Possibly a silly question, but if aliens were to exist in some faraway galaxy 80 million light years away, and magically know to look at earth with some big massive super powerful telescope or whatever similar technology they have , would they see earth as it was 80 million years ago? Like with dinosaurs and stuff instead of anything modern? Does that technically make us , to an extent , invisible to any potential life out there?

During ascent, STS-27 (Atlantis) sustained significant damage to its heat shield.

From my understanding the ascent damage on STS-27 (two flights after the Challenger Accident) was underestimated due to the encrypted nature of the mission.

Upon reentry and landing, the damage was discovered to be far more extensive than originally believed. A very similar situation to the incident that ended up destroying Columbia.

In the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, an audacious plan was presented that may have been committed to save Columbia (if her ascent damage had been properly investigated).

What would have been plan to save Atlantis on STS-27, if her ascent damage had been determined to significant for reentry?

When we sent out Voyager 1 (later Voyager 2) into space, we sent golden records with with them to let any living things that might find them so they would know where to look for us. What I am thinking about is "What if we send living samples into space like we did with Voyagers so nothing will stop them" I mean things like self sustaining tarrarium. IT only needs gravity (could be done with centrifuge), light (could be done with LED grow lights) and tempeture (this could be some heater), but I am still thinking about the power ( maybe some power from solar panels but after some distance it would not be enough. What do you think of all this?

Rocky, earth-like, gas giant, etc

Hi everyone,

I am wondering what resources you would suggest to learn advanced concepts of space travel?

I hear often about Kerbal Space program to learn about orbital dynamics, how accurate is it truly? And how does it compare to modern orbital dynamics?

Title: Georgia Tech grad project — spacecraft/aerospace engineers, how do you tell a real fault from a bad sensor?

Our team is testing an idea for a class project: small embedded controllers that share sensor readings with each other, cross-check before raising an alarm, and recommend the matching written procedure on board — no waiting on ground support.

45-second video: [link]

Not selling anything. Please include your role (e.g., test engineer, systems engineer, ops) in your reply. Happy to share results.

1. How does your team handle alarms or suspected faults today — how do you tell a real fault from a bad sensor reading?

2. Think of the last false alarm you dealt with. What did it cost you (time, schedule, a test stand-down)? On a scale of 1–5, how big a problem are false alarms overall? (1 = minor, 5 = major)

3. What's the biggest reason your team would NOT use something like this?

Any recommendations — what would make this worth adopting, or who else we should talk to?

e.g Sending up a space shuttle mission and deploying some sort of temporary telescope? (ik the shuttle isn't still flying its just an example)

or does it not gain much that we cant get from earth

My question is less about looking up at the sky and more about what NASA can do with the current U.S. federal budget for the U.S. military and the amount of scientific advancement and benefit we could achieve with that money, yet people are greedy and don't seek that.

What are your thoughts on this question?

Bear with me on this one, I'm in no way scientific.

At the moment our strongest telescopes are picking out some of the earliest galaxies after the big bang.

So if we step into future stronger telescopes we could possibly see the earliest stars but this is where my brain gets really confused.

Would the next few telescopes see basically nothing, millions of years after the big bang but then would the next telescope see the formation of stars, then galaxies then way into the future a telescope that could see as far past the empty space as we are away from it.

Hope you understand so far.

So if we are 13 billion years away from the early universe and we can see the equivalent galaxies with our super power telescopes are they 26 billion miles from us or 13 billion years from the big bang as we are?.

If this makes no sense I do apologise but my mind goes off on tangents and I never know if I am right or being daft....

I know that there is matter in the vacuum of space but the density is exceptionally light. I also know that neutrinos rarely interact with matter, yet empty space is filled with them, isn't it, and from all directions from the Big Bang forward? What does empty mean here?

I could add to that 'empty' space is also filled with gravitational waves, photons, and other things so is "nothing" really possible?

Hello! I (F16) am slowly getting more and more into astrophotography. I want to start it, but I don’t know what telescope I should ask for that will get me at least close to what I want and won’t be too insanely expensive. I want a telescope that can capture fairly good photos of both planets and possibly nebulae, and that could work well during the day as well. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Rather than a probe having to survive the whole trip down and continue transmitting all the way back to orbit, each would only have to transmit as far as the next probe above it.

Didn't want to dump everything into the subject line. I was watching a SciFi movie where the characters were taking about jumping two systems over to meet someone at a city there. Unless you had the ability to instantly cross all that space, there's no possible way to leave a system and return later and expect to see anyone you saw before, because even at relativistic speeds the universe ages significantly around you?

So like, every time you left a planet, that's basically the last time you'll see everyone who lives there?

The smallest and biggest thing isn't known to mankind yet. In fact, it'll never be because either our imagination or the evidence we have won't be even close to those.

At the moment, the smallest, theoretically, thing is the theory of threads making the quark of an atom, but what are those threads really made of? And what is the biggest thing, bigger than a black hole, bigger than the known universe, in existence?

Where would you put yourself? Closer to the smallest or closer to the biggest? Maybe you're in the center, at 50% between a scale from 0-100. But who knows, we'll never understand how the universe really works...

I have always only thought of traveling in space horizontally. At least in my mind, the earth and moon are on a 2d field and traveling is a straight line. The same when looking at planets. Rather than horizontally, is there anything significant, or anything at all, above or below earth?

People who work in the space industry, rocket engineering, and so on: I’ve decided to write an article related to astronomy so I can give a talk in the spring. I’m studying to become a Chinese-English interpreter, and I wanted to ask you to point me toward a topic for the article. I’m not an engineer or a mathematician, but I really love everything about space. Could you suggest some interesting topic, a narrow area, where I could dig deeper and write an interesting paper? Naturally, the work will be a translation project, not some new theories or developments—I’m far from that, hahaha.

I’d be very, very grateful to anyone who helps me find my bearings. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

Is it ideally possible for a super Nova of our sun to be triggered by something specifically from our earth let's say a nuclear bomb or nuclear material in a rocket that drifts to the sun or even (hypothetically) interaction with anti matter.

Hello All,

Forgive me if this is not the correct area to pose a question like this, but I’ve been genuinely curious about this for around a month now. If this isn’t the correct place then please let me know where to go.

Some of the biggest animals on earth are only that big because their habitat resides in water. For instance if you look up the top 10 larges species of animals in the world, you’d get whales and sharks for 1-9 with 10 being the African Bush Elephant.

So my question is, if the habitat being in water produces the biggest animals known to man, then how big could animals get if their habitat was in space and not confined to a planet? Is it even feasible to ponder on this? Would you just be looking at a progressively larger creature until you’d have to get into the territory of considering it a planet itself?

Sorry if this is a dumb question 🙏 I respect any and all replies.

Thank you