*Those Razor-like Shadows, They’re So Black They Look Photoshopped

Cassini prepares for final orbital “Grand Finale” at Saturn.

Erik Wernquist, the same filmmaker who created 2014’s “Wanderers” and a stunning New Horizons promotional film in 2015, has created a new video highlighting NASA’s Cassini mission’s final days at Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft will begin its final series of orbits to cap a 13-year groundbreaking science mission known as the Grand Finale. For the first time ever in Cassini’s time at Saturn, the spacecraft will fly in between the planet’s rings and atmosphere. No spacecraft has ever before flown in this region of any of the solar system’s ringed planets. After 23 orbits, Cassini will dive into Saturn’s upper atmosphere September 15 where it will be destroyed. In 2008, mission managers explored a range of End of Mission scenarios that would protect Saturn’s moon’s from Earthly contaminants before ultimately deciding on atmospheric reentry. Cassini began her End of Mission manoeuvres on November 26, 2016, when it began the first of 20 ring-grazing orbits. A close flyby of Titan April 22 will alter the spacecraft’s trajectory to begin the first of 23 orbits in the Grand Finale, which will begin April 26.

Cassini launched from Earth on October 15, 1997, and entered Saturn orbit June 30, 2004. Six months later, on January 14, 2005, the European-built Huygens probe attached to the spacecraft landed on Titan, becoming the first probe to land in the outer solar system. 

Originally scheduled for a four-year mission ending in 2008, Cassini received two mission extensions in 2008 and 2010, with the latter ending in 2017. With the spacecraft’s fuel reserves low, the Cassini team decided to end the mission. P/C: JPL/Erik Wernquist

Սպիրու Կոստաքեի Հարեթ Spiru C. Haret

Romanian Armenian mathematician, astronomer and politician. He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by introducing the concept of secular perturbations in relation to this. (Proved that planetary motion is not absolutely stable)  As a politician, during his three terms as Minister of Education, Haret ran deep reforms, building the modern Romanian education system. He was made a full member of the Romanian Academy in 1892. He also founded the Astronomical observatory in Bucharest, The crater Haret on the Moon is named after him. The Spiru Haret University, a private university in Bucharest, Romania, bears the name of a scientist and reformer of the Romanian education.

Born 15 February 1851 in Iaşi, Moldavia to an Armenian family, He showed talent for mathematics at a very young age, publishing two textbooks, one in algebra and one in trigonometry when he was still in high school. Whilst in his second year studying physics and mathematics the in the University of Bucharest, he became a teacher of mathematics in Nifon Seminary.

After graduation, Haret won a scholarship competition organized by Titu Maiorescu and went to Paris in order to study mathematics at the Sorbonne. There he earned a mathematics diploma in 1875 and a physics diploma in 1876. Two years later he earned his Ph.D. by defending his thesis, Sur l’invariabilité des grandes axes des orbites planétaires (On the invariability of the major axis of planetary orbits), in front of examiners led by Victor Puiseux. In this work he proved a result fundamental for the n-body problem in astronomy, the thesis being published in Vol. XVIII of the Annales de l'Observatoire de Paris. Haret was the first Romanian to obtain a Ph.D. degree in Paris, (though he was of full Armenian descent)

After his return to Romania in 1878, Haret abandoned scientific research and dedicated the rest of his life to improving Romanian education, which was heavily underdeveloped at the time, both as professor and as politician. He only published an article on the secular acceleration of the Moon in 1880 and one on Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (1912). And in In 1910 he published Social mechanics, which used mathematics to explain social behaviour (somehow anticipating the fictional “psychohistory” branch of mathematics developed by Hari Seldon, the fictional character of Isaac Asimov‘s Foundation, published 40 years later).

He was appointed professor of rational mechanics at the Science Faculty in Bucharest. The next year Haret became a correspondent member of the Romanian Academy. He kept the professorship at the Science Faculty until his retirement in 1910.  As Minister of Education he ran a complete reform, basically building the modern Romanian education system

William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781. 205 years later in 1986, NASA sent Voyager 2 2.6 billion km to photograph it. Quite a leap in 2 centuries’ time. *http://bit.ly/AstroTwitter

Ham Radio and Equipment Operator at Short Creek

Try www.astrotidbits.com for a deeper understanding of space and astronomy, and a great selection of astronomy-related merchandise.

I'm curious about the physics of bottle rockets. In the novel I'm writing, my characters use bottle rockets as weapons. They tape sharpened sticks to the rockets and use them as projectile spears. What would be the velocity of a bottle rocket with a stick taped to it? What kind of damage would it inflict? Love your blog! Thank you!

The final velocity depends on a lot of variables, like the trajectory, weight, fuel being used, burn rate of the fuel, size of the bottle, etc. However, you can be assured that they can be harmful and with the right pointy sticks, they can be deadly.

Here’s one example:

Good luck with your novel!

ham radio.

The first Space Launch System hardware from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans just arrived at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. We take a minute to introduce you to the crew of NASA’s barge Pegasus. The crew made an 18-day journey on the barge leaving New Orleans on April 28 and arriving at Marshall on May 15. The barge delivered a structural test version of the core stage engine section of SLS, NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket. Pegasus will deliver four test articles of the rocket’s core stage to Marshall for tests that will simulate the forces experienced during launch. Pegasus will later ferry the flight-ready core stage to NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, for testing and then to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration of the SLS flight vehicle in the Vehicle Assembly Building.

Comets may hold the secret to the origin of life on Earth

We’ve studied life on Earth extensively, but we still have no idea where it came from. Some scientists think it may have spontaneously arisen on Earth by some unknown process. Others think the ingredients for life were delivered here by comets crashing into Earth in the early days of the solar system. The latter theory just got a huge boost.

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