I am incredibly lucky as my father was an Army Helicopter pilot so around the time we were in our early teens, he took us out to the military base when they were training on night vision goggles. We had a chance to wear his helmet (while supervised) out on the flight line after dark. I have never seen such a beautiful sight of the milky way through those goggles. Incredible and I have really never forgotten that image. Its insane and that was 30 years ago.
Joseph probably the same type of dude that would tweet “wHY DiD wE Go tO tHe MoOn?” online using all this high technology that probably started with those moon missions.
plenty of territory on earth still to explore, just none of it to discover as far as undiscovered land goes at this point, I would assume.
This one has been popping up from time to time over the last few years. A little background: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/first-photo-another-solar-system/
We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.
NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration broke yet another record for laser communications this summer by sending a laser signal from Earth to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft about 290 million miles (460 million kilometers) away. That’s the same distance between our planet and Mars when the two planets are farthest apart. By transporting data at rates up to 100 times higher than radio frequencies, lasers can enable the transmission of complex scientific information as well as high-definition imagery and video, which are needed to support humanity’s next giant leap when astronauts travel to Mars and beyond. The technology demonstration’s data is sent to and from Psyche as bits encoded in near-infrared light, which has a higher frequency than radio waves. That higher frequency enables more data to be packed into a transmission, allowing far higher rates of data transfer. Even when Psyche was about 33 million miles (53 million kilometers) away — comparable to Mars’ closest approach to Earth — the technology demonstration could transmit data at the system’s maximum rate of 267 megabits per second. That bit rate is similar to broadband internet download speeds. As the spacecraft travels farther away, the rate at which it can send and receive data is reduced, as expected. On June 24, when Psyche was about 240 million miles (390 million kilometers) from Earth — more than 2½ times the distance between our planet and the Sun — the project achieved a sustained downlink data rate of 6.25 megabits per second, with a maximum rate of 8.3 megabits per second. While this rate is significantly lower than the experiment’s maximum, it is far higher than what a radio frequency communications system using comparable power can achieve over that distance.
Starship is designed to achieve reflight of its rocket booster ultimately within an hour after liftoff. The booster returns within ~5 minutes, so the remaining time is reloading propellant and placing a ship on top of the booster.
I've been trying to see the comet the last three nights but clouds have been in place on the horizon each time.