Weekly Space Roundup, August 3-9

Hello fellow AstronomyTimers!  Below is our weekly roundup of the most remarkable space activity:

  • This is what the planets in our solar system would look like if they were place the same distance away from the moon.  Too cool!
  • The sun over the new few months will flip it’s magnetic poles which happens only once every 11 years.  Right now the sun’s North pole has flipped but the South pole is still catching up, so it has two South poles.  This is interesting because Earth only does this every few hundred thousand years.  And even though the Sun’s shift won’t cause any change in our daily lives, it will likely create some cool space weather.
  • NASA has begun thinking about what questions to answer before sending a probe to Europa, Jupitor’s icy moon which may harbor oceans and even life!
  • The Curiosity rover’s one year anniversary was on Monday, August 5th and in honor it sang happy birthday to itself, the firs time a robot has ever done that.