#01 SPACE ROBOTS

+ A Japanese capsule carrying the first subsurface samples from an asteroid returned to planet Earth last week. The sample return is the culmination of the Hayabusa2 mission which launched in 2014, orbited the asteroid Ryugu for over a year, collected samples, and sent multiple landers to the surface. Although the capsule is safely back home, the rest of the spacecraft is now on an extended mission to a small astroid with the cryptic name 1998KY26, a one-way journey that will take another 10 years.

+ The Chinese Chang'e 5 mission is on its way back to Earth with lunar rocks and soil less than two weeks after launch. If successful, China would become only the 3rd nation in history to return samples from the moon and the first since 1976. The return capsule is expected to land in Mongolia on December 16th. 

#02 ANCIENT PAINTINGS

+ "Tens of thousands of cliff drawings dating back to the Ice Age have been revealed on nearly eight miles of cliff faces in Colombia’s Amazon rainforest. Archaeologists are calling the discovery 'the Sistine Chapel of the ancients.'" The 12,500 year-old murals are some of the most expansive on Earth and "depict an incredibly wide array of creatures, from humans, horses, tapirs, fish, alligators, turtles and birds to extinct species including giant sloths, mastodons, camelids and three-toe ungulates (hooved mammals) with trunks." The area was inaccessible during Columbia's decades-long civil war and is just now becoming known to western archeologists. “These rock paintings are spectacular evidence of how humans reconstructed the land, and how they hunted, farmed and fished... We’re talking about several tens of thousands of paintings. It’s going to take generations to record them."

#03 SPACE PEOPLE

+ Meet the Artemis Team, a group of 18 astronauts that NASA hopes will participate in lunar landings starting only a few years from now. Meanwhile, engineers preparing for the first test launch of the Orion capsule experienced a setback when a power unit failed. The problem could lead to a months long delay in the completion of the capsule.  

+ In case you ever forget, you can always remind yourself how many people are in space right now. I really like the simplicity of this tool and the app version includes a useful list of upcoming rocket launches.

#04 ANTARCTICA

+ There are a lot of penguins in Antarctica, I mean, there are a lot. The Cape Crozier colony itself is home to over 600,000 birds, and monitoring that number is helpful to understand the effect of climate change on Antarctic habitats. Unfortunately, it's not exactly easy to count hundreds of thousands of mobile animals in one of the harshest environments on Earth. So scientists have recently deployed a set of eight autonomous drones to fly over the colony and produce detailed maps, giving a better idea of the overall count and distribution of penguins than ever before. 

#05 ASTRONOMY

+ It wasn't long ago that astronomy was an adventure sport. In the 1960s the US Air Force sent two pilots up in a stratospheric balloon with a telescope to figure out if piloted balloons were a good platform for astronomy. Unfortunately, Project Stargazer was canceled shortly thereafter partly due to improvements in unmanned spacecraft technology. Today, automated, unmanned balloon-borne telescopes are seeing a resurgence for use in astronomy thanks to better balloon technology that keeps the payloads aloft for days or even weeks on end. 

+ New stellar maps from Europe's Gaia satellite show the Milky Way in gorgeous and unprecedented detail. 

#06 CONSERVATION

+ A hummingbird sanctuary provides a respite from the stress of busy city life, and large-scale road projects in the UK will now be lined with wildflowers in a bid to boost biodiversity.

#07 A GOOD BOOK

+ Chuck Yeager, the first person to travel faster than the speed of sound, died this week at the age of 97. His life, cataloged in the autobiography simply titled Yeager, is the envy of any aspiring adventurer or explorer. Although Yeager will forever be known for breaking the sound barrier his accomplishments range far and wide beyond that. He flew P-51 fighters in WWII, had an illustrious career as a test pilot, commanded supersonic fighter squadrons in Vietnam and Germany, ran the astronaut training program for some time (despite not qualifying for astronaut school himself due to a lack of a college degree), and eventually retired as a brigadier general. He never did stop flying and continued piloting supersonic aircraft into his 80s just because he could. Over his life he logged over 18,000 flight hours in a staggering 341 different types of aircraft. The book offers countless remarkable stories to tell, but I think my favorite might by from an emergency landing in Ohio:

"Wheels up, we hit the ground, slithering along, and went through the chicken house in a clattering of boards and a cloud of feathers... We came to rest right alongside the farmwife's kitchen window. She was at the sink, looking out, and I was looking her right in the eye through a swirl of dust and feathers. I opened the canopy and managed a small smile. "Morning ma'am," I said, "Can I use your telephone?"

Yeager always had something of an interesting way with words.

That's all for this week! You can respond to this email to tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, tell me about a project you're working on, or suggest a story. You might also forward this email to a friend so they can subscribe too!

- Evan Hilgemann

This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers.

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