The track left on the Moon by Lunokhod 2 in 1973. (on right) On
the left (arrow) is the mark made by the rover’s ninth wheel, which
measured how far the vehicle had travelled.
Russian Academy of Sciences & Roskosmos
Revised data show Soviet Union’s 1970s lunar vehicle outdistanced NASA’s Opportunity — for now. (click here)
Alexandra Witze
Now it seems that the second rover, Lunokhod 2, went even farther than many back then had thought. New calculations, using images from orbit that trace the rover’s 40-year-old tracks far below, show that Lunokhod 2 travelled some 42 kilometres in its lifetime — 5 kilometres more than the distance recorded in the official mission logs. And that means that NASA’s Opportunity rover, inching up to the 37-kilometre mark after nearly a decade on Mars, has a long way to go to break the record for the distance driven by a wheeled vehicle on another world (see ‘Space race’)....
The new studies of Sol (our sun) will provide information to levels of radiation into space. There is no way human beings can venture into deep space without understanding the radiation of the sun. Hopefully, the 'cycles' of the sun will provide a 'glide path' to PREDICT the storms that produce the radiation.
Understanding Sol means understanding Sol. It does not mean every sun in every solar system or universe has the same patterns or radiation, so there is a lot to understand about what we know about Sol and what we don't understand about other suns. They are similar, but, not 'genetically' identical.
IRIS mission aims to scrutinize the layer between the star’s surface and its flickering corona. (click here)
Alexandra Witze
...But between these two charismatic regions lies a swathe some 1,700
kilometres thick — the chromosphere — that has largely been overlooked.
This region is about to have its day. On 26 June, NASA plans to launch the US$181-million Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). The instrument’s ‘eyes’, working in the ultraviolet spectrum and designed to follow the flow of matter and energy in the chromosphere, will help astronomers to work out how the photosphere and corona are linked — including how temperatures soar from some 6,000 °C at the solar surface to more than 1 million degrees in the corona. The chromosphere is “a missing piece of the puzzle”, says Bart de Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California....
Russian Academy of Sciences & Roskosmos
Revised data show Soviet Union’s 1970s lunar vehicle outdistanced NASA’s Opportunity — for now. (click here)
Alexandra Witze
Now it seems that the second rover, Lunokhod 2, went even farther than many back then had thought. New calculations, using images from orbit that trace the rover’s 40-year-old tracks far below, show that Lunokhod 2 travelled some 42 kilometres in its lifetime — 5 kilometres more than the distance recorded in the official mission logs. And that means that NASA’s Opportunity rover, inching up to the 37-kilometre mark after nearly a decade on Mars, has a long way to go to break the record for the distance driven by a wheeled vehicle on another world (see ‘Space race’)....
The new studies of Sol (our sun) will provide information to levels of radiation into space. There is no way human beings can venture into deep space without understanding the radiation of the sun. Hopefully, the 'cycles' of the sun will provide a 'glide path' to PREDICT the storms that produce the radiation.
Understanding Sol means understanding Sol. It does not mean every sun in every solar system or universe has the same patterns or radiation, so there is a lot to understand about what we know about Sol and what we don't understand about other suns. They are similar, but, not 'genetically' identical.
IRIS mission aims to scrutinize the layer between the star’s surface and its flickering corona. (click here)
Alexandra Witze
This region is about to have its day. On 26 June, NASA plans to launch the US$181-million Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). The instrument’s ‘eyes’, working in the ultraviolet spectrum and designed to follow the flow of matter and energy in the chromosphere, will help astronomers to work out how the photosphere and corona are linked — including how temperatures soar from some 6,000 °C at the solar surface to more than 1 million degrees in the corona. The chromosphere is “a missing piece of the puzzle”, says Bart de Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California....
