(with a nod to Carl Sagan) Why are people so afraid of science? Or are they? As a scientist, or, in fact, as a curious human being, I cannot but notice that science is treated differently from other aspects of life. To give just one example, a car mechanic can point towards his experience and…
Sometimes we toss comments, more than discussing, about leaving Earth for another planet. Well – That would be a kind of a journey. Freja, a space engineer student at Luleå tekniska universitet, wrote an essay that might give you some perspective on a journey to a planet, orbiting another star. In-betweeners – by Freja Andrea Dyrbye…
Loading new images of a full Moon rising over the Ostrobothnia countryside fueled my imagination. What would I see in the sky if I could make the planet Trappist-1d change places with the Earth? In the compact planet system around the ultra-cool brown dwarf star Trappist-1, the neighbour planets are almost within reach. Ok. Not exactly…
The first answer coming to mind is simply “Why not?”. But – There’s a lot more to it. First of all, teachers should be updated on space science. We all should. It’s not an easy task, though. Just reading the news about space science and space technology takes time. Understanding the basic concept often takes…
Everybody remembers them from school, surely, the little pieces of iron on a surface that align in weird shapes when you put a magnet on them. We all remember that – as boring, why-do-I-have-to-learn-about-this-boring. As follow-up to my last text where I ended up mentioning our trip to Abisko, I thought I would get a…
The Mars Pathfinder robotic Rover, Sojourner, was the first vehicle landed to explore another planet. That happened July 4th, 1997. Until today, four rovers have successfully been operated on the surface of our red neighbour planet. March 10th, 2016, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had kept a close eye at Mars for ten years. March 14th, 2016, the ExoMars…
The Sober Scientist. What an excrutiatingly weird concept to me. I am one myself, a scientist, I mean; and I know how much I have to force myself to not feel but think when it comes to science. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know where the image of the sober scientist comes from. It…
A satellite in Low Eart Orbit, LEO, can cover just one certain area of the Earth’s surface at a time. The same thing goes when it comes to contacting the satellite. To download data from the satellite, or to send commands to the satellite is possible only during the few minutes each orbit it passes right…
In some sense, this was the shortest visit to a museum ever. I had half-an-hour for this bounty of different instruments from all epochs of science since the 16th century, concentrated in a cellar somewhere on the premises of the University of Padova, in Galileo Galilei’s town. Thankfully, I had a wonderful guide. In addition,…
In science you should never say no. To anything. Period. Until it is proven wrong. Then you shout No! to the world. Technology development, now, may be a rather different story. Just take this. What would provoke NASA to give such an un-equivolent message about a particular mainstay of Sci-Fi-literature, the warp drive. One should…
Most of our satellites orbit the Earth – either in Low Earth Orbit, LEO, Medium Earth Orbit, or in Geostationary Orbit, GEO. The closer to the Earth a satellite is the shorter its period. So – What if the satellite is even further away than the geostationary satellites? Why would you place satellites that far…
Friday, November 13th, at a conference, Professor Hannu Koskinen, gave a speech about space as an almost infinite source of surprises. Being a part of the Rosetta team, he reminded the audience about comments on the first images showing the duck-shaped comet 67P/Chyryumov-Gerasimenko. The images of Pluto, captured by New Horizons, also were more surprising…
