Wow - an ocean 45 kilometers deep, with the moon being 40% liquid water by volume? That's pretty incredible.

I like seeing the real (well... closer to "real") colors.

The Caribbean is incredible... the shallows there are almost emerald-colored.

That looks like it's only for one brief period (the flyby), though, right? So that doesn't really cast doubt on the Hubble results since it's not for the same time -- does it?

So it's fluffy, but as hard as solid ice? Is it vacuum cemented together or something, or a thin layer of 'fluffy' on top of 'solid', I wonder?

Ah, cool, I'd never heard of that - thanks.

Is this the first private payload beyond LEO?

Ah, cool, thanks.

The difference between the daily high and low temperatures is huge! Looks like almost 80 degrees Celsius difference...

(And why does the air pressure vary so much over the seasons? Is that because of CO2 freezing out of the atmosphere onto the polar cap in winter?)

This is something I'd kind of wondered about... given that Spirit lasted dozens of times past the 90 day lifetime and Oppy is still going, in different locations, doesn't that move a bit beyond "got lucky" and into "Mars is a more benign environment for solar panels than previously assumed"?

Congratulations! Awesome!

That's great! I hope something within New Horizons' delta-v range shows up (or even multiple objects to choose from?)

EDIT: When will the full search be completed?

Are these objects supposed to be too cold for WISE to have seen? IIRC WISE was supposed to have ruled out Saturn+ planets out to some huge distance...

Has anything more been said about the proposed late 2010s successor mission to Jupiter & the Trojan asteroids? Is that still planned?

With that mass (3-10 Jupiter masses) and temperature, why is it called a "brown dwarf" at all? I thought that was above 13 Jupiter masses... is it because it didn't form in a protoplanetary disk?

Impressive!



That's kind of sad IMO. Mars gets all the love

Interesting.

But that seems only to relate to hydrogen abundances in minerals, not affecting the LCROSS results relating to polar ice in craters.

Ah - thank you again!

OK, thank you!

So there is still thought to have been a Big Bang immediately before the inflationary epoch, rather than the inflation being a new model for the Big Bang itself? Is that correct?

Cool!

(Now they just need to actually get one of the gravitational wave detectors to register one...)

So this cosmic inflation thing... never been too clear on it... this is something that happened immediately after the Big Bang, rather than an alternative to Big Bang theory, right?

One news article I saw about this was going on about multiverse stuff... is that related to inflation at all?

Ah, OK, thanks... I just had seen stuff making it sound like it would be incredibly difficult to get through the ice intentionally (eg drilling lander) so it seemed like kind of a disconnect.

When you say recycled over reasonable scales are you talking millions of years (short compared to the age of the moon itself) or something much shorter?

I dunno if this is the right place for this... but what is the logic behind planetary protection for Europa? I had thought that the ice crust was at minimum 1 km thick... how could a reasonably sized spacecraft at orbital speeds possibly penetrate to an 'interesting' region?

Ah... too bad. I was hoping "Tyche" would turn out to be real...

Well ... one hopes it will drop again as more information is added ...

Not that 1 in 1000 is really that much of a risk. Especially since an object this size would have a good chance of harmlessly falling into/exploding over an ocean somewhere even if it DID hit.

Awesome to see wetlands/lakes/etc. on another world...

Also, Rev 200 - wow!

Awesome! Wonderful to see it rolling on the Moon...

(and congratulations to the Chinese space program for this achievement...)