Pint-sized asteroid will make close pass of Earth tomorrow, but a much larger one is right behind it

A tiny asteroid will slip by Earth on Friday, March 2nd, coming within around 70,000 miles of our planet as it cruises through the Solar System. The rock, which has been named “2018 DV1,” is quite small, measuring just 23 feet in width, and isn’t considered a danger to Earth. However, the same can’t be said for the much larger asteroid that is right behind it.

On March 7th, the asteroid named “2017 VR12” will make its closest approach to Earth, coming within around 870,000 miles. That’s a much larger buffer zone, but the rock itself is also a great deal more massive than 2018 DV1. 2017 VR12 is thought to measure over 500 feet wide, and might even be as large as 1,500 feet wide based on the most recent observations. That’s large enough to warrant a NASA label of “potentially dangerous.”

According to NASA, both asteroids should pass safely by our planet and aren’t expected to cause much of a headache. That’s obviously good news, especially since the smaller of the two, 2018 DV1, will actually be quite close when it makes its pass. 70,000 miles is a mere hair’s width in cosmic terms, and is well within the orbit of the Moon which orbits at around 240,000 miles.

2018 DV1 is a fairly recent discovery. Asteroids of this size are very hard to spot until they get much closer to Earth, while larger rocks like 2017 VR12 catch the eye of astronomers from a much greater distance. Even if 2018 DV1 were to strike the planet, it’s small enough that it would likely not do very much damage, and certainly wouldn’t threaten the planet as a whole.

2017 VR12, on the other hand, has some potential to do serious harm if it were to end up in a collision course with our planet. It’s considered a medium sized rock, based on the size of asteroids that have been logged in the past, and it’s not even in the same league as the really big ones. Still, at as large as 1,500 feet wide, it’s not small. Thankfully, it appears it will easily miss us this time around, and NASA says it’s not expected to fly back into our neighborhood again for another 177 years or so.

Voyager 1: Earth's Farthest Spacecraft

Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to reach interstellar space. It originally was launched (along with Voyager 2) in 1977 to explore the outer planets in our solar system. However, it has remained operational long past expectations and continues to send information about its journeys back to Earth.

Artist rendering of Voyager1

The spacecraft officially entered interstellar space in August 2012, almost 35 years after its voyage began. The discovery wasn't made official until 2013, however, when scientists had time to review the data sent back from Voyager 1.
Voyager 1 was actually the second of the twin spacecraft to launch, but it was the first to race by Jupiter and Saturn. The images it sent back have been used in schoolbooks and newspaper outlets for a generation. Also on board was a special record, carrying voices and music from Earth out into the cosmos.
Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched about two weeks later, on Sept. 5. Since then, the spacecraft have been traveling along different flight paths and at different speeds. The Voyager missions were intended to take advantage of a special alignment of the outer planets that happens every 176 years. It would allow a spacecraft to slingshot from one planet to the next, assisted by the first planet's gravity.
The spacecraft’s next big encounter will take place in 40,000 years, when Voyager 1 comes within 1.7 light-years of the star AC +79 3888. (The star itself is roughly 17.5 light-years from Earth.) However, Voyager 1's falling power supply means it will stop transmitting data by about 2025, meaning no data will flow back from that distant location.

Entering interstellar space

Voyager 1's official departure from the solar system occurred in August 2012; the discovery was made public in a study published in Science the following year.
The results came to light after a powerful solar eruption was recorded in Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument between April 9 and May 22, 2013. The eruption caused electrons near Voyager 1 to vibrate. From the oscillations, researchers discovered Voyager 1's surroundings had a higher density than what is found inside the heliosphere, or the region of space in which the sun's environment predominates.
It seems contradictory that electron density is higher in interstellar space than it is in the sun's neighborhood, but the researchers explained that at the edge of the heliosphere, electron density is dramatically low compared with locations nearby Earth.
Researchers then backtracked through Voyager 1's data and nailed down the official departure date to sometime in August 2012. The date was fixed not only by the electron oscillations, but also by its measurements of charged solar particles.
On Aug. 25, the probe saw a 1,000-fold drop in these particles and a 9-percent increase in galactic cosmic rays that come from outside of the solar system. At that point, it was 11.25 billion miles (18.11 billion km) from the sun, approximately 121 times the Earth-sun distance.

Voyager 1's interstellar adventures

As of February 2018, Voyager is roughly 141 astronomical units (sun-Earth distances) from Earth. That's roughly 13.2 billion miles, or 21.2 billion kilometers. You can look at its current distance on this NASA website.
Since flying past the solar system's boundary into interstellar space, Voyager 1 sent back valuable information about conditions in this zone of the universe. Its discoveries include showing that cosmic radiation is very intense, and demonstrating how charged particles from the sun interact with those of other stars, said project scientist Ed Stone in a September 2017 interview.
The spacecraft's capabilities continue to astound engineers. In December 2017, NASA announced that Voyager 1 successfully used its backup thrusters to orient itself to "talk" with Earth. These "trajectory correction maneuver" (TCM) thrusters hadn't been used since November 1980, during Voyager's last planetary flyby of Saturn. Since then, Voyager used its standard attitude-control thrusters to swing the spacecraft in the right orientation to talk with Earth.
As the performance of the attitude-control thrusters began to deteriorate, however, NASA decided to test using the TCMs to extend Voyager 1's lifespan. That test ultimately succeeded. "With these thrusters that are still functional after 37 years without use, we will be able to extend the life of the Voyager 1 spacecraft by two to three years," Voyager project manager Suzanne Dodd, also of JPL, said in a statement.
The Voyager spacecraft each celebrated 40 years in space in 2017, prompting celebrations from NASA and celebrities such as "Star Trek" star William Shatner. In September 2017, Shatner read out a message to the spacecraft originally crafted on Twitter, by Oliver Jenkins: "We offer friendship across the stars. You are not alone." Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Annabel Kennedy then transmitted the message to Voyager 1; it was projected to reach the spacecraft in about 19 hours.
"None of us knew, when we launched 40 years ago, that anything would still be working, and continuing on this pioneering journey," Stone said in a NASA statement from August 2017. "The most exciting thing they find in the next five years is likely to be something that we didn't know was out there to be discovered."

Water Might Be All Over the Moon, New Research Shows

In 2009, three spacecraft confirmed that water exists on the moon, but until now, astronomers thought most of that water was confined to "cold traps" at the moon's poles. Now, a new analysis of two lunar missions throws doubt on that theory and suggests that water could actually be spread across the moon's surface.
The analysis, published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Feb. 12, could help researchers understand where the moon's water comes from and how helpful the water would be as a resource for Earth, whether it's collected for drinking water or converted into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel or into air for future space explorers.
Although this new analysis doesn't give researchers a sense of how accessible the water is, it does suggest that both H2O and OH (a molecule known as hydroxyl) are spread across the moon's surface and can be found day and night. [The Search for Water on the Moon in Photos]
"We find that it doesn't matter what time of day or which latitude we look at; the signal indicating water always seems to be present," Joshua Bandfield, a senior research scientist with the Space Science Institute and lead author of the study, said in a statement from NASA. "The presence of water doesn't appear to depend on the composition of the surface, and the water sticks around."
Previous studies suggested that water and hydroxyl — a relative of H2O that's made with just one oxygen molecule and one hydrogen molecule — were found mostly at the poles in "cold traps," regions that are so cold that water vapor and other volatiles will remain stable there for up to several billion years. The researchers also found that the strength of the reflective signal used to detect water depended on the lunar day (which is equal to 29.5 Earth days), the statement said.

Bandfield and his team found a new way to use temperature information in data taken from lunar missions. Using this method, they changed the interpretation of previous studies' search for water on the moon's surface.
Water on the moon reflects sunlight at a specific wavelength — about 3 micrometers — which lies beyond visible light and in the realm of infrared radiation, NASA officials said in the statement. Remote sensors measure the strength of sunlight reflected off the lunar surface. But the moon also gets hot enough to emit its own light in the infrared spectrum, so researchers have to untangle this signal from the one coming from reflections off of water and hydroxyl. They do this by using information about the lunar temperature.
Bandfield's team found a new, more accurate way to detect the temperature and, therefore, better disentangle signals coming from water reflections from those coming from the moon's hot surface. The new temperature model suggests that water on the moon is present mostly as hydroxyl, which would have to be extracted from minerals in order to be used.
The researchers are still working out what the data tells them about the source of water on the moon. However, they suggested that water may be created when solar winds hit the lunar surface and the hydrogen atoms in those winds react with the oxygen atoms in the lunar rocks and its dusty surface, called regolith. Nonetheless, they didn't want to discount the possibility that the water might be slowly released from minerals on the moon since its formation.
"Some of these scientific problems are very, very difficult, and it's only by drawing on multiple resources from different missions" that we can zero in on an answer, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter project scientist John Keller, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in the statement.

Humans Will Hear from Intelligent Aliens This Century, Physicist Says

Humans will make contact with aliens by the end of the century😃, can't wait!, theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku said last week. However, Kaku said he wasn't sure whether we'd be able to communicate directly with this unknown extraterrestrial society — one that could run the gamut from hostile to pacifist, according to Kaku.

  He responded to a question about alien civilizations, saying, "Let me stick my neck out. I personally feel that within this century, we will make contact with an alien civilization, by listening in on their radio communications. But talking to them will be difficult, since they could be tens of light years away. So, in the meantime, we must decipher their language to understand their level of technology. Are they Type I, II, or III??? [These represent three categories in the Kardashev scale, measuring technological achievement in civilizations based on their level of energy use for communication.] And what are their intentions. Are they expansive and aggressive, or peaceful."
Kaku added, "Another possibility is that they land on the White House lawn and announce their existence. But I think that is unlikely, since we would be like forest animals to them, i.e. not worth communicating with." [Greetings, Earthlings! ]
Futurists and theoretical physicists, among others, have proposed a range of ideas for when and how Earthlings could "hear from" E.T., with one astronomer's calculation predicting it would happen within 1,500 years and another suggesting we'll find intelligent alien life by 2040.
Though a recent survey suggests humans would be cool with alien interlopers, many scientists and thinkers have warned about the risks involved. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking has voiced his concern several times, saying that intelligent aliens would have no problem wiping out the human race. That said, the same futurists and theoretical minds also fear that the same fate could be dished out to us by human-created artificial intelligence.

Why radio signals?

When Kaku mentions humanity's eavesdropping on extraterrestrial "radio communications," he is likely referring to what alien hunters call narrow-band signals, or those that are spread over only a very small part of the radio extent of the electromagnetic spectrum — no more than a few hertz wide. By comparison, noise emanating from galaxies, quasars, pulsars and other cosmic entities typically extends across a wide swath of the spectrum. Narrow-band noise could therefore be "the mark of a purposely built transistor," according to the SETI Institute.
"Alien life" can refer to anything from little green men to microbes. But when Kaku refers to extraterrestrial life that is capable of communication that traverses light-years, he is clearly talking about more advanced beings. As a civilization grows and becomes more sophisticated, it will inevitably use more energy. As a way of measuring how advanced a society is, Russian astrophysicist Nikolai S. Kardashev in 1964 proposed using this energy as a proxy. The Kardashev scale moves from Type I, a civilization that can harness all the energy of its home planet (Earth is just about at this level); to Type II, which can use all the energy from its parent star (a Dyson sphere is the most common example), to Type III, a civilization that can control all the energy from its home galaxy.
Narrow-band signals "pack a lot of energy into a small amount of spectral space, and consequently are the easiest type of signal to find for any given power level. If E.T. intentionally sends us a signal, those signals may well have at least one narrow-band component to get our attention," according to the SETI Institute.
In his new book "The Future of Humanity" (Doubleday, 2018), Kaku paints a picture of what these aliens might be like, based on interviews with experts in exobiology. They'd have three traits: stereovision (needed to hunt prey), grasping appendages like opposable thumbs, and their own language, according to news reports.
If these "little green men" with opposable thumbs make contact, what happens next? That would depend on the beings' level of intelligence, experts have said.

The SETI Institute used its Alien Telescope Array in California to confirm an intriguing radio signal coming from the star HD 164595, located about 94 light-years from Earth.

Credit: SETI Institute

Did you know that VOYAGER 1 is currently the furthest man-made object from earth and still operating.

What were you doing back in 1977? Were you alive? Do you remember that time period? Well, in September of 1977 NASA was about to embark on one of the greatest and most successful missions of its existence.
September 5, 1977 the Voyager 1 Space Probe was sent into space on the rocket to study the outer Solar System and then see where things go from there.
At the time of this post, it’s been roughly 38 years and 2 months since that fateful day and the Voyager 1 Space Probe continues to communicate with the Deep Space Network and transmit data from the furthest realms of the Solar System.
In honor of this spacecraft, the single further object ever sent out into space by mankind,

The mission Voyager 1 has been tasked with is to study the outer space. The Voyager 1 has spent a great deal of time performing flybys of Saturn, Jupiter and Titan – Saturn’s largest moon.
One of the most exciting and more notable achievements made by Voyager 1 includes studying the rings, magnetic fields and weather on both Jupiter and Saturn, capturing and sending detailed images of their moons back to Scientists and Astronomers here on Earth.

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to travel beyond the limits of interstellar space and crossed through the heliopause. With great anticipation, Voyager 1 immediately began studying the famous interstellar medium and sending data back to Earth.
Best estimates have the Voyager 1 Space Probe in working condition until around 2025. At this time, the Voyager 1 Space Probe’s thermoelectric generators will no longer work.

At the Space Probe’s current distance from earth. its signal take around 18 hours to finally reach the Earth. Another amazing feat for Voyager 1 is the discovery of volcanic activity in Jupiter’s moon Io; which was a very welcomed and shocking surprise.
In fact, this was the first time volcanic activity has been found on another astronomical body in the Solar System other than here on Earth.

Traveling at 38,000 miles per hour Yeah, that’s right, the Voyager 1 Space Probe is one of the fasted moving man-made objects in space! It travels at a little more than !
Despite how fast the Voyager 1 Space Probe is traveling, it’s barely left the Solar System and we’re decades after its launch.
Something to keep in mind, it will take Voyager 1 nearly 300 years to reach the famous Oort Cloud and it’ll take around 30,000 years just to go from the entry point of the Oort Cloud ring to the exit.

If you think the Voyager 1 moves fast relative to astronomical objects, think again! The star Gliesse 445 is racing towards our Solar System at nearly 266,000 miles per hour!
One last tidbit to chew on, NASA speculates that the Voyager 1 Space Probe might wander around the Milky Way eternally. What a life!


The Voyager 1 carries a golden record with song mixes, a speech from the President of the United States, a baby cry and even music from Mozart and other masters.

This is a gold-plated disc created with a unique purpose: to be a useful device if the Voyager 1 Space Probe is ever found by other intelligent beings from other planetary system.
 he Voyager 1 Space Probe has an unthinkable distance from Earth of roughly 12,427,423,844 miles. This distance only increases every second and at an immaculate pace.

In fact, the Voyager 1 Space Probe has been exploring places that no other spacecraft has ever gone before. Voyager 1 is further away from the Sun than Pluto, which is amazing to think that mankind has achieved the ability to send objects out of our Solar System.

Right now Voyager 1 is traveling into the great area Astronomers refer to as interstellar space, which is a region define as the space between stars. Interstellar space is filled with a plethora of various materials produced when a star dies.










he Voyager 1 Space Probe, along with its cousin, the Voyager 2 Space Probe, have both studied each of the giant and gas planets in our Solar System. The giant planets included Jupiter and Saturn, and the gas planets include Uranus and Neptune.
In addition to this exciting accomplishment, both of these Space Probes have studied a variety of each of these massive planet’s moons. Another important aspect of the Voyager’s missions was to study the unique and awesome system of magnetic fields and rings around these outer objects.

In fact, the Voyager 1 Space Probe is one of the few probes to go beyond the planets in our massive Solar System. By passing Pioneer 10, another Space Probe, Voyager 1 has become the most-distant spacecraft ever to be launched into the outer space.



Voyager 1 has been travelling nearly a million miles per day (912,000 miles, give or take) since its launch decades ago. At that speed and that distance, the Voyager 1 Space Probe needs a lot of features to protect its integrity when traveling alone through the abyss of outer space.
The Voyager 1 has the ability to automatically program itself to rest in a safe state within seconds of detected danger. This amazing feature (even for back in 1977) is paramount for its survival and longevity.

In fact, Some argue that the Voyager 1 Space Probe is the single greatest feat undertaken by NASA in the exploration of outer space.
The Voyager 1 Space Probe has been traveling through space at nearly 38,000 miles per hour for the last 38 years. Though, the original plan from NASA was to simply end its mission within 4 years of launch, the little Voyager 1 Space Probe that could just keeps on chugging along.
There’s no question that the Voyager 1 Space Probe has far exceeded everyone’s expectations. Some say it’s the best use of monies by NASA, ever. Voyager 1 took a “family portrait” of the Solar System from around 4,000,000,000 miles away from Earth, what a sight.
However, in 2025 the Voyager 1 will not longer work and will remain dormant for eternity. Nonetheless, the Voyager 1 Space Probe has done an immaculate job and we in another decade, all we can do is hope that one day intelligent beings will find one of the greatest achievements of mankind; the Voyager 1 Space Probe.

SPACE GEEKS: Proxima Centauri (one of our nearest stars)

SPACE GEEKS: Proxima Centauri (one of our nearest stars): Proxima centauri as seen by Humble Telescope Proxima Centauri , or Alpha Centauri C , is a red dwarf , a small low-mass star...

Proxima Centauri (one of our nearest stars)

Proxima centauri as seen by Humble Telescope

Proxima Centauri, or Alpha Centauri C, is a red dwarf, a small low-mass star, about 4.25 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Centaurus. It was discovered in 1915 by the Scottish astronomer Robert Innes, the Director of the Union Observatory in South Africa, and is the nearest-known star to the Sun. With an apparent magnitude of 11.05, it is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. Proxima Centauri forms a third component of the Alpha Centauri trinary star system(meaning that the stars a three in the Alpha Centauri System), currently with a separation of about 12,950 AU (1.94 trillion km) and an orbital period of 550,000 years. At present Proxima is 2.18° to the southwest of Alpha Centauri. 

In 2016, the European Southern Observatory announced the discovery of Proxima b, a planet orbiting the star at a distance of roughly 0.05 AU (7.5 million km) with an orbital period of approximately 11.2 Earth days. Its estimated mass is at least 1.3 times that of the Earth. The equilibrium temperature of Proxima b is estimated to be within the range of where water could exist as liquid on its surface, thus placing it within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri,  although because Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf and a flare star, whether it could support life is disputed. Previous searches for orbiting companions had ruled out the presence of brown dwarfs and supermassive planets.

The light-year is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances. It is about 9.5 trillion kilometers or 5.9 trillion miles. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a       light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days). Because it includes the word "year", the term light-year is sometimes misinterpreted as a unit of  time. So you might wanna note that!

The two bright points are the Alpha Centauri system (left) and Beta Centauri (right). The faint red star in the centre of the red circle is Proxima Centauri.

Interstellar travel

 

Because of the star's proximity to Earth, Proxima Centauri has been proposed as a flyby destination for interstellar travel. Proxima currently moves toward Earth at a rate of 22.2 km/s. After 26,700 years, when it will come within 3.11 light-years, it will begin to move farther away

If non-nuclear, conventional propulsion technologies are used, the flight of a spacecraft to a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri would probably require thousands of years. For example, Voyager 1, (the only man-made object out of the solar system) which is now travelling 17 km/s (38,000 mph) relative to the Sun would reach Proxima in 73,775 years(wooo!!!..😱😨!), were the spacecraft travelling in the direction of that star. A slow-moving probe would have only several tens of thousands of years to catch Proxima Centauri near its closest approach, and could end up watching it recede into the distance.
 

Nuclear pulse propulsion might enable such interstellar travel with a trip timescale of a century, inspiring several studies such as Project Orion, Project Daedalus, and Project Longshot.

Project Breakthrough Starshot aims to reach the Alpha Centauri system within the first half of the 21st century, with microprobes travelling at twenty percent of the speed of light propelled by around 100 gigawatts of Earth-based lasers. The probes will perform a fly-by of Proxima Centauri to take photos and collect data of its planet's atmospheric composition. It will take 4.22 years for the information collected to be sent back to Earth.

From Proxima Centauri, the Sun would appear as a bright 0.4-magnitude star in the constellation Cassiopeia.

The Sun as seen from the Alpha Centauri system, using Celestia

 Lets hope that we will ever make it up there.