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[Culise]

So far, the deployment of the JWST is going as smoothly as can be hoped for!

So, so very excited to see what sort of pictures we'll be able to get way out at the Lagrange point.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[LordBaal]

Did not they just made a live anti-satellite weapon test not long ago? They can go and eat a dick.

No, that was Russia.

Then they can also go to heck if ever complain.

[martinuzz]

So far, the deployment of the JWST is going as smoothly as can be hoped for!

So, so very excited to see what sort of pictures we'll be able to get way out at the Lagrange point.

Apparently the thing is sensitive enough, that if it were placed on earth, it would be able to spot a bumblebee-sized heat signature on the moon. Out there in space, without atmospheric interference, it's going to give us amazing pictures, I'm sure.

[Starver]

Apparently the thing is sensitive enough, that if it were placed on earth, it would be able to spot a bumblebee-sized heat signature on the moon. Out there in space, without atmospheric interference, it's going to give us amazing pictures, I'm sure.

Are they going to use the flash?

[martinuzz]

Webb has succesfully maneuvered into orbit around L2. Let the calibrations begin!

[Starver]

SpaceX is going to the Moon this year!

An expended Falcon 9, left to drift in high orbit for half a decade, will hit somewhere on the far side on 4th March. While many things have been deliberately sent to the Moon, others (including the final boosters used to send the first things there) have been allowed to crash there, this may be the first thing that we tracked to just drift that way.

Of course, countless other abandoned high-orbit things probably got there first, but until we have a closer look at any suspiciously fresh craters for tell-tale wreckage, we won't know about them. And even when they do, it'll be probably not linkable to any given mission.

From the size and more immediate observational(/radar) history of the Falcon, we'll probably have a reasonable idea where to look (if a current lunar-surveyor doesn't catch it in more immediate action/aftermath), but bear in mind that there's still a lot of doubt about where some of the Apollo hardware (from a number of the various trans-lunar boosters to the six LEM ascent-stages that were not needed any more) actually fell. (Or at least that was the case when I last mapped everything left on the Moon for an uncompleted project of my own. Maybe some of the latest radar-mappers have spotted metallic signatures in likely spots.)

[Magmacube_tr]

This is maybe a bit offtopic, but I guess this is the best place to put it.

If you had the chance to visit any, I mean any place in the solar sytem for a full Earth day, where would you choose to go? You are guaranteed to come back home unharmed, and there is no travel time, you just appear there.

[martinuzz]

DISNEYWORLD!

[Il Palazzo]

Your mum!

[Sirus]

Charon. I'll find that mass relay and become the most famous human of all time (until some jerk named Shepard outdoes me in a hundred years or so).

[Starver]

I've been thinking about this a lot.

[spoiler=First, second and third thoughts...]I was originally thinking Deimos. Because most people would probably say Phobos, so I'd avoid the rush. (At least for those not more interested in a day relaxing in the Sun.  Or messing about with (and around) some currently active lander.)

But it's really got to be interesting. Given any apparent invulnerability, maybe a volcanically-active moon (no preference what of, but of course either Jupiter or Saturn in the sky would add something to the view). Cryovolcanoes are no problem. Might even be a bonus.[/quote]

After a little extra time to mull it over, though, perhaps a seat on the comet C/2021 O3 some day not too long before the 21st of April, if you can arrange that quick enough?

[Il Palazzo]

I don't know this will be of any interest to anyone, but here's a little nerdy project I've done recently.
I wanted to recreate Hubble's original graph - the celebrated, seminal one suggesting expansion of the universe - from the data in his 1929 paper, and compare it with modern data for the same set of objects:

Spoiler: mid-sized image (click to show/hide)

The numbers are NGC designations of galaxies. E.g. 224 is Andromeda.

It's interesting to see how hilariously underestimated (compare the scale of the x-axes), or flat out in the wrong order, most of the distances were back then. But that the trend still shows all the same.

Here's the associated spreadsheet. The calculations are mostly just to remove solar motion through the Galaxy from the raw data in the paper, which Hubble only does off-screen, so to speak.

[EuchreJack]

Nice!
Thanks for sharing.

[Starver]

(Yes, I appreciated that also, but couldn't think of anything interesting to add about it. I like that kind of re-analysis.  Talking of which...)

SpaceX is going to the Moon this year!

An expended Falcon 9, left to drift in high orbit for half a decade, will hit somewhere on the far side on 4th March.

...apparently, the person who said this was happening has recently changed his mind. It's actually a rocket stage that was used in the Chang'e 5 mission, from 2014. There's (further) expert agreement with this, though still some uncertainty.

I actually saw an astronomical photo of the whatever-it-is, the other day (when we still thought it was the Falcon), against the background of stars, and so while there remains some mystery if we rewind the timeline, the immediate future path is pretty much solid, so there's no real doubt that whatever-it-is is definitely where-it-is and moving-as-it-is to crash-where-it-will.

[Il Palazzo]

So, the divine algorithm has blessed me with this video out of the blue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgiMu8A3pi0
And it's a wonder. What it is, is an almost 2h long educational video on the inner workings of the V2 missile, from the engineering perspective. It's very specifically about the turbopump, but that's pretty much where the magic happens. So in a sense it's a general 'how rockets work' thing, really. The first few minutes sound like the ad for the turboencabulator, but it quickly follows with a clear, very detailed, step-by-step, hands-on analysis. Original schematics, real parts, rendered images and physical cut-outs, a bit of chemistry experiments and mockup models.
A lovely thing overall.