Posted on by Fraser Cain

When Will Space Traffic Control Be Necessary?

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There’s an interesting story posted to the Christian Science Monitor today entitled, Does Space Need Air Traffic Control?. It’s a good question. Are there just too many spacecraft, satellites and space telescopes buzzing around the Earth at this point that collisions will be inevitable without some kind of system to manage them all?

The article describes the pileup of spacecraft currently at the International Space Station. Think about it. Endeavour just arrived for STS-123 and Europe’s new cargo ship will show up on April 3rd. There’s already a Progress supply ship docked to the station, and a Soyuz will be arriving on April 10th for a crew swap. And next year, the Japanese will be adding their automated resupply ship there as well.

With this kind of traffic to and from the station, people are starting to call for some way to regulate it. Some are hoping there’ll be an international body, like the International Civil Aviation Organization, and others think that nation-to-nation agreements will do the trick.

There’s a building consensus that space debris is becoming a real threat to future space launches. The more material up there, the better chance it could collide with future spacecraft and stations. And there’s a worry that the density of space debris could reach some dangerous point where it collides and re-collides until a band of space becomes a shrieking hail of tiny particles moving at high velocity. No spacecraft could withstand passing through that region without being torn to shreds.

You might be surprised to know that there’s currently no cooperation between nations. Last year, China fired an anti-satellite missile at dead communications satellite, and blew it into high velocity shrapnel. Other nations will now have to keep track of this belt of debris for more than a century until its orbit finally decays and it burns up.

Countries don’t inform one another when they launch spacecraft, when they change orbits, or even when they crash them back down into the Earth’s atmosphere (hopefully to burn up).

What would it take to get international cooperation to ensure that the trip up to orbit is as safe from debris as possible? Anyway, check out the article and discuss.

Original Source: Christian Science Monitor

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Oxygen-Rich Supernova Remnent N132D

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Not much to say, just a pretty picture of supernova remnant N132D, captured by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory. I don’t know about you, but this actually reminds me of a mysterious creature that might pass by a deep sea submersible. But nope, it’s in space, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. In fact, it’s the brightest supernova remnant in the nearby dwarf galaxy.

As usual, an image like this is completely false colour, based on different wavelengths of X-ray radiation. The low energy X-rays are in red, the intermediate in green and the high-energy rays are in blue.

N132D may be the brightest supernova remnant, but it’s actually part of a rare class of oxygen-rich explosions. Astronomers are still trying to understand what conditions existed in the star itself to generate an explosion that spread so much heavy elements, like oxygen, into the surrounding space.

Original Source: Chandra News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

A Disk of Sand Found Orbiting a Young Binary System

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It’s amazing to think that the Sun and planets formed out of a diffuse cloud of gas and dust. Somehow, the dust clung together into larger and larger particles – grains of sand. This sand then went on to become pebbles, rocks, and eventually entire planets. Well now astronomers have discovered a young star system with a disk of sand-sized particles orbiting it.

The discovery was made by Christopher Johns-Krull, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University, working with collaborators in the US, Germany, and Uzbekistan.

Astronomers have detected microscopic dust particles orbiting other stars before, but only by sensing their infrared emissions. This method isn’t precise enough to tell astronomers how big these particles become, or how far they’re orbiting from the newly forming star.

In this new study, the researchers measured the light reflected from sand orbiting a binary system called KH-15D. The stars are about 2,400 light years from Earth in the Cone nebula, and they’re a mere 3 million years old.

The researchers discovered that the Earth has a nearly edge-on view of KH-15D. From our point of view, the dusty disk mostly blocks the stars from view, but one star has an eccentric orbit that occasionally peeks up above the disk.

“We were attracted to this system because it appears bright and dim at different times, which is odd. These eclipses let us study the system with the star there and with the star effectively not there,” Johns-Krull said. “It’s a very fortuitous arrangement because when the star is there all the time, it’s so bright that we can’t see the sand.”

The team examined 12 years of data gathered by a handful of observatories around the world, and studied how light from the star was being reflected by the disk. They were able to determine the chemical composition and size of the sand-like particles.

Original Source: Rice University News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Meteorites Can Be Rich With the Ingredients of Life

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How did life arise on Earth? How did we get from rocks and water to the abundance and variety that we see today? Perhaps the raw ingredients for life, amino acids, were delivered to Earth by a steady bombardment of meteorites. Researchers have turned up space rocks with concentrations of amino acids 10x higher than previously measured, raising hopes that the early Solar System was awash in organic material.

The study was done by Marilyn Fogel of Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory and Conel Alexander of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism with Zita Martins of Imperial College London and two colleagues, and will be published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

If you’re like me, the astronomy stuff’s fine, but the biology news is a little baffling (I forward the kids’ biology questions to my wife). Amino acids are organic molecules that form the backbone of proteins, which make much of life’s structures and drive chemical reactions in cells. Amino acids are naturally occurring, but they somehow came together to make the first proteins in the Earth’s early days.

The researchers took samples from three meteorites collected during recent expeditions to Antarctica. The meteorites are from a type called CR chondrites, which are through to contain ancient organic materials that date back to the earliest times of the Solar System. At one point, these meteorites were part of a larger “parent body”, which was later shattered by impacts.

One sample had few amino acids, but the other two had the highest concentration ever seen in primitive meteorites.

“The amino acids probably formed within the parent body before it broke up,” says Alexander. “For instance. ammonia and other chemical precursors from the solar nebula, or even the interstellar medium, could have combined in the presence of water to make the amino acids. Then, after the break up, some of the fragments could have showered down onto the Earth and the other terrestrial planets. These same precursors are likely to have been present in other primitive bodies, such as comets, that were also raining material onto the early Earth. ”

So this points to the conclusion that the early Solar System was a much richer source of organic molecules than researchers previously believed. And the constant rain of amino acid-laden meteorites would have delivered this material to the primordial soup where life first emerged.

Exactly how the amino acids became the first proteins… that’s still one of the biggest mysteries in science.

Original Source: Carnegie Institution for Science News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

The Constantly Changing Vortex on Venus

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ESA’s Venus Express has been constantly watching the huge swirling vortex of clouds around Venus’ southern pole. It’s a strange weather feature, morphing and changing shape within just a few days. And scientists, as you can probably imagine, are puzzled about what’s going on.

Venus’ south pole vortex is similar to a hurricane here on Earth. It measures 2,000 km (1,240 miles) across, and was discovered by the Mariner 10 flyby in 1974. A second, similar vortex was found at the planet’s north pole by the Pioneer Venus mission in 1979.

“Simply put, the enormous vortex is similar to what you might see in your bathtub once you have pulled out the plug” says Giuseppe Piccioni, co-Principal Investigator for the Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) on Venus Express, at IASF-INAF, Rome, Italy.

When Venus express observed the vortex in June 2006, it had a roughly hourglass-shape, similar to what Pioneer Venus saw in the north polar region. But with continued observations from Venus Express, scientists are seeing that the storm is much more fickle than they previously thought.

Over the course of just a single day, scientists watched the shape of the storm’s vortex change from a circle to a oval. It’s believed that atmospheric gases are flowing into the region from different directions at different altitudes. The shape of the vortex is a result of changes in temperature across different parts of the planet.

The actual vortex is created because atmospheric gases are heated by the Sun at the equator. They cool near the polar regions and sink down. The rotation of Venus deflects them sideways so they swirl together, like water going down the drain of a bathtub.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Carnival of Space #45

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Another new host has taken control of the Carnival of Space. This week we’re over to the blog “Observations from Missy’s Window”. Learn about Von Neumann devices, the latest release of data from WMAP, and how, exactly, we know the Universe’s expansion is accelerating.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #45

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past carnivals of space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let me know if you can be a host, and I’ll schedule you into the calendar.

Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

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Universe Today – 300,000 visitors, 700,000 pageviews, 35,000 RSS subscribers
Universe Today is one of the top space and astronomy news websites on the Internet, published by Fraser Cain. The site covers breaking news in astronomy research, space sciences, and human and robotic space exploration. It’s aimed at science enthusiasts who don’t necessarily have a science background.

Bad Astronomy – 500,000 visitors, 800,000 pageviews, 13,000 RSS subscribers
Bad Astronomy is the website and blog of the noted astronomer and author Dr. Philip Plait. On the site, he debunks cosmic myths and misconceptions, and uses them to write about real science. Opinionated and funny, he brings an insider’s knowledge about astronomy while still making it fun and entertaining to read. Bad Astronomy was voted the Best Science Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards.

Star Stryder – 15,000 visitors, 40,000 pageviews, 1,000 RSS subscribers
Written by Dr. Pamela L. Gay, Star Stryder explores astronomy, space science, academia, and the politics that accompanies human exploration of the sky. Best known as the sexy female voice on Astronomy Cast and in the original Slacker Astronomy podcast series, Pamela is a rising star in the world of astronomy blogging, with work appearing in the Open Lab anthology of the best science blogs of 2007. Her writing combines analogy, passion, and a professor’s understanding of where it’s easy to get lost.

Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Forum – 150,000 visitors, 800,000 pageviews, 33,000 members
The Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Forum, or BAUTForum is the most popular space and astronomy forum on the entire Internet. At any time, there are more than 1,000 people simultaneously participating in the community, discussing space and astronomy topics, such as telescopes, astrophotography and human spaceflight.

Astronomy Cast – 30,000 visitors, 55,000 pageviews, 200,000 downloads
Astronomy Cast is the most popular astronomy-related podcast, hosted by Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay. Each episode focuses on one specific aspect of astronomy, such as dark matter or the search for alien life. The hosts make the information exciting and accessible through an informal conversation style, and yet they don’t talk down to the listeners.

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Posted on by Fraser Cain

Party Videos of Endeavour’s Launch

Whenever we report on the launch of the shuttle, the video footage and pictures come directly from NASA. That’s great, for high resolution, and all. Don’t worry, we’ll be burying you with it over the course of STS-123. But I think there’s something missing from it. The exhilaration (I can only assume) that comes when you watch a shuttle actually take off.

So, I’m going to show you a few videos of the shuttle’s night launch captured at parties at homes near the Cape. It’s not as good quality as NASA might provide. But there an emotional impact from the people in the room that more than offsets this. You lucky, lucky people.
Continue reading “Party Videos of Endeavour’s Launch”

Posted on by Fraser Cain

The World’s Most Powerful Telescope Sees First Light

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First light is a big deal. That’s when a new observatory opens up for the first time and gathers light on its detectors. It’s even a bigger deal when the world’s most powerful telescope sees the night sky for the first time. Astronomers get ready for the Large Binocular Telescope.

I’ve been writing stories about the LBT for years now, so it seems a little surreal to be reporting on its first light. But here we are. So, for those of you who haven’t been obsessing about this monster since it was first conceived, here’s the breakdown.

The Large Binocular Telescope, in case you hadn’t guessed, is actually two 8.4-metre telescopes perched side-by-side. Although they’re separate, they work together to act like a single, much larger telescope. They have the light-collecting power of an 11.8-metre telescope, and their combined light produces an image sharpness of a single 22.8-metre scope.

The first light images for the LBT were captured in January, and show the galaxy NGC 2770, located 102 million light-years away. The same scene was captured in ultraviolet and green light to show the regions of active star formation. And then it was captured again in red to show the older, cooler stars. Finally, a third composite image was put together that shows both features at the same time.

Now for a bit of history. The observatory’s structure was moved up to the top of Arizona’s Mount Graham in 2002. The first mirror was delivered in 2003, and aligned in 2004. The second mirror was delivered in 2005, and the first individual images where captured soon after that. But it wasn’t until this year that both halves were brought together to act as a single large observatory.

The first light is a great step. I can’t wait for the discoveries to pour in.

Original Source: University of Arizona News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Are There Planets Around Alpha Centauri?

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We’re holding out hope for the next generation of planet-finding observatories to locate Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. But hold on, maybe we don’t need a super space observatory like ESA’s Darwin just yet. In fact, if our nearest neighbour Alpha Centauri has Earth-sized planets, we should be able to detect them with established techniques… right now, with the observatories we have today.

University of California researcher Javiera Guedes has developed a computer simulation that shows that Alpha Centauri B – the largest star in the nearby triple-star system – should have terrestrial planets orbiting within its habitable zone, where liquid water can exist.

They ran several simulations of the system’s first 200 million years. In each instance, despite different parameters, multiple terrestrial planets formed around the star. In every case, at least one planet turned up similar in size to the Earth, and in many cases this planet fell within the star’s habitable zone.

Guedes and co-author Gregory Laughlin think there are several reasons why Alpha Centauri B makes an excellent candidate for finding terrestrial planets. Perhaps the best reason is that Alpha Centauri is just so close, located a mere 4.3 light years away. But it’s also positioned well in the sky, giving it a long period of observability from the Southern Hemisphere.

Most of the 228 extrasolar planets discovered to date have been with the Doppler technique. This is where a planet pulls its parent star back and forth with its gravity. The star’s relative velocity in space changes the wavelength of light coming from it which astronomers can detect. Until now, only the largest planets, orbiting at extremely close distances from their parent stars have been discovered.

But with a nearby star like Alpha Centauri B, much smaller planets could be detected.

The researchers are proposing that astronomers dedicate a single 1.5-metre telescope to intensively monitor Alpha Centauri over a period of 5 years. In that time, any change in the star’s light should be detectable by this telescope.

“If they exist, we can observe them,” said Guedes.

Original Source: UCSC News Release