Spaaaaace (Part 1)

Pluto is just too
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Yeah, no, I don’t think it is. I mean, sure, they won’t care about clearing its orbit as such…but the fact that it didn’t do so has strong implications about how it formed, what other objects it is like, and how it fits into the structure of the solar system. It very clearly goes with it being in the same category as things like Haumea and Triton rather than things like Neptune or Earth all the ways that a planetologist should care about.

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Junking orbital junk? The mind behind ASTRIAGraph database project hopes to ‘make space transparent’

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That’s a mass based defintion. Fine for Schwarzschild black holes, but there’s more to those bodies than mass.

There’s a theory that Triton originated in the Kuiper belt and was captured by Neptune.

Neptune’s capture of its moon Triton in a binary–planet gravitational encounter

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NASA postpones spacewalk as it would be too much of a pain in the neck for astronaut

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Yes, but I said there was more to it than mass too, although it’s clearly not a coincidence that an order of magnitude gap happens at exactly the same place as with orbit clearing measures. And that Triton was very likely captured from the Kuiper belt…as in, you can tell in part because it has similar properties to the objects there…is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about and even mentioned. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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I once read a book on dark matter in which the author, an astronomer, criticized the use of astronomical facilities and budgets to essentially solve physics problems. Yes, it is possible to use astronomy to nail down the rate of cosmological expansion, and figure out dark matter/ dark energy-- but those aren’t the only astronomy problems; they’re just the ones that excite physicists and politicians.

The idea of pluto as a major planet, or as a dwarf planet has political implications. A major planet seems on it’s face to be worthy of more than a flyby, a minor planet has to fight for it. Uranus seems like a likely candidate for an orbiter, because it is a major planet, but it’s also described as fairly boring. The fact that it has cleared its orbit does not make it interesting to the folks who would actually take scientific advantage of close observations.

In part because there are a lot more dwarf planets out there, and I can see whether one visits Haumea or Makemake or Pluto or Eris being a question of expediency more than anything. To a proper scientist, though, they would all be examples of a category of objects we barely understand and should learn more about. If you really think they’re worth investigating, which I do, maybe it would be better to convince people of that than lie about whether one in particular fits with the all the others, which I assume you would then neglect accordingly.

By the way, Uranus might or might not be fairly boring, but I’m not convinced Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon all are. Are you really not interested because they exist there by orbiting a much larger mass and so are called moons?

In any case, though, taxonomists organize life into animals, plants, fungi, protists, and prokaryotes, not into economically important, charismatic, and who cares. The idea that how we describe and organize the natural world should not be an attempt to best capture what is out there, to make it understandable for pedagogical purposes, or to provide a framework for answering questions, but simply to talk certain things up for political reasons is so anathema to me that I don’t think I can argue against it.

Just compare: Pluto, which could be considered a planet, has varied terrain, which in suggesting as a planetary feature you are clearly taking that as something specific to it; or Pluto, the first Kuiper belt object seen up close, has varied terrain, which is both interesting in itself but also encourages questions about the others.

I mean, this is a dead argument and I shouldn’t be indulging in it. But I was so happy back when Pluto was reclassified, because it reflected a new understand of the solar system, one which was a long time coming and has gone with a ton of exciting new discoveries. And then it turns out people can’t be bothered to care about any of that, just whether America’s world has the special “status” they learned in school, and it’s so frustrating to see still hammered on.

Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya is pretty popular.

It’s probably possible to sort this list by NSF grants

List of model organisms - Wikipedia

and come up with a result that does not reflect taxonomic diversity.

It is, but that’s not actually in disagreement with what I said since Archaea and Bacteria are the two domains of prokaryotes. And various new research has suggested there is in fact a single ancestral domain, with Bacteria giving rise to the others somewhere near Plactomycetes. In which case that may not be the best way to separate them, which is why I didn’t go into that.

Now does any of that actually have anything to do with what we were saying, or are you just trying to score pedantic points for their own sake? Because if so, I’m kind of disappointed they keep being things I already know. :unamused:

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Interesting paper! Thanks.

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Planetary Mission Concept Study: Persephone A Pluto System Orbiter and Kuiper Belt Explorer

Persephone is a concept mission study that will address key questions raised by New Horizons’ encoun- ters with Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), with arguably the most important being “Does Pluto have an ocean?” which has critical astrobiological impacts. More broadly, Persephone will answer three significant science questions: What are the internal structures of Pluto and Charon? How have the surfaces and at- mospheres in the Pluto system evolved? How has the KBO population evolved? The questions we ad- dress here directly contribute to four Key Questions (KQs) and six Important Questions (IQs) outlined in the 2013–2022 Planetary Science Decadal Survey (PSDS; Vision and Voyages, 2011). Although not a driver for this study, we note that because of the nature and payload of this concept mission, the final mission would also address two Key Goals (KGs) from the Heliophysics Decadal Survey (SSP, Solar and Space Physics, 2013).

NEPTUNE ODYSSEY: Mission to the Neptune Triton system

The Neptune Odyssey mission concept is a Flagship-class orbiter and atmospheric probe to the Nep- tune-Triton system. This bold mission of exploration would be the first to orbit an ice giant planet to study the planet, its rings, small satellites, space environment, and the planet-sized moon, Triton. Triton is itself a captured dwarf planet from the Kuiper Belt and a geophysically reactivated twin of Pluto. Odyssey addresses Neptune system-level science, with equal priorities placed on Neptune, its rings, moons, space environment, and Triton. Between Uranus and Neptune, the latter is unique in providing simultaneous access to both an ice giant and a Kuiper Belt dwarf planet. The spacecraft— in a class with Cassini—would launch in 2033 on a Space Launch System (SLS) or equivalent launch vehicle on a 16-year cruise to Neptune for a 4-year prime orbital mission. The defined solution pro- vides annual launch opportunities and allows for easy upgrade to a shorter (12-year) cruise phase that can utilize a Jupiter gravity assist (JGA), if NASA chooses to stand up this mission in time for a launch before 2032. Odyssey would orbit Neptune retrograde (prograde with respect to Triton), providing New Horizons-quality science from Triton every month, using the moon’s gravity to shape the orbital tour and allow coverage of a range of latitudes and longitudes on Triton, on Neptune, and in the space environment. The atmospheric entry probe would descend in ~37 minutes to the 10-bar pressure level in Neptune’s atmosphere just before Odyssey’s orbit-insertion engine burn. Odyssey’s mission would end by conducting a Cassini-like Grand Finale tour, passing inside the rings very close to the giant planet, and ultimately taking a final great plunge into Neptune’s atmosphere.

There are also proposals for Enceladus, and Titan, but I can’t find the pdfs.

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The Register recreates Apollo 15 through the medium of plastic bricks, 50 years on

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This way up: James Webb Space Telescope gets ready for shipment after final tests

It’s been a big week for the much-delayed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) as testing of the observatory was completed and operations to ship the spacecraft to the Kourou launchpad began.

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Perseverance to take a second stab at Martian rocks … but first it has to scratch’n’sniff

NASA’s Perseverance rover will make a second attempt at collecting a sample of Mars rock for eventual return to Earth – though it’s going to scratch its latest target first to make sure it’s worth bothering.

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