APOD: The Clipper and the Comet (2024 Oct 17)

[APOD Robot]

The Clipper and the Comet

Explanation: NASA's Europa Clipper is now headed toward an ocean world beyond Earth. The large spacecraft is tucked into the payload fairing atop the Falcon Heavy rocket in this photo, taken at Kennedy Space Center the day before the mission's successful October 14 launch. Europa Clipper's interplanetary voyage will first take it to Mars, then back to Earth, and then on to Jupiter on gravity assist trajectories that will allow it to enter orbit around Jupiter in April 2030. Once orbiting Jupiter, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times, exploring a Jovian moon with a global subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. Posing in the background next to the floodlit rocket is Comet Tsuchinsan-ATLAS, about a day after the comet's closest approach to Earth. A current darling of evening skies, the naked-eye comet is a vistor from the distant Oort cloud

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[johnnydeep]

Only 49 orbital flybys of Europa? I presume that's dictated by the amount of fuel on board? Hopefully they can squeeze a few more flybys in.

This was a decent science fiction movie - "Europa Report" - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/

And from Wikipedia:

Europa Report is a 2013 American science fiction film directed by Sebastián Cordero and written by Philip Gelatt. It stars Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, and Sharlto Copley. A found footage film, it recounts the fictional story of the first crewed mission to Europa, one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. Despite a disastrous technical failure that causes the loss of all communications with Earth, and a series of further crises, the crew continues its mission to Europa and finds mounting evidence of life on the moon.[3]

And more from Wikipedia:

To raise public awareness of the Europa Clipper mission, NASA undertook a "Message In A Bottle" campaign, i.e. an actual "Send Your Name to Europa" campaign on June 1, 2023, through which people around the world were invited to send their names as signatories to a poem called "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa" written by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, for the 1.8-billion-mile voyage to Jupiter. The poem connects the two water worlds – Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored.

The poem is engraved on Europa Clipper inside a tantalum metal plate that seals an opening into the vault. The inward-facing side of the metal plate is engraved with the poem in the poet's own handwriting. The public participants' names are etched onto a microchip attached to the plate, within an artwork of a wine bottle surrounded by the four Galilean moons. After registering their names, participants received a digital ticket with details of the mission's launch and destination. According to NASA, 2,620,861 people signed their names to Europa Clipper's Message in a Bottle, most of whom were from the United States.[110] Other elements etched on the inwards side together with the poem and names are the Drake equation, representations of the spectral lines of atomic hydrogen and the hydroxyl radical, together known as the water hole, and a portrait of planetary scientist Ron Greeley.[111] The plate is about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters). The outward-facing panel features art that highlights Earth's connection to Europa. Linguists collected recordings of the word "water" spoken in 103 languages, from families of languages around the world. The audio files were converted into waveforms and etched into the plate. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for "water".[112] The research organization METI International gathered the audio files for the words for "water," and its president Douglas Vakoch designed the water hole component of the message.[113][114]

And here's the poem:

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa
Copyright Ada Limón, 2023

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

Finally, God speed Europa Clipper!

[Ann]

Only 49 orbital flybys of Europa? I presume that's dictated by the amount of fuel on board? Hopefully they can squeeze a few more flybys in.

This was a decent science fiction movie - "Europa Report" - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2051879/

And from Wikipedia:

Europa Report is a 2013 American science fiction film directed by Sebastián Cordero and written by Philip Gelatt. It stars Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, and Sharlto Copley. A found footage film, it recounts the fictional story of the first crewed mission to Europa, one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. Despite a disastrous technical failure that causes the loss of all communications with Earth, and a series of further crises, the crew continues its mission to Europa and finds mounting evidence of life on the moon.[3]

And more from Wikipedia:

To raise public awareness of the Europa Clipper mission, NASA undertook a "Message In A Bottle" campaign, i.e. an actual "Send Your Name to Europa" campaign on June 1, 2023, through which people around the world were invited to send their names as signatories to a poem called "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa" written by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, for the 1.8-billion-mile voyage to Jupiter. The poem connects the two water worlds – Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored.

The poem is engraved on Europa Clipper inside a tantalum metal plate that seals an opening into the vault. The inward-facing side of the metal plate is engraved with the poem in the poet's own handwriting. The public participants' names are etched onto a microchip attached to the plate, within an artwork of a wine bottle surrounded by the four Galilean moons. After registering their names, participants received a digital ticket with details of the mission's launch and destination. According to NASA, 2,620,861 people signed their names to Europa Clipper's Message in a Bottle, most of whom were from the United States.[110] Other elements etched on the inwards side together with the poem and names are the Drake equation, representations of the spectral lines of atomic hydrogen and the hydroxyl radical, together known as the water hole, and a portrait of planetary scientist Ron Greeley.[111] The plate is about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters). The outward-facing panel features art that highlights Earth's connection to Europa. Linguists collected recordings of the word "water" spoken in 103 languages, from families of languages around the world. The audio files were converted into waveforms and etched into the plate. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for "water".[112] The research organization METI International gathered the audio files for the words for "water," and its president Douglas Vakoch designed the water hole component of the message.[113][114]

And here's the poem:

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa
Copyright Ada Limón, 2023

Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

Finally, God speed Europa Clipper!

Thank you, Johnny. That is a post worthy of Neufer.

Ann

[johnnydeep]

Only 49 orbital flybys of Europa? I presume that's dictated by the amount of fuel on board? Hopefully they can squeeze a few more flybys in.
...

Thank you, Johnny. That is a post worthy of Neufer.

Ann

The spirit moved me. And here's one more interesting thing, prompted by watching a NOVA episode about gravity forming planets.

This is the episode, which seems to be free to watch for all.

https://www.pbs.org/video/solar-system- ... ds-pmb9ko/

The segment about Huamea, a very oblate - it's a triaxial ellipsoid! - 500 mile average diameter Kuiper belt object (or is it just a Trans Neptunian Object (TNO)?) with a 4 hour rotation period and with two moons - and even a ring! - starts at 8:55 in the video. Amazing stuff. I hope we send a probe there some day!

More at https://www.britannica.com/place/Haumea

Haumea, unusual dwarf planet orbiting the Sun in the Kuiper belt beyond Pluto. It was discovered in 2003 by a team of American astronomers at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Originally called 2003 EL61, Haumea is named for the Hawaiian goddess of birth and fertility. In September 2008 the International Astronomical Union designated Haumea as the fifth dwarf planet and the fourth plutoid.

Haumea is an elongated object, unusual for a dwarf planet; its dimensions are about 2,322 × 1,704 × 1,138 km (1,443 × 1,059 × 707 miles). It has a fast rotation period of 3.92 hours, which may be the reason for Haumea’s elongation, and an orbital period of 285.46 years. Unlike most objects in the Kuiper belt, Haumea is not an equal mixture of ice and rock but likely has a thin water ice crust covering a rocky interior. It is one of the densest Kuiper belt objects, with a density of 1.885 grams per cubic centimeter. (The name Haumea alludes to this structure, since the goddess Haumea is also associated with stone.) Haumea has a surface feature, the Dark Red Spot, which may be an impact crater that has revealed the dwarf planet’s interior. About 10 other Kuiper belt objects have orbits, fast rotational periods, and icy surfaces similar to Haumea’s; these objects and Haumea’s fast rotation may have been caused by a collision of Haumea with some object in the distant past.

In 2005 two moons of Haumea were discovered and were subsequently named after daughters of Haumea.
...
In 2017 astronomers discovered a ring around Haumea. The ring is about 70 km (40 miles) wide and is at a radius of 2,287 km (1,421 km) from the dwarf planet.
...

And from https://nineplanets.org/haumea/

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