Many may be focusing on the upcoming Total Solar eclipse coming in early 2024, but did you know there is a much rarer event coming just a few years from now?
One of the most potentially hazardous asteroids, Apophis, is coming back to very near the Earth. In 2029, it will approach our planet at a distance of just 32,000 kilometers or about 19,900 miles, passing below the orbits of geostationary satellites and shining as brightly as a satellite itself. This event will make it visible to billions of naked-eye observers worldwide, a rare occurrence that occurs only once every few thousand years. NASA's OSIRIS-APEX mission is already on its way to study the asteroid up close.
Quote: The IM-1 launch to the Moon successfully lifted off Feb. 15 on @SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. @Int_Machines’ Nova-C lander is expected to reach the lunar surface on Feb. 22: https://t.co/7Y8I2V9QSQpic.twitter.com/EuOcLaPciV
— NASA (@NASA) February 15, 2024
Quote:Odysseus, the working name for the uncrewed Nova-C lander built by the Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines, lit up the skies above Cape Canaveral shortly after 1am on a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
Its scheduled 22 February touchdown near the moon’s south pole would be the first lunar landing of a US spacecraft since Nasa’s final Apollo mission in December 1972, and the first by a non-government entity. It will deliver a suite of scientific equipment belonging to the agency that will gather data about the lunar environment to help prepare for the next landing of US astronauts, the Artemis III mission currently scheduled for 2026.
Quote:On Wednesday morning, a robotic lunar lander launched by a Houston company got closer to reaching the moon.
The company, Intuitive Machines, announced that its Odysseus spacecraft had fired its engine for six minutes and 48 seconds, slowing it enough to be pulled by the moon’s gravity into a circular orbit 57 miles above the surface.
On Thursday, it is scheduled to touch down on the moon. If all goes well, it will become the first private spacecraft to make a soft landing there and the first American mission to arrive there since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Odysseus is expected to land on the lunar surface at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time Thursday. (Late Wednesday afternoon, Intuitive Machines adjusted the landing time, moving it up by 19 minutes, based on the orbit the spacecraft ended up in.)
Although it is a private mission, the main customer is NASA, which paid $118 million for the delivery of six instruments to the moon. NASA TV will stream coverage of the landing beginning at 4 p.m. Thursday.
What will the lander do on the moon?
Because solar panels provide the spacecraft’s power, its mission will last only about seven days until the sun sets on the landing site. That’s when a two-week-long, frigid lunar night begins, and Odysseus was not designed to survive those conditions.
The six NASA instruments carried to the moon by Odysseus and what their tasks are:
— A laser retroreflector array that bounces back laser beams.
— A lidar instrument that precisely measures the spacecraft’s altitude and velocity as it descends to the lunar surface.
— A stereo camera that will capture video of the plume of dust produced by Odysseus’ engines during landing.
— A low-frequency radio receiver that measures the effects of charged particles on radio signals near the lunar surface, providing information that could aid the design of future radio observation on the moon.
— A beacon, Lunar Node-1, that will demonstrate an autonomous navigation system.
— An instrument in the propellant tank that uses radio waves to measure fuel levels.
The lander is also carrying other payloads, including a camera built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida; a precursor instrument for a future moon telescope; and an art project by Jeff Koons.
I am still often impressed by how forward thinking Gene Rodenberry was....
He wrote the Star Trek Episode of 'NOMAD' in 1967... which was essentially what happened when we sent a probe out to space (supposedly in or around 2002, btw) to search for life... The episode name was changeling... but everyone who watched it remembers... 'I am NOMAD' and iirc, it had a similar panel on it.
Quote:It was just this week that Swiss luxury brand Bovet accomplished what had been the last major challenge of mechanical timekeeping by creating a worldtimer that could automatically account for Daylight Saving Time. But before the dust has even settled from that impressive achievement, it appears as if a new time zone challenge is on the horizon for the world’s top watchmakers.
With moon missions ramping up for the first time in 50 years, the White House has tasked NASA with creating a standard of time for the moon and other celestial bodies by the end of 2026, according to a new report from Reuters. The system will be known as Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), an outer space equivalent to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) network of time zones we use here on Earth.
Due to gravitational differences and other environmental factors, time works differently on the moon than on Earth, with the difference averaging out to about 58.7 microseconds per day. That doesn’t sound like much, but space missions require perfect precision, and the LTC will help ensure that future coordinated missions on the moon run smoothly by keeping everyone involved in sync.
This will likely require setting up a system of atomic clocks on the moon like we have on Earth, but I’m mostly interested in how LTC will be tracked here on our planet. Specifically, from my wrist.
We don’t yet know what LTC will look like, how many time zones it will include or how it will function. But once those details emerge, I’m betting a number of watch brands will start figuring out a way to track LTC accurately. Watch brands love being the first to do something, whether it’s landing on the moon, reaching the bottom of the ocean or scaling Mount Everest, and creating the first Lunar GMT seems like catnip for certain brands....
Quote:It was just this week that Swiss luxury brand Bovet accomplished what had been the last major challenge of mechanical timekeeping by creating a worldtimer that could automatically account for Daylight Saving Time. But before the dust has even settled from that impressive achievement, it appears as if a new time zone challenge is on the horizon for the world’s top watchmakers.
With moon missions ramping up for the first time in 50 years, the White House has tasked NASA with creating a standard of time for the moon and other celestial bodies by the end of 2026, according to a new report from Reuters. The system will be known as Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), an outer space equivalent to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) network of time zones we use here on Earth.
Due to gravitational differences and other environmental factors, time works differently on the moon than on Earth, with the difference averaging out to about 58.7 microseconds per day. That doesn’t sound like much, but space missions require perfect precision, and the LTC will help ensure that future coordinated missions on the moon run smoothly by keeping everyone involved in sync.
This will likely require setting up a system of atomic clocks on the moon like we have on Earth, but I’m mostly interested in how LTC will be tracked here on our planet. Specifically, from my wrist.
We don’t yet know what LTC will look like, how many time zones it will include or how it will function. But once those details emerge, I’m betting a number of watch brands will start figuring out a way to track LTC accurately. Watch brands love being the first to do something, whether it’s landing on the moon, reaching the bottom of the ocean or scaling Mount Everest, and creating the first Lunar GMT seems like catnip for certain brands....
If we need a lunar time then UTC doesn't seem all that 'universal'.
