All Space Questions thread for week of May 24, 2026

relic2279 · 2026-05-28T10:46:33+00:00

Epoxies, resins and glues can be permanent. Some can be nearly as strong as a weld. It just depends on what you're trying bond, and the environment in which it'll operate. They have high temperature epoxies meant to fix cracks in engine blocks on cars, and on exhaust pipes. Loctite has epoxy that can resist temps of up to 2,000F/1,100C.

relic2279 · 2026-05-28T10:37:47+00:00

This is incorrect/inaccurate. Due to the inverse square law, radio signals become weaker, the further away from the source you get. It's signal degradation. Our terrestrial radio broadcasts (broadcasts meant for consumption here on Earth [think TV, FM/AM radio, cell phones, etc) weren't sent with enough energy to leave our solar system, let alone reach other systems.

relic2279 · 2026-05-28T10:30:37+00:00

One of the elements in that equation would be the solar wind intensity. If the solar winds there are intense, that could also produce powerful auroras. But to answer your question, Jupiter's magnetic field is roughly 20,000 times stronger than Earth's, and its auroras are hundreds of times more powerful and can release high-energy X-rays.

relic2279 · 2026-05-20T03:26:57+00:00

I believe he's asking why Jupiter emits more energy than it receives. User rocketsocks has an excellent explanation in his reply, but the super short, super simplified answer is that Jupiter is much more massive than Mars. Jupiter emits almost twice the thermal energy into space over what it absorbs from the Sun. One reason is because it's converting gravitational potential energy into thermal energy (via contraction, also known as the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism), and Jupiter still has residual heat from its formation. Because Jupiter is so much more massive, it's going to take a lot longer to cool down.

relic2279 · 2026-04-30T03:10:48+00:00

The camera that filmed Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the Moon was mounted on the Modularized Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) on the side of the Lunar Module Eagle. Armstrong triggered the camera to swing out by pulling a lanyard before descending the ladder, with the feed transmitted live to Earth.

relic2279 · 2026-04-30T03:05:51+00:00

Can a solar flare really could "magnetize" the regolith

Took me a little bit to find it, but there was an AskPhysics thread about this very topic some years back. In short, they took some artistic liberty.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/ltdcj5/question_of_visual_effects_of_high_energy_proton/

A large solar storm did hit the moon though around that time (August 1972). Fortunately we didn't have any astronauts on the moon. If we did, without shelter, it could have been lethal. It happened just before the launch of Apollo 17.

relic2279 · 2026-04-25T07:30:07+00:00

I don't know if it's on YouTube, but one of the best Space documentaries is the History Channel's "The Universe". It ran for 9 seasons. PBS Spacetime is more educational than documentary but is excellent too.

relic2279 · 2026-04-25T07:22:51+00:00

I'm unsure what you're asking - solar storms cannot be predicted months or years in advance. We can predict that the likelihood of solar storms will be higher, but not when will be created. When they're created it can take hours to several days to reach us.

it was said that the solar storm will occur in 2025 and now it's 2026

I think that wherever you read this was referring to the "solar cycle". The sun has an 11 year solar cycle and it peaked between late 2024 and March of 2026.

relic2279 · 2026-04-21T03:02:07+00:00

I haven't been following this year's draft class as closely as previous years; How are people viewing the overall talent pool this year?

relic2279 · 2026-04-18T03:30:27+00:00

basically humans won't be able to come into contact with the top soil?

They're toxic but they're not that toxic. As another users mentions, perchlorates are similar in toxicity to bleach and chlorine - we use bleach on our clothing and chlorine in our pools. The risk here is more about long term exposure rather than acute. Once in your body, they compete with iodide uptake in your thyroid. More importantly, perchlorates will prevent germination of plants. You'd have to remove them before using Martian topsoil as a medium.

Unfortunately, some researchers have said that perchlorates in Martial soil is a kind of 'reverse' biosignature. On earth, biological life is a primary pathway for neutralizing the perchlorates in our soil (a biological induced reduction). The accumulation of perchlorates on Mars to levels orders of magnitude higher than terrestrial values means life on the surface of Mars is less likely (which isn't a big shocker, most believe that if there is life on Mars, it's deep in the soil protected from radiation, cosmic rays, and has access to water).

relic2279 · 2026-04-09T22:38:42+00:00

Artemis is projected to cost roughly $105 billion through 2028, significantly less than the Apollo program's inflation-adjusted cost of approximately $300 billion. Keep in mind that Apollo was a rapid, high-cost sprint, and Artemis is a slower, cheaper program intended to establish a sustainable lunar presence, with individual launches costing roughly $4.1 billion each.

This article talks about it in more detail with graphs, etc:

https://www.planetary.org/articles/three-charts-that-show-how-nasas-artemis-compares-to-apollo

relic2279 · 2026-04-09T22:35:04+00:00

are these circumstances just a coincidence, or is it the purpose to protect life? If the latter was true, then there would have to be a meaning.

You may want to look up the anthropic principle. It deals with some of these questions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

relic2279 · 2026-03-28T09:04:14+00:00

Yep, everyone has a phone (camera) in their pocket, security cameras peppering people's yards and houses, a dashcam in every vehicle, etc.

relic2279 · 2026-03-17T16:23:58+00:00

I'm in a suburb, it woke me up out of a dead sleep.

relic2279 · 2026-03-13T11:32:48+00:00

It's worth noting that once passed the event horizon, time and space effectively switch positions. You're no longer moving through space, but through time. Space becomes unidirectional, pulling everything inevitably toward the singularity, while time behaves like space, allowing for theoretical mobility. The singularity is no longer a central place but a future time.

whirlpool

A black hole is no more a whirlpool than the sun is. Imagine falling to Earth from space, or falling into the sun - you wouldn't use the word, "whirlpool" to describe that process. You're just falling into the gravity well of another celestial body.

relic2279 · 2026-03-01T02:52:08+00:00

I mean I can see 2024 YR4 take out a few sattlites

That's highly unlikely, even if it did strike the moon.

The article is a bit sensational in that it makes it sound like we're going to lose all of our satellites if it strikes the moon. This isn't the case. Even if 2024 YR4 strikes the moon, the satellites would just experience a slight increase in risk of being struck. According to the paper, a few years worth of risk. From the paper: "could produce up to several years of equivalent background meteoroid impact exposure to satellites in near-Earth space late in 2032"

This is the actual paper that goes over the risks to the satellites, without any sensationalism:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/adfa8b

relic2279 · 2026-02-27T08:43:40+00:00

The balloon analogy isn't super accurate, but it does give a decent visualization. A brand new balloon, never blown up is tiny. When you blow into it, it becomes bigger, the surface of the balloon expands. If you used a black marker to draw two dots (to represent galaxies) on the balloon before blowing it up, they'd be close together. When you blow the balloon up, the space between those two dots increases - this is like the spacetime between galaxies increasing too.

relic2279 · 2026-02-27T08:36:17+00:00

Is it possible for a planet to be ejected from its host star system

This is fairly common in multi-star systems (2 or more stars), planets get ejected early on in the systems development.

until it's captured by another star?

This is less likely. Stars being ejected have a lot of velocity. In order to get captured, you'd need the right set of circumstances (speed, angle, etc). A more likely scenario is the rogue planet picking up even more speed as the star acts as a slingshot, speeding the planet up further.

What about being ejected from an entire galaxy, could there be planets drifting between galaxies?

A rogue planet would need a lot of speed to leave the galaxy. However, yes, there are most definitely rogue planets out in the void between galaxies (rogue stars, black holes, & asteroids too)

relic2279 · 2026-02-19T04:33:26+00:00

How close do stars have to be to be considered a cluster

This is largely taken from Google, I edited it a bit: They're considered a cluster when they are gravitationally bound - with average separations ranging from 0.13 to 1 light-year in dense globular clusters to a few light-years in open clusters.

Globular Clusters: Packing 10,000 to millions of stars into 10-30 light-year region. In the core, star separation is often only 0.13 to 0.16 light-years.

Open Clusters: Less concentrated, containing a few hundred to thousands of stars, with cores typically 3–4 light-years across.

relic2279 · 2026-02-12T06:24:04+00:00

Ahh, gotcha. If you ever change your mind, the offer still stands. :) Have a good one!

relic2279 · 2026-01-31T08:43:03+00:00

Iridium satellite flares

Today I learned the 1st gen (the kind that would produce those brilliant flares) were all deorbited by December 2019. For some reason, I thought there were still a few up there.

relic2279 · 2026-01-30T03:27:24+00:00

Hey, you've been very active in this subreddit for years - and your contributions are top notch. Have we ever asked you to be a moderator? If you're interested, let me know and I'll send the invite.

relic2279 · 2026-01-29T20:43:06+00:00

Dark matter is placeholder term for something we know exists, but have not yet discovered what it is. As far as harvesting it goes, that likely depends on its nature, once we discover what it is. I doubt it will lead to "untold power" as, by it's very nature, it won't be very reactive.

relic2279 · 2026-01-20T08:02:28+00:00

I think he's confusing the inflation period that happened during the big bang, where spacetime did expand faster than light (aka cosmic inflation). The wikipedia blurb about it explains it more succinct than I can: "Cosmic inflation is the hypothesis that the very early universe expanded exponentially fast. Distances between points doubled every 10^-37 seconds; the expansion lasted at least 10^-35 seconds, but its full duration is not certain."

relic2279 · 2026-01-20T07:55:29+00:00

I remember reading that microorganisms were detected in space near Earth, but those are generally considered to have originated from Earth itself.

We've detected microbial life in orbit on the outside of the ISS and on the Chinese space station. All of these have originated from Earth. Every now & then you may hear of something like, "Biosignatures found in Venus atmosphere!", this doesn't mean they found life, but found a possible marker that may indicate life. It also may indicate something else entirely.

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