Gene Roddenberry Called It

The science community has been buzzing of late about the Voyager probes' impending (did it already happen?) departure from the heliosphere. Launched 35 years ago, Voyager's primary mission was to visit the outer planets. The two craft performed flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and for the last 23 years have continued along their trajectories toward the edge of the solar system. It looks like V'GER will become the first ship to leave our solar system and enter interstellar space.

If you're asking me what V-GER is, you're not a Trekkie. V'GER was the fictional Voyager 6 craft that appeared in Star Trek: The (Slow) Motion Picture (I'm still yawning) and wreaked all kinds of sci-fi havoc on the Klingons and the Federation. According to Kirk, its purpose was to transmit data back to Earth but eventually it disappeared into a black hole. The real Voyager crafts aren't headed for any black holes that we know of but they'll one day both leave the solar system. Who knows what they'll find. Preliminary data received from Voyager 1 as it navigates the heliosheath is already forcing astrophysicists to reevaluate some of their long-standing assumptions about the edge of the solar system and interstellar space.

BTW, I dig the poster for the upcoming Star Trek movie even though the Dark Knight influence is obvious.

The Eyes In The Sky

The National Academy of Sciences released a report on Wednesday that was troubling: apparently, NASA was never given enough money to build the telescopes it needs to complete its absolutely vital mission of locating 90 percent of the potentially deadly rocks traveling through space.

There will come a day when the human race no longer walks the earth, though we should strive to ensure that day remains in the very distant future. This is exactly the sort of mission, despite being very costly, that we shouldn't underbudget. According to the Academy's report, the US government's effort has been "relatively little;" however, what's more startling is the fact that the US is "practically the only government doing anything at all." Our existence is balanced on a knife's edge, as they say, but this mission is one way we can increase our chances of staying on that edge. We need more eyes in the sky.

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It's a good thing Earth isn't the biggest planet in the solar system. That distinction, thankfully, remains Jupiter's, and with significantly more gravity, the gas giant attracts a lot of these dangerous rocks flying through space. Just last month, a comet or an asteroid collided with Jupiter, and scientists estimate the object was the size of several football fields. Because of the collision, there is a new, expanding spot on Jupiter.