space girl comic
ingenuity (aka “ginny) still hasn’t flown yet (at least as of when this comic was published), but when it does it will be not only the first flight in the history of mars but any planet outside of earth. and if everything goes well, we might see bigger, more ambitious helicopter drones on mars in the future.
given the perseverance rover has a top speed of about 0.15km/h, i’m sure you can imagine how revolutionary it would be if we could start exploring mars from the air.
percy is actually the first step in a plan to bring a martian surface sample to earth for the first time, which will be of huge massive scientific importance.
essentially a mini esa-built rover will collect the samples from percy and deliver them to a nasa-built rocket, which will launch into mars orbit and rendezvous with another esa-built spacecraft which will take the samples and return to earth by the year 2031 if all goes to plan (which it probably won’t).
hearing about all the new technology perseverance used for it’s propulsive landing just made me think about how much of a miracle it was we succeeded the first time with curiosity.
but even that might not be as crazy as curiosity’s predecessors spirit and opportunity, which were covered in giant airbags, dropped from 10 metres above the ground, and bounced around on the martian surface for a while until they finally settled in an upright position. and somehow this worked perfectly both times. hey, if it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid.
so while we’re still living off the high of watching nasa soft-land a science car on another freaking planet (or at least i am), you all get to enjoy some comics about sedna and her little rover “ako”.
given i drew and uploaded these months ago, words cannot express how relieved i am that percy didn’t splatter on the surface of mars and age all my comics poorly before they were even released. thanks nasa. appreciate it.
(click here for a high resolution version of this illustration)
illustration day boys! and this is an extra special one! 10.5 hours from this post, at around 8:30pm utc (12:30pm pst, 3:30pm est, 7:30am aest), the rover “perseverance” will attempt to soft land on the surface of the planet mars. if it succeeds, this illustration will be a celebration for percy and nasa’s amazing accomplishment. if it fails, this will be more of a sad farewell. either way, i definitely need to come back and edit this description based on the outcome.
this is possibly the most i’ve ever procrastinated on an illustration. drawing complex messes of machinery is so hard and confusing, i just kept putting it off. pretty happy with the outcome though.
UPDATE: PERCY MADE IT! EVERYTHING IS OKAY IN THE WORLD!!!
fact: anything you can completely cover with your thumb does not at all matter (i.e. literally everything if you stand back far enough). it’s called the jim lovell principle, and it’s definitely a real thing that i didn’t make up just now. ◑.◑
maybe this is why sedna never lets dini get more than a few steps away from her. (´ω｀*)
looks like astronomy’s back on the menu boys! ’bout time too. we’ve barely even seen sedna bust out the telescope since the first 9 comics. seriously, this is supposed to be a space comic! get your act together tom!
poor betelgeuse. people can’t talk about astronomy for 5 minutes without mentioning their desire to see this particular star violently commit suicide within their lifetimes. last year when betelgeuse dimmed significantly millions of people were chanting excitedly for this guy to hurry up and die (turned out it was just a gas cloud passing in front of it).
awfully rude. honestly.
hopefully non-aussies know what a hills hoist clothesline is, or this comic is gonna be real confusing.
i would be amiss if i failed to mention that ‘spaghettification’ is a real scientific term that you should totally drop whatever you’re doing and google right now. it refers to when the extreme tidal forces of a black hole stretch you into a long skinny noodles should you get too close. well, more likely it would just shred you to pieces, and you would have been well cooked by extreme heat and radiation long before you even got there, but hey, you’d be a tad too dead to appreciate the difference either way.
just stay away from black holes kids. they’re not your friends.
oh no :(
well, now you know why i started this story arc with the last illustration. now i’m half tempted to write a spinoff series about the adventures of “sedna the space ninja”, a brave young girl warrior who travels the galaxy saving planets from the threat of destruction by an evil alien empire. quick, someone stop me before i talk myself into it!
