A Topographical Map Of The UK Built Out Of A LEGO In A Vintage Style. If You’d Like This To Become

Curious about how NASA will land the next mission to the Red Planet – the Perseverance Mars rover? Here’s your chance to ask our expert! 

After nearly 300 million miles, our Perseverance rover completes its journey to Mars on Feb. 18. To reach the surface of the Red Planet, it has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing. Mission engineer Chloe Sackier will be taking your questions in an Answer Time session on Thursday, Feb. 4 from noon to 1pm ET here on our Tumblr! Make sure to ask your question now by visiting http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask. 

Chloe Sackier is a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. She works on the Mars 2020 Entry, Descent and Landing team, tasked with safely delivering the Perseverance rover to the surface of Mars.

Landing Perseverance on Mars – fun facts: 

The landing system on the mission includes a parachute, descent vehicle, and an approach called a “skycrane maneuver” for lowering the rover on a tether to the surface during the final seconds before landing.

Perseverance will use new technologies for landing, including Terrain-Relative Navigation. This sophisticated navigation system allows the rover to detect and avoid hazardous terrain by diverting around it during its descent through the Martian atmosphere. 

A microphone allows engineers to analyze entry, descent, and landing. It might also capture sounds of the rover at work, which would provide engineers with clues about the rover’s health and operations.

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

Some misconceptions to clear up:

-Polyamory is not necessarily synonymous with “open relationship”. Poly relationships can be and often are closed relationships, involving only the members already present and not seeking out more people.

-Polyamory is not inherently abusive, disrespectful, cheating etc. People can lead happy, loving, fulfilling lives in poly relationships.

-Polyamorous people are not naturally “less committed” to their partners than monogamous people are. Polyamorous people can be and often are very committed to their partners, just as much as monogamous people are. Having multiple partners does not make a person less committed, the same way that you aren’t “less committed” to your friends for having multiple friends.

-Not all poly relationships are sexually oriented. Plenty of poly relationships do not include sex at all, in fact. That being said, there is nothing wrong with poly relationships that involve or are primarily about sex.

-Polyamorous people may have one-on-one sex with each other. Not everyone participates in all sex all the time.

-Polyamorous people/relationships aren’t inherently more “kinky” than monogamous people or relationships. Poly people can have quite vanilla sex lives. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with poly relationships that do involve kink.

-People in poly relationships may have different relationships to each other. Not everyone in a poly relationship feels the exact same way about everyone else. For example, A, B, and C may all be romantically attracted to each other, but only A and B are sexually attracted to each other, and so C is involved in the relationship in a romantic way but not a sexual one. Or perhaps A is sexually involved with B and C, but B and C are not sexual with each other. Or perhaps B and C are not romantically attracted to each other, either! There are different terms for these different sorts of relationships between members.

-Polyamory is not a solution to cheating, disrespect, abuse, etc. in monogamous relationships. If someone is disrespectful/abusive/a cheater while in a monogamous relationship, they’re still going to be abusive/disrespectful/a cheater in a poly relationship.

-If a monogamous partner tries to make excuses for cheating by saying “it’s polyamorous”, then that person is still a cheater, period. Polyamory is about informed consent for all parties involved, and cheating is not. If someone cheats on you and makes these sorts of excuses, you’re fully within your rights to dump their ass.

-Yes, it is possible to cheat on your partners in a polyamorous relationship, and it’s just as bad as cheating in a monogamous relationship.

-It’s not always easy to transition from a monogamous to a polyamorous relationship, even for people who know it’s exactly what they want. Polyamorous people can sometimes still feel jealous and insecure about their partners finding new people to love.

-Some polyamorous people consider their polyamory to be an important aspect of their identity. They may refer to themselves as polyamorous even when single, and they find themselves unable to be fulfilled in a monogamous relationship. They perceive their polyamory as similar to a sexual or romantic orientation. Other polyamorous people may consider their polyamory to be something that they choose to do, rather than a part of who they are.

-Polyamory is heavily, heavily stigmatized in many parts of the world. Polyamorous people deserve the support of other marginalized communities, such as the LGBTQ+ community, and activists would do well to work towards ending stigma and bigotry towards polyamory, and monogamous normativity.

Poly people, feel free to add on to this

I can't believe one of my posts went viral on jumblr. People are paying attention to me. I don't know whether to shrink out of sight or to celebrate.

Stutterer Pride!

A flyby of Earth from the International Space Station.

It would be even weirder if it was also natural (it isn't, it was made in 1991)

Neitokainen is a body of water in Finland, which is shaped like Finland

the rise in antisemitism rn is like looking up and seeing wolves mixed in with sheep in wolves clothing. if you don't want to kill me why are you dressing like you do?

I have a Twitter account devoted to Aeniith only now! Go follow me on @Aeniith_ if you’re so inclined!

Tidbits, musings, ideas, fact, and more on worldbuilding, conlangs, etc.

The “Necromancy is evil“ we see in most fantasy worlds stems from a christian view of having to honor the body after death in a certain way to ensure the soul’s safety in the afterlife. And while I encourage you to explore societies that don’t see necromancy as evil, I also encourage you to explore societies that see necromancy as evil for different reasons.

Drow might believe that after death, your body belongs to Lolth and must be fed to spiders. Reanimating a body means stealing from Lolth and must therefore be punished.

A Zoroastrian inspired society might believe that with death, evil starts infesting the body, so dead bodies must be kept away from the community, and reanimating them keeps them in the community and is therefore bad.