There is something oddly serendipitous (or at least, curiously reflective) in receiving and invitation from Mareea Farrasco to attend a new exhibition of art by Scylla Rhiadra, which opened on January 5th, 2024 at her IMAGOLand Art Galleries. I say this because Containers in some ways encapsulates a subject of which I’ve been very much focused upon in my physical world for the last few months as a project to completely refurbish the house insides and out continues: the Ying / Yang relationship between who we are in life, and the spaces we inhabit.
As Scylla notes in her introduction to the exhibition, the spaces we occupy, be they at home or at work or somewhere between, whether public or private, can both help organise and protect us as individuals whilst also giving us the freedom to fully express who we are, whilst at the same time they can also inform, contain, and constrain us in how we reveal ourselves to the world at large – and perhaps actually to ourselves as well.
At a metaphysical level, no-one is truly an “individual”; we are all (and here, having raised the subject of metaphysics, I’m going to horribly mangle perdurantism and endurantism, simply because the “truth” likely encompasses elements of both even though they are treated as rivals) all collections of experiences and reactions, and of growth and change through time and events.
IMAGOLand Galleries: Scylla Rhiadra – Containers
Perhaps the easiest way to explain this is to take an obvious set of examples: how we project ourselves at work is not how we project ourselves at home; how we face the world when attending a religious service is not the same as when we are joining with like-minded supporters at a sporting event; how we behave within a crowd is generally not the same as when socialising with a smaller, closer group of friends. Of course, how we project ourselves in each of these circumstances is in part the result of accepted social frameworks – when at work, it is expected that we are “professional”; when attending a place of worship, we are expected to exhibit some degree of piety; and so on.
However, it cannot be denied that how we slip between these different personas is also driven by the spaces we have created in order to engage in these activities. For example, a building of worship both naturally constrains our behaviour even before we have entered it; the structure itself demands a more pious behaviour as we approach it; similarly, entering a place of work requires we become “professional” in outlook and attitude. Even at home, the spaces we build so easily inform us as much as we have sought to inform them through the choices we have made in terms of our choices in their décor, the placement of furniture within them, and the “rules” society has placed around them.
IMAGOLand Galleries: Scylla Rhiadra – Containers
This is where Containers stuck that serendipitous / reflective cord within me. For the last few months I’ve been very engaged in a complete re-vamp of the place where I both live and work within the physical world; the work is far from over (and in places hasn’t entirely gone as planned!) but it encompasses everything from general room redecoration through the complete refurbishment of entire rooms – including the remove of walls, the shifting of doorways, the use of lighting, and much more.
Throughout all of it, I’ve become increasingly aware of that Ying/Ying nature in how we express ourselves at home through the décor we chose for the rooms, etc., and how the rooms actually shape – and go as far as to confine our thinking in terms of how we can / should express ourselves through them. That awareness has actually done a lot to alter thinking on how some of the rooms in the house should actually be refurbished such that their use need not be so constrained by convention or how it impacts upon thinking.
IMAGOLand Galleries: Scylla Rhiadra – Containers
Within Containers, and with a lot more subtlety that I’ve used here, Scylla explores the idea of how rooms both express and constrain, not only using images but – as is becoming her trademark – through the use of considered quotes (which also, perhaps, reveal more about her – they certainly further encourage a sense of kinship I hold towards her (and which itself is rooted in multiple facets of her personality she has expressed both through SL and other mediums we share). Together, each image and its accompanying text offer a rich, contemplative exploration of our relationship with the spaces / structures we create (an exploration in which doorways and windows play as much a role as the rooms themselves, offering as they do both suggestions of escape and (as I noted somewhat differently above) the coming constrains a space might try to impose.
Whether drawing us together or as a means to provide separation (be it “personal space” or in some other form), the rooms and spaces – the containers – we create have a power to be an extension of who we are, both in terms of the freedoms of expression they allow and the constraints they demand.
Blue Finch Frosty Hollow, November 2023 – blog post †
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 4th, 2024.
The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work.
As a rule, these meetings are:
Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden, in accordance with the dates and times given in the the SL Public Calendar, which also includes the location for the meetings.
Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
Open to all with an interest in content creation.
The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript.
Official Viewers Status
No updates through the week, leaving the current crop of official viewers as:
Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, issued December 1, promoted December 14 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat – NO CHANGE.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
General Notes
It appears that the glTF PBR Materials maintenance RC viewer is being fast tracked for promotion to de facto release status. This could happen in the next few (working) days.
The Emojis viewer is currently held up due to some viewer library merging issues and some other unspecified issues. However, the hope at the Lab is that this will be the next viewer promotion after the glTF PBR maintenance release.
Client-Side Scripting
This has been the subject of some discussions at a number of recently User Group meetings and also internally at the Lab. Key areas of use for such a capability are seen by the Lab as:
Allowing viewer modifications to the UI.
Enabling client-side script testing.
Providing support for viewer-side functionality.
Those as the meeting saw the ability to use client-side scripting to generate HUDs (with the ability for the client scripts to trigger server-side supporting LSL events / functions); ability for custom menu generation for products, etc.
In terms of HUDs, it was suggested by Vir Linden that a more cohesive approach might be to provide support directly through the existing viewer UI and using commands native to the UI rather than part of an additional scripting capability to build / operate HUDs.
Note that this is not at present an active project, more the fact that discussions are going on about the potential for such a capability.
PBR Materials
Runitai Linden has been working to improve the look of the PBR EEP settings in light (no pun intended) of the significant negative user feedback concerning it.
Whilst it does have a large number of fixies and improvements, the glTF PBR maintenance viewer does not address all issues users have reported, and a further maintenance viewer for PBR is anticipated some time after the current update has been promoted.
A discussion was raised on the inability to have PBR materials on a object together with “classic” (Blinn-Phong) materials underlying them as a fall-back (as to get to the “classic” materials, the PBR must effectively be stripped from the object.
As the two approaches are essentially incompatible, an effective means of making this possible is not seen as easy / possible. The decision to separate them was also a conscious one on LL’s part, specifically because they did not want to burden creators with the idea that they must provide two sets of materials for their content in order for that content to “look good” under bot PBR viewers and non-PBR viewers (particularly as glTF / PBR is seen as the future of Second Life .
One suggestion was to perhaps used the PBR albedo texture as the defuse texture with “classic” materials. However, it was pointed out that again, PBR albedo textures are not the same as diffuse textures, so whilst it might work in some cases, it probably won’t work in all cases, and mileage on effectiveness subsequently vary.
Given that PBR is intended to be the way forward for the majority of SL, the preferred approach (from LL’s perspective) is that where a need to offer products with both Blinn-Phong (classic) materials and PBR materials, then produce two versions of the product.
A request was made to have more PDR assets added to the Library (notably PBR EEP settings). It was indicated that LL are looking to add more PBR content to the Library, which may well include additional sky settings.
Marketplace Discussion
As members of the Commerce Team were present at the meeting, there was a further discussion on how the MP is being gamed. This focused on how some sellers are exploiting the fact that items which are intended for gifting to others must have a Linden Dollar value against them in order for the “Add Item To Cart As Gift” button to be available.
The gaming involves placing the term “gift” and multiple product titled, then charging only L$1.00 for each item
This results in multiple items being sold in high volumes, helping to promote the seller(s) to the top of the Marketplace Best Selling Products listing.
Garfield Linden indicated he had some ideas to help address this, but needed to discuss them internally.
The above led to a wider discussion on Gifting through the Marketplace – such as clarifying the gifting process so people don’t end up using Buy Now in error, and sending an intended gift to themselves, and also on providing the means for creators to send copies of their own products as gifts through the MP (e.g. to bloggers for review purposes).
Next Meeting
13:00 SLT, Thursday, January 18th, 2024, at the Hippotropolis Campsite (but check the public calendar).
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday January 3rd, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.
Meeting Overview
The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Marketplace
The meeting started with an apology for the issue over the New Year period which included items merchants were trying to list failing to appear, items and stores failing to show up in search results (see BUG-234924). The Lab believe the causes of the issues have been fixed, and processes have been put in place for the back-end systems to better alert support / engineering when issues of this nature occur.
A request was also made for any merchants still experiencing problems in trying to list items or in having their items / stores show up in searches, to file a Jira with LL.
The above was followed by a meeting-length discussion with what are seen as getting to be long-term terms issues with the MP, some of which are the results of changes which have inadvertently given rise to opportunities for the Marketplace to be gamed, and merchants losing revenue as a result. Key among the complaints being made were (but not limited to):
Active stores seeming to vanish from the Marketplace entirely.
Listed items failing to show up in any searches.
Exploits such as items being falsely labelled in the Product title field producing misleading search results.
Exploits being opened as a result of the 2022/23 overhaul of ElasticSearch (the engine powering MP searches), and relevancy weightings being given to product titles .
Exploits allowing spamming through the features tab which further influences search results in favour of those doing the spamming.
It was noted that these issues – including the problems of items and stores not appearing in searches – go back over several months (rather the the issue witnessed over the new year period being a “one off”), and they are giving rises to across-the-board upset and frustration among MP merchants, and with their customers.
The conversation was very much one in which people spelled out the issues being experienced, whilst Lab representatives at the meeting mostly listened and took notes. This being the case, and rather than risk parsing the meeting through my own subjective presence as someone who is not a merchant, I will refer readers to the video of the meeting as embedded below, and encourage anyone experiencing any of the issues raised to file a Jira bug report with Linden Lab on the matter.
Marketplace Styles
Part of the above discussion touched on Marketplace Styles (allowing things like different colour variants for a product in a single listing).
This was promised as being an active project throughout 2022, with (the since departed) Reed Linden stating in November 2022 (see November 2022 Web User Group: new “Plus” subscription level) the capability could appear before the end of that year or in 2023.
As more than a year has passed without mention, I raised the topic at the end of the meeting, requesting the actual status of the work (particularly as when it was raised in 2023, not long after Sntax Linden has taken over the WUG meetings, he did not appear to be aware of the project). The response was:
Styles is at the top of my list for things for MP. Just need to find the right time to slot it in. I can’t promise when but I am hopeful we can make headway on it this year.
– Sntax Linden
Which probably means that if you are a Merchant who has been looking forward to this capability, probably best not to hold your breath for its arrival. Unless you’re especially fond of blue.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Simulator Deployments
No scheduled deployments, just region restarts.
Viewer Updates
The current official viewers list starts the year unchanged from where it saw out the old year.
Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, issued December 1, promoted December 14 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat – NO CHANGE.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
In Brief
A quiet meeting as a number of the engineering team are on extended vacation (so no Rider, Leviathan, et al).
LL are continuing to work on the issue of repeating collision sounds on the RC channel and the Fall Colors update (see:
BUG-234835 “Can hear Collisions “play” on RC channels”). This should have been reverted over the holiday period to minimise the annoyance, but no news on when an actual fix is likely to be deployed.
Simon Linden has been poking at the Avatar Appearance message, so that at some point soon it will get both a list of attachments as well as some info on pending attachments. He’s also tweaking ObjectUpdate for root prims so it will include the number in the linkset.
A lot of general conversation on region crossings, PBR (and the issues being experienced by those on PBR-enabled viewers). Please refer to the video below for specifics.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, December 31st, 2023
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, issued December 1, promoted December 14 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat – NO CHANGE.
A computer-generated image of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission about to depart Earth orbit for its loop about the Moon – one of the major space missions targeting 2024. Credit: NASA / Liam Yanulis
With the ending of a year comes the start of another and with it an opportunity to take a look at some of what I consider to be the notable space events of 2024.
Space Missions
India
2024 is scheduled to get off the pad with the January 1st launch of the India Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat), another ambitious mission designed to further demonstrate India’s ability to stand alongside the likes of the United States, China an the European Space Agency at the forefront of space science.
ISRO’s XPoSat with solar panels furled, undergoing ground-based systems testing. Credit: ISRO
XPoSat’s 5-year primary mission lifespan of 5 years is to study cosmic ray polarisation by observing the 50 brightest known sources in the universe, including pulsars, black hole X-ray binaries, active galactic nuclei, neutron stars and non-thermal supernova remnants using its two primary instruments. Studying how radiation is polarised gives away the nature of its source, including the strength and distribution of its magnetic fields and the nature of other radiation around it.
January 7th should see India’s Aditya-L1 solar observatory, launched in September 2023, enter its operational halo orbit at the L1 Lagrange Point, located between the Earth and Sun at some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Once in place, it will spend an initial 5 years carrying out continuous observations of the solar atmosphere and study solar magnetic storms as they develop, together with their impact on the environment around the Earth.
In February, the most expensive Earth observation satellite should launch. The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) is intended to observe and understand natural processes on Earth, and will be able to observe both of the planet’s hemispheres over a period of at least 3 years. Intended to measure some of the planet’s most complex natural processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides, NISAR data will be made globally available within days of it being gathered – or in near-real time should it detect any natural disaster, so that agencies and organisations responsible for disaster relief might use the information in their planning and operations.
Also scheduled for the first quarter of 2024 is the first uncrewed test flight of India’s Gaganyaan space vehicle. Designed to carry crews of two or three into orbit, the capsule and its service / propulsion module, will be capable of spending up to 7 days at a time in orbit, and is the formative part of an ambitious programme to establish a national space station in orbit and send crews to the lunar surface.
A screen capture of Vyommitra, obtained during a telecon organised by ISRO featuring the robot responding to prompts. Credit: ISRO
Depending upon its outcome, the fully automated, 2-day Gaganyaan-1 mission could be followed before the end of the year by two further test flights, at least one (if not both) will include Vyommitra (from Sanskrit: vyoma, “space” and mitra, “friend”), a complex robot in the form of a female human upper body.
Initially intended to assess the effects of g-forces and weightlessness on humans flying in Gaganyaan, Vyommitra could in fact play an active role in crewed flights as well in place of a third person. It is not only programmed to speak Hindi and English, recognise various humans and respond to them, it can perform multiple mission-related tasks, including environment control and life support systems functions, handle switch panel operations, and give environmental air pressure change warnings.
Once the 3 uncrewed flights have been completed, the first crewed flight of Gaganyaan is set to occur in 2025, and if successful will mark India as only the fourth nation in the world to independently fly crews to orbit after Russia, the United States and China.
Finally (for this article that is – India has a number of other missions planned for 2024), at the end of the year, ISRO should launch their Venus Orbiter Mission, unofficially known as Shukrayaan (from the Sanskrit for Venus, “Shukra”, and yāna, craft”/ “vehicle”). Intended to study the atmosphere and surface of Venus, the mission will include an “aerobot” balloon it will release into the Venusian atmosphere.
United States – NASA
NASA obviously has a lot going on all the time, so the following really is an abbreviated “highlights” list.
In February, the remarkable Juno vehicle will complete the second of 2 extremely close approaches (both to 1,500 km) to Jupiter’s innermost Galilean moon, Io. These very close flybys (the first having occurred on December 30th, 2023) allow the probe to observe the most volcanically active place in the solar system in extraordinary detail, with the February flyby also allowing the spacecraft to reduce its orbital period around Jupiter and its moons to just 33 days.
Another mission to Jupiter will commence in 2024, with the October launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper at the start of a 5.5 year cruise out from Earth to Jupiter, with assistance from Mars and Earth (in that order) to get there. Once in orbit about Jupiter in 2030, the mission will commence a 4-year primary study of the icy moon of Europa to help scientists better characterise the moon, including the potential for it have an extensive liquid water ocean under its icy crust.
A rendering of the Europa Clipper vehicle. Credit: NASA/JPL
In terms of NASA’s human spaceflight operations and ambitions, 2024 should see three landmark flights:
April 2024 should see the first test flight of Dream Chaser Cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). An automated space plane which is launched via rocket (generally the ULA Vulcan Centaur) but lands like a conventional aircraft, Dream Chaser is intended to deliver up to 5.5 tonnes of cargo (pressurised and unpressurised) to the ISS, although for this first flight, the Dream chaser Tenacity will be limited to 3.5 tonnes. The flight will be the first of at least six the Dream Chaser system will make in support of ISS operations through until 2030, carrying both supplies to, and equipment and experiments from, the space station.
April 2024 should also see the long-overdue Crewed Flight Test (CFT) of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner to the ISS. The eight-day mission is due to see test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams fly the reusable capsule to a rendezvous and docking with the space station. If successful, the mission will clear the way for operational flights of the Starliner vehicles carrying around 4 people at a time to the ISS from 2025 onwards.
Artemis-2 . Targeting an end-of-year launch, this mission – officially referred to Artemis Exploration Mission 2 (EM-2) will return humans to the vicinity of the Moon for the first time since 1972 and Apollo 17. Utilising the third Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), Orion CM-003, the 10-day mission will see the four-person crew of Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen launched on a flight that will loop them around the Moon, with Glover and Koch respectively becoming the first person of colour and first woman to fly in space beyond low Earth orbit. The focus of the mission is to carry out multiple tests of the vehicle in preparation for the commencement of missions to return humans to the surface of the Moon with Artemis 3, officially targeting at end of 2025 launch date, but more realistically slated to fly no earlier than early-to-mid 2026.
The Artemis EM-2 crew (l to r): Commander Reid Wiseman (USA); Mission Specialist 1 Christina Koch (USA); Orion Capsule Pilot Victor Glover USA); Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen (Canada). Credit: ABC News
The US, with the largest share of the commercial spaceflight market will also see numerous private venture missions – some in support of NASA’s lunar exploration ambitions – take place. For me, the most notable commercial flights taking place in 2024 are:
January 8th, 2024: the maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket. The new workhorse launch vehicle for United Launch Alliance (ULA), this first flight will hopefully see the much-delayed launcher send the Peregrine Lander to the Moon. Also a private development (by Astrobiotic Technologies) the Peregrine Mission One has been funded under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload services (CLPS) programme to deliver science and technology payloads to the Moon. If successful, the launch should be the first of 7 Vulcan Centaur launches for the year on behalf of NASA, the US military and commercial customers.
August 2024: the maiden flight of Blue Origin’s heavy lift launcher, New Glenn. With a first stage designed to be reused up to 10 times, New Glenn is intended to be Blue Origin’s entry into commercial and government-funded space launch operations, capable of delivering large payloads to a range of orbits around Earth and sending them into deep space. For its first flight, New Glenn will be responsible for sending NASA’s EscaPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) orbiters to Mars.
Starship IFT-3: the third attempt by SpaceX to achieve a semi-orbit around Earth with their controversial-come-questionable Starship / Super Heavy launches combination. The exact date for the attempt is unknown given the on-going investigation into the failure of the second integrated flight test and the further loss of both vehicles.
Polaris Dawn: the first in a trio of privately-funded crewed orbital missions utilising the tried and trusted SpaceX Crew Dragon. Spearheaded by billionaire Jared Isaacman (who funded and flew the Inspiration4 flight in September 2021), the mission will feature Isaacman and three others – form USAF fighter pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon – none of whom are professional astronauts. As will as carrying out a range of experiments and raising money for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, the mission will attempt to set to records: become the highest Earth-orbiting crewed spaceflight to date (1,400 km above the Earth) and perform the first ever commercial spacewalks, utilising EVA suits designed and developed by SpaceX.
European Space Agency
The European Space Agency hopes to finally launch its Ariane 6 booster on its maiden flight around the middle of the year. Another launcher development programme that has had its share of issues, Ariane 6 is intended to replace the already retired Ariane 5 as ESA’s workhorse medium-to-heavy lift carrier, capable of achieving all of the common Earth orbits with payloads of up to 21.6 tonnes (LEO) and able to lob up to 8.6 tonnes into a lunar transfer orbit (LTO). The maiden flight will see the vehicle hopefully deliver an international mix of government and private missions to LEO in a rideshare arrangement, and will be followed by a French space agency / defence agency mission before the end of the year.
An artist’s impression of ESA’s Hera spacecraft studying the 170-metre across Dimophos asteroid, with its two cubesats called Milani and Juventas on their way to attempt soft landings on the asteroid. Credit: ESA
Later in 2024, ESA will utilise a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster to send its Hera spacecraft to rendezvous with the binary asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos, which it is scheduled to do in December 2026, 26 months after launch. Once there, Hera’s primary focus of study will Dimorphos, the target of NASA’s DART Impactor mission, which slammed into it in September 2022 in an attempt to assess the theory of kinetic impact as a means to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. As well as examining the physical aftermath of DART’s impact on Dimorphos, Hera will attempt to characterise both asteroids in detail, land two cubesats – Milani and Juventas on Dimorphos before itself attempting a landing on Didymos at the end of its mission.
2024 will also see the launch of the joint ESA-JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) EarthCARE (Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer) mission, designed to investigate the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation back into space and trapping the infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface to better understand the evolution of Earth’s temperature.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 