Some months back I made some from the hip comments about ‘Oumuamua, that strange little visitor from outside the solar system. Some of them were superseded by later events, others are certainly debatable. However, in the last week or so, ‘Oumuamua has been in the spotlight due to renewed speculation that it could be artificial, [...]
JPL has produced a further update for the orbit of the Tesla, although the rate of arrival of new observations has slowed. With the Tesla now below magnitude 20 and, with the Moon close to full, it is unlikely that there will be a new orbit update for at least another week or ten days. [...]
Since my original posting on Starman, there have been so many observations made of it as it recedes, mainly by amateur astronomers, that JPL has produced multiple updates for the orbit of the Tesla. The latest orbit is sufficiently good that JPL has also calculated future encounters with the Earth, the Moon and Mars. Although [...]
The only way to avoid knowing that, this week, a bright red, electric sports card with a spacesuit clad dummy at the wheel was launched into interplanetary space was to have become a hermit. The launch was deeply impressive and it seemed only right that the most powerful American rocket since the Saturn V should [...]
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