The VMS Eve (Virgin Mother Ship) carrys VSS Unity (Virgin Spaceship) for its first flight ever over Mojave, CA on Thursday September 8, 2016. Image: Virgin Galactic
Stephen Hawking has spent decades theorizing about the Universe. His thinking on black holes, quantum gravity, quantum mechanics, and a long list of other topics, has helped shape our understanding of the cosmos. Now it looks like the man who has spent most of his adult life bound to a wheel-chair will travel to the edge of space.
In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Hawking said “Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately.” Hawking added that his “three children have brought me great joy—and I can tell you what will make me happy, to travel in space.”
Stephen Hawking is one of the premier physicists and theorists of our time. Here he is being presented by his daughter Lucy Hawking at the lecture he gave for NASA’s 50th anniversary. Credit: NASA/Paul Alers
It’s all thanks to Richard Branson and his VSS Unity spaceship, which is still under development by The Spaceship Company. The Unity is designed to launch not from a rocket pad, but from underneath a carrier aircraft. By eliminating enormously expensive rocket launches from the whole endeavour, Branson hopes to make space more accessible to more people.
Virgin Spaceship Unity (VSS Unity) glides for the first time after being released from Virgin Mothership Eve (VMS Eve) over the Mojave Desert on 3rd, December 2016. Image: Virgin Galactic
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft is carried to an altitude of about 50,000 feet, then released from its carrier aircraft. Its rocket fires for about 1 minute, which accelerates the craft to three-and-a-half times the speed of sound, then is shut off. Then, according to Virgin Galactic, passengers will experience a “dramatic transition to silence and to true weightlessness.”
As the video shows, the spacecraft is still in glide testing phase, where it is carried to altitude, then released. There is no rocket burn, and the craft glides down and lands at its base.
This spaceflight won’t be Hawking’s first experience with weightlessness, however. To celebrate his 65th birthday, Hawking travelled on board Zero Gravity Corp’s modified Boeing 727 in 2007. At the time, that zero-g flight was in preparation for a trip into sub-orbital space with Virgin Galactic in 2009. But the development of Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft has suffered setbacks, and the 2009 date was not attainable.
Hawking has experienced zero gravity before, when he flew on Zero Gravity Corp’s modified Boeing 727 in 2007. Image: By Jim Campbell/Aero-News Network – http://www.flickr.com/photos/39735679@N00/475109138/ / http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=31873, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3655144
Virgin Galactic’s stated aim is to “democratize space,” albeit at a cost of US $250,000 per person. But somehow I doubt that Hawking will be paying. If anyone has earned a free trip into space, it is Dr. Stephen Hawking.
The stunning, shaped clouds of gas in the Orion Nebula make it beautiful, but also make it difficult to see inside of. This image of the Orion Nebula was captured by the Hubble Telescope. Image: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) and
The Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team
It sometimes doesn’t take much to tear a family apart. A Christmas dinner gone wrong can do that. But for a family of stars to be torn apart, something really huge has to happen.
The dramatic break-up of a family of stars played itself out in the Orion Nebula, about 600 years ago. The Orion Nebula is one of the most studied objects in our galaxy. It’s an active star forming region, where much of the star birth is concealed behind clouds of dust. Advances in infrared and radio astronomy have allowed us to peer into the Nebula, and to watch a stellar drama unfolding.
This three-frame illustration shows how a grouping of stars can break apart, flinging the members into space. Panel 1: members of a multiple-star system orbiting each other. Panel 2: two of the stars move closer together in their orbits. Panel 3: the closely orbiting stars eventually either merge or form a tight binary. This event releases enough gravitational energy to propel all of the stars in the system outward, as shown in the third panel. Credits: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levy (STScI)
Over the last few decades, observations showed the two of the stars in our young family travelling off in different directions. In fact, they were travelling in opposite directions, and moving at very high speeds. Much higher than stars normally travel at. What caused it?
Astronomers were able to piece the story together by re-tracing the positions of both stars back 540 years. All those centuries ago, around the same time that it was dawning on humanity that Earth revolved around the Sun instead of the other way around, both of the speeding stars were in the same location. This suggested that the two were part of a star system that had broken up for some reason. But their combined energy didn’t add up.
Now, the Hubble has provided another clue to the whole story, by spotting a third runaway star. They traced the third star’s path back 540 years and found that it originated in the same location as the others. That location? An area near the center of the Orion Nebula called the Kleinmann-Low Nebula.
This composite image of the Kleinmann-Low Nebula, part of the Orion Nebula complex, is composed of several pointings of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in optical and near-infrared light. Infrared light allows to peer through the dust of the nebula and to see the stars therein. The revealed stars are shown with a bright red colour in the image. With this image, showing the central region of the Orion Nebula, scientists were looking for rogue planets and brown dwarfs. As side-effect they found a fast-moving runaway star. By ESA/Hubble, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57169218
The team behind these new results, led by Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, will release their findings in the March 20, 2017 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“The new Hubble observations provide very strong evidence that the three stars were ejected from a multiple-star system,” said Luhman. “Astronomers had previously found a few other examples of fast-moving stars that trace back to multiple-star systems, and therefore were likely ejected. But these three stars are the youngest examples of such ejected stars. They’re probably only a few hundred thousand years old. In fact, based on infrared images, the stars are still young enough to have disks of material leftover from their formation.”
Young stars have a disk of gas and dust around them called a protoplanetary disk. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The Orion Nebula could be surrounded by additional fledging stars that were ejected from it in the past and are now streaming away into space.” – Lead Researcher Kevin Luhman, Penn State University.
The three stars are travelling about 30 times faster than most of the Nebula’s other stellar inhabitants. Theory has predicted the phenomenon of these breakups in regions where newborn stars are crowded together. These gravitational back-and-forths are inevitable. “But we haven’t observed many examples, especially in very young clusters,” Luhman said. “The Orion Nebula could be surrounded by additional fledging stars that were ejected from it in the past and are now streaming away into space.”
The key to this mystery is the recently discovered third star. But this star, the so-called “source x”, was discovered by accident. Luhman is part of a team using the Hubble to hunt for free-floating planets in the Orion Nebula. A comparison of Hubble infrared images from 2015 with images from 1998 showed that source x had changed its position. This indicated that the star was moving at a speed of about 130,000 miles per hour.
The image by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows a grouping of young stars, called the Trapezium Cluster (center). The box just above the Trapezium Cluster outlines the location of the three stars. A close-up of the stars is top right. The birthplace of the multi-star system is marked “initial position.” Two of the stars — labeled BN, and “I,” for source I — were discovered decades ago. Source I is embedded in thick dust and cannot be seen. The third star, “x,” for source x, was recently discovered to have moved noticeably between 1998 and 2015, as shown in the inset image at bottom right. Credits: NASA, ESA, K. Luhman (Penn State University), and M. Robberto (STScI)
Luhmann then re-traced source x’s path and it led to the same position as the other 3 runaway stars 540 years ago: the Kleinmann-Low Nebula.
According to Luhmann, the three stars were most likely ejected from their system due to gravitational fluctuations that should be common in a high-population area of newly-born stars. Two of the stars can come very close together, either forming a tight binary system or even merging. That throws the gravitational parameters of the system out of whack, and other stars can be ejected. The ejection of those stars can also cause fingers of matter to flow out of the system.
As we get more powerful telescopes operating in the infrared, we should be able to clarify exactly what happens in areas of intense star formation like the Orion Nebula and its embedded Kleinmann-Low Nebula. The James Webb Space Telescope should advance our understanding greatly. If that’s the case, then not only will the details of star birth and formation become much clearer, but so will the break up of young families of stars.
A new definition of what is a planet would mean there are at least 110 planets in our Solay System. Image Courtesy of Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society, Data from NASA / JPL, JHUAPL/SwRI, SSI, and UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA, processed by Gordan Ugarkovic, Ted Stryk, Bjorn Jonsson, Roman Tkachenko, and Emily Lakdawalla. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Pluto’s status as a non-planet may be coming to an end. Professor Mike Brown of Caltech ended Pluto’s planetary status in 2006. But now, Kirby Runyon, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University, thinks it’s time to cancel that demotion and restore it as our Solar System’s ninth planet.
Pluto’s rebirth as a planet is not just all about Pluto, though. A newer, more accurate definition of what is and what is not a planet is needed. And if Runyon and the other people on the team he leads are successful, our Solar System would have more than 100 planets, including many bodies we currently call moons. (Sorry elementary school students.)
This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) changed the definition of what a planet is. Pluto’s demotion stemmed from discoveries in the 1990’s showing that it is actually a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). It was just the first KBO that we discovered. When Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, and included as the ninth planet in our Solar System, we didn’t know much about the Kuiper Belt.
But in 2005, the dwarf planet Eris was discovered. It was like Pluto, but 27% more massive. This begged the question, Why Pluto and not Eris? The IAU struck a committee to look into how planets should be defined.
In 2006, the IAU had a decision to make. Either expand the definition of what is and what is not a planet to include Eris and other bodies like Ceres, or shrink the definition to omit Pluto. Pluto was demoted, and that’s the way it’s been for a decade. Just enough time to re-write text books.
But a lot has happened since then. The change to the definition of planet was hotly debated, and for some, the change should never have happened. Since the New Horizons mission arrived at Pluto, that debate has been re-opened.
“A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion…” – part of the new planetary definition proposed by Runyon and his team.
The group behind the drive to re-instate Pluto have a broader goal in mind. If the issue of whether Pluto is or is not a planet sounds a little pedantic, it’s not. As Runyon’s group says on their poster to be displayed at the upcoming conference, “Nomenclature is important as it affects how we compare, think, and communicate about objects in nature.”
Runyon’s team proposes a new definition of what is a planet, focused on the geophysics of the object: “A planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has enough gravitation to be round due to hydrostatic equilibrium regardless of its orbital parameters.”
The poster highlights some key points around their new planetary definition:
Emphasizes intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic properties.
Can be paraphrased for younger students: “Round objects in space that are smaller than stars.”
The geophysical definition is already in use, taught, and included in planetological glossaries.
There’s no need to memorize all 110 planets. Teach the Solar Systems zones and why different planet types formed at different distances from the Sun.
Their proposal makes a lot of sense, but there will be people opposed to it. 110 planets is quite a change, and the new definition is a real mouthful.
“They want Pluto to be a planet because they want to be flying to a planet.” – Prof. Mike Brown, from a BBC interview, July 2015.
Mike Brown, the scientist behind Pluto’s demotion, saw this all coming when New Horizons reached the Pluto system in the Summer of 2015. In an interview with the BBC, he said “The people you hear most talking about reinstatement are those involved in the (New Horizons) mission. It is emotionally difficult for them.”
Saying that the team behind New Horizons find Pluto’s status emotionally difficult seems pretty in-scientific. In fact, their proposed new definition seems very scientific.
This image from New Horizons shows the true nature of Pluto. What for a long time was just a blurry, round, blob in space, was revealed as a geologically active planet with a seasonal atmosphere. Image: NASA/JPL/New Horizons
There may be an answer to all of this. The term “classical planets” might be of some use. That term could include our 9 familiar planets, the knowledge of which guided much of our understanding and exploration of the Solar System. But it’s a fact of science that as our understanding of something grows more detailed, our language around it has to evolve to accommodate. Look at the term planetary nebula—still in use long after we know they have nothing to do with planets—and how much confusion it causes.
“It is official without IAU approval, partly via usage.” – Runyon and team, on their new definition.
In the end, it may not matter whether the IAU is convinced by Runyon’s proposed new definition. As their poster states, “As a geophysical definition, this does not fall under the domain of the IAU, and is an alternate and parallel definition that can be used by different scientists. It is “official” without IAU approval, partly via usage.”
It may seem pointless to flip-flop back and forth about Pluto’s status as a planet. But there are sound reasons for updating definitions based on our growing knowledge. We’ll have to wait and see if the IAU agrees with that, and whether or not they adopt this new definition, and the >100 planet Solar System.
You can view Runyon and team’s poster here.
You can view Emily Lakdawalla’s image of round objects in our Solar System here.
You can read the IAU’s definition of a planet here.
Artist's concept of the TRAPPIST-1 star system, an ultra-cool dwarf that has seven Earth-size planets orbiting it. We're going to keep finding more and more solar systemsl like this, but we need observatories like WFIRST, with starshades, to understand the planets better. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
In case you haven’t heard, some new potentially habitable planets were discovered, and they’re named after beer. To celebrate two of our favorite things finally coming together, Forbidden Brewing Co. welcomes local space expert Fraser Cain for an evening of space talk, beer, and pizza.
The newly discovered planets are called the TRAPPIST-1 planets, and they’re named after a type of beer brewed by Belgian Trappist Monks. The knowledgeable and entertaining Fraser Cain will host the evening, and will answer your questions about these fascinating planets and their star.
Whether you’re just curious, or you’re a bona fide astronomy nerd, this is a great opportunity to rub shoulders with others who share your curiosity. And your love of beer.
A mug of beer. Mmmmm… Image: http://twitter.com/aizek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Fraser Cain is a lifelong Comox Valley resident, and is the publisher of Universe Today, a popular space and astronomy website. In honor of the planets-named-after-Belgian-beer, Forbidden Brewing will be serving their Belgian Saison, (which we can confirm as a great beer!) There will also be food available.
This fun and fact-filled evening will be held at the Forbidden Brewing Company on Cliffe Avenue in Courtenay, Vancouver Island, BC, on March 29th at 6:30 PM.
NASA is beginning to integrate the results of its twin study on astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly. Image: NASA
People who plan and conduct space missions never tire of telling us how hard it is to do things in space.
Our next big goal is getting humans to Mars, and establishing a colony there. There are a multitude of technical and engineering hurdles to be overcome, but we think we can do it.
But the other side of the coin is the physiological hurdles to be overcome. Those may prove to be much more challenging to deal with. NASA’s twins study is poised to add an enormous amount of data to our growing body of knowledge on the effects of space travel on human beings.
NASA’s astronaut twins, Scott Kelly (l) and Mark Kelly (r). Image: NASA
Astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly are the basis of NASA’s study. Scott spent a year in space, returning to Earth on March 1st 2016, after spending 340 days aboard the ISS. Mark, himself a retired astronaut, remained on Earth during Scott’s year in space, providing a baseline for studying the effects on the human body of such a prolonged period of time away from Earth.
In February of 2016, NASA released preliminary results of the study. Now, the team studying the results of the twins study has started integrating the data. The way they’re doing this sets it apart from other studies.
“No one has ever looked this deeply at a human subject and profiled them in this detail.” – Tejaswini Mishra, Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine.
Typically, individual studies are released to appropriate journals more or less one at a time. But in the twins study, the data will be integrated and summarized before individual papers are published on separate themes. The idea is that taken together, their impact on our understanding of prolonged time in space will be much greater.
“The beauty of this study is when integrating rich data sets of physiological, neurobehavioral and molecular information, one can draw correlations and see patterns,” said Tejaswini Mishra, Ph.D., research fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine, who is creating the integrated database, recording results and looking for correlations. “No one has ever looked this deeply at a human subject and profiled them in this detail. Most researchers combine maybe two to three types of data but this study is one of the few that is collecting many different types of data and an unprecedented amount of information.”
“Each investigation within the study complements the other.” – Brinda Rana, Ph.D., U of C, San Diego School of Medicine
Mike Snyder, Ph.D, is the head of a team of people at Stanford that will work to synthesize the data. There are roughly three steps in the overall process:
Individual researchers in areas like cognition, biochemistry, and immunology will analyze and compile their data then share their results with the Stanford team.
The Stanford team will then further integrate those results into larger data sets.
Those larger data sets will then be reviewed and analyzed to confirm and modify the initial findings.
“There are a lot of firsts with this study and that makes it exciting,” said Brinda Rana, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry, University of California San Diego School of Medicine. “A comparative study with one twin in space and one on Earth has never been done before. Each investigation within the study complements the other.”
NASA compares the twins study, and the new integrated method of handling all the results, to conducting a symphony. Each study is like an instrument, and instead of each one playing a solo, they will be added into a greater whole. The team at Stanford is like the conductor. If you’ve ever listened to an orchestra, you know how powerful that can be.
“The human systems in the body are all intertwined which is why we should view the data in a holistic way,” said Scott M. Smith, Ph.D., NASA manager for nutritional biochemistry at the Johnson Space Center. He conducts biochemical profiles on astronauts and his research is targeted to specific metabolites, end products of various biological pathways and processes.
“It is a more comprehensive way to conduct research.” – Chris Mason, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Physiology and Biophysics Weill Cornell Medicine
Chris Mason Ph.D., at Weill Cornell Medicine said, “Both the universe and the human body are complicated systems and we are studying something hard to see. It’s like having a new flashlight that illuminates the previously dark gears of molecular interactions. It is a more comprehensive way to conduct research.”
Scientists involved with the twins study are very clearly excited about this new approach. Having twin astronauts is an extraordinary opportunity, and will advance our understanding of spaceflight on human physiology enormously.
“There is no doubt, the learnings from integrating our data will be priceless,” said Emmanuel Mignot, M.D., Ph.D., director of Center for Sleep Science and Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine. He studies the immune system and is enthusiastic to study specific immune cell populations because many of the other immune studies focus only on general factors.
A summary of the early results should be out by early 2018, or possible late 2017. Individual papers on more detailed themes will follow shortly.
8 Ukrainian-built Cyclone 4 rockets will be launched each year from Maritime Launch Services' planned spaceport in Nova Scotia, Canada. Image: Maritime Launch Services
Canada is getting its own rocket-launching facility. Maritime Launch Services (MLS) has confirmed its plans to build and operate a commercial launch facility in Nova Scotia, on Canada’s east coast. The new spaceport should begin construction in 1 year, and should be in operation by 2022.
The facility will be built near Canso, in the province of Nova Scotia. Maritime Launch Services hopes to launch 8 rockets per year to place satellites in orbit. The Ukrainian Cyclone 4M medium-class rockets that will lift-off from Canso will have a payload of up to 3,350 kg.
The red marker in the map above shows the location of the Maritime Launch Services spaceport. Image: Google
Spaceports have certain requirements that make some locations more desirable. They need to be near transportation infrastructure so that rockets, payloads, and other materials can be transported to the site. They need to be away from major population centres in case of accidents. And they need to provide trajectories that give them access to desirable orbits.
The Nova Scotia site isn’t the only location considered by MLS. They evaluated 14 sites in North America before settling on the Canso, NS site, including ones in Mexico and the US. But it appears that interest and support from local governments helped MLS settle on Canso.
The Ukrainian Cyclone M4 rockets have an excellent track record for safety. The company who builds it, Yuzhnoye, has been in operation for 62 years and has launched 875 vehicles and built and launched over 400 spacecraft. Cyclone rockets have launched successfully 221 times.
The Cyclone 4. The Cyclone family of rockets have over 200 successful launches to their credit. Image: Yuzhnoye Design Office
MLS is a group of American aerospace experts including people who have worked with NASA. They are working with the makers of the Cyclone 4 rocket, who have wanted to open up operations in North America for some time.
The Cyclone rocket family first started operating in 1969. The Cyclone 4 is the newest and most powerful rocket in the Cyclone family. It’s a 3-stage rocket that runs on UDMH fuel and uses nitrogen tetroxide for an oxidizer.
There have been other proposals for a Canadian spaceport. The Canadian Space Agency was interested in Cape Breton, also in Nova Scotia, as a launch site for small satellites in 2010. A Canadian-American consortium called PlanetSpace also looked at a Nova Scotia site for a launch facility, but they failed to get the necessary funding from NASA in 2008. Fort Churchill, in the Province of Manitoba, was the site of over 3,500 sub-orbital flights before being shut down in 1985.
The Canso launch facility is an entirely private business proposal. Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Space Agency are partners. It’s not clear if having a launch facility on Canadian soil will impact the CSA’s activities in any way.
But at least Canadians won’t have to leave home to watch rocket launches.
CubeSats NODes 1 & 2 and STMSat-1 are deployed from the International Space Station during Expedition 47. Image: NASA
We’re accustomed to the ‘large craft’ approach to exploring our Solar System. Probes like the Voyagers, the Mariners, and the Pioneers have written their place in the history of space exploration. Missions like Cassini and Juno are carrying on that work. But advances in technology mean that Nanosats and Cubesats might write the next chapter in the exploration of our Solar System.
Nanosats and Cubesats are different than the probes of the past. They’re much smaller and cheaper, and they offer some flexibility in our approach to exploring the Solar System. A Nanosat is defined as a satellite with a mass between 1 and 10 kg. A CubeSat is made up of multiple cubes of roughly 10cm³ (10cm x 10cm x 11.35cm). Together, they hold the promise of rapidly expanding our understanding of the Solar System in a much more flexible way.
A cubesat structure, made by ClydeSpace, 1U in size. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Svobodat
NASA has been working on smaller satellites for a few years, and the work is starting to bear some serious fruit. A group of scientists at JPL predicts that by 2020 there will be 10 deep space CubeSats exploring our Solar System, and by 2030 there will be 100 of them. NASA, as usual, is developing NanoSat and CubeSat technologies, but so are private companies like Scotland’s Clyde Space.
NASA has built 2 Interplanetary NanoSpacecraft Pathfinder In Relevant Environment (INSPIRE) CubeSats to be launched in 2017. They will demonstrate what NASA calls the “revolutionary capability of deep space CubeSats.” They’ll be placed in earth-escape orbit to show that they can withstand the rigors of space, and can operate, navigate, and communicate effectively.
Following in INSPIRE’s footsteps will be the Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats. MarCO will demonstrate one of the most attractive aspects of CubeSats and NanoSats: their ability to hitch a ride with larger missions and to augment the capabilities of those missions.
In 2018, NASA plans to send a stationary lander to Mars, called Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight). The MarCO CubeSats will be along for the ride, and will act as communications relays, though they aren’t needed for mission success. They will be the first CubeSats to be sent into deep space.
So what are some specific targets for this new class of small probes? The applications for NanoSats and CubeSats are abundant.
Other NanoSat and CubeSat Missions
NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission, planned for the 2020’s, will likely have CubeSats along for the ride as it scrutinizes Europa for conditions favorable for life. NASA has contracted 10 academic institutes to study CubeSats that would allow the mission to get closer to Europa’s frozen surface.
The ESA’s AIM asteroid probe will launch in 2020 to study a binary asteroid system called the Didymos system. AIM will consist of the main spacecraft, a small lander, and at least two CubeSats. The CubeSats will act as part of a deep space communications network.
ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission is joined by two triple-unit CubeSats to observe the impact of the NASA-led Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) probe with the secondary Didymos asteroid, planned for late 2022. Image: ESA
The challenging environment of Venus is also another world where CubeSats and NanoSats can play a prominent role. Many missions make use of a gravity assist from Venus as they head to their main objective. The small size of NanoSats means that one or more of them could be released at Venus. The thick atmosphere at Venus gives us a chance to demonstrate aerocapture and to place NanoSats in orbit around our neighbor planet. These NanoSats could take study the Venusian atmosphere and send the results back to Earth.
NanoSWARM
But the proposed NanoSWARM might be the most effective demonstration of the power of NanoSats yet. The NanoSWARM mission would have a fleet of small satellites sent to the Moon with a specific set of objectives. Unlike other missions, where NanoSats and CubeSats would be part of a mission centered around larger payloads, NanoSWARM would be only small satellites.
NanoSWARM is a forward thinking mission that is so far only a concept. It would be a fleet of CubeSats orbiting the Moon and addressing questions around planetary magnetism, surface water on airless bodies, space weathering, and the physics of small-scale magnetospheres. NanoSWARM would target features on the Moon called “swirls“, which are high-albedo features correlated with strong magnetic fields and low surficial water. NanoSWARM CubeSats will make the first near-surface measurements of solar wind flux and magnetic fields at swirls.
This is an image of the Reiner Gamma lunar swirl from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credits: NASA LRO WAC science team
NanoSWARM would have a mission architecture referred to as “mother with many children.” The mother ship would release two sets of CubeSats. One set would be released with impact trajectories and would gather data on magnetism and proton fluxes right up until impact. A second set would orbit the Moon to measure neutron fluxes. NanoSWARM’s results would tell us a lot about the geophysics, volatile distribution, and plasma physics of other bodies, including terrestrial planets and asteroids.
Space enthusiasts know that the Voyager probes had less computing power than our mobile phones. It’s common knowledge that our electronics are getting smaller and smaller. We’re also getting better at all the other technologies necessary for CubeSats and NanoSats, like batteries, solar arrays, and electrospray thrusters. As this trend continues, expect nanosatellites and cubesats to play a larger and more prominent role in space exploration.
A radar view of Venus taken by the Magellan spacecraft, with some gaps filled in by the Pioneer Venus orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL
Venus is known as Earth’s Sister Planet. It’s roughly the same size and mass as Earth, it’s our closest planetary neighbor, and Venus and Earth grew up together.
When you grow up with something, and it’s always been there, you kind of take it for granted. As a species, we occasionally glance over at Venus and go “Huh. Look at Venus.” Mars, exotic exoplanets in distant solar systems, and the strange gas giants and their moons in our own Solar System attract much more of our attention.
If a distant civilization searched our Solar System for potentially habitable planets, using the same criteria we do, then Venus would be front page news for them. It’s on the edge of the habitable zone and it has an atmosphere. But we know better. Venus is a hellish world, hot enough to melt lead, with crushing atmospheric pressure and acid rain falling from the sky. Even so, Venus still holds secrets we need to reveal.
Chief among those secrets is, “Why did Venus develop so differently?
Conditions on Venus pose unique challenges. The history of Venus exploration is littered with melted Soviet Venera Landers. Orbital probes like Pioneer 12 and Magellan have had more success recently, but Venus’ dense atmosphere still limits their effectiveness. Advances in materials, and especially in electronic circuitry that can withstand Venus’ heat, have buoyed our hopes of exploring the surface of Venus in greater detail.
The group acknowledged several over-arching questions we have about Venus:
How can we understand the atmospheric formation, evolution, and climate history?
How can we determine the evolution of the surface and interior?
How can we understand the nature of interior-surface-atmosphere interactions over time, including whether liquid water was ever present?
Since the Vision 2050 Workshop is all about the next 50 years, Cutts and his team looked at the challenges posed by Venus’ unique conditions, and how they could answer questions in the near-term, mid-term, and long-term.
Near Term Exploration (Present to 2019)
Near-Term goals for the exploration of Venus include improved remote-sensing from orbital probes. This will tell us more about the gravity and topography of Venus. Improved radar imaging and infrared imaging will fill in more blanks. The team also promoted the idea of a sustained aerial platform, a deep probe, and a short duration lander. Multiple probes/dropsondes are also part of the plan.
Dropsondes are small devices that are released into the atmosphere to measure winds, temperature, and humidity. They’re used on Earth to understand the weather, and extreme phenomena like hurricanes, and can fulfill the same purpose at Venus.
Dropsondes are released into the atmosphere, and their descent is slowed by a small parachute. As they descend, they gather data on temperature, wind, and humidity. Image By Staff Sgt. Randy Redman of the US Air Force
In the near-term, missions whose final destination is not Venus can also answer questions. Fly-bys by craft such as Bepi-Colombo, Solar Probe Plus, and the Solar Orbiter missions can give us good information on their way to Mercury and the Sun respectively. These missions will launch in 2018.
Bepi-Colombo, a joint mission of the ESA and JAXA, will perform two fly-bys of Venus on its way to Mercury. Image: ESA/JAXA
The ESO’s Venus Express and Japan’s Akatsuki, (Venus Climate Orbiter), have studied Venus’ climate in detail, especially its chemistry and the interactions between the atmosphere and the surface. Venus Express ended in 2015, while Akatsuki is still there.
Mid-Term Exploration (2020-2024)
The mid-term goals are more ambitious. They include a long-term lander to study Venus’ geophysical properties, a short-duration tessera lander, and two balloons.
The tesserae lander would land in a type of terrain found on Venus known as tesserae. We think that at one time, Venus had liquid water on it. The fundamental evidence for this may lie in the tesserae regions, but the terrain is extremely rough. A short duration lander that could land and operate in the tesserae regions would help us answer Venus’ liquid water question.
Thanks to the continued development of heat-hardy electronics, a long-term duration lander (months or more) is becoming more feasible in the mid-term. Ideally, any long-term mobile lander would be able to travel tens to hundreds of kilometers, in order to acquire a regional sample of Venus’ surface. This is the only way to take geochemistry and mineralogy measurements at multiple sites.
On Mars the landers are solar-powered. Venus’ thick atmosphere makes that impossible. But the same dense atmosphere that prohibits solar power might offer another solution: a sail-powered rover. Old-fashioned sail power might hold the key to moving around on the surface of Venus. Because the atmosphere is so dense, only a small sail would be necessary.
A simple sail-powered rover may solve the problem of mobility on the Venusian surface. Image: NASA
Long-Term Exploration (2025 and Beyond)
The long-term goals from Cutts and his team are where things get really interesting. A long-lived surface rover is still on the list, or possibly a near-surface craft like a balloon. Also on there is a long-lived seismic network.
A seismic network would really start to reveal the secrets behind Venus’ geophysical life. Whereas a lander would give us estimates of seismic activity, they would be crude compared to what a network of seismic sensors would reveal about Venus’ inner workings. A more thorough understanding of quake mechanisms and locations would really get the theorists buzzing. But it’s the final thing on the list that would be the end-goal. A sample-return mission.
We’re getting good at in situ measurements on other worlds. But for Venus, and for all the other worlds we have visited or want to visit, a sample return is the holy grail. The Apollo missions brought back hundreds of kilograms of lunar samples. Other sample-return missions have been sent to Phobos, which failed, and to asteroids, with varying degrees of success.
Subjecting a sample to the kind of deep analysis that can only be done on labs here on Earth is the end-game. We can keep analyzing samples as we develop new technologies to examine them with. Science is iterative, after all.
An artist’s image of Hayabusa leaving Earth. Hayabusa was a Japanese sample return mission to the asteroid 25143 Itokawa. The mission was a partial success. A sample mission to Earth’s sister planet is the holy-grail for the exploration of Venus. Image credit: JAXA
The 2003 Planetary Science Decadal Survey identified the importance of a sample return mission to Venus’ atmosphere. A balloon would float aloft in the clouds, and an ascending rocket would launch a collected sample back to Earth. According to Cutts and his team, this kind of sample-return mission could act as a stepping stone to a surface sample mission.
A surface sample would likely be the pinnacle of achievement when it comes to understanding Venus. But like most of the proposed goals for Venus, we’ll have to wait awhile.
The Changing Future
Cutts and the team acknowledge that the technology to enable exploration of Venus is in flux. No more missions to Venus are planned before 2020. There’ve been proposals for things like sail powered landers, but we’re not there yet. We’re developing heat-resistant electronics, but so far they’re very simple. There’s a lot of work to do.
On the other hand, some things may happen sooner. It may turn out that we can learn about Venusian seismic activity from balloon-borne or orbital sensors. The team says that “Due to strong mechanical coupling between the atmosphere and ground, seismic waves are launched into the atmosphere, where they may be detected by infrasound on a balloon or infrared or ultraviolet signatures from orbit.” That’s thanks to Venus’ dense atmosphere. That means that the far-term goal of seismic sensing of the interior of Venus could be shifted to the near-term or mid-term.
Japan’s Akatsuki orbiter captured this image of a gravity wave in Venus’ upper cloud layer. Could orbiter sensors remove the need for a network of seismic sensors on the surface? Image credit: JAXA
As work on nanosatellites and cubesats continues, they may play a larger role at Venus, and shift the timelines. NASA wants to include these small satellites on every launch where there is a few kilograms of excess capacity. A group of these nanosatellites could form a network of seismic sensors much more easily and much sooner than an established network of surface sensors. A network of nanosatellites could also serve as a communications relay for other missions.
Venus doesn’t generate a lot of buzz these days. The discovery of Earth-like worlds in distant solar systems generates headline after headline. And the always popular search for life is centered on Mars, and the icy/sub-surface moons of our Solar System’s gas giants. But Venus is still a tantalizing target, and understanding Venus’ evolution will help us understand what we’re seeing in distant solar systems.
An artist's illustration of a light-sail powered by a radio beam (red) generated on the surface of a planet. Could the part of the beam that misses the sail be our mysterious Fast Radio Bursts? Image Credit: M. Weiss/CfA
The extremely energetic events that we see out there in the Universe are usually caused by cataclysmic astrophysical events and activities of one sort or another. But what about Fast Radio Bursts? A pair of astrophysicists at Harvard say that the seldom seen phenomena could, maybe, possibly, be evidence of an advanced alien technology.
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are short-lived radio pulses that last only a few milliseconds. It’s been assumed that they have some astrophysical cause. Fewer than 2 dozen of them have been detected since their discovery in 2007. They’re detected by our huge radio telescopes like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and the Parkes Observatory in Australia. They’re extremely energetic, and their source is a great distance from us.
The NSF’s Arecibo Observatory, which is located in Puerto Rico, is the world largest radio telescope. Arecibo detected 11 FRBs over the course of 2 months. Credit: NAIC
The two astrophysicists, Avi Loeb at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Manasvi Lingam at Harvard University, decided to investigate the possibility that FRBs have an alien technological origin.
“Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven’t identified a possible natural source with any confidence. An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.” – Avi Loeb, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
I’ll Take ‘Alien Signals’ For $200 Alex
Loeb and Lingam began by calculating how much energy would be needed to send a signal that strong across such an enormous distance. They found that doing so with solar energy requires a solar array with an area twice the surface area of Earth. That would be enough energy, if the alien civilization was as close as we are to a star similar to our Sun.
Obviously, such a massive construction project is well beyond us. But however unlikely it sounds, it can’t be ruled out.
The pair also asked themselves questions about the viability of such a project. Would the heat and energy involved in such a solar array melt the structure itself? Their answer is that water-cooling would be sufficient to keep an array like this operating.
Their next question was, “Why build something like this in the first place?”
I’ll Take ‘Alien Spacecraft Propulsion Systems’ For $400 Alex”
The thinking behind their idea is based on an idea that we ourselves have had: Could we power a spacecraft by pushing on it with lasers? Or Microwaves? If we’ve thought of it, why wouldn’t other existing civilizations? If another civilization were doing it, what would the technology look like?
Their investigation shows that the engineering they’re talking about could power a spacecraft with a payload of a million tons. That would be about 20 times bigger than our largest cruise ship. According to Lingam, “That’s big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances.”
If FRBs are indeed the result of an alien propulsion system, here’s how it would work: Earth is rotating and orbiting, which means the alien star and galaxy are moving relative to us. That’s why we would only see a brief flash. The beam sweeps across the sky and only hits us for a moment. The repeated appearance of the FRB could be a clue to its alien, technological origin.
The authors of the study outlining this thinking know that it’s speculative. But it’s their job to speculate within scientific constraints, which they have done. As they say in the conclusion of their paper, “Although the possibility that FRBs are produced by extragalactic civilizations is more speculative than an astrophysical origin, quantifying the requirements necessary for an artificial origin serves, at the very least, the important purpose of enabling astronomers to rule it out with future data.”
There are other interpretations when it comes to FRBs, of course. The others of another paper say that for at least one group of FRBs, known as FRB 121102, the source is likely astrophysical. According to them, FRBs likely come from “a young, highly magnetized, extragalactic neutron star.”
Lurking behind these papers are some intriguing questions that are also fun to ponder.
If the system required a solar array twice the size of Earth, where would the materials come from? If the system required water-cooling to avoid melting, where would all the water come from? It’s impossible to know, or to even begin speculating. But a civilization able to do something like this would have to be master engineers and resource exploiters. That goes without saying.
Why they might do it is another question. Probably the same reasons we would: curiosity and exploration, or maybe to escape a dying world.
Is Earth in the range of normal when it comes to habitable planets? Or is it an outlier, with both large land masses, and large oceans? Image: Reto Stöckli, Nazmi El Saleous, and Marit Jentoft-Nilsen, NASA GSFC
For a long time, the idea of finding life on other worlds was just a science fiction dream. But in our modern times, the search for life is rapidly becoming a practical endeavour. Now, some minds at NASA are looking ahead to the search for life on other worlds, and figuring out how to search more effectively and efficiently. Their approach is centered around two things: nano-satellites and microfluidics.
Life is obvious on Earth. But it’s a different story for the other worlds in our Solar System. Mars is our main target right now, with the work that MSL Curiosity is doing. But Curiosity is investigating Mars to find out if conditions on that planet were ever favorable for life. A more exciting possibility is finding extant life on another world: that is, life that exists right now.
MSL Curiosity is busy investigating the surface of Mars, to see if that planet could have harbored life. Image: NASA/JPL/Cal-Tech
At the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop, experts in Planetary Science and related disciplines gathered to present ideas about the next 50 years of exploration in the Solar System. A team led by Richard Quinn at the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) presented their ideas on the search for extant life in the next few decades.
Their work is based on the decadal survey “Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022.” That source confirms what most of us are already aware of: that our search for life should be focussed on Mars and the so-called “Ocean Worlds” of our Solar System like Enceladus and Europa. The question is, what will that search look like?
The North Polar Region of Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Could there be an ocean world full of life under its frozen surface? Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Quinn and his team outlined two technologies that we could center our search around.
Nanosatellites
A nanosatellite is classified as something with a mass between 1-10 kg. They offer several advantages over larger designs.
Firstly, their small mass keeps the cost of launching them very low. In many cases, nanosatellites can be piggy-backed onto the launch of a larger payload, just to use up any excess capacity. Nanosatellites can be made cheaply, and multiples of them can be designed and built the same. This would allow a fleet of nanosatellites to be sent to the same destination.
Most of the discussion around the search for life centers around large craft or landers that land in one location, and have limited mobility. The Mars rovers are doing great work, but they can only investigate very specific locations. In a way, this creates kind of a sampling error. It’s difficult to generalize about the conditions for life on other worlds when we’ve only sampled a small handful of locations.
In 2010, NASA successfully deployed the nanosatellite NANO-Sail D from a larger, microsatellite. Image: NASA
On Earth, life is everywhere. But Earth is also the home to extremophiles, organisms that exist only in extreme, hard-to-reach locations. Think of thermal vents on the ocean floor, or deep dark caves. If that is the kind of life that exists on the target worlds in our Solar System, then there’s a strong possibility that we’ll need to sample many locations before we find them. That is something that is beyond the capabilities of our rovers. Nanosatellites could be part of the solution. A fleet of them investigating a world like Enceladus or Europa could speed up our search for extant life.
NASA has designed and built nanosatellites to perform a variety of tasks, like performing biology experiments, and testing advanced propulsion and communications technologies. In 2010 they successfully deployed a nanosatellite from a larger, microsatellite. If you expand on that idea, you can see how a small fleet of nanosatellites could be deployed at another world, after arriving there on another larger craft.
Microfluidics
Microfluidics deals with systems that manipulate very small amounts of fluid, usually on the sub-millimeter scale. The idea is to build microchips which handle very small sample sizes, and test them in-situ. NASA has done work with microfluidics to try to develop ways of monitoring astronauts’ health on long space voyages, where there is no access to a lab. Microfluidic chips can be manufactured which have only one or two functions, and produce only one or two results.
In terms of the search for extant life in our Solar System, microfluidics is a natural fit with nanosatellites. Replace the medical diagnostic capabilities of a microfluidic chip with a biomarker diagnostic, and you have a tiny device that can be mounted on a tiny satellite. Since functioning microfluidic chips can be as small as microprocessors, multiples of them could be mounted.
” Technical constraints will inevitably limit robotic missions that search for evidence of life to a few selected experiments.” – Richard.C.Quinn, et. al.
When combined with nanosatellites, microfluidics offers the possibility of the same few tests for life being repeated over and over in multiple locations. This is obviously very attractive when it comes to the search for life. The team behind the idea stresses that their approach would involve the search for simple building blocks, the complex biomolecules involved in basic biochemistry, and also the structures that cellular life requires in order to exist. Performing these tests in multiple locations would be a boon in the search.
Some of the technologies for the microfluidic search for life have already been developed. The team points out that several of them have already had successful demonstrations in micro-gravity missions like the GeneSat, the PharmaSat, and the SporeSat.
“The combination of microfluidic systems with chemical and biochemical sensors and sensor arrays offer some of the most promising approaches for extant life detection using small-payload platforms.” – Richard.C.Quinn, et. al.
Putting It All Together
We’re a ways away from a mission to Europa or Enceladus. But this paper was about the future vision of the search for extant life. It’s never too soon to start thinking about that.
There are some obvious obstacles to using nanosatellites to search for life on Enceladus or Europa. Those worlds are frozen, and it’s the oceans under those thick ice caps that we need to investigate. Somehow, our tiny nanosatellites would need to get through that ice.
Also, the nanosatellites we have now are just that: satellites. They are designed to be in orbit around a body. How could they be transformed into tiny, ocean-going submersible explorers?
There’s no doubt that somebody, somewhere at NASA, is already thinking about that.
The over-arching vision of a fleet of small craft, each with the ability to repeat basic experiments searching for life in multiple locations, is a sound one. As for how it actually turns out, we’ll have to wait and see.
