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The Search For Apollo 10's "Snoopy"
astroengine writes "A UK-led team of astronomers are going to use their comet and asteroid-hunting skills to track down a piece of Apollo history. In 1969, Apollo 10 did everything the first moon landing (Apollo 11) did, except land on the lunar surface. During the Apollo 10 mission, the lunar module, nicknamed 'Snoopy,' was jettisoned and sent into a solar orbit — it is still believed to be out there, 42 years later. 'We're expecting a search arc up to 135 million kilometers in size which is a huge amount of space to look at,' British amateur astronomer Nick Howes told Discovery News. 'We're aware of the scale and magnitude of this challenge but to have the twin Faulkes scopes assist the hunt, along with schools, plus the fact that we'll doubtless turn up many new finds such as comets and asteroids makes this a great science project too.'"
I guess the larger question is "Why?" Why are they even looking for this in the first place?
Imagine if all the money spent on sending handfuls of people into space was spent on health care education here on Earth? I love the idea of astronomers at their telescopes but the costs involved with manned spaceflight is astronomical. Didn't it cost something like $10,000/pound to send stuff up in into orbit in the shuttles? How much are the Mars landers costing?
We need a SOLID health research plan back here on Earth. Far less money for the Big Pharma-controlled 'sickness industry' of today and more for alternative medicine research. Alternative medicine has been shown time and again to be just as, or more, effective than Big Pharma drugs or a surgeon's butcher knives. This is actually a timely discussion as the Big Pharma made up "flu season" is coming fast.
For example, did you know the flu shots are ineffective and even dangerous? If you start to show the signs of a flu there are simple things you can do. A homeopathic remedy of Oscillococcinum along with Chiropractic adjustments form a two-pronged attack on the flu virus. The Oscillococcinum attacks the young viruses while the adjustments to the spine help the body's innate healing capabilities destroy the mature virus. It's a 100% painless and safe way to heal yourself from within with the human body's most powerful weapon: innate intelligence.
Don't just take my word for it, educate yourself with the University of Google! Here's more evidence of efficacy:
"Flu season wellness plan should include chiropractic care"
How Chiropractic Can Help The Flu
Swine Flu Chiropractors Handout
Take care,
Bob
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
Space Nutters have assured me that space is far from empty. As a matter of fact, it gorges with resources like running water, air and minerals. So how do these smarty-pants scientists plan to see through all those resources?
I was working in the field for more that 10 years.
To me finding an object that small looks like quite hard but challenging work.
One of Apollo S-IVB stages was BTW found in similar challenge, so
its possible to do, but somewhat hard.
How hard can it be to find Snoopy? Just look for an area where bombs are being dropped, then search for a biplane within that area. When you find that, follow the trail to the nearest Christmas party, and you'll find Snoopy drowning his sorrows in a (root) beer.
Dibs.
Please contact Faulkes Telescope Project or NASA.
If found, do NOT feed or pet.
that AEONITY.COM link is NSFW dammit
We don't know the exact orbit. If this had been from only a few years ago this would be a small range. But after 40 years this means that the module has a massive range. We don't know where it is. Although we should have a better idea how fast it should be moving which helps slightly. Also, this sort of thing has been done before. Since the late 1700s there's been attempts to track down objects based on some observations. This started off in some sense with Halley's Comet, but that was more about realizing that a large set of observations were the same thing (Halley also had the advantage of realizing that Jupiter and Saturn had a major impact on comets and also had Newton's previous work to guide him). The next time this would be used would be in the early 1800s when Gauss (yes, that Gauss as in Gauss's law and lots of other math and physics stuff. He was very productive.) calculated the orbit of Ceres based on a few months of observations. Since then we've refined these sorts of techniques a lot, and in this case we aren't limited to ground based observations since we have a pretty good idea where and when Snoopy was sent out.
The main problem is going to probably be that Snoopy is tiny. Something this small is very hard to see even with very good telescopes. Most asteroids that are detected with telescopes are much larger than the lunar lander. Spotting something of that size even with the (fairly large) telescopes that they are using will be tough.
Imagine if we were to send a small probe out to intercept it...
I was working in the field for more that 10 years.
To me finding an object that small looks like quite hard but challenging work.
One of Apollo S-IVB stages was BTW found in similar challenge, so
its possible to do, but somewhat hard.
Warning: above link is goatse.
There are also the Apollo 8, 10, 11 and 12 S-IVBs (3rd stage). (Starting with Apollo 13, the S-IVBs were impacted on the Moon to produce "Moonquakes" for the ALSEP seismometers). For all of those except for Apollo 8, there were also 4 large SLAs (panels) around the LM, which were ejected when the LM was retrieved just after TLI. (The Apollo-8 panels stayed on the S-IVB, as it had no LM.) In a real trivia, the Apollo 13-17 SLAs also should be out there, as the S-IVB was directed to hit the Moon after the LM was retrieved, and thus after they were ejected.
There was a claim that the S-IVB for Apollo 12 might have been found. I don't know if that was ever confirmed, though.
This was the founding of space archaeology.
Awesome post, keep up the good work...
... it will take 300 years to come back, but when it does, it will be pissed...
(yeah, i'm still thinking of a cool name, but snyger stinks...)
I know there will be a few "who cares?" and "why are we bothering?"... If it's in orbit it will come back around again. Much like how we need to track all satellites around Earth to prevent collisions, and asteroids/comets that may be on a trajectory towards Earth, we'll need to track this object as well. Who knows when and where it might collide with something in the future.
Wah wah wah wah, wah wah wah. Wah wah wah wah wah.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
There's even a documentary about it.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
mos7 people into a it will be among time wholesome and
I'm confused by "We're expecting a search arc up to 135 million kilometers in size which is a huge amount of space to look at,".
An arc would be measured in degrees.minutes.seconds.
An amount of space would be a cubic measurement.
Can someone say what this statement means?
Thanks.
Let me know if they find a teapot while they're looking.
When folks want to learn to program, or in fact do pretty much anything, I usually suggest they pick an arbitrary project idea in the general field and simply start working on it. *What* exactly they're working on matters less than that they are working on something and learning from the process. (The scope of the project ideally grows naturally on their existing knowledge base).
In this case anybody working on this is developing (hopefully better) technology for finding stuff. That technology will go into our lexicon and when the aliens arrive we'll be all set to "quick, see if you can find them on the deep space scanners".
Short of sending a probe out there, I think we're as sure as we're going to get that object J002E3 is the Apollo 12 S-IVB, due to a spectral profile that matches titanium dioxide paint.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Good memory ! Apollo 12 landed within a few hundred meters of the surveyor lander, collected some samples for study, and returned them to earth. (Of course, it was all done in a studio using homeopathic and chiropractic special effects)