Friday's Unscientific Poll

[nanila]

Poll #16119 Space mission publicity

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

View Respondents

I have heard of the following missions independently from your journal.

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Cassini-Huygens (NASA-ESA mission: spacecraft currently in orbit around Saturn)
29 (85.3%)

JUICE (ESA mission: future spacecraft, to orbit Jupiter and the Galilean moons)
9 (26.5%)

Cluster (ESA mission: set of 4 spacecraft currently studying Earth's space plasma environment)
9 (26.5%)

Rosetta (ESA mission: spacecraft orbiting a comet, soon to release a lander)
29 (85.3%)

I would not have heard about these missions if I didn't read your journal.

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Cassini-Huygens (NASA-ESA mission: spacecraft currently in orbit around Saturn)
8 (25.8%)

JUICE (ESA mission: future spacecraft, to orbit Jupiter and the Galilean moons)
26 (83.9%)

Cluster (ESA mission: set of 4 spacecraft currently studying Earth's space plasma environment)
25 (80.6%)

Rosetta (ESA mission: spacecraft orbiting a comet, soon to release a lander)
7 (22.6%)

I keep up with space science news through various media channels.

View Answers

Yes, pretty regularly
12 (32.4%)

Only when it hits the headlines
25 (67.6%)

It's not really my thing
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

Your unscientific poll seems a little bit scientific this week. :)

(If you're wondering why I didn't answer the last question, it's because I need a box for "enthusiastically, but sporadically." :) I don't follow it in any organized way but a few of my friends know me as someone who likes space so they ask me about this thing they heard about the Moon or did I hear about that new planet that was discovered or whatever. Then I tend to look stuff up.)

[nanila]

It was a bit scientific in theme, though not constructed scientifically, as you have pointed out an important missing option! :D

[cosmolinguist]

Though after I wrote that comment, I realized I'd be happy knowing more about what's going on, so added NASA and ESA news feeds to my RSS reader. So now I am more fairly in the category of people who keep up regularly with space science. :)

[davidgillon]

Bit hazy on which I have actually heard about through your postings, certainly Cassini-Huygens, Rosetta and JUICE (and I hadn't yet come across JUICE before seeing it here), but not quite sure on Cluster.

I had heard of them elsewhere, but then I subscribe to Aviation Week and Space Technology, follow relevant twitter accounts and narrowly missed getting the QA job on the minor bit of the James Webb Space Telescope being built by SSTL (dammit!), so probably count as a touch more than averagely interested :)

[nanila]

I figured that those who kept up regularly with Space News would have a more difficult time pinpointing the source of mission information! Thanks for giving it a go.

[forthwritten]

My sister is an astronomy outreach officer so I probably hear a bit more about space than your average arts and humanities type, but I wouldn't say it's something I follow avidly.

[nanila]

"Astronomy outreach officer" is a pretty awesome job title.

[quoththeravyn]

I know a lot more about JUICE and Cluster from reading your stuff here than I otherwise would. The others are high enough profile that I see their stuff elsewhere, though of course seeing it through the eyes of somebody on the team is always wonderful. And thanks for the pic of the earth seen through the rings of Saturn, which you sent me a few years back and is hung on my office wall.

[nanila]

You're welcome! You know, I think JPL may have finally run out of the boxes of those lithographs. I still get requests for them from various outreach people so my supply is slowly dwindling...

[sorrillia]

I'm rather embarrassed by how much less I pay attention to space exploration than when I was in high school.

[nanila]

Other than the missions I work on directly, that probably holds true for me too. I do at least skim the headlines but because I have to spend quite a lot of time looking at data from a specific type of instrument, I tend not to wind down at the end of the day by looking at yet more space stuff. Once a week catch-up is what I tend to do.

[duccio]

Space science is interesting to me. I like how science people go to these great lengths to satisfy their curiosity, prove or disprove hypotheses, and learn new truths. Space science reading, though fascinating, is outside of my orbit so to speak, so I enjoy your reports and they stimulate me to look a little further into these subjects - like read about them on Wiki, or maybe look for other news bits on Google.

Tell us a little bit more about what we should know about JUICE and especially Cluster which I'm clueless about. Plasma? Miasma!... Wha?

[nanila]

It's good to hear that it intrigues you into further investigation. Thank you!

JUICE will be quite exciting because it's going to be the first spacecraft to orbit not only Jupiter, but one of the Galilean moons, Ganymede. Three of the four Galilean moons - Europa, Callisto and Ganymede - are thought to harbour subsurface oceans that are relatively stable and possibly of sufficient depth to contain a significant quantity of liquid water. JUICE, because it will orbit Ganymede fairly closely in a circular orbit, should be able to constrain the ocean depth and extent. If there are outgassing plumes from cracks in the moon's ice crust, JUICE should be able to identify chemicals (water as well as others, including organics) contained in the ocean. Which would all be very exciting.

Like most Earth-orbiting missions these days, Cluster is quite specifically targeted. So while on a mission like JUICE you'll get a full suite of different instruments - visible and infrared cameras, spectrometers at various wavelengths, electric and magnetic field probes, radio and plasma wave detectors - with a mission like Cluster you only get a subset of them, finely tuned to do a particular job. Hence, none of the Cluster spacecraft have cameras. All four of them have the same payload, and the mission is intended for making 3D collisionless plasma measurements.

Plasma is kind of a weird term because while it can refer to the charged particles that float around between the planets, very far apart from one another, (which is what Cluster studies) it can also refer to the same sort of particles inside a tokamak, where they're packed together at incredibly high densities.

[duccio]

Where can I get some of this, this plasma?

[soliano]

I keep up with space news, on a regular basis, but not in any particular depth. Listen regularly to the Pamela Gay related and Neil Tyson podcasts and whatever else crosses my podcatcher, but I don't consider these particularly deep.

[nanila]

They may not be deep, but they keep your interest and awareness going. I do the same with other types of news and politics. I don't have the kind of specialist knowledge that a lot of my DW/LJ friends have, but at least knowing what's going on in current events helps me to understand their far better informed analyses.

[delight]

I've actually got a phobia of space travel stuff, but for whatever reason always followed Cassini intently. I remember being heartbroken that I think I missed my trajectory on going to wave as it passed by by a matter of seconds due to very, very momentary distraction.

[nanila]

Aw, that's a shame. I'm sorry you missed it.

Saturn should start being visible in the northern hemisphere in the mornings again in December, and Cassini is still orbiting it, so really you can give it a wave any time you like.

[ironed_orchid]

I heard about JUICE from you before I saw in in other places, but later I saw it in enough other places that I guess I would have heard about even if I had not been connected with you

[nanila]

That's good to know! I'm never sure how strong public exposure is with "future"/as-yet-unbuilt spacecraft. Certainly it will be less at this point for JUICE than for a craft like Rosetta, but it's hard to tell what will have captured people's interest while still in the design phase...

[lurkingcat]

I think that left to my own devices I'd have been an 'Only when it hits the headlines' person. But I know so many (non-DW) people who would list Geeking Out About Space on their hobbies list that I kind of absorb a lot of space science news simply by being in proximity to them :)

[nanila]

Osmotic transfer of space knowledge. I like it!

[pretty_panther]

I only really follow things in the headlines because they dumb it down a bit. Space confuses me a loooot.

[nanila]

Heh. I think a lot of space scientists would agree with you. I mean, wasn't all that blackness supposed to be empty? How come there's so much STUFF in there?!