nudge

Love sci-fi, both for its entertainment value and cerebral properties, grew up on it as well... mostly books and then movies/tv shows. I'll start with sharing my most favourite short story ever, The Last Question by Isaac Asimov... EDIT: just found a beautiful interactive website where you can read the story: https://thelastquestionstory.com/

Surprised he's only got a beer in his hand there

Never thought I'll hear Martian wind in my life...

ahahahaha to be fair that's the only way he could have survived the FIA gala

Successfully launched!

Do it do it do it!

Is he doing a Nigel Mansell impersonation?

Done and dusted!

Due to popular demand (not really ), here's a thread for anything Space related... Topic title credit: @CaaC - John

I think we need a separate topic for Space Launch in about three hours! Unfortunately no livestream. Other than this being the first landing on the far side of the Moon, there's more interesting things about this mission. One of them is a mini biosphere experiment - they are sending potato seeds and silkworm eggs in a biocan to test photosynthesis and respiration in the low-gravity lunar environment. More infos about the mission here: https://gbtimes.com/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-change-4-mission-to-the-far-side-of-the-moon?cat=chinas-space-program

AI with advanced autonomy that doesn't need to be micromanaged constantly will be a huge breakthrough in space exploration. Better data collection, more accuracy and effectiveness, better productivity, less risks in challenging environments where delayed communications with human control team on Earth is a norm. I've read a while ago that one particular area of AI development that JPL and the likes are really looking into is preparing AI to recognise, analyse and interpret the unknown in new environments where no known model of normality can be built in advance due to lack of data, thus enabling AI to build such models from scratch based on their own observations. Sounds very...intuitive and human-like hehe.

Thailand lost to Malaysia on away goals while Vietnam beat the Philippines to advance to the finals!

It's amazing that we live in a time where anyone can have breakfast in bed and watch ISS astronauts having a spacewalk live This is also a great livestream that streams live HD Earth views as seen from the Space Station; it's breathtaking (make sure to choose HD in options and go fullscreen!)

Great picture and an interesting read... it's cool that the article mentions citizen science projects; I did a bit of work every once in a while on a similar one that has the same objective (i.e. identifying transiting exoplanets from Kepler's data using stars' lightcurves); it's quite fun. Crowdsourcing research is such a fantastic way to analyse huge amounts of data and get common people involved in science. Did they ever find out what was the deal with that weird star? (the article mentions May 2017 hence my question...)

The launch of the cargo ship was successful but the rocket missed the landing as the first-stage booster crashed into the ocean haha. Appears to be undamaged so it's good news anyway!

Ah yes, I started out almost twenty years ago when I asked my dad to teach me and he gave me an old film camera of his to learn... got hooked pretty bad haha.

Nah it's just my healthier way of winding down (as opposed to drinking )

Thanks Chris, much appreciated. It's just a hobby and there's a lot of room for improvement hehe, but I love doing it.

Love it how the original group of discoverers were Star Wars fans and chose a very apt nickname for it

I took this one during the last "blood moon" eclipse and was very surprised with the double Moon until I realised it's actually due to the long exposure... haha. Maybe my best astro related one (Milky Way): And my two favourite moon ones... the second one is taken with a 600mm lens and is obviously cropped...

This is so mind-blowing; both the achievement itself and the fact that it's barely reported outside of specialised news... It's the first of the few planned extra-terrestrial sample return missions that not only will tell us a lot about the earliest history of the Solar System, how the planets formed and life began, but it might also be the very first step into the new direction in natural resources gathering and economic development, not to mention that it enables us to study the possibilities of altering the course of potentially hazardous asteroids in the future (impact mitigation); all of which is not just interesting stuff for scientists and armchair enthusiasts, but might (and most likely will) have serious practical applications for the survival and advancement of humanity. Now let's hope it successfully starts orbiting Bennu within three weeks as that's the biggest task of the mission so far! Also must keep an eye on NASA's New Horizon mission which is the first mission to explore the Kuiper Belt. It has just completed its first course-correction on approach to its Jan. 1 flyby target, the mysterious object nicknamed “Ultima Thule”. The encounter will occur approximately 4 billion miles from Earth. Mind boggling...

Yes, the police woman is said to be doing fine, fortunately!

1st leg of the Suzuki Cup semi finals are over; Malaysia 0-0 Thailand and Philippines 1-2 Vietnam. The 2nd leg of both semis will be played on the 5th and 6th of December respectively.