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still haven't finished a book, sigh
Sep. 13th, 2017 09:15 pmSo, in lieu of the Weds book meme, I get a little maudlin...
Circling back to DragonCon, some of our perennial favorites are the panels on the Space and Science tracks, which are like a second con within the con—a little cocoon of Really Cool Reality within the sprawling web of Really Cool Altered-Reality that surrounds it. This year’s Space track was especially neat in that the Cassini mission (to Saturn & its moons & rings) is about to end after nearly 20 years of amazing data and new finds. I think one or the other of us were at every Cassini panel this year and were comparing notes the whole weekend. (One of the really cool things was that half the panelists I saw/met were women, which is always such a boost to my (sometimes beaten down) girl-engineer morale.)
Anyway, Cassini is almost out of fuel, and has had its mission extended so far beyond its original parameters that it’s almost unbelievable. In order to avoid any potential contamination of the moons Enceladus and Titan with Earth microbes that might have survived (because they are potentially life-supporting environments), the spacecraft is deliberately being sent on an orbit that will trap it in Saturn’s gravity and burn it up on reentry. It’ll be transmitting on the way down, though, sampling the atmosphere and sending as much data as possible along the way.
This is all happening on Friday. I feel like I’m losing a friend who’s had the best vacation pictures ever. I can’t imagine how the NASA team feels.
eta: Here's all the 'post cards' in a free ebook from NASA: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/7777/?category=graphics
Circling back to DragonCon, some of our perennial favorites are the panels on the Space and Science tracks, which are like a second con within the con—a little cocoon of Really Cool Reality within the sprawling web of Really Cool Altered-Reality that surrounds it. This year’s Space track was especially neat in that the Cassini mission (to Saturn & its moons & rings) is about to end after nearly 20 years of amazing data and new finds. I think one or the other of us were at every Cassini panel this year and were comparing notes the whole weekend. (One of the really cool things was that half the panelists I saw/met were women, which is always such a boost to my (sometimes beaten down) girl-engineer morale.)
Anyway, Cassini is almost out of fuel, and has had its mission extended so far beyond its original parameters that it’s almost unbelievable. In order to avoid any potential contamination of the moons Enceladus and Titan with Earth microbes that might have survived (because they are potentially life-supporting environments), the spacecraft is deliberately being sent on an orbit that will trap it in Saturn’s gravity and burn it up on reentry. It’ll be transmitting on the way down, though, sampling the atmosphere and sending as much data as possible along the way.
This is all happening on Friday. I feel like I’m losing a friend who’s had the best vacation pictures ever. I can’t imagine how the NASA team feels.
eta: Here's all the 'post cards' in a free ebook from NASA: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/7777/?category=graphics
