Hyperion: Saturnal moon of caves and energy beams!

That's no (ordinary) moon! It's an electrostatic field generator!

Truth is often stranger than (science) fiction and Hyperion, a moon of Saturn is no exception. Besides being a largely porous, ovoid object, Hyperion has an electrostatic field (similar to our own moon's) that can apparently capture space craft, like the Cassini probe. From NASA

Hyperion is porous and icy, with a bizarre, sponge-like appearance. Its surface is continuously bombarded by ultraviolet light from the sun and exposed to a rain of charged particles -- electrons and ions -- within the invisible bubble generated by Saturn's magnetic field, called the magnetosphere. The researchers think Hyperion's exposure to this hostile space environment is the source of the particle beam that struck Cassini.

Measurements made by several of Cassini's instruments during a close encounter with Hyperion on September 26, 2005, indicate that something unexpected took place in the charged particle environment around the spacecraft. Among those instruments, the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) detected that the spacecraft was magnetically connected to the surface of Hyperion for a brief period, allowing electrons to escape from the moon toward the robotic probe.

This raises the question of whether other bodies in the solar system have similar properties. Imagine the possibilities in your own games, stories, projects for objects that might pose a Bermuda Triangle-like danger to explores caught unawares. First they're caught in a natural tractor beam (of sorts) and then pulled down into the cavernous interiors. "Moon-as-monster" has a neat ring to it, is all I'm saying!

Via NASA

Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

More about the Cassini mission:

• http://www.nasa.gov/cassini
• http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Asteroids are good for lots of things

Tired of the same old space rock tumbling around in your home star system?

"Aw hell, who forgot to wind the wheel this morning?!"

Asteroid base - Captured asteroid serves as a space-based port; they can be dug into to provide cover, even disguised to appear as a regular 'ol space rock.

Mazes - Asteroids make for great zero-G labyrinths of any scale, including startfighter-sized tunnels if not the traditional humanoid-sized dungeon crawl.

Really big projectiles - Starship Troopers taught us they could be used as ammo for massive rail-gun type weapons with catastrophic consequences.

The trip to Grandma's just became one boring car ride.

Raw materials - That giant habitable ring around the sun needs ore! Where do you think it's going to come from? The value of an asteroid's mineral content has been valued in the trillions (today's dollars). Asteroids = treasure!

Colonization - Panspermia is the theory that life was seeded from space, via comets and/or asteroids. What happens when life already exists on a world that's about to be to get hit?

"Can I hang with you guys? Do you want to ride on my event horizon? Hey, where ya going? You know you can't escape, right?"

Food - Need to feed that rock-munching space kaiju? How about that stellar fragment that keeps following you around--or that sentient black hole that won't shut up?

Interdimensional jump gate - Buckaroo Banzai traveled through solid objects to breach the 8th dimension. What if phasing through rocks (or some sort of mineral found in them) were the only way (or easiest/quickest way) to travel between dimensions.

They remember what you did with the garden hose.

Insectoid alien nest - Weaving together several asteroids to make a hive or digging into the rocks to hollow them out for an alien ant nest.

Giant space geodes - Ultra rare jackpots for space miners or as a container for micro "Hollow Earth" adventures.

Monster - Space rocks need love too. And when they don't get it, they get angry, maybe even a little hostile. Think how many rocks there are between Mars and Jupiter that might have it out for us...WE'RE SURROUNDED!

Suggest more in the comments below, please!

First Ringed Asteroid Discovered!

NASA announced today an intrasolar oddity--a Centaur astroid called Charilko looks to be the first ever ringed asteroid system. The rings are likely made up of ice drummed up from another object impacting the asteroid, which sits between Saturn and Uranus.

From Wired:

At 155 miles across, or about the length of Massachusetts, Chariklo is the largest known asteroid in its neighborhood. Looking to get a better idea of its exact size and shape, astronomers trained their telescopes on the giant space rock as it passed in front on a distant star in June 2013. As Chariklo performed its eclipse, researchers noticed something odd: The star’s light flickered just a bit immediately before and after Chariklo’s pass.

The reason for this darkening was the asteroid’s two dense rings, which had briefly blocked the starlight. The thicker inner ring is about four miles wide, while the thinner outer ring is a little less than two miles. Spectroscopic analysis of the starlight also revealed that the rings are composed partially of water ice.

Pretty sweet discovery--and it doesn't sound like astronomers had expected it!

Click to enlarge:

Arist conception by artist Lucie Maquet

More coverage:

• NBC News
• Universe Today

40 years after Apollo - asteroid mining our next booster to the stars

You know the first man on the moon, but do you know the last? Do you know what he said before departing?

Today marks 40 years since we left our moon. There were many reasons why we left--most of them were issues here on Earth that were more pressing, less costly, or had stolen the zeitgeist of popular support.

In the intervening decades, space enthusiasts, astrophiles, and rocket jockies who've been heartbroken at the lack of progress to establish a permanent human presence off-world have been looking for a more commercial rationale to return to the great space race of yore. They found it in the asteroid belt.

The untapped resources that float between Jupiter and Mars (and futher out, in the Kuiper Belt) contain a wealth of metals, minerals, gasses, and even liquids with market value--that would sustain a burgeoning economy for centuries to come. And those resources would not only supply us here at home, but could propel futher exploration.

We chose to go to our moon to help turn the tide of the Cold War, but in the process opened a door to magnanimous scientific inspiration. The chore of getting living beings to walk on its surface was an engineering and technical undertaking unlike any other previous or since. But on December 14, 1972, we came home and haven't been back.

Mining.com just posted an infographic explaining how asteroid mining will soon become a neccessity, given the soon-to-peak mineral and metallurgical resources market. It's also a story and start-ups like Planetary Resources are trying desperately to convey. They're hoping to light a fire public opinion and venture capitalists alike. The windfall from these efforts could (in all likelihood, would) spur an economic and scientific revolution that would carry our species to the ends of the solar system--and hopefully--beyond.

Click to enlarge

Oh, and that last man? He was Eugene Andrew Cernan, commander of Apollo 17. And these were the words he uttered just before launching off the surface (starts at 1:12):

NASA: We found 2.5 million supermassive black holes gorging themselves

DUDE. Don't look up, lest your eyeballs be sucked into any one of 2.5 MILLION supermassive black holes currently digesting spacetime. NASA announced today that they've pinpointed the suckers (ha!) using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope.

All those little circles are really reality-ripping hot DOGs (dust obscured galaxies) with black holes at their centers that care not for your puny "sentience" or pleas for mercy. NOM-NOM-NOM. From Universe Today:

WISE scanned the whole sky twice in infrared light, completing its survey in early 2011. Like night-vision goggles probing the dark, the telescope captured millions of images of the sky. All the data from the mission have been released publicly, allowing astronomers to dig in and make new discoveries.

The latest findings are helping astronomers better understand how galaxies and the behemoth black holes at their centers grow and evolve together. For example, the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, has 4 million times the mass of our sun and has gone through periodic feeding frenzies where material falls towards the black hole, heats up and irradiates its surroundings. Bigger central black holes, up to a billion times the mass of our sun, may even shut down star formation in galaxies.

In one study, astronomers used WISE to identify about 2.5 million actively feeding supermassive black holes across the full sky, stretching back to distances more than 10 billion light-years away. About two-thirds of these objects never had been detected before because dust blocks their visible light. WISE easily sees these monsters because their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light.

It's funny, but quasars always seem to come up as "extroverts" on the Myers Briggs.

WISE actually picked up other objects too, including asteroids, quasars, and a whole mess o' other stuff that you probablly think is cool, but should thank your stars isn't headed this way.

STAY IN SCHOOL, BECAUSE SCIENCE. IS. COOL.

Coverage:

• NASA (all images are from NASA, check out their page for more!)
• Universe Today
• io9.com did a live blog with recap
• Red Orbit
• Wired.com

Filling in the Map Part III: Artifacts

LEVEL 6 CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTATION

CENTRAL SPACE COMMAND MEMORANDUM: INCIDENT AT ASTEROID 9950 (Tarkas)
MISSION: Kuiper Belt Exploration and Prospect Analysis
DATE: 2612.5.18
LOG FILE: Kuiper Belt Expedition 505 - C.S.C. 1001 Helios
AUTHOR: [REDACTED------>], Astro Intelligence Division

After the last transmission we received the C.S.C. Command Council met to go over the evidence. In addition to the Helios' A.I. persona's written report, still images, and poor quality audio, we were able to capture two more images. The first was recovered from one of the geo-rovers that went with the team, below the surface of Tarkas in their drill vehicle "Rocky". Images were then bounced to Helios via drones on the surface and the second of the two files was badly damaged, but the Graphics Dept. is working on enhancing.

Here's the first, we're not sure when exactly it was taken:

The astrobiologists and geology teams are up in arms right now--one of them even claims this is some sort of city-like structure. All analysts on this project are in quarantine until further notice. Nobody calls home--nobody leaves the facility. At this time I'd like to enter into the record my own misgivings about [REDACTED--------------------------->] and I think it's best we assume these [REDACTED---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->]. It's essential we proceed with utmost caution.

At 0850 hours I ordered a press blackout. So far we've been reporting that contact was lost due to a malfunctioning relay satellite, but that won't satisfy them for long. We made such a stink about this mission at the start that the whole thing is ready to go to hell once they catch on.

I'll have orders in one hour, once the Council is out of session.

END TRANSMISSION




....



[SUPPLEMENTAL: 01]
Session just ended--we're clear to form a special strike team to go in. I'll send mission and manifest details soon, but you should alert your best personnel now and let them know they'll be flying into a hot zone. We're still aiming at keeping this quiet. If word of this leaks, we'll have [REDACTED--------------->] from Naval Space Command chomping at the bit to nuke the entire belt.

One last thing--there's a good chance they won't come home. Give them one hour to contact kin and get them up to the space elevator pad by 1600 hours.

END TRANSMISSION



....


[SUPPLEMENTAL 02]
Graphics just finished enhancement. Thought you'd like to see what we're up against:

Mission details to follow shortly.

END TRANSMISSION






Images by artist Kilian Eng

Filling in the Map Part II: A Deeper Mystery

SPACESHIP REGISTRY: HELIOS
MISSION: Kuiper Belt Exploration and Prospect Analysis
DATE: 2612.5.5
LOG FILE: Kuiper Belt Expedition 505
AUTHOR: Ship's A.I., S.O.P.H.I.E.

Since our arrival last week at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, we've begun our survey of resident specimens using remote drones. Current Kuiper objects analysed: 58. Today, we found something most extraordinary.

Science officers are still analyzing the data, but it appears we've found an unusual asteroid: 9950 (Tarkas) giving off a high frequency energy signature that the captain has called "the hum". The object has an equatorial diameter of approximately 1,900 km.

"Rocky", our mission rover outfitted with the large diamond-tipped drill apparatus was deployed to the surface. Approximately 2 standard hours after drilling began, a flashing of purple auroras were viewed in various spots on the object.

At the same time a energy spike on the EM sensor registered at +3500 percent.

The anomaly lasted a mere 3.7 seconds, but was visible from both my sensor relays, visual scanners, and crew starboard portholes.

Soon after, Midshipman Wallace observed a "glint" which he approximated to be an elongated "shard" that quickly disappeared. No further observances were made.

Rocky has resumed drilling.




FILE ADDENDUM: 01

Approximately 17.25 hours after drilling resumed, Rocky has stumbled upon what appears to be a vast cavern system inside 9950 Tarkas. An excursion team has been sent down to have a closer look, but preliminary reports point to an ice cave of immense size.

The captain, with science officers and CSC naval commandos in tow is taking a scanning package with mapping drones Jules our geo-rover into the caves. I've outfitted them with supplies for 1 week. Further reports to follow.




FILE ADDENDUM: 02
Jules has returned some shocking images. It appears that the ice caverns were only the beginning (tip of the iceberg?). The asteroid's true nature was revealed at 24.25 hours into the mission--it is by all appearances a giant geode. Preliminary findings indicate it's interior composition could be completely filled with massive quartz or quartz-like crystals. While it's not yet understood how this phenomenon could come to pass without regard to volcanic genesis, the occurrence is never the less, astounding.

Science officers also have discovered microbial life growing on the interior walls. Samples have been taken for further study.

The captain has said that he will report back in the next hour with detailed scans and raw data for me to process. Perhaps most intriguing, the captain says that there seems to be ordered paths from one cavern room to the next.

I eagerly await his supplementary report.



FILE ADDENDUM: 03
At 26.75 hours into the mission, the excursion crew has yet to check in. I've come to the conclusion that the geode's exterior crust and interior make-up are playing a part in hampering communications. Per my standard protocols, I've dispatched a drone to check in on the crew.

Further reports to follow.














FILE ADDENDUM: 04

------------> %%%////////////

ERROR 00070002301

DATE: 2612.5.9

LOG FILE RETRIEVAL FAILURE

FRAGMENT RECOVERY:

-------...NDER ATTACK...REPEAT, WE ARE UNDER ATT-----

CODE NULL

END FILE








For the story on the very REAL images, visit Threads of Adventure. Images: 2001: A Space Odyssey, King Moguras model, National Geographic

GOLD RUSH IN SPACE! Asteroid Mining is Coming!

So it seems my previous post kicking off a new adventure was more timely than I thought: space mining is the next big thing! Planetary Resources Inc., which may as well be called Rich Billionaires Inc., is a consortium of wealthy space geeks who want to start mining asteroids for mineral commodities. With almost 9,000 known asteroids out in the Mars-Jupiter belt that might go for as much as a billion bucks a piece, this isn't as far-out as it initially sounds.

From Wired.com:

In terms of extraction, Planetary Resources hopes to go after the platinum-group metals — which include platinum, palladium, osmium, and iridium — highly valuable commodities used in medical devices, renewable energy products, catalytic converters, and potentially in automotive fuel cells.

Platinum alone is worth around $23,000 a pound — nearly the same as gold. Mining the top few feet of a single modestly sized, half-mile-diameter asteroid could yield around 130 tons of platinum, worth roughly $6 billion.

Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources’ Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes will figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.

Within five to seven years, the company hopes to send out a small swarm of similar spacecraft for a more detailed prospecting mission, mapping out a valuable asteroid in detail and identifying rich resource veins. They estimate such a mission will cost between $25 and 30 million.

The group is also planning on using robots to do the mining (reducing human risks) as well as shipping it home.

If there's anything that will get private enterprise to drive a new space race folks--THIS IS IT. And with it, here's hoping a few thousand scientific discoveries along the way.

Check out the cool videos put up by ABC News
More at Gizmodo

Image: Artist concept by Denise Watt for NASA

Filling in the Map: PART 1

LOGFILE: Kuiper Belt Expedition 505
DATE: 2612.4.18
AUTHOR: Col. Valerie Animus, Dept. of History, University of
Sagan, Lagrangian Station 3.

Near the outskirts of our home solar system exists the Kuiper Belt, a vast array of ice and rock left over from the birth of the planets. The belt is made up of icy chunks, asteroids, and planetary bodies that include dwarf planets like Pluto, Hamumea, and the "nearly dwarf" Orcus.

When the Space Settlement Act of 2436 was passed, many of our system's planets (and moons) were
settled not only by corporations, governments, and billionaires, but by the everyfolk that struggled to make a better life for themselves and their communities.

For the decades and centuries that followed, asteroids inside the Mars-Jupiter Interplanetary Ridge were successfully mined by multinational megacorps and Mom-and-Pop operations alike. Interplanetary shipping, manufacturing, and mercantile operations sprung up seemingly overnight to support a burgeoning industry. But while the inner belt prospered, the Kuiper became a sort of Bermuda Triangle where ships would venture and never be seen or heard from again.

One after another, starships, freighters, and exploratory missions would venture in, and no sooner, disappear inside the Kuiper's icy grasp. No remains of any kind, no derelicts or debris were ever recovered in more than 117 separate cases.

Soon after faster-than-light travel became commonplace, the belt was relegated to Sargasso Sea status: deemed too treacherous to warrant further navigation. But a few still longed for the rich minerals and scientific gold rush for which the region seemed primed.

Even dating back to ancient Earth times, scientists have claimed the Kuiper--like the Oort Cloud beyond it--has long held the secrets to life itself in the form of chemical compounds frozen in ice crystals, carried to inner planets by comets, and released into the warm embrace of Earth's atmosphere where they seeded life.

So it's with great pride, that at 06:00 Central Sol Time this morning, we launched the first of a series of scientific missions into a thicket of dense debris in the hopes finding evidence that would spawn a new gold rush to the belt.

Like the Earth sailors of old, we fling ourselves into Neptune's domain and beyond in the name of discovery and enterprise. And perhaps we'll also yet learn the fates of all those who never did return....

***TRANSMISSION END***


Images: NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, Our Universe, and Chesley Bonestell

Space Pioneers: Microcolonies and SSA.2436

Proper space colonies are generally 100+ population to support and maintain a presence in an established environment (be it planetary, moon, or space-based). Colonies were therefore huge undertakings that sometimes became too expensive to fund, which led to many ventures being canceled. Seeking a way to spread the human genome throughout the galaxy (and increase profitability in space), a new approach was sought--and SSA.2436 was born.

Two centuries ago, the Space Settlement Act of 2436 (SSA.2436), also called the “Homesteaders Act” encouraged settlers to found their own micro colonies with as little as a few families and a star cruiser stocked full of supplies--this was often thought to be extremely dangerous, if not the least bit risky.

Most environs—be they uninhabited asteroids, desolate moons, or primordial worlds infested with savages—gave even the most equipped and well trained colonials a run for their money.

To send unregistered citizens out into the final frontier without more than a few small arms and freeze-dried rations seemed like manslaughter, at best. So the Act included regulations for spacefaring technologies, provisioning, and a pared-down “code for lawful conduct” and “establishing friendly relations” with neighbors, natives, traders, and “elements unknown”. The Act became the basis for a cottage industry that exploded overnight and fueled the spread of human settlements on other worlds.

For the first time in history, we were no longer left wanting to reach the stars—we were outfitted and made ready for the task.

Next file: Occupation: Space Pioneer