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Is Mimas Hiding Pac-Man?
cremeglace writes "Shaped into the likes of the Death Star of Star Wars fame by the giant crater Herschel, 396-kilometer-diameter Mimas was expected to have its warmest surface temperatures on the equator, where it was early afternoon. Instead, it was warmest in the morning (all of 92 K), giving rise in the science team's temperature-calibrated color scheme to a very large Pac-Man."
No, but Uranus is hiding Q*bert!
Worst summary ever...
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No, there have however been discussion on the cost of the downlink from the Hubble space telescope: http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2008/05/nparticle.2008-05-12.4476906328
In essence, a sending data via text will give you bills for around GBP 350 per MB. The funny thing with this is of-course that sending texts is basically for the operator free of charge as it is only using excess capacity of the mobile networks, that is, text messages have no guaranteed delivery and will simply be dropped in case a link is congested. The only cost that texts infer are the operational costs with maintaining the servers that manages the texts, but you cannot expect that that will be a very high cost.
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That's no moon... oh wait, sorry, yes it is.
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
The long-lost backstory on Pac-Man has its origins in space, too! Of course, every geek probably knows this already:
In 1976, Cosmonaut Nikolai Peckmann was sent alone to an orbiting space station for what would be called Mission Six- to study the radiation levels and strange circumstances that killed all four crewmen of the last research mission.
By the third day, Peckmann's broken transmissions were coming back to ground control filled with increasing paranoia and delusion. He claimed that the spirits of the dead cosmonauts were coming to claim him, and that he had to keep moving to evade them. He shouted that if he could capture consume these spirits himself while he still had strength, he could move to the next level of consciousness...Truly the rantings of an insane man.
Indeed, video recovered later would show Peckmann running around the confined but maze-like station, downing emergency sedatives like a madman....pausing in a corner momentarily, only to throw back vitamin pills and give chase to his invisible demons.
He had exhausted the entire cargo of vitamins, pills, and fresh fruit well ahead of schedule. There was no way another crew could be assembled to rescue him before he starved. After one rather violently garbled transmission, the static cleared and the last live image on record is that of Peckmann's empty, wilted spacesuit on the cabin floor.
It was determined that another mission to recover any remains or gather any more research would be a waste of the people's money, and the station was allowed to drift out of orbit and into space- a failure never to be mentioned again. It was ordered and assumed that all video and paper evidence had been destroyed.
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