One thing which seems to remain constant no matter who is the president, is the idea we should be back on the moon very soon. Things are different this time than when we launched our first Apollo mission since there are many more countries which are getting close to being able to make moon landings. Previously there was only the United States and the Soviet Union racing to get to the moon, but this time we also have China, India and maybe others who have the same idea. If it wasn’t for the politics involved in the moon landing it would be much more ideal to have several countries participate and share the cost. Recently news articles have come out which state President Trump has said he wants a manned moon landing to be accomplished in three years. Many believe China is getting very close to being able to do the same thing. Does it really matter who gets there first this time? Probably not. Will the moon be treated the same way we treat the North and South Poles? No one should be able to claim the entire moon for their own. We didn’t do it when we landed there the first time and nobody else should.

NASA is readying the mission to explore Europa. Europa is one of the moons of Jupiter and NASA wants to search Europa to see if life exists on it. They are planning to do this by sending an instrument package there. One of the reasons to do this is the fact evidence of water has been found and scientists believe earth like oceans may be below the frozen ice on the surface. Years ago I remember a proposal which was made to build a sort of submarine which could explore these oceans under the ice. The idea was to send a probe which would bore its way through the ice and release the submarine which would be able to travel on its own for a couple of years. I haven’t heard much about this since and it may still be on the drawing board. One of the problems with these missions is they take many years to organize and then more years to reach their target. It is a very slow process from initiation to accomplishment and even then there could be failure along the way.

There’s been a lot of talk about a light which was spotted on Mars by the curiosity Rover. It was spotted a couple of years ago and what really interested researchers was the fact the light seem to move around. This was noticed in different pictures which the Rover had taken. The light has been talked about and studied for years. Some people have said the light proves there are aliens on Mars, but does it really? I don’t think so, I think it only proves there is some sort of light which we don’t know the source of. When we look at it in close-ups it seems to show what looks like light coming out of a hole on the surface and maybe some sort of spray or light particles spreading out. NASA has said what we think of as a light is just a shiny rock or glitch in the Curiosity Rover’s camera. When you look at the light in the close up it does not look like a camera glitch and quite frankly it doesn’t even look like a rock, it looks more like it’s coming from a hole in the ground.

There are so many other unexplained objects in Mars photos we could fill a book with these images. Some of these images could be just things which are fooling our eyes, for example when we look at overhead photos of rocky areas on the earth we sometimes see things which our eyes interpret as carvings and statues, but they are nothing more than shadow and light so these things have to be the ignored until we actually land on the planet and check it out. However there are other things which have turned up in photos which we cannot ignore such as construction materials which are clearly visible in some of the photos. When we see an ornate cornice for example it is very hard to ignore and the same is true for a fluted column. There seems to be many such things on Mars and some places look like they contain ancient rubble from some past towns or cities. I personally believe there is a very good chance Mars was inhabited at some point, but if it still is inhabited today the civilization has taken a terrible hit and may only be able to survive in the interior of the planet. There has been some evidence which seems to indicate there is a chance water, which may have existed on the surface of Mars, is now below that surface. If this is the case there is even a greater chance of life below the surface. Lately however the Mars Rover has been sending back data which seems to contradict the fact water may have existed on Mars and this has many scientists scratching their heads. Climate scientists are now saying Mars was never warm enough to produce water.

The idea was for Japan to launch a satellite which was capable of cleaning up some of the junk orbiting our planet. This junk consists of little pieces and parts of satellites right up to full satellites which no longer function. It is thought there are over a hundred million pieces of junk just swirling around the planet. If it keeps building up like it has we will no longer be able to launch satellites, because eventually there will be so much stuff orbiting the earth anything we send up would be destroyed by it. This is where JAXA came in. JAXA stands for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The agency sent a rocket up which was to deploy a long tether. Immediately there were problems and since the rocket was due to enter Earth’s atmosphere in only five days there wasn’t much time to fix this problem. To make a long story short the problem wasn’t fixed and the Japanese had to abandon their project.

If you want to get a scientist excited just tell him you found water on an exoplanet or moon. The current thinking is water means a chance at life. While we believe this to be true today, because there is life in our water, it could turn out this is not a common occurrence. We have nothing to go by, but our own experiences and we really don’t have any off world experiences at checking out water anywhere else. Scientists have found a planet fifty light-years away named 51 Pegase B which has water on it. One of the problems is our current state of technology prevents us from getting there to check the water out to see if life exists in it. When the explorers of old decided to check out areas of this planet which were very far away they were able to do it, but things are different in space, because the distances are just too great and there are a lot of areas we research with telescopes which we will never be able to reach.