Between chess, holes and sandstorms, space research has reached an important milestone in 2018



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2018 ends and, to commemorate another cycle of our beloved planet, the Earth around the Sun, nothing better than to remember the most important information about our infinite search for knowledge about new worlds. It was not an easy year – many problems left engineers and astronauts tense enough – but it certainly had its victories and successes.

Tretas

He thought he would have only good news, discoveries, and major breakthroughs in space exploration. retrospective of 2018?

The Kepler telescope, for example, was decommissioned after a fuel outage. The year was marked by goodbyes and many problems with probes, rovers and other equipment. It's about nine years of work and about 2,700 exoplanets discovered in distant star systems.

Another famous telescope, the Hubble, has had problems, but remains alive and working after an unusual repair: NASA basically hung up and connected a faulty gyroscope to

Another problematic scenario was designed to NASA's equipment on Mars. The Curiosity mobile had memory anomalies in his computer, but he returned to perform scientific operations.

The Opportunity probe "has disappeared" because of a dust storm on the red planet – for the moment, no sign of it. NASA hopes that by January, winds will be able to clear the dust off its aircraft and allow it to resume operations.

On the Russian side of space exploration, things have not improved much. The failure of the launch of a Soyuz rocket has led Russia to suspend future trips to the International Space Station. As Roscosmos is one of the few space agencies to make this type of trip, the possibility of having to leave the empty IEE has been taken into account.

The worst stories involving a Russian spacecraft are not left out. An air pressure leak was detected on the International Space Station in September, because of a "micro-crack" in the hull of the Soyuz space shuttle. Except that, it seems, it was not a kind of hole, but a hole made with a drill, and it is suspected that it was made from the inside. It's a weird story out there, which should have repercussions in 2019.

With so many problems, it would not be surprising that there is even an extraterrestrial invasion. They even felt that the interstellar object Oumuamua was a spacecraft belonging to another civilization, but it was nothing of the kind.

Independent Acts

The year 2018 was also marked by new achievements of private companies investing in space exploration. SpaceX has entered history by launching its first Falcon Heavy rocket, the heaviest to date. He even took Billionaire Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster in space, with the Starman doll "in the direction".

View from SpaceX Launch Control. Apparently, there is a car in orbit around the Earth. The future announces even more promising: the company announced in November its first voyage into space

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk ) 6th of February 2018

"Tourist". A rocket takes Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on a moon tour.

SpaceX was not the only one. Virgin Galactic has achieved a smaller feat, but no less impressive. The company sent its SpaceShipTwo commercial aircraft flying at an altitude of 82.68 km. It is still below the Karman line, a line 100 km from the sea level that defines the beginning of space, but it was enough to see and photograph the curvature of the planet Earth.

SpaceShipTwo, welcome to space. The year was so good for independent publications that even bigotry

Great Discoveries

Despite the difficulties and the successive difficulties of space agencies, significant advances, achievements and discoveries have been made recorded. Scientists have found evidence of the presence of liquid water trapped under an ice cap on Mars. We also learned that there was some ice on the moon.

We know the rings of Saturn better: they produce organic matter that is raining on the planet. And over time, this can dramatically change the way we know it: in 100 million years, the rings could disappear. Of course, none of us will be here to see that.

But it's not just the planets and moons that have left us with surprises for 2018. We're slowly discovering objects far removed from the solar system, like Farout. At a distance of 120 astronomical units – 120 times the average distance between the Earth and the Sun – Farout is the farthest object ever identified.

The discovery of a new dwarf planet in the solar system enclosure provides further evidence of its existence.

indicates quite interesting possibilities. The goblin, which is 80 AU, further supports the hypothesis of the existence of the so-called New Planet, which would have a large mbad and whose gravity would explain the elongated orbits of these objects.

Launches and Landings

The landing this year was the landing of NASA's InSight probe on Mars. Asteroids research has also been news, with the arrival of JAXA's Hayabusa2 mission on the asteroid Ryugu, and the landing of NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe on the asteroid. Bennu.

New launches were also made: China sent a spacecraft to the dark side of the moon and the European agency ESA put the BepiColombo mission to Mercury in space.

Among the many achievements, problems and achievements, we already know what will be the first big news of 2019: NASA confirmed that the space shuttle New Horizons would approach the ultimate Thule Ultima object in the first hours of the first day of the year.

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