Tag: Space Exploration

Kill Or Be Killed!

For decades we have been sending messages into space and hopefully watch for some reply…..so far little has returned.

First ever considered that those aliens out there may not want to talk to us or even acknowledge our existence?

But that aside….say we get a message in return saying “We are on our way”…..what then?

There have been many many movies that deal with this conundrum….one of my favorites was a Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man”…..

If and when they, ET, shows up will we have to fight? (As most SciFi movies would have us believe)

Or will we treat them as we treat most animals?

Scientists often kill animals — that’s just a grisly fact of biological research.

But it’s a bit more complicated in the theoretical future where we’ve made first contact with extraterrestrial life. At that point, science author Guy Harrison argues in a Psychology Today op-ed that biologists may have to come to terms with killing alien life in the name of scientific progress — which raises a difficult question: at what point does scientific inquiry outweigh the value of life?

Harrison suggests guidelines that future biologists may find helpful. For instance, any extraterrestrial life that shows signs of intelligence ought to be spared. In that case, we may be able to learn about the alien lifeform by using our words instead of our scalpels.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/kill-aliens-science

Could we be the lower form of life?

The larger questions of science……and now I leave them for “experts” to answer….if they can.

But the old professor will try……

When considering the prospect of alien life, humankind should prepare for the worst, according to a new study: Either we’re alone, or any aliens out there are acquisitive and resource-hungry, just like us.

These two unpalatable options are pretty much the only possibilities, according to the new study. That’s because evolution is predictable, and alien biospheres should thus produce intelligent creatures much like us, with technological prowess and an ever-increasing need for resources.

But the fact that we haven’t run across E.T. yet argues strongly for the latter possibility — that we are alone in the universe’s howling void, the study suggests.

https://www.space.com/10578-study-fear-aliens-dangerous-extraterrestrials.html

Can we possibly predict the temperament of our alien pals?

Possibly…..

Given the current state of our home planet, and indeed our species, it can seem a bit surplus to needs to speculate on whether extraterrestrials are going to one day come and eat us (or, well, you know, do anything equally unpleasant).

Nonetheless, the question of whether there’s anyone or anything ‘out there’ that might ever show up to cause trouble does seem to come around again, and again, and again. For example, it’s become a bit of a perennial topic for Stephen Hawking to mention, and he’s not alone among serious scientists in speculating on the outcome of any such encounter.

As with any effort to decode the likely thought processes or intents of entirely hypothetical lifeforms, the options are – shall we say – fairly loosely constrained. 

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/how-to-predict-a-hostile-alien-invasion/

I still like the Twilight Zone episode the best…….maybe with some roasted asparagus and a nice Bordeaux.

Any thoughts on this or anything else…maybe the failing dam in the UK?

More later.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Do Laws Apply In Space?

I have watched His Majesty Trump turn everything he touches into a steam pile of manure…..and he has his watery eyes turned to Space.

We Americans pride ourselves to be a nation of laws and we abide by those laws and it is what keeps our nation great among nations….well that was true until the election of 2016.

The new field of law will be that of the issues and situations in space.

I have been writing about space for awhile now (I seem to be the only one that cares enough to post) with the push for a new space force and the mining possibilities in space will give an usual chance for clarity for right now there is very little of that.

The Law and Order (the reality not some idea for a new TV show) is what is interesting and I wrote about it on several occasions…..https://lobotero.com/2019/04/12/space-law/ and again……

The first thing that may violate laws and treaties……

The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit wants options for an unmanned orbital outpost to support space experiments and operations — a logistics hub that might even grow, DIU’s solicitation suggests, to a larger manned space station.

Pentagon Eyes Military Space Station

Then I read another space story that again made me think of existing laws and treaties……

16 Psyche is composed of iron, nickel, gold and platinum, the only asteroid we know of that is 95% or more metal. Scientists believe that the asteroid had a rocky surface at one time, but lost it due to several violent collisions billions of years ago.

The potato-shaped asteroid is estimated to have a value of $10,000 quadrillion. That’s enough staggering wealth to hypothetically make every single on Earth a billionaire.

A 2018 report said the value of 16 Psyche was $15 quintillion, while another source said the asteroid could be worth an unbelievable $700 quintillion, enough to give every human being on Earth about $92 billion each. What is NASA waiting for?

NASA Mission To Explore Solid Metal Asteroid That Is So Valuable It Could Make Everyone On Earth A Billionaire

Now to make clear the US among others signed a treaty called the “Principles and Actions Governing the Exploration and Use of Outer Space”…..read it for yourself (Hahaha like anyone would take the time…I am so cute thinking they would)……https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/isn/5181.htm

Or the UN treaty……https://www.ifrc.org/docs/idrl/I515EN.pdf

Let us not forget what Obama did as president……

On November 25, 2015, President Obama signed into law the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (H.R. 2262). This Act encompasses four titles: I. Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (acronym: SPACE), II. Commercial Remote Sensing, III. Office of Space Commerce and IV. Space Resource Exploration and Utilization.

https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2015/11/frans-vonderdunk-space-launch/

Or more news……https://www.space.com/33440-space-law.html

Read the bill that made the Act possible……https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-114hr2262enr/pdf/BILLS-114hr2262enr.pdf

Since we live in this instant gratification and have lost the ability to read I have included some videos which simpler minds will appreciate (if they get this far into this post)…….

Plus a little more…..

The Market forces will determine the need and the supply……

There is so much more to this situation than anyone wants to admit…..exploitative forces will be at work if they already are not.,,,,someone needs to keep an eye on the legality…..of the Space Force of the commercial ideas for space and the arming of space junk.

That someone might as well be me!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

That Saturday News

It was usually cool for late July in the Deep South but that has been replaced with the more traditional heat and humidity.

Saturday is the day when I give news that is news that NO one hears or sees or reads and most importantly no one cares……this Saturday it is more Space News…..

Since we just celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the Moon Landing I have more news of Apollo 11…….

On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on Earth’s moon for the first time in human history. Four days later, they — along with Apollo 11 command module pilot Michael Collins — were locked up on an American battleship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The triumphant astronauts were in quarantine. Per a NASA safety protocol written half a decade earlier, the three lunar visitors were escorted directly from their splashdown site in the central Pacific to a modified trailer aboard the USS Hornet, where a 21-day isolation period began. The objective? To ensure that no potentially hazardous lunar microbes hitchhiked back to Earth with them. [5 Strange, Cool Things We’ve Recently Learned About the Moon]

Of course, as NASA quickly confirmed, there were no tiny aliens lurking in the astronauts’ armpits or in the 50 pounds (22 kilograms) of lunar rocks and soil they had collected. But despite this absence of literal extraterrestrial life, the Apollo 11 astronauts still may have succeeded in bringing aliens back to Earth in another way that can still be felt 50 years later.

https://www.space.com/moon-brought-aliens-to-earth.html

Will children born in space actually be human or not?

The first step to human colonization of the universe is fairly straightforward: we need to figure out how to get people to Mars and beyond.

But evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon isn’t terribly concerned with how humans plan to explore the universe. Instead, he’s focused his attention on what might happen to our species once we settle into our off-world homes. His surprising conclusion: future human colonists might not be humans at all.

“Eventually,” he recently told Business Insider, “people living in space could evolve to be different enough from people on Earth that we would consider them to be different species.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/biologist-space-birth-babies-not-human

Word is that the Earth is littered with small cones from space…..to what end?  (A Doctor Who episode comes to life?)

Earth is littered with cones from space, and it’s our planet’s own fault.

Most meteorites found on Earth are just randomly shaped blobs. But a surprisingly high number of them, about 25%, are cone-shaped when you fit all their pieces back together. Scientists call these conical space-stones “oriented meteorites.” And now, thanks to a pair of experiments published online today (July 22) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), we know why: The atmosphere is carving the rocks into more aerodynamic shapes as they fall to Earth.

https://www.space.com/space-cones.html

The small IST news round-up is finished and now it is time for MoMo to have that bath….not her favorite thing to do.

Image

Have a great day and enjoy your weekend.

Saturday Thought–20Jul19

We are about to celebrate 50 years since our historic moon landing in 1969.

Us old farts can remember where we were when the news broke….I was on R&R from Vietnam in a bath house in Bangkok waiting for my happy ending.

Let’s look back……

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

https://www.history.com/topics/space-exploration/moon-landing-1969

This was exciting news when it was taking place….and years afterwards there has been a conspiracy grown up around the achievement…..our “One Giant Step” thing was not so notable….I am talking about the Moon Landing Hoax….

Despite the extraordinary volume of evidence (including 382kg of moon rock collected across six missions; corroboration from Russia, Japan and China; and images from the Nasa Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the tracks made by the astronauts in the moondust), belief in the moon-hoax conspiracy has blossomed since 1969. Among 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, chemtrailers, flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers and Sandy Hook conspiracists, the idea that the moon landings were faked isn’t even a source of anger any more – it is just a given fact.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/10/one-giant-lie-why-so-many-people-still-think-the-moon-landings-were-faked

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Space Law–Part 2

I am a student of international relations….of laws and diplomacy……but could I expand that into the regions we call “Outer Space”?

Our president has proposed a new branch of our military, a Space Force…….personally I do not think it is a good idea from a monetary point but could there be other reasons just as valid?

I wrote about what I thought about this idea from a legal point of view……https://lobotero.com/2019/04/12/space-law/

Scientists have considered setting parts of space as “wilderness”..this would preclude the encroachment of humans into the regions of the unknown….

The resources of the solar system only seem infinite. They’re not, say scientists who have proposed declaring more than 85% of the solar system “space wilderness,” safe from human development. The primary goal, the Guardian reports, is to keep us from using up all the resources within our reach. That runs counter to mining companies’ argument that taking minerals from other planets would preserve Earth’s environment, per the BBC. “Once you’ve exploited the solar system, there’s nowhere left to go,” said Martin Elvis, a senior astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Massachusetts. Elvis and British philosopher Tony Milligan say that opening one-eighth of the solar system to mining is less restrictive than it sounds; one-eighth of the asteroid belt’s iron could supply Earth for centuries, their report estimates.

Space mining companies have their sights set on iron and precious metals in asteroids, as well as minerals and water on the moon, per the Guardian. The European Space Agency is planning a village on the moon. Deciding which areas to protect is difficult, Elvis and Milligan write in Acta Astronautica, which is among the practical and ethical issues that they point out would have to be settled. Mining missions could begin within 10 years, Elvis says. “Once it starts and somebody makes an enormous profit, there will be the equivalent of a gold rush,” he says. “We need to take it seriously.”

There has been interests shown in mining in space in one form or another…..https://lobotero.com/2013/02/02/mining-a-new-frontier/

The World Economic Forum sees a problem with a space “gold rush”……

The US president, Donald Trump, has stuck to his plan to send humans back to the moon in the next five years, recently giving the project a US$1.6 billion shot in the arm. Whether he succeeds or not, the first successful landing on the lunar far side by China, the European Space Agency’s recent “lunar village” concept and a myriad of private companies all gearing up for commercial human spaceflight indicate that a human return to the moon may be about to begin in earnest.

But is it a good idea? A new study suggests that, to avoid material exhaustion of the solar system, humans ought to limit ourselves to developing just one-eighth of the available resources. As we may be witnessing the start of a new lunar gold rush of sorts, this new proposal may be put to the test sooner than we think – and the moon will serve as an early test bed.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/lunar-gold-rush-is-about-to-start-and-we-could-exhaust-the-solar-system-in-fewer-than-500-years/

How about the mining of water from the Moon?

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/23/space-investors-rejoice-worth-mining-moon.aspx

There is a treaty for space…it may be little known but it is still in place….let me help you grasp this…..

The Outer Space Treaty was considered by the Legal Subcommittee in 1966 and agreement was reached in the General Assembly in the same year ( resolution 2222 (XXI)). The Treaty was largely based on the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, which had been adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 1962 (XVIII) in 1963, but added a few new provisions. The Treaty was opened for signature by the three depository Governments (the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) in January 1967, and it entered into force in October 1967. The Outer Space Treaty provides the basic framework on international space law, including the following principles:

  • the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;
  • outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
  • outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;
  • States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner;
  • the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes;
  • astronauts shall be regarded as the envoys of mankind;
  • States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental entities;
  • States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects; and
  • States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

But this could be a moot point sense Trump has backed out of every treaty the US has signed (an overstatement but you get the point)

Space is NOT a domain exclusively for the US and his new Space Force.  Time for this treaty to see the light of day yet again…..or for the world to design and sign a new one.

Space Thoughts For Another Saturday

My weekend begins with a Tropical Storm, Barry,  in the Gulf which usually means rain like monsoon….but the temps are cooler by about 10 degrees……so while I cannot walk with MoMo I will wax fanciful.

I admit it as a child of the 50s and 60s I have had more eyes to the stars…I even thought about a life as a SciFi writer….but as I grew older I found history and geography more interesting but I never lost my interest in space.

From time to time I write about the news that is in the news but not many bloggers pass it on….I just want to help my readers understand that this nation is doing with the stars….

For decade we have been send messages in one form or another into deep space searching for someone who may be listening…..and that we are not alone.

A new batch of alien signals has been picked up from the direction of two galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. 

So-called fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the more enigmatic and unexplained cosmic phenomenon that have occurred recently. A few dozen of the powerful, fleeting pulses have been detected over the past 12 years, and Russia’s Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory reported nine more on Friday.

https://www.cnet.com/news/more-mysterious-signals-from-deep-space-detected/

I recall the “WOW” signal and then I thought about the movie “Independence Day”…..maybe we should re-think all these invitations we are sending into space.

Space scientists have made a discovery far out into that void we call Space…..

For the first time, researchers have been able to observe the atmosphere of a planet between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. Gliese 3470 b is a world 96 light-years away, orbiting a star roughly half the size of the Sun. It is 12.6 times the mass of our planet and slightly smaller than Neptune, which weighs 17 times the mass of the Earth.

As reported in Nature Astronomy, this planet delivered quite the surprise to astronomers. Using the combined power of the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Spitzer infrared observatory, they discovered a clear atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, the main components of stars.

“We expected an atmosphere strongly enriched in heavier elements like oxygen and carbon which are forming abundant water vapor and methane gas, similar to what we see on Neptune,” lead author Björn Benneke, of the University of Montreal, said in a statement. “Instead, we found an atmosphere that is so poor in heavy elements that its composition resembles the hydrogen/helium-rich composition of the Sun.”

https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-have-observed-the-atmosphere-of-a-planet-like-no-other-in-the-solar-system/amp.html

That is it for now…..I am still watching and writing about the money draining proposal of an independent Space Force….this is getting more and more legs and looks like a sure thing if events continue along these lines…..and the effort has a new spokesperson…..

In the weeks since he became acting secretary of the Air Force, Matthew Donovan has used his bully pulpit to advocate for the establishment of a separate space service. With Congress just weeks away from taking decisive action on the issue, Donovan said he will continue to press the case on Capitol Hill.

“Let’s unleash the space professionals so they can grow and become the equivalent of the Air Force after separating from the Army,” Donovan said July 3 in an interview with SpaceNews.

Space forces today are at that point where the Air Force was in 1947 when it broke away from the Army, Donovan said. Just like military aviation back then, space is ready to carve out its own lane. “When the Air Force separated from the Army, we became a global power because we were unleashed from other ways of thinking,” said Donovan. “Space is in that same place now.”

As acting Air Force secretary, Donovan takes lead role advocating for independent space force

To me this whole idea violates a treaty the the US signed back in the 1960s….but that matters not for the US will violate treaties it must in pursuit of dominance. (Future posts to explain)

Dark clouds out over the Gulf……I think I will take a page from MoMo and take a nap while it rains…..

Put It In The Bank

I know that I am throwing a lot of space stuff at my readers…….one I think it is a waste of money and two some really “crazy” ideas are out there and I want my readers to know about them.

There seems to be a big push of start the process of the colonization of Mars by 2023……now the question is how do we get all those people to make the colonization possible?

There is an answer for that question…there is always an answer….no one ever says, “How the Hell do I know”……

A new study by researchers from the Dexeus Women’s Health research network in Barcelona found that frozen sperm samples survived when exposed to microgravity.

That could mean that sperm banks in space are possible, providing future space travelers with the ability to reproduce in space with sperm samples brought up from Earth.

“Some studies suggest a significant decrease in the motility of a human, fresh sperm sample,” Montserrat Boada who presented the research yesterday at an annual meeting in Vienna, Austria, said, as quoted by The Guardian. “But nothing has been reported on the possible effects of gravitational differences on frozen human gametes, in which state they could be transported from Earth to space.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/sperm-banks-space-colonizing-mars

More stuff……

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-06/esoh-fsr062019.php

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/23/all-female-mars-colony-possible-using-frozen-sperm-says-study

Make a deposit….and wait for the withdrawal.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

As Seen On E-Bay

Many years ago I was addicted to E-Bay…I would spend hours scouring the pages looking for “deals”…..found some and got screwed by some…..and then I broke with E-Bay and have never looked back……my go to site nowadays is Amazon (Go figure)

I read an article about the necessity of the return trip to the Moon to retrieve the astronauts dirty diapers from 50 years ago the first thing I thought of was “I wonder how much they will pull on E-Bay?”  How sick is that?

The article…..

https://youtu.be/VL18F8oHMrU

Human feces can be disgusting, but it’s also teeming with life. Around 50 percent of its mass is made up of bacteria, representing some of the 1,000-plus species of microbes that live in our guts. In a piece of poop lives a whole wondrous ecosystem.

With the Apollo 11 moon landing, astronauts took that microbial life to the most extreme environment it has ever been in. Which means the human feces on the moon — along with bags of urine, food waste, vomit, and other waste that also might contain microbial life — represents a natural, though unintended, experiment.

The question the experiment will answer: How resilient is life in the face of the brutal environment of the moon? And for that matter, if microbes can survive on the moon, can they survive interstellar travel, making them capable of seeding life across the universe, including on places like Mars?

To learn more, check out the video above on our YouTube channel. Or read our feature story: Apollo astronauts left their poop on the moon. We gotta go back for that shit.

That to close out my day’s posting binge……thanx for your attention.

Space For A Saturday

I begin my weekend reporting on stuff most people never think about….SPACE–the final frontier or something like that…..

I had a thought…..we have been “beaming” messages into space for decades…messages of greetings and some on our location and so far no one has answered…..could it be like that bum on the street that you avoid you hear their pleads but pretend not to understand?  That is Earth!

Since a young age I have been interested in Space and the exploration of said domain…..I have the original Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon to help peak my interest…..

The nation’s planetary scientist have been jumping up and down trying to find worlds that could support life……

The hunt for nearby exoplanets has just heated up considerably.

A new instrument designed to find potentially habitable alien worlds in Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own sun, began operations on May 23, project team members announced today (June 10).

The instrument, called NEAR (Near Earths in the Alpha Cen Region), is a thermal coronagraph installed on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.

https://www.space.com/alien-planets-alpha-centauri-breakthrough-watch.html

I have heard that could be billions of planets that could support life…that is billions with a “B”…..but are there?

Where is complex alien life hanging out in the universe? Likely not on planets stewing in toxic gases, according to a new study that dramatically reduces the number of worlds where scientists will have the best luck finding ET.

In the past, researchers defined the “habitable zone” based on the distance between the planet and its star; planets that, like Earth, orbit at just the right distance to accommodate temperatures in which liquid water could exist on the planetary surface would be considered “habitable.” But while this definition works for basic, single-celled microbes, it doesn’t work for complex creatures, such as animals ranging from sponges to humans, the researchers said.

When these extra parameters — needed for complex creatures to exist — are taken into account, this habitable zone shrinks substantially, the researchers said. For instance, planets with high levels of toxic gases, such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, would drop off the master list. [9 Strange, Scientific Excuses for Why Humans Haven’t Found Aliens Yet]

https://www.space.com/where-complex-alien-life-exists.html

NASA and JPL are pushing the limits of exploration these days……

Finally, NASA has said it wants a man on Mars within the next 20 years……and how is that going?

When a female astronaut first sets foot on the Moon in 2024, the historic moment will represent a step toward another NASA first: eventually putting humans on Mars. NASA’s latest robotic mission to the Red Planet, Mars 2020, aims to help future astronauts brave that inhospitable landscape.

While the science goal of the Mars 2020 rover is to look for signs of ancient life – it will be the first spacecraft to collect samples of the Martian surface, caching them in tubes that could be returned to Earth on a future mission – the vehicle also includes technology that paves the way for human exploration of Mars.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7422

That is it for my Space news….hopefully it was informative for those that like and are fascinating by space…….

Please…..watch this “SPACE”.  (I could not resist)

Space: No One Hears You Scream!

Another weekend and the beginning of another Summer.

This weekend I will touch on a subject that few people care anything about…..even though we are approaching the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing…most Americans could care less…..

Speaking of the Moon……VP Pence has stated that we will be back on the Moon by 2024 and this time to stay……but the plans have been leaked……

An extraordinary scoop from Ars Technica: senior space editor Eric Berger has obtained an internal NASA plan for the next 37 rocket launches to the Moon — and it includes sending human astronauts in 2024 and establishing a permanent lunar base in 2028.

In sum, the schedule for Artemis is ambitious, and the program’s goal isn’t just sending Americans back to the Moon, but moving toward a permanent presence there that could signal a new era in the exploration of the solar system.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-lunar-outpost

But the plans have been made and now the loss of the leader of Artemis…….

A NASA executive who was appointed just six weeks ago to lead the strategy for future missions to the Moon has resigned, The Hill reports.

Mark Sirangelo was hired in April as special assistant to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. It’s a sudden departure that looks especially odd considering the White House’s focus on getting Americans back to the Moon — but Congress’s refusal to grant extra funds is forcing NASA to re-evaluate the ambitious plans.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-executive-moon-mission-sirangelo-quit

Now let’s expand our vision beyond our proposed Moon Base…….how about our other objective….Mars?

The building blocks of life….water has been discovered on Mars……

Scientists think they’ve stumbled on a new cache of water ice on Mars — and not just any ice but a layered mix of ice and sand representing the last traces of long-lost polar ice caps.

That’s according to new research based on data gathered by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the Red Planet since 2006 and has just marked its 60,000th trip around Mars. On board the spacecraft is a radar instrument that can see about 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) below the planet’s surface — and in that data, scientists see lots and lots of ice.

“We didn’t expect to find this much water ice here,” lead author Stefano Nerozzi, a doctoral student in geology at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, said in a statement released by the American Geophysical Union, which published the new research. “That likely makes it the third largest water reservoir on Mars after the polar ice caps.”

https://www.space.com/ancient-water-icecaps-discovered-on-mars.html

Once we set up our “settlement” on Mars the mutations will begin……

Scientists have set their sights on getting humans to Mars — and maybe even terraforming the Red Planet. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s goal is to send humans to Mars by 2024, and NASA plans to launch astronauts there after the Moon.

But despite the resources being funneled into technology to transport us to the Red Planet, we don’t yet understand the evolutionary implications the move will have on the human body. In a new interview with Inverse, evolutionary biologist and Rice University professor Scott Solomon thinks it’s worth asking what will happen to Mars colonists in the long term — as mutations start to cascade through the gene pool.

https://futurism.com/mars-colonists-mutation-evolution

The Moon and Mars have taken up so much of the scientific research but what about our other “neighbor”….Venus?

Did life exist on Venus in the distant past?

While today Venus is a very inhospitable place with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, geological evidence, supported by computer model simulations, indicate it may have been much cooler billions of years ago and had an ocean, and so have been very similar to Earth.

It is not only the temperature and highly corrosive atmosphere of the present day Venus that makes it different from the Earth. Venus also rotates very slowly, taking 243 Earth days to complete a Venusian day. However, billions of years in the past it may have spun faster, which would have helped make the planet more habitable.

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-05-possibility-life-venus.html

From the distant past into the distant future…..when our Sun starts to die it will take the Earth with it….maybe not……

In about five billion years, the Sun will begin to die, rapidly expanding and incinerating the Earth in its death throes. That’s not for a while, but any humans left will need to plan well in advance if they want to escape cosmic obliteration.

Humanity’s best bet is migrating to another planet, according to an essay by Glasgow space engineer Matteo Ceriotti in The Conversation. But with enough planning, he argues, it could be possible to push Earth’s orbit around the Sun to a safe distance where the explosion won’t reach us.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/space-engineer-earth-orbit-escape-sun

A short trip around the world of space exploration…..space is our future……