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Jupiter’s brown spot sparks potty humor

Jupiter cloud system
This cloud formation on Jupiter is called “Mr. Hankey.” (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill)

Jupiter’s titanic storms have spawned their share of memorable cloud features, including the Great Red Spot, Oval BA (a.k.a. Red Jr.) and the now-defunct Baby Red Spot. Now there’s a new spot on the map, nicknamed “Mr. Hankey.”

Mr. Hankey? The jolly cartoon poo made famous in a “South Park” Christmas episode?

Believe it: The longish, brownish storm system was the star of the show during last Thursday’s close encounter involving Jupiter and NASA’s Juno orbiter. In the days since the encounter, known as Perijove 15, the probe has been sending back Junocam’s imagery for processing by a legion of professional and amateur astronomers.

It was Kevin Gill, a software engineer and self-described data wrangler at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who gave the spot its “South Park” sobriquet in a tweet. But if you want to call the scene Jet N4, that’s OK, too.

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Boeing boosts laser communications venture

BridgeSat ground station
BridgeSat uses optical systems to send data to orbiting satellites. (BridgeSat / Boeing Illustration)

Boeing HorizonX Ventures is leading a $10 million investment round to boost BridgeSat, a Denver-based satellite communications company that aims to use laser technology for ground-to-space data connectivity.

Founded in 2015, BridgeSat is developing a network of optical ground stations and proprietary space terminals for use with satellites in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit.  The technology enables secure, high-bandwidth data transmission between satellites, other spacecraft, drones and high-altitude aircraft.

In March, the company announced an agreement with NASA that could open the way for a commercial, laser-based communications system to be used on future space missions. The agreement calls for a ground station demonstration by the end of this year, with on-orbit testing to be completed by next May.

BridgeSat is also providing laser terminals and data services for ICEYE’s commercial satellite radar constellation.

In a news release issued today, Boeing and BridgeSat said the new round of investment will accelerate progress on the network of optical ground stations.

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SpaceX puts Telstar 18V satellite in orbit

SpaceX launch
The Telstar 18V satellite separates from the Falcon 9 second stage, as seen in a rocketcam view. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX launched its second heavyweight Telstar telecommunications satellite from Florida tonight, and brought the Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster down for a landing on a drone ship hundreds of miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.

The mission to put the 15,600-pound Telstar 18 Vantage satellite into geostationary transfer orbit for Canadian-based Telesat was nearly a carbon copy of SpaceX’s successful Telstar 19V launch in July, with a bit of added suspense due to the weather.

Concerns about thunderstorms and lightning near the launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station delayed the launch for 77 minutes, but the Falcon 9 rose without a hitch at 12:45 a.m. ET Sept. 10 (9:45 p.m. PT Sept. 9).

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Amazon patent for a safety cage stirs up a buzz

Human transport device
Diagrams show the design of a proposed human transport device, as seen from the side at left and from the top at right. The patented concept was never turned into an actual device. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO).

Warehouse workers confined in cages? That’s the dark vision evoked by an essay delving into the worries that come along with the development of artificial-intelligence devices such as the Amazon Echo speaker.

“Anatomy of an AI System” was published on Friday by the AI Now Institute and Share Lab — and it’s already gotten a rise from the executive in charge of Amazon’s distribution system, who says the cage concept never ended up being used.

The 7,300-word essay was written by Kate Crawford, who is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research as well as co-founder and co-director of New York University’s AI Now Institute; and Vladan Joler, director of the Share Foundation and a professor at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia.

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Historical study revisits debate over Pluto

Pluto and Charon
A composite image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft shows enhanced-color views of Pluto at lower right and Charon, its largest moon, at upper left. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Photo)

Twelve years after the International Astronomical Union voted in a definition of planethood that reclassified Pluto, the debate goes on.

A newly published study uses the historical record to take aim at the definition’s most controversial clause: the idea that a planet in the solar system has to “clear the neighborhood of its orbit,” so that no other worlds are at a similar orbital distance.

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Tesla stock drops after Elon Musk smokes weed

Elon Musk
Elon Musk smokes a cigarette described as containing tobacco and marijuana during a chat on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” a popular YouTube talk show. (Joe Rogan Experience via YouTube)

Tesla share prices took a hit amounting to as much as 10 percent today, after billionaire CEO Elon Musk took a hit off what looked like as a marijuana stogie during a YouTube talk show. The controversial electric-car company was also hit with the departure of two key executives.

First, about that joint: The toke came in the midst of Musk’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” hosted by Rogan, a stand-up comedian, reality-TV star and martial-arts commentator who’s built up a huge following for his video podcast. As of midday today, more than 1.6 million users had checked out his chat with Musk.

The 2.5-hour chat touched upon a wide range of topics — including the Boring Company’s foray into tunneling and flamethrowers, his long-running concerns about artificial intelligence, his vision to merge brains with software through the Neuralink venture, his plan to use SpaceX’s yet-to-be-built BFR rocket for suborbital point-to-point travel, and his idea for an electric-powered airplane that takes off vertically and would be capable of supersonic speeds.

But when Rogan lit up a joint more than two hours into the interview, it was the puff of smoke that sparked headlines.

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ANA partners with space agency on telepresence

Avatar X roadmap
The Avatar X initiative would begin on Earth and move out to the International Space Station, other outposts, the moon and Mars. (ANA Holdings Graphic)

Telepresence robots on the moon and Mars? That’s the vision laid out for the partnership between ANA Holdings, the parent company of Japan’s All Nippon Airways, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The ANA-JAXA program, known as Avatar X, aims to establish a public-private consortium to develop new types of human-controlled robots that can collect data and perform tasks in remote locations. The concept is in line with the ANA Avatar Vision that was unveiled in March, as well as with JAXA’s new J-SPARC research and development program.

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Artist uses spaceship to launch double entendre

Work magazine spread
A photo spread from the latest issue of Work magazine had a little fun with Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket venture. (Work / CIPD / Blue Origin Photo via @christhebarker on Twitter)

It’s hard to top the risque rocket scene in “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” but Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has also spawned its share of comparisons to the male anatomy.

The latest double entendre paying tribute to Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture appears in Work magazine, a controlled-circulation quarterly published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in Britain.

Graphic designer Chris Barker, who was also behind the viral “Lonely Hearts” roundup of 2016’s celebrity deaths, deemed it a point of pride that he was able to get his visual joke into print. “Pleased my headline/image combo got through,” he tweeted.

The layout shows Blue Origin’s New Shepard on one page, in all its phallic glory, opposite a bold headline reading, “What Exactly Is Jeff Bezos Trying to Prove?”

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Online-only voting? Don’t do it, experts say

Electronic voting
Experts say electronic voting systems need to generate a voter-verifiable paper audit trail. (U.S. State Dept. Photo)

Chastened by Russian interference and hacking attempts in the 2016 election, academic experts on voting technology say electronic voting machines that don’t leave a paper trail should be phased out as soon as possible.

“Every effort should be made to use human-readable paper ballots in the 2018 federal election,” the experts write in a report issued today by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. “All local, state and federal elections should be conducted using human-readable paper ballots by the 2020 presidential election.”

That’s already the case for Washington, Oregon and Colorado, where mail-only voting has become the norm. (The report notes that “vote-by-mail” is something of a misnomer, since most ballots are still returned by hand. “Ballot delivery by mail” comes closer to the mark.)

Washington’s election officials have implemented the report’s top recommendation for mail-voting systems: giving voters an easy way to check whether their ballot has been sent, and where their returned ballot is in the system. The “MyVote” websitelinks to online ballot trackers as well as voter registration information.

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Pulsar discoverer wins $3 million prize … at last

Jocelyn Bell Burnell
British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell is featured in an episode of the BBC documentary series “Beautiful Minds.” (BBC Photo)

British astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell missed out on a share of the Nobel Prize for her part in the discovery of the first radio pulsars in 1967, but now she has a $3 million Breakthrough Prize all to herself.

Bell Burnell’s selection for the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was announced today, and she’ll receive the award during a Nov. 4 ceremony that will also honor winners of the annual prizes in physics, life sciences and math.

Organizers of the Breakthrough Prize program said the award serves to recognize Bell Burnell’s “fundamental contributions to the discovery of pulsars, and a lifetime of inspiring leadership in the scientific community,”

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