Fraser Cain, Author at Universe Today

September 5, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

New Mexico Spaceport Design Unveiled

Somebody pinch me, because I still can’t believe this is going forward. The world’s first commercial spaceport took the next step today, releasing new plans and illustrations to the public today. With a building that looks like the Millennium Falcon with wings, the spaceport, and its main tenant, Virgin Galactic, are taking this whole “space is cool” concept very, very seriously.

Spaceport America will be a 9,300 square metre (100,000 square foot) hanger and terminal facility located in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Construction is expected to begin in 2008, and is expected to be completed by 2009 or 2010.

It was designed by a partnership between the American firm URS Corporation and the British architectural agency Foster+Partners, which has plenty of experience designing airports.

Virgin’s chief, Sir Richard Branson, clearly had a hand in setting some of the environmental requirements of the facility. It was designed to meet the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum Certification, which is the highest rating you can get from the US Green Building Council. It’ll have solar panels for electricity, a water recycling system and natural earth to provide passive energy for heating and cooling.

The terminal and hanger facility are expected to cost about $31 million, and will also serve as a tourist attraction. It will include Virgin Galactic’s pre-flight and post-flight training facilities, and contain a maintenance hanger for two White Knight 2 aircraft and five Spaceship 2s.

Branson revealed more details about Spaceship 2’s testing as well, saying, “next year will see the first test flights of Spaceship 2 and it is fantastic that we will now have a permanent home to go to, which will be every bit as inspiring for the astronauts of the future as Burt Rutanâ€™s groundbreaking technology.”

So, Spaceship 2 tests next year, and a spaceport completed as early as 2009. Like I said… pinch me.

You can check out a full image gallery of the spaceport here.

Original Source: Spaceport America News Release

September 5, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

How’s Phoenix Doing?

Time really flies. It’s already been a month since NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander blasted off for the Red Planet, so I’m sure you’re wondering, how’s the spacecraft faring up so far? Pretty good actually. The Phoenix flight operations team recently checked in with the spacecraft, and made sure its most crucial instruments (well, for the landing anyway) are working properly.

Phoenix Mars Lander launched on August 4, 2007 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, and won’t arrive at Mars until May 25, 2008. During its entire journey, the spacecraft is communicating back to Earth using a high frequency X-band transmitter. This transmitter is only temporary, however. Once the spacecraft arrives at Mars, it’ll jettison a portion of the spacecraft – where this transmitter is located – and from then on out, it’ll be relying on its UHF radio.

When landing day arrives, this radio absolutely has to be working.

Another instrument that needs to be working is its landing radar. This instrument will be constantly measuring the distance to ground as the spacecraft passes through the Martian atmosphere. A whole string of activities rely on the spacecraft being able to accurately gauge its distance to the ground for the last 3 minutes of its descent.

So, NASA tested them out. The flight operations team tested the UHF radio and its landing radar on August 24th, and made sure they were working properly. The radio won’t be turned on again until landing day on May 25th, 2008. The team also tested out one of the spacecraft’s science experiments, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, which will look for water and carbon-containing molecules in the icy soil at its landing site at the Martian north pole. More tests of other instruments are planned for October.

Mars Phoenix Lander has already traveled more than 81 million km (50 million miles). That sounds like a lot, and it is, but the spacecraft still has another 600 million km to go.

“Everything is going as planned. No surprises, but this is one of those times when boring is good,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

That’s good, it’s boring now, but it’s going to be insane on May 25th… I can’t wait.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

September 4, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Podcast: Panspermia

As a reward to the all the dedicated fans who completed our demographic survey, we released this special episode of Astronomy Cast. As promised, we’re now releasing this episode to all of our subscribers. Panspermia is a controversial theory that life on Earth originatedâ€¦ out there. Maybe it started out in a cosmic dust cloud or originated from another planet, but somehow the very first lifeforms made the trip through the vacuum of space and colonized our home planet.

Click here to download the episode

Panspermia – Show notes and transcript

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

September 4, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Podcast: Mars

Today we consider Mars, the next planet in our journey through the Solar System. Apart from the Earth, it’s the most explored planet in our Solar System. Even now there are rovers crawling the surface, orbiters overhead, and a lander on its way. It’s a cold, dry desert, so why does this planet hold such fascination?

Click here to download the episode

Mars – Show notes and transcript

Or subscribe to: astronomycast.com/podcast.xml with your podcatching software.

August 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Another Reminder: Aurigid Meteor Shower, September 1st, 2007

I just wanted to give you all another gentle reminder about the Aurigid Meteor Shower, due to light the heavens on September 1st, 2007. Although the shower won’t peak until early tomorrow morning, astrophotographer John Chumack has already captured one on camera, and made a little video of its path through the skies. Now, we don’t know if this meteor shower is going to be amazing or boring, it’s all a mystery.

John had an automated camera pointed East on morning of August 31st, 2007, and captured a meteor streaking out of the constellation Auriga. John estimates that the meteor brightened to about 0.1 magnitude before fading away. John created a quick video of the meteor, and overlaid the constellation Auriga, so you can get a sense of direction. The video is a Windows movie file (WMV), and it’s about 850 kb. Click here to download the movie. Check out John’s website here for more amazing space images.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, the Aurigids are the dusty remnants from Comet Kiess. This long-period comet has only visited the inner Solar System twice in the last two thousand years – its last visit was in 83 BC. During that visit, the comet put down a trail of material that’s been drifting towards the Earth’s orbit ever since.

And on September 1st, 2007, our planet will cross this dusty trail for the first time. Will it be spectacular or boring? Nobody knows, we’ve never hit this dust trail before.

The outburst peaks on September 1st at 11:36 UT. In other words, for folks in Europe, that’s in the middle of the day. Not great timing. For me here on the West Coast of Canada, that’s 4:36 am PDT. The whole event should last about 2 hours, and be visible from California, Oregon, Hawaii and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

But you never know what’s going to happen. If you’re feeling adventurous, check out the show. Get up a few hours before dawn, or watch in the early evening, and see if you can spot some meteors. And as always, let me know how it goes.

Here’s more info from NASA.

August 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Video of the Sun, Thanks STEREO

Well, this is one of the coolest things I’ve seen all week. NASA released a new video of the Sun, captured by the twin STEREO spacecraft. The video, in Quicktime format, covers 2.5 days of the Sun, and shows it slowly rotating, with solar prominences blasting out into space.

If you want to just cut straight to the video, check it out here.

The series of images were captured by STEREO from August 16-18, 2007, and then stitched together into a single animation. The prominences that you see on the edges of the Sun were captured in extreme ultraviolet light by the Ahead spacecraft (the one leading the Earth in orbit). And if you watch right to the end, you’ll see a prominence on the upper side arch away into space.

Just amazing to watch.

Click here to watch the video.

Just in case you need a reminder, NASA’s STEREO mission is a set of twin solar observing spacecraft. One is leading the Earth in our orbit around the Sun, and the other is trailing behind us. Because of their different points in space, they’ll be able to create a 3-dimensional view of events on the Sun’s surface – just in the same way your eyes give you depth perception. They launched in October, 2006 on board a Delta II rocket.

One of the best uses of this binocular vision will be to trace the path of coronal mass ejections; especially the ones headed towards Earth. With STEREO, astronomers will be able to know right away if a CME is headed our way, and can help power companies and satellite operators prepare for some rough space weather. And they’ll be able to give us a better idea of when to head outside and see an aurora.

I think this mission is going to be one of the surprising hits for astronomy fans. Make sure you get a pair of 3-D glasses to really enjoy some of the STEREO movies.

Original Source: NASA STEREO Site

August 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Supernovae Blowing Superbubbles in the Small Magellanic Cloud

At a distance of only 200,000 light years, the Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours. Thanks to its brutal treatment by our galaxy’s gravity, the galaxy has massive regions of active star formation, and regular supernova explosions. Astronomers studied the region with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and saw superbubbles formed by stars and supernovae working together.

The region that Chandra focused in on is known as LHa115-N19, or N19 for short. It’s an area in the Small Magellanic Cloud which is rich in ionized hydrogen gas. There are many massive stars forming in the region, and many more supernova remnants – all that remain from the short-lived stars that formed in this rich nursery.

Astronomers combined images from Chandra with data gathered in other wavelengths. And when they did this, they found evidence for so-called superbubbles. These are formed when smaller cavities created by stars and detonating supernovae combine together to create gigantic cavities.

In just one small region, the Chandra data reveals three supernovae explosions clustered together; well, the supernova remnants, anyway. There are even hints in the data that the stars were associated with one another, forming together from the same interstellar cloud, and then dying together.

Original Source: Chandra News Release

August 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Rovers Hit the Road Again

After being threatened by darkening dust storms, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers are ready to hit the road again. Both Spirit and Opportunity still face dusty skies, but they’re getting enough light through to their solar panels that they’re able to spare some battery power to start driving.

On August 21st, Opportunity moved ahead 13.38 metres (44 feet) towards the edge of Victoria Crater. This is the large impact crater that the rover has been studying for the last few months. Its next big job will be to work its way down a ramp into the crater, observing the layered rock as it descends. The crater serves as a time machine, allowing Opportunity to measure rock that was deposited during periods when the planet was much younger. The hope, of course, is for Opportunity to discover periods when the region was acted upon by water for long spans of time.

Opportunity’s total power supply reached 300 watt-hours on August 23, which is twice what it received 5 weeks ago. It’s enough to move and communicate, but mission controllers want it to get back into the 600+ watt-hour range that it had several months ago. If it wanted to, Opportunity could run a 100 watt light bulb for 3 hours.

The rover has been driven towards the rim of Victoria crater to put it at a favourable angle, pointing its solar panels towards the Sun. That way if further dust accumulates on its solar panels, it’ll still be able to generate enough power. But gusts of wind have actually been clearing off the panels, giving it more and more power each day.

To see what the rovers faced during the dust storms, check out this link to a Cornell University article. It has animations of the Sun each day, so you can see there was a long span in July when Opportunity couldn’t see the Sun at all.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

August 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

Water Vapour Raining Down on a Planetary Disk

Ever wonder how the Earth got its oceans? Well, new data gathered by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope could provide a clue. The telescope imaged a planetary disk forming around a young star, surrounded by a cloud of water vapour. This water is raining down right into the dusty disk where planets are thought to form.

Now that’s convenient.

The discovery appears in the August 30th edition of the journal Nature. According to the discovering astronomers, there’s enough water vapour located in the star system NGC 1333-IRAS 4B, located about 1,000 light-years away, to fill up the oceans on Earth 5 times over.

Astronomers used to believe that Earth’s water arrived early on in our Solar System’s formation in the form of icy comets. The early Earth was bombarded by comets large and small, and our oceans slowly built up over time. But this research indicates that water falling as ice will actually vapourize as it arrives from the stellar envelope to its disk.

The discovering team studied a total of 30 stellar embryos, using Spitzer’s infrared spectrograph, which can peer through obscuring dust. Of all the systems they analyzed, only one had such a strong signature of water. The vapour was easy to spot for Spitzer because when the ice falling from the envelope into the planet-forming disk, it heats up, glowing with infrared light.

Is this a rare situation? The astronomers believe the water signature was so bright because the star system is perfectly lined up for Spitzer to be able to see its bright core. It’s also probably that this phase of planetary formation is very short lived, so the other systems have already gone through this phase, or will do so shortly.

Original Source: NASA/JPL/Spitzer News Release

August 31, 2007December 26, 2015 by Fraser Cain

NASA is Certain There Were No Drunk Astronauts

Now what should we believe? A NASA safety review released on Wednesday says that there’s no evidence that astronauts were drunk when they flew into space. The review was conducted by NASA chief of Safety and Mission Assurance Bryan O’Connor, who looked into the last 20 years of NASA spaceflights.

As you may remember, the news of drunken astronauts first came out about a month ago, when an internal safety review turned up two incidents where astronauts were intoxicated just before their launch into space. In one case, a shuttle launch was scrubbed. And in another case, an astronaut went into space aboard a Soyuz rocket.

This new 45-page report by safety chief Bryan O’Connor, a former astronaut himself and one of the Columbia accident investigators, was requested by NASA chief Mike Griffin after the allegations came out.

According to O’Connor, “I was unable to verify any case in which an astronaut spaceflight crewmember was impaired on launch day.” He also didn’t find any situation where a manager disregarded warnings from a NASA employee that an astronaut was unsafe to fly.

Despite the lack of evidence, O’Connor still suggested that NASA doctors should play a stronger oversight role during launch day, and that NASA should add excessive drinking to its list of risky activities.

In a recent press conference, NASA administrator Mike Griffin noted that there was a 1991 law that directed the space agency to come up with a policy for alcohol testing, but they hadn’t implemented it yet. So, now they’ll probably get going to put something in place.

You can read the full report here.

Original Source: NASA News Release