@ridingrobots
Robotic solar system exploration, astrophotography, exasperating earnestness. My day job is impersonating your favorite planets and spacecraft on social media for one of your favorite government agencies. Opinions are my own.
A grove of tall pines on a snowy hill in the Uintah Mountains of Utah. Sirius and other stars at the beginning of the day shine through their branches. Photo: Bill Dunford
...please let me speak on behalf of the good dark.
— Maggie Smith
Episode 43 of the Kilauea eruption is a BEAST. They just zoomed out and uhhh this may be on its way to setting a record for tallest lava fountains. What on Earth. 😍🌋
Cam 2 live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiyt...
Today's Bad Astronomy Newsletter covers a bunch of news from NASA's DART mission, which whacked an asteroid back in 2022. Very cool stuff including streaks on the asteroid moon's surface, the plume generated, and how the orbit of the binary pair changed!
badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/way-too-mu...
These galaxies are colliding, merging, and tearing each other apart. It’s beautiful and destructive all at once.
Hear astrophysicist Derek Ward-Thompson and astronomer/Queen guitarist Brian May talk about seeing them in 3D on our podcast. buff.ly/UoaGdU2
‘Hey’ came before ‘hi,’ and ‘hi' came before ‘hello.’
‘Hi’ is most likely a variant of ‘hey.’
‘Hello’ is not related to either.
Goodbye.
No surprise, but depressing as hell anyway.
We're killing 1000s of Iranians & destroying ancient, vibrant places to obscure a) Trump's political decline & b) the drip-drip-drip revelations of Trump's pedophilia.
All that in our names, to the lasting shame of—and increased danger to—every American.
Even as a cynical scholar of rape culture, I'm shocked that this isn't the headline story on domestic politics everywhere right now. It's just an unfathomable abuse of power, in clear violation of the law.
A giant radio dish antenna pointed at the twilight sky at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communication complex in Goldstone, California. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Bill Dunford
Communication
During two decades, MRO has supported NASA’s ground operations on Mars – from the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, to the Phoenix and InSight landers, to the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. So far, MRO has relayed more than 2.3 terabits of data to Earth!
The Curiosity rover in its aeroshell, hanging beneath an open parachute, is seen floating down to the surface of Mars in a black-and-white photo.
Preparing for Landing
MRO can map landing site hazards, assess soil stability, provide images for post-landing assessment, and even capture images of spacecraft on descent! (This is a shot of the Curiosity rover under its parachute shortly before landing.)
The current position of a Mars rover is marked on a map of a desert landscape of rock layers. The rover's recent path through Gediz Valles is marked with a line.
An ancient river delta seen from above. Different parts of the ground are coded in varying colors to indicate the detected presence of different minerals.
Charting the Terrain
MRO has provided 3D, high-res maps for route planning across the Martian terrain for both current and potential future missions. It has also mapped minerals on the surface.
A broad swath of the Martian landscape seen from space, with circular volcanoes and snaking canyons. White clouds of water ice and brownish clouds of blown dust hover over the ground.
A tall, twisting, snaking dust devil whirlwind casts a shadow on the desert floor.
Monitoring the Weather
From its orbital vantage point, MRO has provided a better understanding of weather patterns, which can inform future dust storm monitoring for planning astronaut excursions on the surface.
A radargram showing ice deposits from the side, appearing almost like a mountain range.
An impact crater on a field of red dunes, seen from above. A dark pattern radiates out from the impact point. At that point, a small circle of unburied ice is bright white.
A dark circular cave opening on a flat plain, seen from above.
Scouting for Resources
MRO has discovered many locations on Mars that could help future astronauts, including buried ice revealed by radar, water ice exposed by impacts, and caves that could potentially provide shelter.
From NASA
Our Eye on Mars 🔴
As it marks 20 years at the Red Planet, here are five ways
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is mapping the future of exploration. 🛰 ➠ 👩🚀
🧵
This is the title slide to basically every academic talk
It's so bad that we've reached a point where members of Congress casually discuss stripping citizenship from and deporting people because they don't like their views.
It was 20 years ago today...
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived at Mars with the best camera ever sent to another planet: HiRISE! A massive thanks to all our team @uarizona.bsky.social , JPL and @baesystems.com who keep this adventure going on strong. 😃 #uahirise
Excited
Sandstone bluffs and spires in a desert landscape under a perfectly clear blue sky. Photo: Bill Dunford
Dark silhouettes of sandstone bluffs and spires in a desert landscape under a clear, starry sky crossed by the Milky Way and illuminated with a band of green airglow. Photo: Bill Dunford
Day and night are both illusions. The Sun is always shining. So are the stars.
Good night
Ida Gulch, Utah on Sunday and in May 2023.
Introducing NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcju...
Close-up of colorful Psyche Mission socks showing the spacecraft approaching the asteroid on an orange background
Close-up of the same socks showing the asteroid and spacecraft on a purple and magenta background
Just found out the Mars gravity assist of the #Psyche spacecraft is only 2 months away! 🛰️
Perfect time to plug these totally metal socks featuring Psyche's journey to a metal #asteroid 😎🧦
🔗 sciencesocks.co/prod...
🔭🐡🧪🎨
A painting of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope surrounded by colourful exoplanets. The background is dark blue with silver dust scattered to represent the stars.
The Nancy Grace Roman
Space Telescope by me. Watercolour, gouache, marker, ink, and aluminium pigment on paper.
#SciArt 🔭🎨
Yeah, the home canning company diversified into aerospace and had a lot of hardware in space exploration. They later sold that division though.
We still get comments about it on social media every time Pluto is mentioned. And sometimes even when it isn't.
I liked it back when Ball Aerospace and the jar company were one and the same.
Er, double dwarf planet. If you want. I genuinely do not care.
One of the reasons I get tired of the Pluto planethood debate is that it obscures all the other cool stuff about Pluto, such as the fact that it's actually a double planet.
Colorful auroral glow in a starry sky over a line of sandstone natural monuments. Photo: Bill Dunford
We'll have to settle for this 2023 shot of auroras over the Park Avenue trail.
We don't talk enough about the risks of geomagnetic storms.
Earlier this year, an Aussie power company said that some of their network might have been knocked out by the Jan solar storm.
So I chatted to our leading space weather scientists about the origin and risk mitigation of these events.
🔭🧪
Trump in the last couple of hours has said the US effort in Iran is “almost complete,” a “short-term excision,” and also, “we will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”
