Death Star - Blog Posts

VFX Artist Reveals HOW BIG Star Wars Ships REALLY Are! | via CorridorCrew

Greatest Hits — Craters We Love

Our solar system was built on impacts — some big, some small — some fast, some slow. This week, in honor of a possible newly-discovered large crater here on Earth, here’s a quick run through of some of the more intriguing impacts across our solar system.

1. Mercury: A Basin Bigger Than Texas

Mercury does not have a thick atmosphere to protect it from space debris. The small planet is riddled with craters, but none as spectacular as the Caloris Basin. “Basin” is what geologists call craters larger than about 186 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter. Caloris is about 950 miles (1,525 kilometers) across and is ringed by mile-high mountains.

For scale, the state of Texas is 773 miles (1,244 kilometers) wide from east to west.

2. Venus: Tough on Space Rocks

Venus’ ultra-thick atmosphere finishes off most meteors before they reach the surface. The planet’s volcanic history has erased many of its craters, but like almost any place with solid ground in our solar system, there are still impact scars to be found. Most of what we know of Venus’ craters comes from radar images provided by orbiting spacecraft, such as NASA’s Magellan.

Mead Crater is the largest known impact site on Venus. It is about 170 miles (275 kilometers) in diameter. The relatively-flat, brighter inner floor of the crater indicates it was filled with impact melt and/or lava.

3. Earth: Still Craters After All These Years

Evidence of really big impacts — such as Arizona’s Meteor Crater — are harder to find on Earth. The impact history of our home world has largely been erased by weather and water or buried under lava, rock or ice. Nonetheless, we still find new giant craters occasionally.

A NASA glaciologist has discovered a possible impact crater buried under more than a mile of ice in northwest Greenland.

This follows the finding, announced in November 2018, of a 19-mile (31-kilometer) wide crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier – the first meteorite impact crater ever discovered under Earth’s ice sheets. 

If the second crater, which has a width of over 22 miles (35 kilometers), is ultimately confirmed as the result of a meteorite impact, it will be the 22nd largest impact crater found on Earth.

4. Moon: Our Cratered Companion

Want to imagine what Earth might look like without its protective atmosphere, weather, water and other crater-erasing features? Look up at the Moon. The Moon’s pockmarked face offers what may be humanity’s most familiar view of impact craters.

One of the easiest to spot is Tycho, the tight circle and bright, radiating splat are easy slightly off center on the lower-left side of the full moon. Closer views of the 53-mile (85 kilometer)-wide crater from orbiting spacecraft reveal a beautiful central peak, topped with an intriguing boulder that would fill about half of a typical city block.

5. Mars: Still Taking Hits

Mars has just enough atmosphere to ensure nail-biting spacecraft landings, but not enough to prevent regular hits from falling space rocks. This dark splat on the Martian south pole is less than a year old, having formed between July and September 2018. The two-toned blast pattern tells a geologic story. The larger, lighter-colored blast pattern could be the result of scouring by winds from the impact shockwave on ice. The darker-colored inner blast pattern is because the impactor penetrated the thin ice layer, blasting the dark sand underneath in all directions.

6. Ceres: What Lies Beneath

The bright spots in Ceres’ Occator crater intrigued the world from the moment the approaching Dawn spacecraft first photographed it in 2015. Closer inspection from orbit revealed the spots to be the most visible example of hundreds of bright, salty deposits that decorate the dwarf planet like a smattering of diamonds. The science behind these bright spots is even more compelling: they are mainly sodium carbonate and ammonium chloride that somehow made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust. Thanks to Dawn, scientists have a better sense of how these reflective areas formed and changed over time — processes indicative of an active, evolving world.

7. Comet Tempel 1: We Did It!

Scientists have long known we can learn a lot from impact craters — so, in 2005, they made one themselves and watched it happen.

On July 4, 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft trained its instruments on an 816-pound (370-kilogram) copper impactor as it smashed into comet Tempel 1.

One of the more surprising findings: The comet has a loose, “fluffy” structure, held together by gravity and contains a surprising amount of organic compounds that are part of the basic building blocks of life.

8. Mimas: May the 4th Be With You

Few Star Wars fans — us included — can resist Obi Wan Kenobi's memorable line “That’s no moon…” when images of Saturn’s moon Mimas pop up on a screen. Despite its Death Star-like appearance, Mimas is most definitely a moon. Our Cassini spacecraft checked, a lot — and the superlaser-looking depression is simply an 81-mile (130-kilometer) wide crater named for the moon’s discoverer, William Herschel.

9. Europa: Say What?

The Welsh name of this crater on Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa looks like a tongue-twister, but it is easiest pronounced as “pool.” Pwyll is thought to be one of the youngest features we know of on Europa. The bright splat from the impact extends more than 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) around the crater, a fresh blanket over rugged, older terrain. “Fresh,” or young, is a relative term in geology; the crater and its rays are likely millions of years old.

10. Show Us Your Greatest Hits

Got a passion for Stickney, the dominant bowl-shaped crater on one end of Mars’ moon Phobos? Or a fondness for the sponge-like abundance of impacts on Saturn’s battered moon Hyperion (pictured)? There are countless craters to choose from. Share your favorites with us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

May the 4th Be With You

Happy May the 4th! 

How many connections does America’s space program have with the fictional world of Star Wars? More than you might think…

Join us as we highlight a few of the real-world TIE-ins between us and Star Wars:

Space Laser

Lasers in space sounds like something straight out of Star Wars, but it’s also a reality for us. Our own GEDI (yes, like Jedi) instrument will launch later this year to the International Space Station.

GEDI stands for the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation lidar. It will study the height of trees and forests, using three lasers split into eight tracks, and create a 3D map of forests around the planet.

With GEDI’s new tree maps, we’ll get a better understanding of how much carbon is stored in forests all over Earth, and how forests will be able to absorb increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The Jedi knights may help protect a galaxy far, far away, but our GEDI will help us study and understand forest changes right here on Earth.

Another JEDI

There’s another Jedi in town and it happens to be orbiting the planet Jupiter. Our Juno spacecraft, which arrived at the gas giant in July 2016, has an instrument on board that goes by the name of JEDI - the Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector Instrument. 

While it doesn’t use a light saber or channel “the force”, it does measure high-energy particles near Jupiter. Data collected with the JEDI instrument will help us understand how the energy of Jupiter’s rotation is being funneled into its atmosphere and magnetosphere. 

Death Star Moon

We know what you’re thinking...”That’s no moon.” But actually, it is! This is a real picture taken by our Cassini spacecraft of Saturn’s moon Mimas. In this view taken on Cassini’s closest-ever flyby of Mimas, the large Herschel Crater dominates, making the moon look like the Death Star. Herschel Crater is 130 kilometers, or 80 miles, wide and covers most of the right of this image. 

We Actually Do Have the Droids You’re Looking For

We have robots roving and exploring all over the solar system, but it's our own “R2” that's most likely to resonate with Star Wars fans. Robonaut 2, launched in 2011, is working along side humans on board the International Space Station, and may eventually help with spacewalks too dangerous for humans. Incidentally, an earlier version of Robonaut bore a strong “facial” resemblance to enigmatic bounty hunter Boba Fett.

Another "droid" seen on the space station was directly inspired by the saga. In 1999, then Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor David Miller, showed the original 1977 Star Wars to his students on their first day of class. After the scene where hero Luke Skywalker learns lightsaber skills by sparring with a floating droid “remotes” on the Millennium Falcon, Miller stood up and pointed: "I want you to build me some of those."

The result was "SPHERES," or Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites.  Originally designed to test spacecraft rendezvous and docking maneuvers, the bowling-ball size mini-satellites can now be powered by smart phones.

A few more TIE ins...

When space shuttle Atlantis left the International Space Station after 2007’s STS-117 mission, it caught a view of the station that looked to some like a TIE fighter. 

The "TIE-ins" go beyond casual resemblance to real engineering. We already use actual ion engines ("TIE" stands for "Twin Ion Engines") on spacecraft like Dawn, currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres. In fact, Dawn goes one better with three ion engines. 

Want more Star Wars connections? Check out THIS Tumblr to learn about the REAL planets we’ve found outside our solar system that resemble planets from the movie. 

Take THIS quiz to see if you know more about the Milky Way galaxy or a galaxy far, far away. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com. 

That’s no moon...

A nice delicious indica! https://www.leafly.com/indica/death-star

Rogue One - Art by Me

I have some words about this idea.

First of all, I don't mean to go around saying "No, that can't happen" or "Your opinion is trash" or something along those lines. I just want to give my own opinions on this topic, honest and simple, take it or leave it.

Idk, I guess this is some slight spoiler territory? I'll put a border just in case.

Personally, I don't think Luke potentially appearing at the end could be compared to "Andor" for a number of reasons.

Firstly, "Andor" was specifically created to lead directly into "Rogue One". "Skeleton Crew" has so far been entirely its own thing with absolutely minimal tie-ins to other projects (like the New Republic X-Wing patrols and the rise of pirates) and minimal cameos (they could have easily shoed in Carson Teva or Zeb, or somebody like that). Vane is pretty much the only previously established character who has appeared and I personally don't find that problematic because it's not impossible to imagine a minor character like him to be hopping from crew to crew to make a living in the aftermath of "Mando" season 3.

As such, I think "Skeleton Crew" deserves a conclusion that is unique to itself, devoid of any immediate intermeddling of big names that honestly won't even lead into anything. Having Luke appear would be a neat cameo, but other than that, it would serve no purpose and honestly would even be detrimental to the entire build-up so far. The only real pay-off I can think of would be Wim finally meeting a real Jedi in the flesh, but other than that, there is basically nothing that has been set up so far that could justify Luke's presence. Nobody is seeking a Jedi mentor, nor has the threat of piracy become so apparent to the New Republic that they're considering bringing in their most powerful ally to deal with it.

Furthermore, as far as we know, the kids and SM-33 are the only ones who are actually aware that Jod is Force-sensitive. Nobody else so far has suggested that they know anything about that, not his crew, not his previous acquaintances. Therefore, it is unlikely Luke would even know about him at all since the last two times that we've seen/heard of him take up a pupil, one was dialing him directly through the Force and the other was his nephew.

Having said that, I do agree that having some sort of tie-in to a future story could be interesting, if it has a valid pay-off. Considering At Attin is the last Old Republic credit production planet, it isn't unlikely that it might become a key asset in the New Republic's development or even Thrawn's return.

So now that I've laid out those arguments, how do I find it justifyable to put a scene of building a piece of the Death Star in a series about the guy who will eventually steal the Death Star plans? Other than foreshadowing and fan service? We get to see just how much the Empire is desperate to manage and control every aspect of its populace, all the way down to having its criminals, big and small, rebels and jaywalkers, become nothing more than tiny, determined, replaceable cogs which build up its massive war machine amd how that despair eventually leads to it's downfall, both in the series with the impossible prison break and eventually with the destruction of the Death Star.

Plus the irony that Cassian is helping in the construction of something so monumental he will eventually help destroy, but I guess that can already fall under foreshadowing.

Now that Jod is decidedly proven to be a ruthless, Force using pirate who now has a lightsaber, it’s possible that Luke could show up in the finale. And if he does, I don’t want to hear ANY cries about fan service or overuse, because A) Luke has appeared in precisely two episodes of any live action shows (not counting young Luke in Obi Wan), and he was the most underutilized character in the sequels (apart from Lando) and the one who suffered the most character assassination. He sure as hell hasn’t been over utilized; and B) it makes as much in-universe sense for the last Jedi Master in the Galaxy to be interested in a Force sensitive ruthless pirate with a lightsaber who is on the trail of a long lost Old Republic planet that could potentially have Jedi relics hidden somewhere on the surface (and to have heard of it through his New Republic contacts in regard to underworld/Imperial Remnant buildup) as it does for a main member of the strike team to steal the Death Star plans to have once been put to work by the Empire building panels for the Death Star superlaser while in prison for jaywalking.