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ICYMI: here's Douglas' thoughts on the first day of the contested case.
TMT Contested Case Hearing Update 10/20/2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ3HRgiD25o

'Heartbeat Stars' Unlocked in New Study
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/heartbeat-stars-unlocked-in-new-study

Heartbeat stars, discovered in large numbers by NASA's Kepler space telescope, are binary stars (systems of two stars orbiting each other)
that got their name because if you were to map out their brightness over time, the result would look like an electrocardiogram, a graph of
the electrical activity of the heart. Scientists are interested in them because they are binary systems in elongated elliptical orbits.
This makes them natural laboratories for studying the gravitational effects of stars on each other.

In a heartbeat star system, the distance between the two stars varies drastically as they orbit each other. Heartbeat stars can get as close
as a few stellar radii to each other, and as far as 10 times that distance during the course of one orbit.

At the point of their closest encounter, the stars’ mutual gravitational pull causes them to become slightly ellipsoidal in shape, which is
one of the reasons their light is so variable. This is the same type of "tidal force" that causes ocean tides on Earth. By studying heartbeat
stars, astronomers can gain a better understanding of how this phenomenon works for different kinds of stars.

Tidal forces also cause heartbeat stars to vibrate or "ring" -- in other words, the diameters of the stars rapidly fluctuate as they orbit
each other. This effect is most noticeable at the point of closest approach.

Kepler finds scores of planets around cool dwarf stars : Nature News & Comment
http://www.nature.com/news/kepler-finds-scores-of-planets-around-cool-dwarf-stars-1.20853

NASA’s Kepler observatory has spotted 20 planets that orbit cool, small stars — the largest such haul so far. These long-lived stars,
known as K and M dwarfs, are ubiquitous in the Milky Way and could turn out to host numerous habitable planets.

After the Kepler spacecraft experienced a mechanical failure in 2013 that made it impossible for it to keep observing its original targets,
astronomers gave it a new mission, called K2. It now uses pressure from sunlight to help stabilize the craft. The latest observations with
K2 revealed 87 planet candidates, on top of 667 previously announced candidates, almost all with sizes between those of Mars and Neptune.

Although the original Kepler mission examined many Sun-like stars, the majority of stars in our Galaxy are smaller, fainter, cooler stars,
known as red dwarfs. Such stars make up nearly half the targets of the K2 mission. “There are more than 250 of them within 30 light-years —
all over the place — which is why some other astronomers here might call them the vermin of the sky,” says Courtney Dressing, an astrophysicist
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who presented the research at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society's
Division for Planetary Sciences and the European Planetary Science Congress in Pasadena on 19 October.

A Simple Response to an Elemental Message has now reached 2000 AU (299,195,741,382 km), the estimated closest boundary to
the Oort cloud or the Solar System's outer shell. It may take a while to get surpass this region, estimated to be 50,000 AU thick (~0.79ly).
Distance estimates sourced via; Morbidelli, A. (2005) 'Origin and Dynamical Evolution of Comets and their Reservoirs'

Photonics Dawning as the Communications Light For Evolving NASA Missions
https://www.nasa.gov/...016/photonics-dawning-as-the-communications-light-for-evolving-nasa-missions

A largely unrecognized field called photonics may provide solutions to some of NASA’s most pressing challenges in future spaceflight.

Photonics explores the many applications of generating, detecting and manipulating photons, or particles of light that, among other things,
make up laser beams. On this day in 1983, the General Conference of Weights and Measures adopted the accepted value for the speed of light,
an important photonics milestone. Oct. 21, 2016, is Day of Photonics, a biennial event to raise awareness of photonics to the general public.
The study has multiple applications across NASA missions, from space communications to reducing the size of mission payloads to performing
altitude measurements from orbit.

Hotspots in an Active Galactic Nucleussu201641 | www.cfa.harvard.edu/
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/su201641

The nucleus of a so-called "active" galaxy contains a massive black hole that is vigorously accreting material.
As a result, the nucleus often ejects bipolar jets of rapidly moving charged particles that radiate brightly at
many wavelengths, in particular radio wavelengths. Active galaxies display a range of dramatically different
properties, and the ones that are bright in the radio can beam as much as one trillion solar luminosities of
radiation into space at those wavelengths.

NEW PAPYRUS: Inflatable Biospheres for the New Frontier
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.cz/2016/10/inflatable-biospheres-for-new-frontier.html

A time lapse of DSS 43 as it was tracking TGO on approach to Mars' orbit - 19th October 2016.

DSS43 Tracking @ESA_TGO 19Oct16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGWYVT_lFMk

Steering the Voyager Golden Record back to Earth
http://thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-factory-releases/voyager-golden-record-interview/

As the Kickstarter campaign to release a 40th anniversary box set draws to its conclusion, exceeding its target five-fold and raising $1.2million
at time of publication, we caught up with David Pescovitz to talk about why the Voyager Golden Record still resonates with so many people.