News of Distant Views

Thinking it was about time to check the Universe Today space news site again, I followed a link I keep ready to hand, and was intrigued to see a report of a proposal to head back out to Neptune and Triton. While I was perhaps a little pleased Triton’s proximity to Neptune hadn’t made it more active and interesting than Pluto, the sixth of the “big moons” of the solar system seems interesting enough by itself to merit a return trip. First, of course, the mission has to be picked over three others that would reach their targets much sooner; the proposed “Trident” mission would head out long enough after Voyager 2’s first reconnaissance that’s perhaps not to be dwelt on too much right now.

In wondering if I could find a second report on the subject I checked another space news site I’m aware of, and did see the “parallax experiment” I’d seen planned for New Horizons had taken place. I’d known about the slight shifts the closest stars to Earth make against further stars over the course of half a year; with New Horizons having got a lot further than one astronomical unit from Earth by now, the shift compared to ground-based imaging is much more noticeable. Although this may amount to “mental escape from here,” I did also notice on the second site a report of the recently launched Falcon 9 first stage being returned to shore, the “old new” NASA logo that hadn’t been especially visible on the launch pad dirty but not that burnt-up to my eyes.