MetaFilter posts tagged with solarsystem and science

Objects in Space

Artw — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:44:06 -0800

Do gravity holes harbour planetary assassins?

Mission to Mercury

Artw — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:28:21 -0800

Mercury Messenger, a NASA probe, just performed a fly-by of Mercury at a height of 200 kilometers. It's the first spacecraft to visit Mercury since 1975.

Hot space bot uses stirling engine

Artw — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:24:57 -0800

NASA proposes using a Stirling cooler (essentially a Stirling engine in reverse) to keep a probe cool on the surface of Venus, which has had a tendency to melt or smash previous probes. The cooler would maintain a 25cm sphere within the probe at 200°C -- 100°C above the boiling point of water but sufficiently cool for a high-temperature microcontroller to operate. The waste heat radiators on the exterior of the sphere would reach the temperature of 500°C, 40°C above the the normal Venusian surface temperature.

The Lovely Universe

panoptican — Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:28:43 -0800

Six million pixels from Gracela... er, Pluto. A scale model of our solar system. It turns out, we're really, really small.

SpecialK — Fri, 19 Jul 2002 18:25:55 -0800

NASA finds gravitational 'space freeway' that runs through solar system ... Vorgon jokes aside, this could seriously reduce the amount of energy it takes to move around the solar system. [this is good]

Lynsey — Mon, 06 May 2002 21:12:38 -0800

I saw all five of the visible planets in our solar system tonight! And so can you, if you have clear skies and go outside between 8:45 and 9 p.m. your time this week. Disclaimer - my naked eyes weren't good enough to see Mercury but I could see it with binoculars.