He added: “We’ve seen what’s happening in the U.S. with SpaceX and Starlink but also with Kuiper.”

In addition to technical specifications, the study is also considering various funding models to finance the space-based network.

Ruy Pin, chief technology officer at satellite operator SES, said on the panel that it favors a “mostly private model,” and not a government-led scheme seen in Europe’s Galileo and Copernicus space programs.

“Many of the services — government services, broadband, sovereign services — are already provided by some of the largest satellite operators of the world in Europe,” Pin said.

“We have the competencies.” 

Hayes said it is too early to say whether a competitive tender will be run for building and operating the LEO project once the study is over for the implementation phase, or whether there will be a process that involves all the EU space prime contractors in some way.

The Eutelsat question

Not wanting to wait for Europe’s sovereign LEO network, French GEO operator Eutelsat said April 27 it will buy 24% of U.K.-headquartered OneWeb.

OneWeb is already a third of the way through deploying around 650 LEO broadband satellites.

Pinto said that investment makes “the landscape a little bit more complicated,” but pointed to “a ton of money” SES is putting into its MEO constellation O3b mPOWER.

“Let’s not forget that one of the advantages of Europe is we’re in a competitive environment,” he said.

Eutelsat spokesperson Marie-Sophie Ecuer told SpaceNews that it sees no conflict of interest because the “objectives and the maturity of both projects are not the same.”

OneWeb is designed to address businesses and company requirements, as well as the needs of militaries, and will start commercial service in a few months.

“The European project, which is at the very early stages of a feasibility study, aims to address the needs of European institutions and governments,” Ecuer said.

SpaceX’s LEO constellation Starlink is even further ahead than OneWeb in terms of launches, with more than 1,600 satellites estimated to be in orbit at the time of writing.

According to Hayes, in some ways it will be beneficial to miss out on the initial megaconstellation potential coming to the market.

“We won’t have the first-mover advantage, but we will potentially take advantage of some of the economies of scale in the development of receiver technologies,” Hayes said.

“We know that — or we suspect — that Starlink are actually selling their terminals at a loss to gain market access. We wouldn’t see that as being a sustainable model, but ultimately the price will come down on those receivers, and I would like to think that we could take advantage of that mass availability of those types of receivers when we come into the market.”

SpaceX is currently offering Starlink beta testers a terminal that includes an antenna and router for $499.

Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX president and chief operating officer, said April 6 she expects terminals coming down to the few-hundred-dollar range “within the next year or two,” and that the cost of the terminal is already less than half the $3,000 that SpaceX was originally paying for the equipment.

#Space

[levysoft]

Quando osserviamo il Sole lo vediamo com’era otto minuti fa. Il Sole è distante dalla Terra 150 milioni di chilometri e i fotoni, che viaggiano a circa 300 mila Km al secondo, impiegano circa 8 minuti per giungere sulla Terra.

Ma per quanto riguarda la gravitazione? La forza di gravità che la Terra sperimenta orbitando attorno al Sole è emessa in maniera istantanea o si comporta come la luce?

Sembrerebbe non esserci nessuna relazione tra la propagazione della luce e la gravità, poiché la gravità deriva dalla massa e ha effetti totalmente diversi rispetto all’elettromagnetismo.

Grazie a esperimenti e osservazioni possiamo trovare una risposta. La gravità non è istantanea e risulta propagarsi esattamente alla velocità della luce. Ecco come lo abbiamo scoperto.

Il primo a tentare di misurare la velocità della luce, almeno secondo la leggenda, fu Galileo Galilei. Organizzò un esperimento di notte, in cui due persone si sarebbero posizionate in cima a due colline adiacenti, ciascuna con  una lanterna. Uno di loro avrebbe acceso la propria lanterna e, quando l’altro l’avesse vista, avrebbe svelato la propria, consentendo al “collega” di misurare quanto tempo fosse trascorso. Sfortunatamente la velocità della luce apparve istantanea, limitata solo dalla velocità di reazione umana.

La risposta arrivò solo nel 1676, quando Ole Rømer ebbe la brillante idea di osservare la luna più interna di Giove, Io, mentre riemergeva dall’ombra del pianeta. Poiché la luce deve viaggiare dal Sole a Io, e poi da Io deve raggiungere i nostri occhi, dovrebbe esserci un ritardo da quando Io abbandona l’ombra di Giove, fino a quando non possiamo osservarlo sulla Terra. Sebbene i risultati di Rømer fossero discordanti di circa il 30% dal valore effettivo, la sua è stata la prima misurazione della velocità della luce e la prima dimostrazione concreta che la luce viaggia a una velocità finita.

Il lavoro di Rømer influenzò molti importanti scienziati del suo tempo, tra cui Christiaan Huygens e Isaac Newton, che escogitarono le prime descrizioni scientifiche della luce. Circa un decennio dopo Rømer, tuttavia, Newton rivolse la sua attenzione alla gravitazione e tutte le idee su una velocità finita vennero abbandonate. Secondo Newton, ogni oggetto massiccio nell’Universo esercita una forza attrattiva su ogni altro oggetto, e quell’interazione è istantanea.

La forza gravitazionale è sempre proporzionale a ciascuna delle masse e inversamente proporzionale al quadrato della distanza che le separa. Raddoppiando la distanza la forza gravitazionale si riduce a un quarto e la direzione della forza gravitazionale è sempre lungo una linea retta che collega le due masse. Questo è il modo in cui Newton formulò la sua legge di gravitazione universale, in cui le orbite matematiche da lui derivate corrispondevano esattamente al modo in cui i pianeti si muovevano nello spazio.

Ovviamente, sapevamo già come descrivere il moto dei pianeti intorno al Sole: le leggi di Keplero sul moto planetario erano vecchie di molti decenni quando arrivò Newton. Ciò che fece di così straordinario fu presentare una teoria della gravità: una struttura matematica che obbedisse a regole da cui si potevano derivare tutte le leggi di Keplero (e molte altre).

Affinché la concezione della gravità di Newton possa funzionare, la forza gravitazionale deve essere istantanea. Se la velocità di propagazione della gravitazione avesse un valore finito, la legge di Newton non funzionerebbe.

Fin dalla sua nascita, la gravità di Newton risolse ogni problema meccanico che la natura (e gli uomini) gli ponevano. Quando l’orbita di Urano sembrava violare le leggi di Keplero, la legge di Newton vacillò. L’errore fu però spiegato grazie alla scoperta di un nuovo pianeta oltre l’orbita di Urano, il gigante Nettuno. Una volta calcolate posizione e massa del nuovo membro del sistema solare tutto sembrò tornare a posto.

La teoria di Newton iniziò a vacillare dopo la stesura della Relatività Speciale, l’idea che lo spazio e il tempo non sono quantità assolute, ma piuttosto, il modo in cui li osserviamo dipende dalla velocità con cui ci muoviamo e dalla nostra posizione. Come lo descrissero Fitzgerald e Lorentz, prima di Einstein, le distanze si contraggono e il tempo si dilata quanto più ci si avvicina alla velocità della luce.

Se questo è vero, e osservatori diversi che si muovono con velocità diverse non sono d’accordo su distanze e tempi, allora come potrebbe essere corretta la concezione della gravità di Newton? Proviamo a fare un esperimento mentale: Cosa succederebbe alla Terra se il Sole sparisse improvvisamente? Sappiamo che la luce continuerebbe ad arrivare sulla Terra per altri otto minuti e il Sole stesso per gli osservatori sparirebbe una volta trascorso quel tempo. Ma per quanto riguarda la gravitazione? Cesserebbe all’istante? Tutti i pianeti, gli asteroidi, le comete e gli oggetti della fascia di Kuiper partirebbero in linea retta? O continuerebbero tutti a orbitare per un po?

Il problema, secondo Einstein, è che la legge di Newton deve essere sbagliata. La gravità non è vista come una forza istantanea che collega due punti qualsiasi dell’Universo. Einstein ha prodotto un’immagine in cui lo spazio e il tempo sono intrecciati in quello che ha visualizzato come un tessuto inseparabile, e che non solo le masse, ma tutte le forme di materia ed energia, lo deformano. Invece che orbitare a causa di una forza invisibile, i pianeti si muovono semplicemente lungo il percorso determinato dalla curvatura dello spaziotempo che una massa produce.

Questa concezione della gravità porta a un insieme di equazioni radicalmente diverse da quelle di Newton, e prevede che la gravità non solo si propaghi a una velocità finita, ma che la velocità di propagazione della gravità – deve essere esattamente uguale alla velocità della luce.

Per molti anni abbiamo effettuato test indiretti della velocità della gravità, ma niente che la misurasse direttamente. Abbiamo misurato come le orbite di due stelle di neutroni cambiano mentre orbitavano l’una sull’altra, determinando che l’energia si irradiava a una velocità finita: la velocità della luce, con una precisione del 99,8%. Proprio come l’ombra di Giove oscura la luce, la gravità di Giove può piegare una fonte di luce sullo fondo e una coincidenza del 2002 ha allineato la Terra, Giove e un quasar distante. La flessione gravitazionale della luce quasar dovuta a Giove ci ha fornito un’altra misurazione indipendente della velocità della gravità: è ancora paragonabile alla velocità della luce, ma con un errore di circa il 20%.

Tutto questo ha cominciato a cambiare circa 5 anni fa, quando i primi rivelatori di onde gravitazionali hanno raccolto i primi segnali. Mentre le onde gravitazionali hanno attraversato l’Universo generate dalla fusione dei buchi neri, dopo aver percorso un miliardo di anni luce sono arrivate a due rilevatori di onde gravitazionali a pochi millisecondi di distanza, una piccola ma significativa differenza. Poiché i rivelatori si trovano in punti diversi della Terra, ci aspetteremmo un tempo di arrivo leggermente diverso se la gravità si propagasse a una velocità finita, ma nessuna differenza se fosse istantanea. Per ogni evento di onde gravitazionali, la velocità della luce è coerente con i tempi di arrivo delle onde osservate.

Nel 2017 è successo qualcosa di spettacolare che ha spazzato via tutti gli altri nostri vincoli, sia diretti che indiretti.

Da aver percorso 130 milioni di anni luce, è arrivato un segnale di onde gravitazionali che è iniziato con un’ampiezza piccola ma rilevabile, quindi è aumentata di potenza mentre diventava più veloce in frequenza. Queste onde sono state emesse da due stelle di neutroni che si sono fuse. Ci sono voluti circa 130 milioni di anni perché sia ​​le onde gravitazionali che la luce di questo evento viaggiassero attraverso l’Universo, arrivando nello stesso identico momento: entro due secondi.

Ciò significa che se la velocità della luce e la velocità della gravità sono diverse, allora non sono diverse di più di circa 1 parte su un quadrilione, o che queste due velocità sono identiche al 99,9999999999999%. Questa è la misurazione più accurata di una velocità cosmica mai realizzata. La gravità viaggia davvero a una velocità finita e quella velocità è identica alla velocità della luce.

Da un punto di vista moderno, questo ha senso, poiché qualsiasi forma di radiazione priva di massa, sia particellare che onda, deve viaggiare esattamente alla velocità della luce. Ciò che era iniziato come un presupposto basato sulla necessità di autoconsistenza nelle nostre teorie è stato ora confermato direttamente dall’osservazione. La concezione originale di Newton della gravitazione non regge, poiché la gravità non è una forza istantanea. I risultati danno ragione ad Einstein: la gravitazione si propaga a una velocità finita e la velocità della gravità è esattamente uguale alla velocità della luce.

Fonte: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/12/18/ask-ethan-why-doesnt-gravity-happen-instantly/

[mantanebula]

Space Facts: Pluto, Planet or Not?

First off: Inside joke for Discord -- no not that kinda Space Fact, you major cucks

Hello friendlies and welcome to a series I’m doing completely at random, because I feel like it -- helping people who don’t understand a thing about space or space stuff to understand some stuff about space stuff. I’m can word good I swear.

Okay. First on the agenda, planets. What the frick are they and why did NASA make Pluto not a planet anymore I’mgonnamurderthatonewasmyfavorite. Well, that’s a story that starts a few thousand years ago.

We’ve never really had a good working definition for planet that wasn’t pretty quickly lolnoped by something new in astronomy.

See, originally we thought planets were special orbs of light, be it gods, omens, or other holy enlightenment, going around the planet, stuck inside the dome/sphere that was the sky. They were ‘special’ cause they zipped across the sky way faster than the ‘fixed stars’ that seemed to stay in the exact same spot each night, and because of that the Ancient Greeks called them ‘asteres planētai’ or “wandering stars”, which is where we get the word planet.

Unlike today however, the Pokémon Sun and Moon were also considered planets. After all, they orbited the Earth within the Great Sky Sphere™®©, so why not?

Well, lets just say Copernicus and a good few others had a problem with that.

Once the Christians calmed down with their whole ‘kill the non-believer’ schtick and the Sun was set at the center of the Universe (ahaha... yeah don’t worry they’ll fix that later), a good model of the Solar system came in view.

The Sun, with six planets orbiting it: Mercury, Venus, Earth and the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. What really cemented the Earth as just another of the big group was Galileo, who first documented the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, proof that these ‘planets’ were whole worlds just like our own.

Now, ‘planets’ were big spheres of rock lofted in space by gravity, around a heavenly ball of fire, our Sun. Pretty soon, as our telescopes got better we found two more planets Butt and Fish God er... Uranus and Neptune. And then, based on a little math error, we found tiny tiny Pluto, waaaay out there.

And there we have our nine planets.

So why did NASA have to say bye-bye to the small boi space rock? Was Pluto not good enough?

Welllll... kinda????

See, the problem came about when astronomers noticed a big ol’ rock inbetween Mars and Jupiter. It was really small... Like, REALLY small. Smaller than the Moon, small. But still, it’s another one! They called it Ceres, and now we have ten planets!

Or... eleven planets, cause then they found Pallas... it... wasn’t even round... but... it’s there. Okay cool, so ele-- THIS JUST IN, JUNO THE TWELFTH--NO VESTA’S THE NEW ONE--MEET HEBE--HOW’S ABOUT IRIS--HERE’S FLORA--AND METIS--HYGIEA--

OKAY CHILL. Like, for one sec. Plz.

People were finding these small lumpy space rocks everywhere and they were all inbetween Mars and Jupiter. Not only that, but they were beginning to see other small space pebbles out near Pluto. HECK, they even found one bigger than Pluto, called Eris...

We... need a better definition for planets don’t we?... people can barely remember eight, you want them to remember 5 billion? Yeah... no...

A little group of people called the [deep booming echoey voice] *International Astronical Union* got together to fix this once and for all...  And then they kinda forgot about it, and told everyone else to make something up instead.

So a bunch of people made up some stipulations to be a planet that’d fix this mess, and the IAU chose the best one.

Alrighty everyone, we’re here. The modern definition of a planet follows these three rules:

It is in orbit around the Sun:

That seems fair until you remember that exoplanets are a thing, but... whatever... they fixed that in 2015.

It has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium:

This just means ‘it round’. When things get big, they collapse into spheres, and to be a planet you gotta be a sphere. My name is Bronson and I speak for the spheres.

It has "cleared the neighborhood" around its orbit

Here’s the one we’re worried about. This one means that the object needs to hold the most STUFF of everything else on its orbit. If there’s other STUFF on its orbit, to the point that the object doesn’t have the most STUFF, then it can’t be a planet.

And that last one is why Pluto is not a planet anymore. There’s a ton of junk flying out by Pluto, and a lot of them cross Pluto’s orbit (Including Neptune, so yeah) so we really can’t say it’s dominant.

And it’s not just Pluto, guys. This ‘dwarf planet’ class got four more friends; Eris, Haumea and Makemake of the Kuiper Belt out by Pluto, and our good friend Ceres. Ceres is unique in that it’s also classified as an asteroid, along with well... everything else in the Asteroid Belt.

Come on though, DWARF PLANET. That’s a rad name. Sounds like a fantasy-adventure class. I like it at least. To say that Pluto got the short end of the stick is to ignore 4/5ths of the stick.

And really, it’s just a name (You’d be surprised how much uproar this got a decade ago). A name. ‘Planet’, ‘Dwarf Planet’, ‘Asteroid’... they’re just names, made up by us silly little humans, trying to make sense of a big messy universe.

I mean, if you wanna get real then you’ve gotta get with Cthulhu, he ACTUALLY knows what he’s doing. 

[maksymilianmikolajczak]

Decade 2010-2019

- 2010 

JAN 1, 2010 Canon announced the largest CMOS image sensor ever made. The new sensor measures 202mm by 205mm. It is about 40 times the size of full-frame image sensor and is capable of capturing images using 1/100 of the light a normal professional DSLR. This means that the new sensor is capable of capturing 60 fps video at the unbelievable light level of 0.3 lux. Canon's new an important milestone in the world of digital photography.

- U.S. President Barack Obama honours Kodak's Steven Sasson, inventor of the digital camera, with the National Medal of Technology at the White House in Washington November 17, 2010. 

- 2011 

2011 – Lytro releases the first pocket-sized consumer light-field camera, capable of refocusing images after they are taken.                                         A light field camera, also known as plenoptic camera, captures information about the light field emanating from a scene; that is, the intensity of light in a scene, and also the direction that the light rays are traveling in space. This contrasts with a conventional camera, which records only light intensity.

One type of light field camera uses an array of micro-lenses placed in front of an otherwise conventional image sensor to sense intensity, color, and directional information. Multi-camera arrays are another type of light field camera. Holograms are a type of film-based light field image.

- 2012

JAN 1, 2012 Panasonic LUMIX G Lens for Micro Four Thirds                            This Technique has micro four third mount, 2 aspheric lens elements and minimum focus distance. In addition, it is awesome little lens, perfect prime, fast, sharp, and so on. Also, this lens is lightweight and fast/accurate image. To many photographers, it is an essential lens. It is recommended to used in the conditions like low light, night, landscape/scenery, weddings.

-2013

JAN 1, 2013 Sony’s ‘Smart Skin’ Camera Can See Zits Before They Appear. SSKEP (Smart Skin Evaluation Program), is a highly accurate, high speed technology for analyzing various elements of the skin, including texture, pores, brightness and coloring. Furthermore, pigmentation on and beneath the surface of the skin can be viewed by conducting pixel-by-pixel analysis of melanin in the skin, thus enabling information to be obtained about non-visible skin. 

-2014  

MAR 9, 2014Kodak Color Negative Film                                                    Kodak introduced Kodacolor, the first color reversal (negative) film, enabling color prints to be made.

-2015 

A nocturnal image showing a man passing a baby through a barbed wire fence on the Serbia-Hungary border, namely between Horgoš (Serbia) and Röszke (Hungary).

-2016

The winning photo of 2016 Description: The photo shows police officer Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş standing next to Andrei Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey, moments after he shot him in the back. Altıntaş shot Karlov to protest Russia's involvement in the Syrian Civil War.

-2017

The winning photo of 2017 Description: José Salazar, 28, catches fire amid violent clashes with riot police during a protest against president Nicolás Maduro, in Caracas, Venezuela. Salazar was set alight when the gas tank of a motorbike exploded. He survived the incident with first and second-degree burns. President Maduro had announced plans to revise Venezuela’s democratic system by forming a constituent assembly to replace the opposition-led National Assembly.

-2018 

2018 – Kodak resumes the production of Ektachrome film.

What else Happened ? 

2010

Haiti is struck by a devastating earthquake | The longest solar eclipse of the 3rd millennium occurs | Apple debuts the iPad | The Constellation Program is essentially cancelled | The worst marine environmental disaster in US history | Scientists create synthetic life | One-fifth of Pakistan is flooded | Solar power is plunging in cost

2011

Japan is devastated by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami | The death of Osama bin Laden | Worsening economic crisis in Greece | The world's first synthetic organ transplant | South Sudan becomes an independent nation | The Space Shuttle fleet is retired | Global population reaches 7bn | USB 3.0 is widely available | 22 nanometre chips enter mass production

2012

The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II | Euro 2012 is held in Poland and Ukraine | London hosts the Olympic Games | Mars Science Laboratory explores the Red Planet | Voyager I crosses the heliopause | Windows 8 is released | Quad-core smartphones and tablets | Nintendo launches the Wii U | The Abraj Al-Bait Towers are completed in Mecca

2013

North Korea conducts its third nuclear test | A meteor explodes over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk | The first creation of human embryonic stem cells by cloning| The NSA documents are leaked | Birth of a royal baby | China overtakes the USA in scientific research | The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is launched by NASA | The first gene therapy in the Western world

2014

Latvia joins the eurozone | The first gay marriages are held in England and Wales | Google Glass is launched to the public | Brazil hosts the FIFA World Cup | The 100th anniversary of World War I | 14 nanometre chips are released | Scotland votes "no" to independence | The MAVEN probe arrives at Mars | India's first Mars mission | The global average Internet connection is broadband | A comet passes extremely close to Mars.

2015

Lithuania joins the Eurozone | The Eurasian Union is formed | Expo 2015 is held in Milan, Italy | The Large Hadron Collider reaches its maximum operating power| The first self-regulating artificial heart | A new generation of hi-tech supercarriers | Queen Elizabeth II is the longest reigning monarch in British history | Personal biometric scanners for online banking

2016

Completion of the Panama Canal expansion project | Microchipping of all dogs in England | Euro 2016 is held in France | Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympic Games | Supercomputers reach 100 petaflops | The Juno probe arrives at Jupiter | The world's largest single-aperture telescope is completed in China | The mining industry is highly automated | Agricultural robots are increasingly common on farms

2017

Total solar eclipse in the US | The JFK files are released | Sales of electric and hybrid trucks reach 100,000 annually | 10 nanometre chips enter mass production | Web-connected video devices exceed the global population | Electronic paper is seeing widespread use | Wireless, implantable devices that monitor health conditions in real time | A new treatment for prostate cancer

2018

South Korean city Pyeongchang hosts the Winter Olympics | Launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) | Russia hosts the FIFA World Cup | East Africa's largest ever infrastructure project | The Japanese Hayabusa-2 probe arrives at 1999 JU3 | The Transbay Transit Center is opened in San Francisco | The NHS begins high-energy proton therapy in England

2019

The New Horizons probe arrives at Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69 | US copyright begins to expire, starting with all works from 1923 | Jair Bolsonaro becomes President of Brazil | The first soft landing on the far side of the Moon | The Emperor of Japan abdicates | Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system is fully operational | Connected vehicle technology is being deployed in a number of countries

https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-photography--81

https://www.businessinsider.com/digital-photography-revolution-2015-4?r=US&IR=T

https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2010-2019.htm

[nasa]

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Earth is the ultimate ocean planet (that we know of), but it turns out that our solar system has water in some surprising places, with five ocean-bearing moons and potentially several more worlds with their own oceans. 

1. The Original "Alien Ocean"

Our Galileo spacecraft (1989-2003) detected the first evidence of an ocean beyond Earth under the ice of Jupiter's icy moon Europa.

2. Lost Oceans

There are signs that Mars and Venus once had oceans, but something catastrophic may have wiped them out. Earth's natural force field -- our magnetosphere -- acts like shield against the erosive force of the solar wind.

3. Earth, the Original Ocean World

The search for life beyond Earth relies, in large part, on understanding our home planet. Among the newest Earth ocean explorers us the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, or CYGNSS--a constellation of microsatellites that will make detailed measurements of wind speeds over Earth's oceans to help understand hurricanes. The spacecraft have moved into their science operations phase.

4. Sister Ships

It's fitting the first mission to explore an alien ocean is named in honor of fast-sailing clipper ships of old. Our Europa Clipper spacecraft will seek signs of habitability on Jupiter's moon Europa.

5. Game Changer

Scientists expected Saturn's moon Enceladus to be a tiny, solid chunk of ice and rock. But, not long after arriving at Saturn, our Cassini spacecraft made a series of incremental discoveries, eventually confirming that a global subsurface ocean is venting into space, with signs of hydrothermal activity.

6. Why Ocean Worlds Matter

"The question of whether or not life exists beyond Earth, the question of whether or not biology works beyond our home planet, is one of humanity's oldest and yet unanswered questions. And for the first time in the history of humanity, we have the tools and technology and capability to potentially answer this question. And, we know where to go to find it. Jupiter's ocean world Europa." - Kevin Hand, NASA Astrobiologist

7. More Alien Oceans

Scientists think Jupiter's giant moons Ganymede and Callisto also hide oceans beneath their surfaces. Elsewhere in the solar system, scientists hope to look for hidden oceans on far-flung worlds from Ceres in the main asteroid belt to Pluto in the Kuiper Belt.

8. Cold Faithful(s)?

Thanks to our Cassini orbiter we know the tiny moon Enceladus is venting its ocean into space in a towering, beautiful plume. The Hubble Space Telescope also has seen tantalizing hints of plumes on Jupiter's moon Europa. Plumes are useful because they provide samples of ocean chemistry for oceans that could be miles below the surface and difficult for spacecraft to reach. It's like they're giving out free samples!

9. Titanic Seas and Ocean

Saturn's moon Titan not only has liquid hydrocarbon seas on its surface. It also shows signs of a global, subsurface saltwater ocean--making the giant moon a place to possibly look for life as we know it and life as we don't know it ... yet.

10. Oceans Beyond

Several of the thousands of planets discovered beyond our solar system orbit their stars in zones where liquid surface water is possible--including Proxima-b, a rocky planet orbiting the star nearest to our own.

BONUS: Adopt a bit of YOUR Ocean World

We invite everyone to help us celebrate Earth Day 2017 by virtually adopting a piece of Earth as seen from space. Your personalized adoption certificate will feature data from our Earth-observing satellites for a randomly assigned location, much of it ocean (it is 70 percent of the Earth's surface after all!). Print it and share it, then explore other locations with our interactive map and get even more Earth science data from NASA's Worldview website.

Visit go.nasa.gov/adopt to adopt your piece of the planet today!

Discover more lists of 10 things to know about our solar system HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com