Video: NASA’s Lucy spacecraft successfully completes 1st flyby of asteroid ‘Dinky’

On Nov. 1, NASA confirmed its Lucy spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, a relatively small space rock located in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. This marks a milestone in Lucy’s journey, as Dinkinesh, or ‘Dinky,’ is the first of 10 asteroids the probe will visit over the next 12 years.

"Based on the information received, the team has determined that the spacecraft is in good health," NASA officials wrote in a blog post after the flyby occurred. "The team has commanded the spacecraft to start downlinking the data collected during the encounter."

In a nutshell, the Lucy mission is part of NASA’s ambitious endeavor to unveil secrets of our solar system’s past. Though Lucy will also be passing by a few relatively nearby asteroids like Dinky, the probe’s main goal is to fly by a few more distant Trojan asteroids orbiting the sun alongside Jupiter like bundles of pebbles bound to the gravitational tides of a giant boulder. Scientists are interested in learning more about those Trojans because they’re believed to be ancient relics of the solar system, like extra Lego bricks from the box that built the planets.

Lucy’s flyby of Dinkinesh can be thought of as a test-run in this regard, as many of the spacecraft’s instruments have now been oiled while collecting data about this first asteroid encounter — including a color imager, high-resolution camera and infrared spectrometer.

According to the blog post, data from these tools will take about a week to be downlinked to Earth, and the team is "looking forward to seeing how the spacecraft performed during this first in-flight test of a high-speed asteroid encounter."

Next, Lucy will head back to Earth for a gravity assist that’ll help it zoom toward its second asteroid target: 52246 Donaldjohanson — named after co-discoverer of the Lucy fossil (representative of one the earliest human ancestors, for which the spacecraft is named), American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. And if you were wondering, "Dinkinesh" is just another title for the Lucy fossil.

It also means "you are marvelous," as you are, Lucy.

Source: https://www.space.com/lucy-flyby-dinkinesh-successfully-completed?utm_term=AF536F6D-055D-443A-91F7-FD448D0CCA73&lrh=4cd1bd23c622eeb1274411ac3b55b43215b8c098a20f14a3285c9e8ae13a98ca&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=741942BF-44FC-4A8D-A06D-94A6D5A84ED0&utm_source=SmartBrief

Lots of Rivers were on Mars: Curiosity rover discovers new evidence Mars once had right conditions for life

Thanks to a combination of images from NASA’s Curiosity rover, scans of sedimentary rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico on Earth and computer simulations, geologists have identified the ancient, eroded remnants of rivers in a number of craters on Mars.

A team of researchers examining data collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover at Gale crater, a large impact basin on the Martian surface, discovered further evidence that rivers once flowed across the Red Planet, perhaps more widespread than was previously thought. "We’re finding evidence that Mars was likely a planet of rivers," said geoscientist Benjamin Cardenas of Penn State University and lead author of the research in a statement.

On Earth, rivers are important for chemical, nutrient and sediment cycles that all have a positive impact on life. The discovery of further evidence for ancient rivers on Mars, therefore, could be an important development in the search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

"Our research indicates that Mars could have had far more rivers than previously believed, which certainly paints a more optimistic view of ancient life on Mars," said Cardenas. "It offers a vision of Mars where most of the planet once had the right condition for life."

The specific landforms identified in Curiosity rover data, called bench-and-nose features, are found within numerous small craters, but until now had not been recognized as being deposits formed by running water.

Evidence for rivers on Mars has been known since the first spacecraft to orbit Mars, Mariner 9, imaged dried-up river channels and floodplains on the red planet’s surface. The various Mars rovers have also found mineralogical evidence in the form of sulfur-containing compounds such as jarosite, which form in water. The rovers and orbiters have also identified ridges formed by sediment in river channels billions of years old.

However, the identification of the bench-and-nose landforms suggests that rivers were even more widespread than thought. They are an alternating mix of steep slopes and shallow ‘benches’, and shortened ridges called ‘noses’. They form when sedimentary material laid down in channels by rivers are subsequently eroded in a preferential direction, possibly by prevailing winds.

Suspecting their watery origin, Cardenas and Kaitlyn Stacey, also of Penn State, trained their computer model on Curiosity’s images of bench-and-nose landforms inside craters and three-dimensional scans of layers of sedimentary bedrock on the sea floor beneath the Gulf of Mexico taken by oil companies 25 years ago.

The computer model was then able to simulate the erosion of sediment left by rivers to form the bench-and-nose landforms.

Curiosity had previously ascertained that the 154-km-wide (96 miles) Gale crater, which the rover is exploring, was filled with liquid water. The discovery that the bench-and-nose landforms were produced by rivers now gives some indication of the structure of that water-mass inside Gale crater.

Source: https://www.space.com/mars-water-curiosity-rover-data-conditions-for-life?utm_term=AF536F6D-055D-443A-91F7-FD448D0CCA73&lrh=4cd1bd23c622eeb1274411ac3b55b43215b8c098a20f14a3285c9e8ae13a98ca&utm_campaign=58E4DE65-C57F-4CD3-9A5A-609994E2C5A9&utm_medium=email&utm_content=3C1E8021-83A0-4C2E-9AD9-5BCE1525AAD8&utm_source=SmartBrief

Video: IMPORTANT: Analog computing will take over 30 billion devices by 2040. Wtf does that mean?

[This could be huge. All of our electrical and electronics were analog. Analog is basically "waves" because ALL OF NATURE works on WAVES. Going digital brought us computers, but there are problems with having gone digital, especially when you want to interact with nature, either my monitoring and having sensors (e.g. light, temperature, sound, etc), or for generating things like sound, etc. This could be huge. Jan]

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AgkTdQXFTY