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🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Solar System

The Vega program (Cyrillic: ВеГа) was a series of Venus missions that also took advantage of the appearance of comet 1P/Halley in 1986. Vega 1 and Vega 2 were uncrewed spacecraft launched in a cooperative effort among the Soviet Union (who also provided the spacecraft and launch vehicle) and Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1984. They had a two-part mission to investigate Venus and also flyby Halley's Comet.

The flyby of Halley's Comet had been a late mission change in the Venera program following on from the cancellation of the American Halley mission in 1981. A later Venera mission was canceled and the Venus part of the Vega 1 mission was reduced. Because of this, the craft was designated VeGa, a contraction of Venera and Gallei (Венера and Галлея respectively, the Russian words for "Venus" and "Halley"). The spacecraft design was based on the previous Venera 9 and Venera 10 missions.

The two spacecraft were launched on 15 and 21 December 1984, respectively. With their redesignated dual missions, the Vega probes became part of the Halley Armada, a group of space probes that studied Halley's Comet during its 1985/1986 perihelion.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

Terraforming of Mars is a procedure that would comprise of planetary engineering project or concurrent projects, with the goal of transforming the planet from one hostile to terrestrial life to one that can sustainably host humans and other lifeforms free of protection or mediation. The process would presumably involve the rehabilitation of the planet's extant climate, atmosphere, and surface through a variety of resource-intensive initiatives, and the installation of a novel ecological system or systems.

Justifications for choosing Mars over other potential terraforming targets include the presence of water and a geological history that suggests it once harbored a dense atmosphere similar to Earth’s. Hazards and difficulties include low gravity, low light levels relative to Earth’s, and the lack of a magnetic field.

Objections to the project include questions about its feasibility, general ethical concerns about terraforming, and the considerable cost that such an undertaking would involve. Reasons for terraforming the planet include allaying concerns about resource use and depletion on Earth and arguments that the altering and subsequent or concurrent settlement of other planets decreases the odds of humanity's extinction.

Disagreement exists about whether current technology could render the planet habitable.

🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Geology 🔗 Geology/Meteorites 🔗 Solar System

The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle. The meteors are called the Perseids because the point from which they appear to hail (called the radiant) lies in the constellation Perseus.

🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Moon 🔗 Rocketry 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

The SpaceX Starship is a fully-reusable launch vehicle and spacecraft that is being privately developed by SpaceX. It is designed to be a long-duration cargo and passenger-carrying spacecraft. The development of the Starship began in 2014.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Meteorology 🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Middle Ages 🔗 Middle Ages/History 🔗 Geology 🔗 Glaciers 🔗 Solar System

The 774–775 carbon-14 spike is an observed increase of 1.2% in the concentration of carbon-14 isotope in tree rings dated to 774 or 775, which is about 20 times as high as the normal background rate of variation. It was discovered during a study of Japanese cedar trees, with the year of occurrence determined through dendrochronology. A surge in beryllium isotope ¹⁰
Be, detected in Antarctic ice cores, has also been associated with the 774–775 event. It is known as the Miyake event or the Charlemagne event and it produced the largest and most rapid rise in carbon-14 ever recorded.

The event appears to have been global, with the same carbon-14 signal found in tree rings from Germany, Russia, the United States, Finland and New Zealand.

The signal exhibits a sharp increase of around 1.2% followed by a slow decline (see Figure 1), which is typical for an instant production of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, indicating that the event was short in duration. The globally averaged production of carbon-14 for this event is calculated as Q = 1.3×10⁸ ± 0.2×10⁸ atoms/cm².

🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Moon 🔗 Solar System

A transient lunar phenomenon (TLP) or lunar transient phenomenon (LTP) is a short-lived light, color, or change in appearance on the surface of the Moon. The term was created by Patrick Moore in his co-authorship of NASA Technical Report R-277 Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events, published in 1968.

Claims of short-lived lunar phenomena go back at least 1,000 years, with some having been observed independently by multiple witnesses or reputable scientists. Nevertheless, the majority of transient lunar phenomenon reports are irreproducible and do not possess adequate control experiments that could be used to distinguish among alternative hypotheses to explain their origins.

Most lunar scientists will acknowledge transient events such as outgassing and impact cratering do occur over geologic time. The controversy lies in the frequency of such events.

🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

The Mars monolith is a rectangular object (possibly a boulder) discovered on the surface of Mars. It is located near the bottom of a cliff, from which it likely fell. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of it from orbit, roughly 180 miles (300 km) away.

Around the same time, the Phobos monolith made international news.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.

The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.

Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarities with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 (2012); for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

🔗 Time 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

Various schemes have been used or proposed for timekeeping on the planet Mars independently of Earth time and calendars.

Mars has an axial tilt and a rotation period similar to those of Earth. Thus, it experiences seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter much like Earth. Coincidentally, the duration of a Martian day is within a few percent of that of an Earth day, which has led to the use of analogous time units. A Mars year is almost twice as long as Earth's, and its orbital eccentricity is considerably larger, which means that the lengths of various Martian seasons differ considerably, and sundial time can diverge from clock time more than on Earth.

🔗 United States/U.S. Government 🔗 United States 🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Solar System 🔗 Solar System/Moon

The Artemis program is a U.S. government-funded international human spaceflight program that has the goal of landing "the first woman and the next man" on the Moon, specifically at the lunar south pole region, by 2024. The program is carried out predominantly by NASA, U.S. commercial spaceflight companies contracted by NASA, and international partners including the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Italian Space Agency (ASI) the Australian Space Agency (ASA), the UK Space Agency (UKSA), the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) the State Space Agency of Ukraine, and the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB). NASA is leading the program, but expects international partnerships to play a key role in advancing Artemis as the next step towards the long-term goal of establishing a sustainable presence on the Moon, laying the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy, and eventually sending humans to Mars.

In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, authorizing the lunar campaign. Artemis draws upon ongoing spacecraft programs including Orion, the Gateway, and Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and adds an undeveloped crewed lander. The Space Launch System will serve as the primary launch vehicle for Orion, while commercial launch vehicles are planned for use to launch various other elements of the campaign. NASA requested US$1.6 billion in additional funding for Artemis for fiscal year 2020, while the Senate Appropriations Committee requested from NASA a five-year budget profile which is needed for evaluation and approval by Congress.