Carnival of Space, edition 224

Once a week, the Carnival of Space comes to town, bringing kettle corn, Tilt-a-Whirls, shifty characters, and the highlights of this week's space blogging. This week, Carnival of Space is being hosted here at Smaller Questions.

Read on to find out what the internet has been talking about for the past seven days. (For more information about Carnival of Space, including hosting and submitting articles, take a little trip here.)

News from Far Away

Nancy Atkinson at UniverseToday discusses the "longest distance tune-up." Voyager 2 is currently 9 billion miles from us, but we (or some subset of "we") just completed a remote repair job, activating thrusters that had not ever been used during the 32 years that Voyager 2 has been hanging out in space. 

Megan Watzke at ChandraBlog discusses Chandra's contributions to our knowledge of the black hole Cygnus X-1, including the truly carnival-esque statement that the event horizon spins 800 times a second.

Nicole Gugliucci at Discovery both ogles and explains a pretty radio image of the peaceful gas and dust not so far from the violent star-forming region of the Carina Nebula.


Ian O'Neill at Discovery addresses questions that, at some point, face us all: To recycle, or not to recycle? To blow waste gas into space, or to be frugal about the matter and use the gas gradually to form new stars? Read the article to check out the differences between short-lived starburst galaxies and galaxies with more foresight.

News from Closer to Home
In light of asteroid YU55's recent pass, The SpaceWriter discusses what we can learn when large, rocky objects come hurtling toward us.

It would be easier to execute a human mission to a Martian moon than to Mars (read: totally easy!), but which moon? How do Phobos and Deimos compare as far as their fitness for people like us and the stuff we require, like communication with Earth? Would you choose to land your lander in the same place as the experts? Brian at nextbigfuture covers Lockheed' Martin's analysis.

Exploring the moon, either using people or robots, presents similar communication problems. The latency between a communique/command and its receipt can hinder decision-making. nextbigfuture discusses the benefits of placing a communications center at a Lagrange point, to decrease the latency.

Does anybody else remember that movie What Lies Beneath? What a twist ending.
What lies beneath Europa's icy shell may not cause you to jump out of your seat in fear, but may cause you to do so out of excitement. Liquid water! Interacting with the ice! In a way that could be good for biological things! nextbigfuture covers the NASA release.

Does anybody else remember the Gravitron and how you could climb up the wall once it started spinning? Because of gravity? It's science. Source.

Want to know what private industry will be shooting into space? Check out SpaceX's new launch schedule, courtesy of nextbigfuture. In case you were wondering, the Falcon Heavy will launch late in 2012, and an inflatable space station will likely launch in 2015.

Practical News

If you speak Spanish and love telescope eyepieces--and I hope both things are true--see what Vega00 has to say about your eyepiece options.

A beloved Carnival of Space contributor and participant, Ray Sanders, has been has been nominated for a 2011 Blogging Scholarship. The selection is down to 20 finalists, so he could use your help. Follow the link to see how you can cast your vote! Voting ends at noon (Pacific) on November 23rd.