All Space Flight is Important

This past week has not been a good one for space exploration's public image. Two rockets down, with one man dead. Frankly, considering the vehicle, I can't believe the second man on that ship lived. I'm sure it's caused a lot of people to question the validity and the entire point of space travel. To the regular person, it doesn't seem worth it. I know I've talked about this plenty before, and I'm sure I'll talk about it again. SpaceShipTwo was a space tourism vessel, and in terms of importance, well, there are more important things. However, I don't want people associating that with all space flight.

This is an article about how in a few years, NASA will be bringing most of its planetary space probe missions to an end. After that, we'll be left with very little in the way of new and exciting information about the planets. I've noticed a picture of Titan's lakes circulating through the internet today, in a few years, spectacular images like this will be no more. Manned space flight is important, but so is unmanned. Space probes go where we cannot, they can go further, longer, and they can do it for far less money. Landing a man on Mars may get all the press, but sending a probe to sail on Ligeia Mare, or to drill through Europa's icy crust to the ocean beneath would be just as epic a milestone, and would probably return even more spectacular results.

In an unrelated bit of news, I've got a couple of longer, more involved posts in the works, and hopefully I can get them out this week. They'll be different from my normal fare, so...yes. That will be happening, I guess.

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A Little Blue Dot

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/11/world/space-blue-planet/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

 I'm a big follower of the search for exoplanets, so I just found this fascinating.  The article is about a planet that the Hubble Space Telescope was able to image 63 light years away.  Hubble didn't image the planet directly, but rather was able to discern the planet's color using the spectrum of light reflected off the planet surface as it orbited the star.  As the planet went behind the star, there was a noticeable drop in the blue portion of the spectrum, indicated the planet is blue in color.  That doesn't mean the planet is covered in water.  No, the planet is what is known as a "hot Jupiter," a gas giant that orbits very close to its star, and is several thousand degrees Fahrenheit.  This particular planet orbits about 3 million miles away from its star, a tenth of the distance between Mercury and our sun.  Scientists guess the planet is about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and that any rain would be liquid glass.  Now, this is obviously not a nice place, but the fact that we can do this is remarkable science.  The precision of the Hubble is remarkable, despite its age.  The news about exoplanets has been getting steadily more exciting as time goes on, I look forward to hearing the next story on them.