China Explores the Moon

This is not really a tech story that this blog handles normally however tech news slows down during the holidays and I wanted no one to miss this story so I decided to write a little about it here.

This past Saturday, December 14, China became only the third nation (after the U.S. and Russia) to accomplish a soft-landing on the moon, which is an amazing task.

What Does This Mean for the U.S. Space Program?

If China is successful with their new space program and they decide to focus on Mars and landing on an asteroid it will probably kick off a new space race, this time between the United States and China as Sputnik did in 1957 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

 Back to China's Moon Mission

In order to move the moon probe into a gentle landing, the Chinese lander was equipped with state-of-the-art mini rockets, which allowed it to gently hover above the lunar surface.  This allowed it to avoid small boulders and large rocks that litter parts of its Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows) landing site.
 

The successful landing occurred at 8:11 a.m. EST.

_{Chang'e 3 used its hovering jets to touch down softly on Saturday. [Image Source: News.cn]}

Using its high-resolution imaging and hovering capabilities, the craft safely touched down in the Bay of Rainbows, a basalt sand/rock crater plane in the Lunar north.  After landing safely, the Yutu ("Jade Rabbit") rover climbed off the Chang'e 3 spacecraft without issue on Saturday, snapping pictures.

_{Chang'e 3, post-landing. [Image Source: News.cn]}

The Yutu rover stands roughly 5 feet and features a six-wheel independent bogie-style suspension, similar to the rovers that the NASA used to rove the moon in decades past. It has been nearly four decades since the U.S. and Russia last roamed the moon. 

 

_{A picture of the offloaded rover is snapped by Chang'e 3 [Image Source: CCTV]}

 

China's first and second Lunar probes provided mankind with unprecedented map of the Lunar surface.  Over the next few months Yutu will add yet more insight, "tasting" the chemicals in Lunar rock and exploring the Lunar dirt/crust with ground-penetrating radar. 

 

 

The lander is powered by a radioisotope heater, while the rover is powered by a solar panel.  Both will only operate by day to safeguard their sensitive electronics from the chilling northern Lunar night.

You can be assured that the United States Space Program will be watching this closely and we can all hope that we, as a nation will be exploring the stars again with a new inspired mission we can all collectively get excited about.

Voyager 1 Enters Intersteller Space

Space the Final Frontier.... These are the voyages of the Voyager 1, launched back in 1977.

This depiction of Voyager 1 hangs in my office

Thirty-five years after its launch, Voyager 1 appears to have travelled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, according to a new study appearing online today.

This is really big news because the heliosphere is a region of space dominated by the Sun and its wind of energetic particles, and which is thought to be enclosed, bubble-like, in the surrounding interstellar medium of gas and dust that pervades the Milky Way galaxy.

On August 25, 2012, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft measured drastic changes in radiation levels, more than 11 billion miles from the Sun. Anomalous cosmic rays, which are cosmic rays trapped in the outer heliosphere, all but vanished, dropping to less than 1 percent of previous amounts. At the same time, galactic cosmic rays – cosmic radiation from outside of the solar system – spiked to levels not seen since Voyager's launch, with intensities as much as twice previous levels.

It is these observations that have many in the scientific community believing that Voyager 1 has actually entered interstellar space. If this is true this is amazing. A man made object leaving the solar system, and beyond the influence of our very own sun. This makes me want to watch some Star Trek for sure. In fact if you recall the plot of "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" from 1979 the USS Enterprise does find the Voyager Spacecraft and it's not happy. But that's a story for another day. 



 Captain Kirk & Crew try to persuade Voyager from destroying it's creator... namely us. 

Sadly, we probably are not going to learn much about what lies beyond our solar system. This is because Voyager will begin shutting down its instruments in 2020 and at some point after 2025 its power supply will be exhausted. After that, we just have to hope that it doesn't someday come home with a head full of questions and an existential void in its soul, which is exactly what happened in the first Start Trek motion picture.

This is quite amazing for a piece of technology that was launched by NASA way back in 1977. This is also the spacecraft that Carl Sagan's "Golden Record" and much debated "road map" to Earth was included. The disc carries photos of the Earth and its life-forms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from people (such as the the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a collection of Earth music, including works by Mozart and Chuck Berry.

Exploring Cluster One

I realize that there is no information here that can really help you in a technical way but I found this video of Pink Floyd's "Cluster One" matched with some amazing images from the Hubble telescope. It is awe inspiring. Watch this, relax and remember that the universe is unbelievably and unknowingly mass and our problems are nothing in comparison. This piece of music is simply Gilmour's guitar and Rick Wright's keyboards. Genius.