The Honorable Adam Schiff: Another Congressional Space Enthusiast

Congressman Adam Schiff’s California district includes the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is as enthusiastic a fan of the final frontier as you are likely to find under the capitol dome in Washington D.C. Planetary Society Digital Editor Jason Davis has just returned from the famed Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona. He witnessed the creation of a mirror that will soon become part of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Bruce Betts is all over the first, confirmed interstellar object to enter our solar system. He tells us about it in this week’s What’s Up.

Related Links:

• Congressman Adam Schiff’s Website
• November 2017 Planetary Radio Space Policy Edition
• We choose to go to the Moon and do the other things: Analyzing NASA's new human spaceflight directive
• Reminder: The Giant Magellan Telescope is going to be awesome
• Chop Shop Planetary Society Store

This week's prizes are the Chop Shop-designed Planetary Society t-shirt and a 200-point iTelescope.net astronomy account.

This week's question:

What is the orbital eccentricity of the just-named and discovered interstellar asteroid 1I/'Oumuamua? (Wikipedia: The orbital eccentricity of an astronomical object is a parameter that determines the amount by which its orbit around another body deviates from a perfect circle. A value of 0 is a circular orbit, values between 0 and 1 form an elliptical orbit, 1 is a parabolic escape orbit, and greater than 1 is a hyperbola.)

To submit your answer:

Complete the contest entry form at http://planetary.org/radiocontest or write to us at [email protected] no later than Wednesday, November 22nd at 8am Pacific Time. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.

Last week's question:

What are Bok Globules?

Answer:

The answer will be revealed next week.

Question from the week before:

What is the current designation for the first-ever interstellar asteroid to be identified by astronomers? Its discovery was announced just days ago. The object was originally misidentified and named.

Answer:

1I/'Oumuamua is the name of the recently-detected interstellar asteroid passing through our solar system.