July 17, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- On July 16, 2011 Dawn entered orbit around Vesta, the second-largest body in the main asteroid belt
It stayed there for more than a year, before heading to its second destination, Ceres.
- Photo of astronomers watching Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collide with Jupiter during its July 16–22, 1994 impact
At least 21 fragments hit the gas giant with the force of 300 million atomic bombs.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Shoemaker-levy 9 was an amazing moment in science. Here’s a good overview:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Comet-Shoemaker-Levy-9
Here’s where you can dive deeper into the details:
https://archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?mission=hst&id=5642
In 1994, while watching “the reaction” to Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collide with Jupiter, the first thing that occurred to me was how much things had changed since the 60s and 70s, when we were shown the live events themselves, so we could have our own reactions. By 1994, our reactions, not the events, had become the headlines.
There is now an alternative to nylon in tires:
Researchers in Thailand have developed a prototype high-performance bicycle tire that replaces conventional nylon fabric reinforcement with natural silk. The team combined laboratory-scale material testing with pilot-scale tire manufacturing. Natural rubber composites were produced by placing a layer of silk or nylon fabric between rubber sheets and bonding the layers using a resorcinol-formaldehyde-latex coating. The selected composite formulation was then used to manufacture full bicycle tires.
Tests showed that the silk-reinforced rubber composite had higher tensile strength and better adhesion than the comparable nylon-reinforced material. Dynamic mechanical analysis also showed lower energy dissipation in the silk-reinforced composite, indicating reduced heat buildup under repeated deformation. The study is published in the journal ACS Omega.
The prototype silk-reinforced tire was compared with a nylon-reinforced control tire made using the same basic structure and rubber formulation. It was about 10.5% lighter and achieved:
29% greater endurance;
57% greater puncture resistance; and
143% greater cord tensile strength.
The silk-reinforced tire also showed substantially higher adhesion strength between the rubber tread and reinforcing cord.
The researchers linked this performance to the structure of silk fibers and their interaction with natural rubber. Silk contains protein-based molecular groups that can interact with components in natural rubber, while its fine fibrous structure can improve stress transfer across the composite interface.
Scanning electron microscopy showed good contact between the coated silk fabric and the rubber matrix, with few visible interfacial voids. The silk fibers also had a finer structure than the nylon fibers, which may have contributed to more effective reinforcement.
2001 models
https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/2001-a-space-odyssey-3-d-models.367882/