The State of the Universe

I didn't even realise that there were such things as gamma ray constellations. NASA's Fermi telescope team are creating a map of the sky that groups gamma ray sources - pulsars, black holes and blazars - into handy, recognisable images, just like we have with stars. The difference is that the Fermi team are naming their constellations after pop culture icons, among other recognisable things, including Godzilla (above), the TARDIS and the Starship Enterprise.

This is just one of a number of fascinating developments in astronomy and the space sciences. The wonderfully named BepiColombo has been launched on an Ariane 5 rocket and is headed towards Mercury. This new mission to visit the woefully underexplored innermost planet of the solar system is an historic joint endeavour between the European Space Agency and its Japanese equivalent JAXA. The ship is going to take over five years to spiral towards Mercury (the ESA website has a handy video illustrating the multiple flybys it will take to get there). The long, looping journey is necessary to avoid being pulled into the intense gravity well of the Sun.

The surface of Ryugu

JAXA is on a role, with their asteroidal survey ship Hayabusa2 now happily exploring near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, sending back data, images and even video of the surface. After four years travelling to the asteroid on its orbital path between Earth and Mars, Hayabusa2 will return to Earth carrying samples collected from its four robotic rovers. Three, of the MINERVA-II project and named simply ROVER-1A, 1B and 2, were developed by JAXA, while the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) currently charting the unusual geological and magnetic properties of the asteroid was built by a joint German-French initiative. ROVER-1A has taken the first ever images from the surface of an asteroid.

The Planetary Society also worked with JAXA to include messages to be imprinted on a marker that will be left on the surface of the asteroid. There was an opportunity to submit names to be included - my name, along with my brother's and sister's names, are now on Ryugu!