Artist's conception of how the "nearly naked" supermassive black hole originated. On the left panel, the black hole begins its encounter with another, larger black hole. In the middle panel, the stars are stripped away. On the right, the black hole emerges from the encounter with only the remnants of its galaxy intact.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF.
Most galaxies have a super-massive black hole at their centre. As galaxies collide and merge, the black holes merge too, creating the super-massives we see in the universe today. But one team of astronomers went looking for super-massives that aren’t at the heart of galaxies. They looked at over 1200 galaxies, using the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), and almost all of them had a black hole right where it should be, in the middle of the galaxy itself.
But they did find one hole, in a cluster of galaxies more than two billion light years away from Earth, that was not at the centre of a galaxy. They were surprised too see that this black hole had been stripped naked of surrounding stars. Once they identified this black hole, now called B3 1715+425, they used the Hubble and the Spitzer to follow up. And what they found tells an unusual story.
“We’ve not seen anything like this before.” – James Condon
The super-massive black hole in question, which we’ll call B3 for short, was a curiosity. It was far brighter than anything near it, and it was also more distant than most of the holes they were studying. But a black hole this bright is typically situated at the heart of a large galaxy. B3 had only a remnant of a galaxy surrounding it. It was naked.
James Condon, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) described what happened.
“We were looking for orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes, with one offset from the center of a galaxy, as telltale evidence of a previous galaxy merger,” said Condon. “Instead, we found this black hole fleeing from the larger galaxy and leaving a trail of debris behind it,” he added.
“We concluded that our fleeing black hole was incapable of attracting that many stars on the way out to make it look like it does now.” – James Condon
Condon and his team concluded that B3 was once a super-massive black hole at the heart of a large galaxy. B3 collided with another, larger galaxy, one with an even larger black hole. During this collision B3 had most of its stars stripped away, except for the ones closest to it. B3 is still speeding away, at more than 2000 km per second.
B3 and what’s left of its stars will continue to move through space, escaping their encounter with the other galaxy. It probably won’t escape from the cluster of galaxies it’s in though.
“What happens to a galaxy when most of its stars have been stripped away, but it still has an active super-massive black hole at the middle?” – James Condon
Condon outlines the likely end for B3. It won’t have enough stars and gas surrounding it to trigger new star birth. It also won’t be able to attract new stars. So eventually, the remnant stars of B3’s original galaxy will travel with it, growing progressively dimmer over time.
B3 itself will also grow dimmer, since it has no new material to “feed” on. It will eventually be nearly impossible to see. Only its gravitational effect will betray its position.
“In a billion years or so, it probably will be invisible.” – James Condon
How many B3s are there? If B3 itself will eventually become invisible, how many other super-massive black holes like it are there, undetectable by our instruments? How often does it happen? And how important is it in understanding the evolution of galaxies, and of clusters of galaxies. Condon asks these questions near the end of the clip. For now, at least, we have no answers.
Condon and his team used the NRAO‘s VLBA to search for these lonely holes. The VLBA is a radio astronomy instrument made up of 10 identical 25m antennae around the world, and controlled at a center in New Mexico. The array provides super sharp detail in the radio wave part of the spectrum.
Their black hole search is a long term project, making use of filler time available at the VLBA. Future telescopes, like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope being built in Chile, will make Condon’s work easier.
Condon worked with Jeremy Darling of the University of Colorado, Yuri Kovalev of the Astro Space Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, and Leonid Petrov of the Astrogeo Center in Falls Church, Virginia. They will report their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.
An asteroid strike that could wreak some serious havoc against Earth may be statistically unlikely. But it's not like there's no precedent for one. Artist's Image: . Credit: NASA
Everyone knows it was a large asteroid striking Earth that led to the demise of the dinosaurs. But how many near misses were there? Modern humans have been around for about 225,000 years, so we must have come close to death by asteroid more than once in our time. We would have had no clue.
Of course, it’s the actual strikes that are cause for concern, not near misses. Efforts to predict asteroid strikes, and to catalogue asteroids that come close to Earth, have reached new levels. NASA’s newest tool in the fight against asteroids is called Scout. Scout is designed to detect asteroids approaching Earth, and it just passed an important test. Scout was able to give us 5 days notice of an approaching asteroid.
Here’s how Scout works. A telescope in Hawaii, the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) detected the asteroid, called 2016 UR36, and then alerted other ‘scopes. Three other telescopes confirmed 2016 UR36 and were able to narrow down its trajectory. They also learned its size, about 5 to 25 meters across.
The Pan STARRS telescope in Hawaii. Image: Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii.
After several hours, we knew that UR 36 would come close to us, but was not a threat to impact Earth. UR 36 would pass Earth at a distance of about 498,000 km. That’s about 1.3 times further away than the Moon.
The key part of this is that we had 5 days notice. And five days notice is a lot more than the few hours that we usually have. The approach of 2016 UR36 was the first test for the Scout system, and it passed the test.
Asteroids that come close to Earth are called Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and finding them and tracking them has become a growing concern for NASA. In fact NASA has about 15,000 NEOs catalogued, and they’re still finding about 5 more every night.
NASA is getting much better at discovering and detecting NEOs. Image: NASA/NEO Program.
Not only does NASA have the Scout system, whose primary role is to speed up the confirmation process for approaching asteroids, but they also have the Sentry program. Sentry’s role is a little different.
Sentry’s job is to focus on asteroids that are large enough to wipe out a city and cause widespread destruction. That means NEOs that are larger than about 140 metres. Sentry has over 600 large NEOs catalogued, and astronomers think there are a lot more of them out there.
NASA also has the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which has got to be the greatest name for an office ever. (Can you imagine having that on your business card?) Anyway, the PDCO has the over-arching role of preparing for asteroid impacts. The Office is there to make emergency plans to deal with the impact aftermath.
5 days notice for a small asteroid striking Earth is a huge step for preparedness. Resources can be mobilized, critical infrastructure can be protected, maybe things like atomic power plants can be shut down if necessary. And, of course, people can be evacuated.
We haven’t always had any notice for approaching asteroids. Look at the Chelyabinsk meteor from 2013. It was a 10,000 ton meteor that exploded over the Chelyabinsk Oblast, injuring 1500 people and damaging an estimated 3,000 building in 6 cities. If it had been a little bigger, and reached the surface of the Earth, the damage would have been widespread. 5 days notice would likely have saved a lot of lives.
Smaller asteroids may be too small to detect when they’re very far away. But larger ones can be detected when they’re still 10, 20, even 30 years away. That’s enough time to figure out how to stop them. And if you can reach them when they’re that far away, you only need to nudge them a little to deflect them away from Earth, and maybe to the Sun to be destroyed.
Large asteroids with the potential to cause widespread destruction are the attention-getters. Hollywood loves them. But it may be more likely that we face numerous impacts from smaller asteroids, and that they could cause more damage overall. Scout’s ability to detect these smaller asteroids, and give us several days notice of their approach, could be a life-saver.
Venus and Jupiter at dusk over Australia's Outback on June 27, 2015. Credit: Joseph Brimacombe
The internet is great, isn’t it?
You can post anything you want on the internet, and if people like the sound of it, they spread it. It doesn’t make any difference if it’s true or not. We’re not born fact checkers and skeptics, are we?
Pretty soon, before you know it, it’s gone viral. Then it becomes its own sensation, and people who don’t even believe it start reporting it. Never is this more true than with hoaxes.
The latest hoax is the “15 Days of Darkness in November” thing that’s going around. Everyone’s on the bandwagon.
The 15 days hoax is not new. It made an appearance last year, and was thoroughly debunked. And of course, there wasn’t 15 day of darkness last year, was there? (Unless NASA covered it up!)
It’s here again this year, and will be debunked again, and will probably be here next year, too.
The whole thing started at a site that will remain linkless, and caught on from there. This is what the site reported:
“NASA has confirmed that the Earth will experience 15 days of total darkness between November 15 and November 29, 2015. The event, according to NASA, hasn’t occurred in over 1 Million years.”
Of course, NASA never said any such thing.
Here is supposedly what will happen to cause this calamity. Try and follow along with the nonsensical foolishness.
During the conjunction between Venus and Jupiter on October 26, light from Venus would cause gases in Jupiter to heat up. The heated gasses will cause a large amount of hydrogen to be released into space. The gases will reach the Sun and trigger a massive explosion on the surface of the star, heating it to 9,000 degrees Kelvin. The heat of the explosion would then cause the Sun to emit a blue color.
The dull blue color will last for 15 days during which the Earth will be thrown into darkness.
Where to begin? Let’s start with conjunctions.
Conjunctions are mostly just visual phenomena. The fact that two things in the sky look closer together from our point of view on Earth doesn’t mean that they’re that close together. In fact, even when Jupiter and Venus are in conjunction, they can still be over 800 million km apart. For perspective, the Sun and the Earth are about 150 million km apart.
So, as the hoax goes, at that great distance, light from Venus will cause gases on Jupiter to heat up. News Flash: the light from the Sun is far more intense than light from Venus could ever be, and it doesn’t heat up the gases on Jupiter. In fact, any light from Venus that makes it to Jupiter is just reflected sunlight anyway.
The Moon and this dead tree are in conjunction. This will cause the Martian Pyramids to vibrate harmonically. These vibrations will shake the walls of the movie studio where the Moon landing was faked, causing it to collapse. Image: Evan Gough
The hoax gets more outrageous as it goes along. These supposed heated gases then escape from Jupiter into space, and head for the Sun. But Jupiter is enormous and has enormous gravitational pull. How are any gases going to escape Jupiter’s overpowering gravity? Answer: they can’t and they won’t.
Then, these gases supposedly strike the Sun, and trigger a massive explosion on the Sun’s surface, which turn the Sun blue and plunges the Earth into darkness. Not blueness, which I could understand, but darkness.
This is absurd, of course. The Sun dominates the planets in a one-way relationship, and nothing the planets ever do could change that. No escaped gases from Jupiter would ever strike the Sun.
Jupiter is puny and insignificant compared to the Sun. And it’s also hundreds of millions of kilometers away. How is a puny puff of hydrogen from Jupiter supposed to darken the Sun? Image: NASA/SDO
Nothing Jupiter does can affect the Sun. Jupiter is, on average, 778 million km from the Sun. Jupiter could change places with Venus, and the Sun would keep shining normally. Jupiter could explode completely and the Sun would go on shining normally. Jupiter could put on a big red nose and some clown shoes, and the Sun would remain unaffected.
The Sun is a giant atom-crushing machine 1000 times more massive than Jupiter. The massive wall of energy and solar wind that comes from the Sun slams into Jupiter, and completely overwhelms anything Jupiter can do to the Sun. It’s just the way it is. It’s just the way it will always be.
Like the faked Moon landing hoax, and the Nibiru/Planet X hoax, this 15 days of darkness meme just keeps coming around. There may be no end to it.
It’s annoying, for sure, but maybe there’s a silver lining. Maybe some people reading about this supposed calamity will enter the word “conjunction” into a search engine, and begin their own personal journey of learning how the universe works.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey telescope stands out against the breaktaking backdrop of the Sacramento Mountains. 234 stars out of the Sloan's catalogue of over 2.5 million stars are producing an unexplained pulsed signal. Image: SDSS, Fermilab Visual Media Services
We all want there to be aliens. Green ones, pink ones, brown ones, Greys. Or maybe Vulcans, Klingons, even a being of pure energy. Any type will do.
That’s why whenever a mysterious signal or energetic fluctuation arrives from somewhere in the cosmos and hits one of our many telescopes, headlines erupt across the media: “Have We Finally Detected An Alien Signal?” or “Have Astronomers Discovered An Alien Megastructure?” But science-minded people know that we’re probably getting ahead of ourselves.
Skepticism still rules the day when it comes to these headlines, and the events that spawn them. That’s the way it should be, because we’ve always found a more prosaic reason for whatever signal from space we’re talking about. But, being skeptical is a balancing act; it doesn’t mean being dismissive.
What we’re talking about here is a new study from E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, two astronomers at Laval University in Canada. Their study, titled “Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars” was just published at arXiv.org. ArXiv.org is a pre-print website, so the paper itself hasn’t been peer reviewed yet. But it is generating interest.
The two astronomers used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and analyzed the spectra of 2.5 million stars. Of all those stars, they found 234 stars that are producing a puzzling signal. That’s only a tiny percentage. And, they say, these signals “have exactly the shape of an ETI signal” that was predicted in a previous study by Borra.
A portion of the 234 stars that are sources of the pulsed ETI-like signal. Note that all the stars are in the narrow spectral range F2 to K1, very similar to our own Sun. Image: Ermanno F. Borra and Eric Trottier
Prediction is a key part of the scientific method. If you develop a theory, your theory looks better and better the more you can use it to correctly predict some future events based on it. Look how many times Einstein’s predictions based on Relativity have been proven correct.
The 234 stars in Borra and Trottier’s study aren’t random. They’re “overwhelmingly in the F2 to K1 spectral range” according to the abstract. That’s significant because this is a small range centred around the spectrum of our own Sun. And our own Sun is the only one we know of that has an intelligent species living near it. If ours does, maybe others do too?
The authors acknowledge five potential causes of their findings: instrumental and data reduction effects, rotational transitions in molecules, the Fourier transform of spectral lines, rapid pulsations, and finally the ETI signal predicted by Borra (2012). They dismiss molecules or pulsations as causes, and they deem it highly unlikely that the signals are caused by the Fourier analysis itself. This leaves two possible sources for the detected signals. Either they’re a result of the Sloan instrument itself and the data reduction, or they are in fact a signal from extra-terrestrial intelligences.
This graph shows the number of detected signals by Spectral Type of star. Image: Ermanno F. Borra and Eric Trottier
The detected signals are pulses of light separated by a constant time interval. These types of signals were predicted by Borra in his 2012 paper, and they are what he and Trottier set out to find in the Sloan data. It may be a bit of a red flag when scientist’s find the very thing they predicted they would find. But Trottier and Borra are circumspect about their own results.
As the authors say in their paper, “Although unlikely, there is also a possibility that the signals are due to highly peculiar chemical compositions in a small fraction of galactic halo stars.” It may be unlikely, but lots of discoveries seem unlikely at first. Maybe there is a tiny subset of stars with chemical peculiarities that make them act in this way.
To sum it all up, the two astronomers have found a tiny number of stars, very similar to our own Sun, that seem to be the source of pulsed signals. These signals are the same as predicted if a technological society was using powerful lasers to communicate with distant stars.
We all want there to be aliens, and maybe the first sign of them will be pulsed light signals from stars like our own Sun. But it’s all still very preliminary, and as the authors acknowledge, “…at this stage, this hypothesis needs to be confirmed with further work.”
The Breakthrough team don’t seem that excited about Borra’s findings. They’ve already poured cold water on it, trotting out the old axiom that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” in a statement on Borra’s paper. They also give Borra’s findings a score of 0 to 1 on the Rio Scale. The Rio Scale is something used by the international SETI community to rank detections of phenomena that could indicate advanced life beyond Earth. A rating of 0 to 1 means its insignificant.
President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. Image: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza Public Domain
In the waning days of his presidency, Barack Obama has made a bold statement in favor of the US getting to Mars. Obama didn’t mince any words in his opinion piece written for CNN. He said that America’s next goal in space is “…sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time.”
President Obama has long been a proponent of a strong presence in space for the US, and of the science and technology that supports those efforts. He has argued for healthy NASA budgets in his time, and under his administration, NASA has reached some major milestones.
“Last year alone, NASA discovered flowing water on Mars and evidence of ice on one of Jupiter’s moons, and we mapped Pluto — more than 3 billion miles away — in high-resolution,” Obama said. He also mentioned the ongoing successful hunt for exoplanets, and the efforts to understand asteroids.
Some of his work in support of space and science in general has been more symbolic. His annual White House Science Fairs in particular. He was the first president to hold these fairs, and he hosted 6 of them during his 8 years in office.
Presidents go different directions once they leave office. Some keep a low profile (Bush Jr.), some get targeted for assassination (Bush Sr.), and some become advocates for humanitarian efforts and global peace (Jimmy Carter.) But Obama made it clear that his efforts to promote America’s efforts in space won’t end when his presidency ends. “This week, we’ll convene some of America’s leading scientists, engineers, innovators and students in Pittsburgh to dream up ways to build on our progress and find the next frontiers,” Obama said.
In his piece, Obama gave a laundry list of the USA’s achievements in space. He also pointed out that “Just five years ago, US companies were shut out of the global commercial launch market.” Now they own a third of that market. And, according to Obama, they won’t stop there.
In 2010 he set a goal for American space efforts: to reach Mars by the 2030s. “The next step is to reach beyond the bounds of Earth’s orbit. I’m excited to announce that we are working with our commercial partners to build new habitats that can sustain and transport astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space.” He didn’t elaborate on this in his opinion piece, but it will be interesting to hear more.
Other presidents have come out strongly in favor of efforts in space. The first one was Eisenhower, and Obama mentioned him in his piece. Eisenhower is the one who created NASA in 1958, though it was called NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) at the time. This put America’s space efforts in civilian control rather than military.
President Kennedy got the Apollo program off the ground in 1961. Image: White House Press Office (WHPO)
President Kennedy asked Congress in 1961 to commit to the Apollo program, an effort to get a man on the Moon before the 60s ended. Apollo achieved that, of course, but with only a few months to spare. Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson, was a staunch supporter of NASA’s Apollo Program, especially in the wake of disaster.
In 1967 the entire Apollo 1 crew was killed in a fire while testing the craft on its launch pad. The press erupted after that, and Congress began to question the Apollo Program, but Johnson stood firmly in NASA’s corner.
Like some other Presidents before him, Obama has always been a good orator. That was in full view when he ended his piece with these words: “Someday, I hope to hoist my own grandchildren onto my shoulders. We’ll still look to the stars in wonder, as humans have since the beginning of time.”
The focus has really been on Mars lately, and with Obama’s continued support, maybe humans will make it to Mars in the next decade or two. Then, from the surface of that planet, we can do what we’ve always done: continue to look to the stars with a sense of wonder.
These two images from the camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor show the effect that a global dust storm has on Mars. On the left is a normal view of Mars, on the right is Mars obscured by the haze from a dust storm. Image: NASA/JPL/MSSS
Our ability to forecast the weather here on Earth has saved countless lives from the onslaught of hurricanes and typhoons. We’ve gotten better at predicting space weather, too, and that has allowed us to protect sensitive satellites and terrestrial facilities from bursts of radiation and solar wind. Now, it looks as though we’re getting closer to predicting bad weather on Mars.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is forecasting the arrival of a global dust storm on Mars within weeks. The storm is expected to envelop the red planet, and reduce the amount of solar energy available to NASA’s rovers, Opportunity and Curiosity. The storm will also make it harder for orbiters to do their work.
Dust storms are really the only type of weather that Mars experiences. They’re very common. Usually, they’re only local phenomena, but sometimes they can grow to effect an entire region. In rarer cases, they can envelop the entire globe.
It’s these global storms that concern James Shirley, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California. Shirley published a study showing that there is a pattern to these global storms. If his forecasted storm appears on time, it means that he has correctly determined that pattern.
“Mars will reach the midpoint of its current dust storm season on October 29th of this year. Based on the historical pattern we found, we believe it is very likely that a global dust storm will begin within a few weeks or months of this date,” Shirley said.
Predicting these huge dust storms will be of prime importance when humans gain a foothold on Mars. The dust could wreak havoc on sensitive systems, and can limit the effectiveness of solar power for weeks at a time.
But it’s not just future endeavours that are impacted by Martian dust storms. Spirit and Opportunity had to batten down the hatches when a global dust storm interrupted their exploration of Mars in 2007.
“We had to take special measures to enable their survival for several weeks with little sunlight to keep them powered.
John Callas is JPL’s project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. He describes the precautions that his team took during the 2007 dust storm: “We had to take special measures to enable their survival for several weeks with little sunlight to keep them powered. Each rover powered up only a few minutes each day, enough to warm them up, then shut down to the next day without even communicating with Earth. For many days during the worst of the storm, the rovers were completely on their own.”
This 30-day time-lapse of the Martian atmosphere was capture by Opportunity during the 2007 dust storm. That storm blocked out 99% of the Sun's energy, limiting the effectiveness of the rover's solar panels, and putting the mission in jeopardy. Image: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2475872
We have observed 9 global dust storms on Mars since the first time in 1924, with the most recent one being the 2007 storm that threatened Spirit and Opportunity. Other storms were observed in 1977, 1982, 1994, and 2001. There’ve been many more of them, but we weren’t able to see them without orbiters and current telescope technology. And Earth hasn’t always been in a good position to view them.
These two images show dust build-up on NASA’s Opportunity rover in 2014. In January, a dust storm left a layer of dust on Opportunity’s solar panels (left.) By late March, the wind had blown most of it away. (right) Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.
Global dust storms have left their imprint on the early exploration of Mars. In 1971, NASA’s Mariner 9 orbiter reached Mars, and was greeted by a global dust storm that made it impossible to image the planet. Only two weeks later, the Soviet Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions arrived at Mars, and sent their landers to the surface.
Mars 2 crashed into the planet and was destroyed, but Mars 3 made it to the surface and landed softly. That made Mars 3 the first craft to land on Mars. However, it failed after only 14.5 seconds, likely because of the global dust storm. So not only was Mars 3 the first craft to land on Mars, it was also the first craft to be destroyed by a global dust storm.
If we had been able to forecast the global dust storm of 1971, Mars 3 may have been a successful mission. Who knows how that may have changed the history of Martian exploration?
James Shirley’s paper shows a pattern in global dust storms on Mars based on the orbit of Mars, and on the changing momentum of Mars as the gravity of other planets acts on it.
Mars takes about 1.8 years to orbit the Sun, but its momentum change caused by other planets’ gravity is in a 2.2 year cycle. The relationship between these two cycles is always changing.
This graphic indicates a similarity between 2016 (dark blue line) and five past years in which Mars has experienced a global dust storm (orange lines and band), compared to years with no global dust storm (blue-green lines and band). The arrow nearly midway across in the dark blue line indicates the Mars time of year in late September 2016. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
What Shirley found is that global dust storms occur while Mars’ momentum is increasing during the first part of the dust storm season. When looking back at our historical record of Martian global dust storms, he found that none of them occurred in years when the momentum was decreasing during the first part of the dust storm season.
Shirley’s paper found that current conditions on Mars are also very similar to other times when global dust storms occurred. Since we are much more capable of watching Mars than at any time in the past, we should be able to quickly confirm if Shirley’s understanding of Martian weather is correct.
NASA's MSL Curiosity. NASA is the only agency to successfully place a lander on Mars. This self portrait shows Curiosity doing its thing on Mars. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
We may be living in the Golden Age of Mars Exploration. With multiple orbiters around Mars and two functioning rovers on the surface of the red planet, our knowledge of Mars is growing at an unprecedented rate. But it hasn’t always been this way. Getting a lander to Mars and safely onto the surface is a difficult challenge, and many landers sent to Mars have failed.
The joint ESA/Roscosmos Mars Express mission, and its Chiaparelli lander, is due at Mars in only 15 days. Now’s a good time to look at the challenges in getting a lander to Mars, and also to look back at the many failed attempts.
A model of the Schiaparelli lander. The lander is part of the ExoMars mission. By Pline – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26837226
For now, NASA has the bragging rights as the only organization to successfully land probes on Mars. And they’ve done it several times. But they weren’t the first ones to try. The Soviet Union tried first.
The USSR sent several probes to Mars starting back in the 1960s. They made their first attempt in 1962, but that mission failed to launch. That failure illustrates the first challenge in getting a craft to land on Mars: rocketry. We’re a lot better at rocketry than we were back in the 1960’s, but mishaps still happen.
Then in 1971, the Soviets sent a pair of probes to Mars called Mars 2 and Mars 3. They were both orbiters with detachable landers destined for the Martian surface. The fate of Mars 2 and Mars 3 provides other illustrative examples of the challenges in getting to Mars.
Mars 2 separated from its orbiter successfully, but crashed into the surface and was destroyed. The crash was likely caused by its angle of descent, which was too steep. This interrupted the descent sequence, which meant the parachute failed to deploy. So Mars 2 has the dubious distinction of being the first man-made object to reach Mars.
Mars 3 was exactly the same as Mars 2. The Soviets liked to do missions in pairs back then, for redundancy. Mars 3 separated from its orbiter and headed for the Martian surface, and through a combination of aerodynamic breaking, rockets, and parachutes, it became the first craft to make a soft landing on Mars. So it was a success, sort of.
A model of the Mars 3 lander with its petals open after landing. By NASA – http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/spacecraft/mars3_lander_vsm.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14634254
But after only 14.5 seconds of data transmission, it went quiet and was never heard from again. The cause was likely an intense dust storm. In an odd turn of events, NASA’s Mariner 9 orbiter reached Mars only days before Mars 2 and 3, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. It captured images of the planet-concealing dust storms, above which only the volcanic Olympus Mons could be seen. These images provided an explanation for the failure of Mars 3.
This image from the Mariner 9 orbiter shows Olympus Mons above the dust storms that concealed much of the planet when it arrived at Mars in 1971. Image: NASA
In 1973, the Soviets tried again. They sent four craft to Mars, two of which were landers, named Mars 6 and Mars 7. Mars 6 failed on impact, but Mars 7’s fate was perhaps a little more tragic. It missed Mars completely, by about 1300 km, and is in a helicentric orbit to this day. In our day and age, we just assume that our spacecraft will go where we want them to, but Mars 7 shows us that it can all go wrong. After all, Mars is a moving target.
In the 1970s, NASA was fresh off the success of their Apollo Program, and were setting their sites on Mars. They developed the Viking program which saw 2 landers, Viking 1 and Viking 2, sent to Mars. Both of them were probe/lander configurations, and both landers landed successfully on the surface of Mars. The Vikings sent back beautiful pictures of Mars that caused excitement around the world.
The Viking 2 lander captured this image of itself on the Martian surface. By NASA – NASA website; description,[1] high resolution image.[2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17624
In 1997, NASA’s Martian Pathfinder made it to Mars and landed successfully. Pathfinder itself was stationary, but it brought a little rover called Sojourner with it. Sojourner explored the immediate landing area around Pathfinder. Sojourner became the first rover to operate on another planet.
Pathfinder was able to send back over 16,000 images of Mars, along with its scientific data. It was also a proof of concept mission for technologies such as automated obstacle avoidance and airbag mediated touchdown. Pathfinder helped lay the groundwork for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. That means Spirit and Opportunity.
An artist’s conception of Spirit/Opportunity working on Mars. By NASA/JPL/Cornell University, Maas Digital LLC – http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA04413 (image link), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=565283
But after Pathfinder, and before Spirit and Opportunity, came a time of failure for Martian landing attempts. Everybody took part in the failure, it seems, with Russia, Japan, the USA, and the European Space Agency all experiencing bitter failure. Rocket failures, engineering errors, and other terminal errors all contributed to the failure.
Japan’s Nozomi orbiter ran out of fuel before ever reaching Mars. NASA’s Mars Polar Lander failed its landing attempt. NASA’s Deep Space 2, part of the Polar Lander mission, failed its parachute-less landing and was never heard from. The ESA’s Beagle 2 lander made it to the surface, but two of its solar panels failed to deploy, ending its mission. Russian joined in the failure again, with its Phobos-Grunt mission, which was actually headed for the Martian moon Phobos, to retrieve a sample and send it back to Earth.
In one infamous failure, engineers mixed up the use of English units with Metric units, causing NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter to burn up on entry. These failures show us that failure is not rare. It’s difficult and challenging to get to the surface of Mars.
After this period of failure, NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers were both unprecedented successes. They landed on the Martian surface in January 2004. Both exceeded their planned mission length of three months, and Opportunity is still going strong now.
So where does that leave us now? NASA is the only one to have successfully landed a rover on Mars and have the rover complete its mission. But the ESA and Russia are determined to get there.
The Schiaparelli lander, as part of the ExoMars mission, is primarily a proof of technology mission. In fact, its full name is the Schiaparelli EDM lander, meaning Entry, Descent, and Landing Demonstrator Module.
It will have some small science capacity, but is really designed to demonstrate the ability to enter the Martian atmosphere, descend safely, and finally, to land on the surface. In fact, it has no solar panels or other power source, and will only carry enough battery power to survive for 2-8 days.
Schiaparelli faces the same challenges as other craft destined for Mars. Once launched successfully, which it was, it had to navigate its way to Mars. That took about 6 months, and since ExoMars is only 15 days away from arrival at Mars, it looks like it has successfully made its way their. But perhaps the trickiest part comes next: atmospheric entry.
Schiaparelli is like most Martian craft. It will make a ballistic entry into the Martian atmosphere, and this has to be done right. There is no room for error. The angle of entry is the key here. If the angle is too steep, Schiaparelli may overheat and burn up on entry. On the other hand, if the angle is too shallow, it could hit the atmosphere and bounce right back into space. There’ll be no second chance.
The entry and descent sequence is all pre-programmed. It will either work or it won’t. It would take way too long to send any commands to Schiaparelli when it is entering and descending to Mars.
If the entry is successful, the landing comes next. The exact landing location is imprecise, because of wind speed, turbulence, and other factors. Like other craft sent to Mars, Schiaparelli’s landing site is defined as an ellipse.
Schiaparelli will land somewhere in this defined ellipse on the surface of Mars. Image: IRSPS/TAS-I
The lander will be travelling at over 21,000 km/h when it reaches Mars, and will have only 6 or 7 minutes to descend. At that speed, Schiaparelli will have to withstand extreme heating for 2 or 3 minutes. It’s heat shield will protect it, and will reach temperatures of several thousand degrees Celsius.
It will decelerate rapidly, and at about 10km altitude, it will have slowed to approximately 1700 km/h. At that point, a parachute will deploy, which will further slow the craft. After the parachute slows its descent, the heat shield will be jettisoned.
Schiaparelli’s Descent and Landing Sequence. Image: ESA/ATG medialab. Click here for larger image.
On Earth, a parachute would be enough to slow a descending craft. But with Mars’ less dense atmosphere, rockets are needed for the final descent. An onboard radar will monitor Schiaparelli’s altitude as it approaches the surface, and rockets will fire to slow it to a few meters per second in preparation for landing.
In the final moments, the rockets will stop firing, and a short free-fall will signal Schiaparelli’s arrival on Mars. If all goes according to plan, of course.
We won’t have much longer to wait. Soon we’ll know if the ESA and Russia will join NASA as the only agencies to successfully land a craft on Mars. Or, if they’ll add to the long list of failed attempts.
Elon Musk on stage at his September 27th presentation at the IAC. Image: SpaceX
When Elon Musk speaks publicly about SpaceX and their efforts to make space travel less expensive, people listen. He attracts all kinds of scientists and journalists to his presentations. But he also attracts… other types of people. And those people ask some strange questions.
Musk must be getting used to it by now. He’s one of those public figures that, by virtue of his efforts to bring the future closer, attracts a lot of interest. But some of the questions in the Q&A following his presentation on Sept. 27 were truly bizarre.
Anybody could stand in line at one of the microphones in the audience and ask their question. And ask they did.
One man started off by saying he just recently attended Burning Man in the desert. Mars is like one big desert, he said, with no water to wash away all the sewage. What will future Mars colonists do with all their s**t he asked?
I felt bad for the guy. Here was his chance to ask Musk, who is clearly some sort of hero the guy, any question about space travel. And he chose to ask about poop. It was truly cringe-worthy, but Musk handled it well. He must be used to it.
Elon Musk looking perplexed after being grilled about Martian toilets. Image: SpaceX
It’s not like it’s not a legitimate concern, way down the line, if we ever do establish a city. But good grief. Musk was there to talk about the Interplanetary Transport System, not the nuts and bolts of city planning. It’s clear that this gentleman travelled all that way just to ask about sewage. Fail. (Jump to 1:06:30 in the video for that bit of magic.)
Another person asked everyone to give Elon a hand because he “Inspires the s**t out of us!” (At 1:10:35 in the video.) Musk looked uncomfortable. I don’t think he likes the hero-worship part of his gig. The guy then tried to give him a comic book about Mars, but complained that security wouldn’t let him. Ummmm, yeah.
One person complained that SpaceX won’t hire internationally, and how can they claim to be going interplanetary when they won’t even hire from other countries? Musk patiently explained that when it comes to rocketry, the government tightly restricts who is allowed to come from other countries to work on projects. Rocketry is governed by the same rules as weaponry, as it turns out. Thanks for explaining, Elon.
There were others. One lady wanted to come upstairs and give him a kiss, on behalf of all the ladies. Another asked if they were going to mathematically determine the most expendable human on Earth, and send them to Mars? That gem is 1:16:45 in the video. BTW, that guy thought it would be Michael Cera. Huh?
The same guy wanted to pitch a comedy video to him after the presentation. He was, unfortunately, turned down.
Another guy, who called himself a “local idiot” asked if Elon himself was planning on going to Mars. The guy said he would’ve hated to put in all this work and then not go. Musk’s answer was, in short, that he would like to go, but only if a good succession plan was in place in case he perished. That way the company’s work could continue.
There were some good questions too, of course. Questions about launch site for the craft, where it will be manufactured, and other pertinent questions around who should be the first people to go. Others asked about the journey itself, and how travellers would be kept safe from radiation and other hazards. So the Q&A wasn’t a waste of time by any means.
The whole presentation is worth watching, if you haven’t already. For those of you who just want to watch the wackiest parts of the Q&A, you’re in luck. There’s a highlight video.
SpaceX's newly revealed Interplanetary Transit System will make travel to Mars, and other destinations in our Solar System, possible. Image: SpaceX
Today, Elon Musk elaborated on his plans to make humanity a planet-faring species. We’ve known for a long time that Mars is SpaceX’s destination, but the fine details haven’t been revealed. In today’s talk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Musk revealed a game-changer for travel to Mars, and beyond.
If anyone has ever guessed that Musk’s plans involved a refuelling ship, I’ve never heard them say it out loud. But that’s exactly what Musk revealed. SpaceX plans to launch a Mars-bound craft into orbit, then launch a refuelling craft to refill the interplanetary ship’s fuel tanks. Only then would the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) depart for Mars.
SpaceX’s proposed system is all about lowering the cost of travel to Mars. Only when the cost is lowered, does a sustained presence there become realistic. And Musk’s ITS system will definitely lower the cost.
Traditional space travel would cost $10 billion to get one person to Mars. Musk said that they can get it down to the median cost of a house in the US, about $200,000 US. The idea is that anyone who really wanted to could save up enough money and go to Mars. Musk did acknowledge that it will be tricky to reduce the cost of the Earth to Mars trip by a whopping 5 million percent.
There are four keys to reducing the cost:
full reusability
refilling in orbit
propellant production on Mars
right propellant
The ITS would feature reusable boosters, reusable spaceships, and refuelling in orbit. The interplanetary ship would be launched into orbit around Earth and parked there. Fuel ships would make 3 to 5 trips to fill the tank of the interplanetary ship waiting in orbit. From there, Musk thinks that the trip to Mars could take as little as 80 days. In the more distant future, that could be cut to 30 days.
The ITS requires an extraordinarily powerful booster, featuring 42 of SpaceX’s Raptor engines. Image: SpaceX
If this whole system isn’t shocking enough, and thrilling enough, for you, Musk has more than just one of these craft in mind. He imagines a fleet of them, perhaps 1,000, travelling en masse back and forth to Mars.
The ITS and its vital statistics. Image: SpaceX
The driving force behind all this is, of course, making Mars possible. In his presentation, Musk said we have two paths. One is to stay on Earth and face extinction from some doomsday event. The other is to become an interplanetary species, and use Mars to back up Earth’s biosphere. The SpaceX system is designed to make the second path possible.
Musk talked about the need to create a self-sustaining city in its own right. That obviously won’t happen right away, but it’ll never happen unless transport to Mars, and back, becomes feasible. With the proposed SpaceX system, Mars will be an option. Musk thinks that the ITS could also get us to one of the Jovian moons, if we could create fuel production and depots. In fact, he said we can probably go all the way to Pluto and beyond.
The ITS requires huge fuel tanks, one of which is seen here at SpaceX’s production facility. Image: SpaceX
There are a lot of challenges for this system. It’s far from a done deal. The system will require newer, more powerful engines. But SpaceX is already working on that. It’s called the Raptor, and testing has already begun.
Musk talked about the impressive exploration done on Mars by NASA and other agencies, but stressed that it’s time to take things further and aim for a sustained presence on Mars. To that end, SpaceX plans on sending a craft to Mars during every Earth-Mars opposition, which happens about every 2 years. Initially, that will be done with an unmanned Dragon capsule.
The mood at Musk’s presentation was one of excitement. The crowd was definitely there to see him. There was one humorous moment when Musk remarked “Timelines. I’m not the best at this sort of thing.” This is a nod to the difficulties with creating a timeline for something like the ITS. But really, what agency can adhere to strict schedules when doing something that’s never been done before? Especially in the realm of interplanetary travel?
The excitement surrounding Musk’s plans for travel to Mars is palpable. That’s understandable, considering the magnitude of what he’s talking about, and considering how long people have dreamed of going to Mars. The fact that someone with a track record like SpaceX’s is starting to lay the groundwork for travel to, and a presence on Mars, is exciting. There’s no way around it.
But there are lots of questions. Musk is the first to admit that he doesn’t have all the answers. He says up front that he sees his role as developing the transport system. Once that is moving ahead, others will address the challenges of establishing a presence on Mars.
One of the primary questions is around energy, and there are two sides to that. Fuel processing will have to be established quickly on Mars if the ships are to return to Earth.
This slide from Musk’s presentation show some of the considerations around producing fuel on Mars. Image: SpaceX
Musk also talked about the three possible fuel types to be derived on Mars.
This slide from Musk’s presentation shows the availability/desirability of the three types of fuel that could be derived from Mars. Image: SpaceX
The ITS ships will be able to carry a large payload, so it’s possible that the parts and pieces for a fuel plant could be pre-built somehow, then sent to Mars. There is an enormous amount of detail missing when it comes right down to it, but human ingenuity being what it is, this may be solvable.
Assuming that a rocket fuel plant could be assembled on Mars, that begs the second energy question. Creating this fuel will in itself require lots of energy. Much more than solar can provide. Musk briefly mentioned the possibility of nuclear energy, but didn’t go into detail. That’s understandable, because he clearly sees his role as developing the transportation system.
Establishing nuclear energy on Mars would also require a lot of infrastructure. On Earth, uranium processing is an enormous task. How will that be done on Mars? Is there enough uranium in Mars’ crust? Conventional atomic reactors use water, lots of it, to produce energy. Where will that water come from on Mars? Will the same amount be needed?
Or will thorium reactors be used? If you’re not up on thorium reactors, they are different than uranium reactors and are worth reading about. They use thorium for fuel, not uranium, and are different in other ways. They’re safer and produce less waste, but is there sufficient thorium available on Mars? Thorium is much more plentiful in Earth’s crust than uranium.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are being developed for use on Earth. They are built in one location, then moved to their operational location. They can be linked together and require less sophisticated operators. Perhaps SMRs using thorium will provide the energy required for the ITS to work.
These questions are all important of course, and they bear thinking about. But one thing that can’t be denied is Musk’s vision. Anyone that wants humanity to survive, or that grew up reading science fiction, will love what Musk is doing. For that matter, anyone with a sense of adventure will love Musk.
Musk’s overall vision of us as a planet-faring species is something that will be a long time coming, I think. Fleets of interplanetary cargo ships plying the solar system, with fuelling depots along the way. An established human presence on Mars, the Moon, and perhaps the moons of the gas giants, and all the way out to Pluto.
It seems like a fanciful dream, but remember what Musk said at the start of his presentation. There are really only two paths. The first is to restrict ourselves to Earth, and die at the hands of some sort of extinction event.
The second path is to head outward and expand throughout the solar system.
It’s not science fiction anymore. It’s simple survival.
NASA will make a “surprising” announcement about Jupiter’s moon Europa on Monday, Sept. 26th, at 2:00 PM EDT. They haven’t said much, other than there is “surprising evidence of activity that may be related to the presence of a subsurface ocean on Europa.” Europa is a prime target for the search for life because of its subsurface ocean.
The new evidence is from a “unique Europa observing campaign” aimed at the icy moon. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the images in these new findings, so maybe we’ll be treated to some more of the beautiful images that we’re accustomed to seeing from the Hubble.
Images from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft show the intricate detail of Europa’s icy surface. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ SETI Institute
We always welcome beautiful images, of course. But the real interest in Europa lies in its suitability for harboring life. Europa has a frozen surface, but underneath that ice there is probably an ocean. The frozen surface is thought to be about 10 – 30 km thick, and the ocean may be about 100 km (62 miles) thick. That’s a lot of water, perhaps double what Earth has, and that water is probably salty.
Back in 2012, the Hubble captured evidence of plumes of water vapor escaping from Europa’s south pole. Hubble didn’t directly image the water vapor, but it “spectroscopically detected auroral emissions from oxygen and hydrogen” according to a NASA news release at the time.
This artist’s illustration shows what plumes of water vapour might look like being ejected from Europa’s south pole. Image: NASA, ESA, L. Roth (Southwest Research Institute, USA/University of Cologne, Germany) and M. Kornmesser.
There are other lines of evidence that support the existence of a sub-surface ocean on Europa. But there are a lot of questions. Will the frozen top layer be several tens of kilometres thick, or only a few hundred meters thick? Will the sub-surface ocean be warm, liquid water? Or will it be frozen too, but warmer than the surface ice and still convective?
Two models of the interior of Europa. Image: NASA/JPL.
Hopefully, new evidence from the Hubble will answer these questions definitively. Stay tuned to Monday’s teleconference to find out what NASA has to tell us.
These are the scientists who will be involved in the teleconference:
Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington
William Sparks, astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore
Britney Schmidt, assistant professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta
Jennifer Wiseman, senior Hubble project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
The NASA website will stream audio from the teleconference.
![The Viking 2 lander captured this image of itself on the Martian surface. By NASA - NASA website; description,[1] high resolution image.[2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17624](https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/608px-Viking2lander1.jpg)
