Author: jayden

MAVEN (otherwise known as the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission), was the first mission devoted to understanding the upper Martian atmosphere. The mission has recently been declared as ended, after NASA lost contact with the probe on December 6th, 2025, and was declared as finalized on June 3rd, 2026, after extensive efforts to rescue the stricken probe.

MAVEN was originally launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on the 18th November 2013, and would enter into orbit around Mars on the 22nd September 2014. It would spend its time analysing the planet’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere, to examine how and what rate the solar wind was stripping away volatile compounds from it’s surface.

It’s primary objectives where as follows:

• Measuring the composition and structure of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere today, and determine the processes that were responsible for controlling them.
• Measuring the rate of gas losses from the top of the Martian atmosphere to space, and determine those processes that were responsible for controlling them.
• Determine properties and characteristics that would allow NASA to extrapolate backwards in time to determine the integrated loss to space over the four-billion-year history recorded in the geological record.

Upcoming this year, on the 15th November 2026 (roughly), Voyager 1 will reach a far enough distance, that it will take light 1 day to reach it from Earth. This means any communications with the 50 year old probe will take 2 days to get an answer.

Voyager 1 is currently 15.78 billion miles away, and 1 light day is roughly 16 billion miles away. It will hit that milestone, as mentioned, in mid-November. But what is Voyager 1?

Voyager 1 is a robotic probe, originally built to visit Jupiter & Saturn back in 1977. This was during a rare planetary alignment, which only occurs every 176 years, where Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are aligned in such a way that a spacecraft could use each planet’s gravitational pull as a slingshot – which significantly reduces travel time and fuel to be able to reach the outer solar system.

A list of Voyager 1’s Acheivments:

• The first spacecraft to reach interstellar space, back on August 25th, 2012, when it crossed the Heliopause, allowing it to send back the first direct measurements of the galactic magnetic field and cosmic rays.
• It is the furthest man-made object from Earth
• It captured the first high-resolution images of Jupiter and its moons. Major discoveries included finding active volcanic activity on the moon Io, seeing the first lightning beyond Earth, and detecting Jupiter’s ring system.
• First highly detailed look at Saturn, and Titan, showing highly detailed views of the planet’s complex ring structures.
• It captured the Pale Blue Dot image, a mosaic which showed the earth as a tiny, speck of light suspended in the vastness of space.
• First spacecraft to detect a nitrogen-rich atmosphere found beyond our home planet (Titan’s atmosphere around Saturn).

The oldest satellite that is still readily transmitting today is AMSAT-OSCAR 7, otherwise known as AO-7. It is a amateur radio satellite, constructed in the 1970’s by AMSAT. It was launched into Low Earth Orbit back on November 15, 1974, and remained operational until a battery failure in 1981.

After 21 years of silence, the sattelite’s signal was picked up again on June 21, 2002. It was then learnt that during that time, it was actually used briefly for the anti-communist opposition in Poland, during the time of Martial Law, in 1982.

AMSAT reported in 2015, that the satellite was only receiving power from it’s solar panels, as a short circuit in the battery had caused the initial outage. When this later became an open circuit, due to time, it now functions only on direct solar light.

AO-7 has a mass of 28.6KG, and was placed into a 1,444km (Pe), x 1459km (Ap) Orbit. It is shaped as an octagonal prism, 36cm tall, and 42.4cm in diameter. It has a single circularly polarized, canted turnstile VHF / UHF antenna system. Four radio masts are mounted 90 degree intervals on the base of the satellite and two experimental repeater systems provided store-and-forward for morse code and teletype messages.

Gravitational lensing is a phenomenon, where something that has a large gravitational pull, such as a galaxy cluster, a supermassive black hole, or quasars, warps space and time around them, causing visible distortion that bends light in unique ways around the object.

It was first observed in 1919, by 3 British Astronomers, Arthur Stanley Eddington, Frank Watson Dyson, and Andrew Crommelin, where they did an experiment to see if the Sun’s Gravity would bend starlight in such a way during a total solar eclipse, if they could see & photograph stars that would normally be impossible to do so. They used 3 telescopes, 2 in the Brazilian city of Sobral, and one on the West African Island of Principe, to complete the experiment. This allowed them to see the same star on both sides of the sun, due to the gravitational lensing.

In current practice, we have made numerous observations of gravitational lensing using the Hubble Space Telescope, and more recently, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Popular examples of these include photos of Hubble’s image of the galaxy cluster, J1038+4849, which has extreme gravitational lensing surrounding it, and James Webb’s, First Deep Field, which showed extensive lensing around a center galaxy cluster.

On the 6th April, 2026, the Artemis II craft, Integrity, and the 4 astronauts, Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, completed their flyby around the Moon. The contact, as expected, was lost between 22:46 UTC, and 23:24 UTC, during their 40 minute stint around the far side of the moon, where the Deep Space Network has no direct connection with the vessel.

During this time, they were able to view the far-side of the moon in unprecedented detail, including a solar eclipse after the blackout had finished, and where also able to see Impact Flashes from meteoroids impacting the dark portion of the moon.

This has been the first return to the moon for 50 years, last done by Apollo 17, and the first Lunar Flyby in the same amount of time, as performed by Apollo 13, during their fateful mission. At an altitude of as little as 4,067 miles above the lunar surface, Artemis II created a new distance record, previously set by Apollo 13, which flew-by at just 158 miles above the surface. The new distance record stands at 252,755.8 miles, or 406,771 km.

As part of the wake-up call on Day 6 before the historic flyby, a message recorded by Apollo 13 astronaut, the late Jim Lovell, was played as part of their wake-up call on the day, leading to emotional reactions. A recording can be found here.

The Artemis II crew also proposed a rename of two unnamed crates spotted during the fly-by, one to be named Integrity, after the spacecraft, and one named Carroll, after Reid Wiseman‘s late wife.

Today’s Fun Fact surrounds Artemis II, which launched successfully on Wednesday, 1st April. Currently, 4 Humans, 3 from NASA, and 1 from the CSA, are on their way to re-visit the moon for the first time in 50 years.

Here’s some key things to note:

• They are going to be bypassing the moon on a “Free-Return” trajectory, meaning if anything goes wrong, their orbit will bring them back to Earth.
• They will be flying by the Moon, passing over it’s far side at a height of around 4,047 miles from the surface. This means at their furthest point, they will be the furthest humans have ever travelled, as Apollo 13 passed over the far side at a height of just 158 miles.
• They are the first humans to be using the Deep Space Network, since the Apollo Missions, to communicate, as they are required too at the distances they are at
• The entire mission will take a span of 10 days, and currently they are roughly 30 hours in. They will reach the furthest point, being on the far side of the moon, on Monday, April 6th.
• If you want to find out more, see this NASA Link: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-ii/