1. Space News
June  August 2015

2. TRAVELLING ON A SUNBEAM . . .
LightSail-A completed its successful 25-day test flight on June 16th. Using the pressure of the Solar Wind to travel through space was first suggested by Johannes Kepler 400 years ago. LightSail-B is due to be launched in April 2016.

3. “Holes” in the Sun ??
A recent spectral analysis of sunlight (McMath-Pierce Solar Obs.) clearly shows the large number of ‘black’ absorption lines, each of which relates to a particular atom or molecule. Not all have been identified yet…

4. Conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon
On June 30, Venus and Jupiter were close in western skies at dusk. These two bright evening planets were captured in this image taken after sunset from Beijing, China.
Did anyone here see them like this together? Spot the Jovian moons?

5. Two Full Moons in July. . .
This shot of the first full moon of July also captured the passage of ISS.
Taken from Australia, the transit lasted only 1/3 of a second.

6. July 16th – Full Moon over Full Earth ???
July 16th was actually a New Moon.
So how and where was this picture taken? Is it a trick?
Ans: the DSCOVR spacecraft was 1m miles from Earth, looking back with its EPIC camera. It is the back of the Moon we see here.

7. Significant year 1: July 1950 - First Cape Canaveral Launch
The early rockets consisted of a ‘V2’ plus a ‘WAC Corporal’ 2nd stage.
Used for systems tests and upper atmosphere studies - up to 400km high.
Anyone remember “Tintin on the Moon”? I wasn’t ‘quite’ around then…

8. Significant year 2: Apollo 17 – Last Men on the Moon
December 1972: Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours on the Moon in the Taurus-Littrow valley, while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. No-one has visited since. It seems that the Moon is being ignored for now and Mars is the place to go next.

9. 3 Earth-Years on Mars and still Curious
The Curiosity rover has now spent 3 whole Earth years on Mars (= 953 Martian days or sols).
The route ahead seems pretty difficult to navigate, but each small step reveals something new to investigate.

10. A Very Unusual Mountain on Asteroid Ceres . . .
The DAWN spacecraft has found this unusual ‘mountain’ on CERES – almost 5 kilometres above the fairly flat surface. The ‘White Spots’ are still visible here.

11. 67P - Getting Active as it heats up
This shot of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko 67P was taken by the Rosetta spacecraft on August 12th.
This was just before perihelion at about 1.3AU from the Sun.
This explosive jet of dust and ice is NOT the comet’s tail. Rosetta is too close to see that.
No news of Philae 

12. 67P – Interaction with the Solar Wind
This analysis from Rosetta shows how the Solar Wind results in the Comet’s tail of gases, dust and ions. Elements so far detected are Sodium, Potassium and Calcium. Hydrogen and Helium ions are observed - from the Solar Wind.

13. New Horizons Launch to Pluto - 2006
NH is the fastest spacecraft ever sent into space, passing the Moon only 9 hours after launch on January 19th Nevertheless the whole trip took 9 years to make it to Pluto, targeting an area of space 100 x 150 miles after a total travelled distance of over 3 billion miles, moving at 13.8km/sec as it passed the planet on July 14th 2015 (Pluto Day) and capturing megabytes of data.

14. Pluto in ‘Enhanced Colour’
This picture shows the main features so far identified and ‘named’. The ‘Heart’ is the ‘Tombaugh Region’, which includes the ‘Sputnik Planum’, the ‘Cousteau Rupes’, the mountainous areas of ‘al-Idrisi’, ‘Zhend He’, ‘Hilary’ and ‘Norgay’.

15. Pluto has a Substantial Atmosphere
Occultation data using the ‘ALICE’ ultraviolet spectrometer on New Horizons to measure molecular N2 absorption indicates that Pluto’s atmosphere stretches out to 1000 miles, although it is much denser up to ~ 150 miles or so..

16. Charon has unusual features for a moon…
There is a dark pole area (“Mordor”), a ‘mountain in a moat’, lots of cliffs/troughs and a very long 7-9km deep canyon. Very few craters, indicating recent geological activity. No atmosphere of any kind.

18. Anything interesting during September to: