Nancy Atkinson, Author at Universe Today

November 7, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

In Their Own Words: Apollo Astronauts say “We Went to the Moon”

Happy 40th Anniversary, Apollo 15! — Image from Apollo 15. Credit: NASA

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Someone approached me recently and wanted to ask about how the US faked going to the Moon back in the 1960’s and 70’s. I was so shocked, appalled and dumbfounded, I really didn’t know what to say. I just directed them to Phil Plait’s Moon Hoax Hoax info. Then I wondered, what do the Apollo astronauts say if someone asks them the same question? Now I know. I just finished watching “In the Shadow of the Moon,” a documentary of the Apollo era presented by Ron Howard, directed by David Sington (*correction). It’s a wonderful film with fantastic and rare footage along with interviews of several of the Apollo astronauts. I highly recommend it! And the end, as the credits are rolling, each of the astronauts responds to an unsaid question about the those who think this greatest adventure in human history was a hoax:

Mike Collins: “I don’t know how I would grab someone by the collar who didn’t believe and shake them and somehow change their mind.” And later Collins added, “I don’t know two Americans who could have a fantastic secret without one of them blurting it out to the press. Can you imagine thousands of people being able to keep this secret?”

Charlie Duke: “We’ve been to the moon nine times. If we faked it, why did we fake it nine times?”

Alan Bean: “Some of the tabloids are saying that we did this in a hanger in Arizona. Maybe that would have been a good idea!” (meaning, it would have been a lot safer)

Dave Scott: “Any significant event in history, somebody has had a conspiracy theory one way or the other about it.”

Gene Cernan: “Truth needs no defense. Nobody, nobody can ever take those footsteps that I made on the surface of the moon away from me.”

And Buzz Aldrin said this on a the UK TV show, “Where Are They Now:” “I’m an honest person. If I tell you I was on the moon and you choose not to believe it, forget it.”

The next time someone approaches me, I’ll be better prepared. And I can hardly wait for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s launch early next year. LRO will carry a powerful camera into low orbit over the Moon’s surface. While its primary mission is not to photograph old Apollo landing sites, it will probably photograph them, many times, providing the first recognizable images of Apollo relics since 1972.

The spacecraft’s high-resolution camera, the LROC, or Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, has a resolution of about half a meter. That means that a half-meter square on the Moon’s surface would fill a single pixel in its digital images.

Apollo moon rovers are about 2 meters wide and 3 meters long. So in the LROC images, those abandoned vehicles will fill about 4 by 6 pixels.

Check out “In the Shadow of the Moon” website.

November 7, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomers Discover Odd Kuiper Belt Pair

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Astronomers have discovered a pair of small Kuiper Belt Objects that are gravitationally bound to each other. This is somewhat unusual in itself. But even though these two objects are gravitationally connected, they have an enormous separation between them, about 125,000 kilometers (one third the distance from the Earth to the Moon). Astronomers say, as a comparison, this is equivalent to a pair of baseballs gravitationally “connected” and orbiting each other at a distance of 200 kilometers!

The extreme binary, 2001 QW322, orbits at 43 astronomical units or about 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun. The pair was originally discovered in August 2001 with the Canada-France-Hawai‘i Telescope. Since then, (from 2002-2007), the pair has been monitored closely using 8-meter-class telescopes (Gemini North, Gemini South and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope) to obtain high precision photometric observations of the faint double system.

In the above images, their separation was 1.8 arcseconds. Their radii are about 50 kilometers.
There are on the order of about a billion additional Kuiper Belt Objects in our solar system with Pluto and Charon being among the largest members of this important group of minor planets. These small icy bodies move in low eccentricity and low inclination orbits beyond Neptune, extending possibly as far as 1,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

Most Kuiper Belt Objects are single objects. The advent of adaptive optics and various survey techniques has created a surge in the discovery of binaries in the main asteroid and Kuiper belts. Astronomers say 2001 QW322 clearly stands out as the widest orbit, near-equal mass binary of the solar system.

Source: Gemini Observatory

November 7, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Deepest Ultraviolet Image Shows a Sea of Distant Galaxies

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Dive right in to this image that contains a sea of distant galaxies! The Very Large Telescope has obtained the deepest ground-based image in the ultraviolet band, and here, you can see this patch of the sky is almost completely covered by galaxies, each one, like our own Milky Way galaxy, and home of hundreds of billions of stars. A few notable things about this image: galaxies were detected that are a billion times fainter than the unaided eye can see, and also in colors not directly observable by the human eye. In this image, a large number of new galaxies were discovered that are so far away that they are seen as they were when the Universe was only 2 billion years old! Also…

This image contains more than 27 million pixels and is the result of 55 hours of observation, made primarily with the Visible Multi Object Spectrograph (VIMOS) instrument. To get the full glory of this image, here’s where you can download the full resolution version. It’s worth the wait while it downloads. Or click here to be able to zoom around the image.

In this sea of galaxies – or island universes as they are sometimes called – only a very few stars belonging to the Milky Way are seen. One of them is so close that it moves very fast on the sky. This “high proper motion star” is visible to the left of the second brightest star in the image. It appears as a funny elongated rainbow because the star moved while the data were being taken in the different filters over several years.

The VLT folks describe this image as a “uniquely beautiful patchwork image, with its myriad of brightly coloured galaxies.” It shows the Chandra Deep Field South (CDF-S), one of the most observed and best studied regions in the entire sky. The CDF-S is one of the two regions selected as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS), an effort of the worldwide astronomical community that unites the deepest observations from ground- and space-based facilities at all wavelengths from X-ray to radio. Its primary purpose is to provide astronomers with the most sensitive census of the distant Universe to assist in their study of the formation and evolution of galaxies.

The image encompasses 40 hours of observations with the VLT, just staring at the same region of the sky. The VIMOS R-band image was obtained co-adding a large number of archival images totaling 15 hours of exposure.

Source: ESO

November 6, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Are We Close to Finding Dark Matter?

Dark Matter Halo. Credit: Virgo Consortium

Scientists say he search for the mysterious substance which makes up most of the Universe could soon be at an end. A massive computer simulation was used to show the evolution of a galaxy like the Milky Way, and analysts were able to “see” gamma-rays given off by dark matter. Dark matter is believed to account for 85 per cent of the Universe’s mass but has remained invisible to telescopes since scientists inferred its existence from its gravitational effects more than 75 years ago. If the computations are correct, the findings could help NASA’s Fermi Telescope to search for the dark matter and open a new chapter in our understanding of the Universe.

The consortium of scientists, called Virgo Consortium looked at dark matter halos – structures surrounding galaxies – which contain a trillion times the mass of the Sun. The simulations showed how the galaxy’s halo grew through a series of violent collisions and mergers between much smaller clumps of dark matter that emerged from the Big Bang.

The researchers found that gamma-rays produced when particles collided in areas of high dark matter density could be most easily detectable in regions of the Milky Way lying close to the Sun in the general direction of the galaxy’s centre.

They suggest the Fermi Telescope should search in this part of the galaxy where they predict that gamma-rays from dark matter should glow in “a smoothly varying and characteristic pattern”.

If Fermi does detect the predicted emission from the Milky Way’s smooth inner halo the Virgo team believes it might be able to see otherwise invisible clumps of dark matter lying very close to the Sun.

The Virgo research involved scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, The Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University, UK, the University of Victoria in Canada, the University of Massachusetts, USA, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Professor Carlos Frenk, Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology, at Durham University, said: “Solving the dark matter riddle will be one of the greatest scientific achievements of our time.

“The search for dark matter has dominated cosmology for many decades. It may soon come to an end.”

Sources: EurekAlert, Virgo Consortium

November 6, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Floating Battle Droids On Board ISS

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Three free-flying spheres are currently zooming around inside the International Space Station. Is the crew of Expedition 18 using them to hone their light-saber battle skills a la Luke Skywalker or sharpen their ability to detect UFOs? No, these bowling-ball sized spherical satellites are part of an experiment devised by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to test autonomous rendezvous and docking maneuvers for future formation flying spacecraft. Called SPHERES – which stands for Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites — these color-coded robots are flying inside the ISS, testing different flight formations. But these have to be a lot of fun to play with during off hours on the space station: zero-g bowling or space volleyball, anyone?

Astronauts Greg Chamitoff, Mike Fincke and spaceflight participant Richard Garriott posed with SPHERES. Credit: NASA

Each satellite is self-contained with power, propulsion, computers and navigation equipment. The results are important for satellite servicing, vehicle assembly and formation flying spacecraft configurations. One future formation flying mission is the Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer, which will use multiple small vehicles flying in formation to create an orbiting infrared interferometer.

Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer array.

If successful, these mini-satellites, and their potentially larger versions, would be able to refuel/repair other satellites, establish positioning around space-based telescopes, and support space docking routines. So, battle droids would become maintenance droids.

And smaller, multiple satellite missions are economical and provide redundancy. Instead of launching one big, heavy satellite, launching lots of little is easier. They can orbit Earth in tandem, each doing their own small part of the overall mission. If a solar flare zaps one satellite—no problem. The rest can close ranks and carry on. Launch costs are reduced, too, because tiny satellites can hitch a ride inside larger payloads, getting to space almost free of charge.

The SPHERES can also test the ability to build spaceships in orbit. One way to build a larger ship to go to, for instance, Mars, is to assemble it piece by piece in Earth orbit. The SPHERES are helping engineers design software that could be used to maneuver the pieces of a spaceship together.

Sources: Science@NASA, NASA, MIT

November 6, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Chandrayaan-1 Closer to the Moon; Snaps First Lunar Shot

Artists impress of Chandrayaan-1 at the moon. Credit: ISRO

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Following the fifth and final orbit raising maneuver which put Chandrayaan-1 closer to the moon, the spacecraft snapped the first picture of its final destination. ~~This clear, crisp image of the moon~~ While the images are still being processed and are not available yet, mission managers says the images bode well for spacecraft’s mission to map the entire moon’s surface with its Terrain Mapping Camera. And all systems are go for the final maneuver on November 8, which will put Chandrayaan-1 in lunar orbit.

After launch on October 22, the spacecraft was first injected into an elliptical 7-hr orbit around Earth, at 255 km from Earth at perigee (its closest point) and 22,860 km away at apogee, its farthest point. After five engine firings, Chandrayaan-1 has spiraled outwards in increasingly elongated ellipses around Earth, until it reached its lunar transfer orbit on November 4.

Chandrayaan-1 in its lunar transfer orbit. Credit: ISRO

In the final maneuver, engineers fired the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid-fuel propelled engine for about two and a half minutes. The lunar transfer orbit’s farthest point from Earth is about 380,000 km.

On November 8, as it nears the moon, the spacecraft’s engine will be fired again to slow the spacecraft, allowing the moon’s gravity to capture it, and then it will go into an initial elliptical orbit around the moon. A group of engineers from JPL are assisting the engineers from India, acting as experienced back-up for the “first-time-flyers” from India. And everything has gone smoothly thus far.

The spacecraft will make observations from the initial orbit, and then the orbit will be lowered a 100 km circular polar orbit. Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) will be ejected, impacting the lunar surface. Then the main mission will begin with Chandrayaan-1 exploring the moon from orbit with its array of instruments for two years.

Source: Bharat Chronicle

November 5, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

PAMELA Results Mean Only One Thing: Please Trust the Scientific Process

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Scientists from the PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter/Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) orbiting spacecraft have published preliminary results, putting an end to months of speculation about the first direct detection of dark matter. The science team was, in essence, “forced” to publish before they had conclusive results because other scientists “pirated” data from the team. “We wanted to make our final results available to the scientific community once the data analysis was finalised,” PAMELA member Mirko Boezio said in an article in Physicsworld.com. “Given that our preliminary conference data are starting to be used by people, we felt this was a necessary step — not least because it provides a proper reference that correctly acknowledges the whole PAMELA collaboration and is available to the scientific community at large.” This is not the way the PAMELA team wanted to present their results, but really, they had no choice.

In a preprint on arXiv, the team says PAMELA has seen more positrons above a certain energy (10GeV) than can be explained by known physics. This excess seems to match what dark matter particles would produce if they were annihilating each other at the center of the galaxy. This excess, the authors say, “may constitute the first indirect evidence of dark-matter particle annihilations.” But they add that there could yet be other explanations, such as that positrons of this kind of energy can also be generated by nearby pulsars.

The science team will need to gather more data and do more work to be able to distinguish between the positron signature of dark matter annihilation and the positron signature of pulsars.

Two previous papers were published based on photos taken of slides of preliminary data that were shown at a science conference by the PAMELA team. See their papers here and here.

We humans are a curious and impatient lot. But we have to allow scientists to do their job, and do it the best way that science allows. Science done right does not mean secrecy or concealment. It means not speculating and waiting to announce results until proof positive. A similar event happened earlier this year with the Phoenix team and the detection of perchlorates. The Phoenix science team was forced to call a press conference to end all the speculation. Right now, the PAMELA team cannot say conclusively one way or the other whether they’ve made a direct detection of dark matter. Given enough time and more data, they will. Unless someone else steals the show again.

Sources: Physicsworld, arXiv, arXiv blog

November 5, 2008April 26, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

Microbial Life on the Moon?

Shackelton Crater (and Earth) as seen by Kaguya. Credit: JAXA

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One astrobiologist claims the deep, dark craters on the Moon might contain traces of early life from meteorites blasted off the Earth by asteroids billions of years ago. Joop Houtkooper, from the University of Giessen in Germany says studying these craters could reveal clues about the origin and evolution of life on Earth or even contain remnants of life from other planets in the Solar System, such as Mars. Houtkooper is also one of the few scientists who insist that the experiments done by the Viking Mars Landers in the 1970’s actually did reveal microbial life in the Martian soil, and earlier this year, Houtkooper predicted microbes could be detected by NASA’s Phoenix lander. So, could this new claim about microbes on the Moon be just the latest in a long series of contentious claims, or is Houtkooper onto something?

Houtkooper said the best place for finding evidence of life is on the moon is within the Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s south pole. Houtkooper presented his ideas at the recent 2008 European Planetary Science Congress in Germany. However, this was before results were released from the Japanese Kaguya lunar orbiter, which peered into Shackleton Crater and found no appreciable evidence of water ice. So, while ice on the moon hasn’t been ruled out completely, right now, the evidence isn’t there.

But Houtkooper said the evidence could come in the form of organic molecules, fossil remains, dead organisms, or even organisms in a dormant state that could be revived, such as bacterial spores. He said it is even possible that microbes could have survived for a short while after impact. Although there is no atmosphere to support life today, a temporary, thin atmosphere could have formed shortly after an impact event, as water and gases from the space rock vaporized, Houtkooper claimed.

The permanently shaded craters would be at almost a constant deep freeze temperature of -248ºC, ideal for freezing water and gases such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide or methane, and preserving traces of life undisturbed by sunlight and solar winds.

Other astrobiologists say the theory is possible, but would be a long shot.

“The microbial system on Earth extends to a depth of several kilometers into the crust, and so rocks blasted off the Earth by asteroid impacts could well have contained microbes,” said astrobiologist Malcolm Walter from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

“I’d be very conservative about this idea,” said Lewis Dartnell, an astrobiologist at University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom. “If, say, a comet landed right in the middle of a crater, then it’s possible”.

While Houtkooper agreed the idea is controversial, he maintains that there’s a good chance that remains of life could be found – and the latest mission to the Moon could provide the proof. India’s Chandrayaan-1 space probe launched in October will be specifically looking for ice deposits at the lunar poles.

“The long-existing knowledge about the Moon’s rotation axis implies that there are places in eternal shadow at the Moon’s poles,” Houtkooper said. “That means exceptionally low temperatures at, and some depth below, the surface there.”

Source: Cosmos Magazine

November 5, 2008December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe Challenge #28

Here’s your image for this week’s “Where In The Universe” challenge. Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. The new way we’re doing this challenge is that we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section — if you dare. Check back tomorrow on this same post (reminder: no new post tomorrow — come back to this one) to see how you did!

UPDATE (11/6): The answer has now been posted below. If you haven’t made your guess yet, no peeking before you do!!

I have to say, I am impressed with the knowledge of you UT readers! Great job! Yes, it is Tycho’s Supernova Remnant, taken by the Chandra spacecraft. This is a bubble of hot gaseous supernova debris (green and red) inside a more rapidly moving shell of extremely high-energy electrons (blue). These features were created as the supersonic expansion of the debris into interstellar gas produced two shock waves – one that moves outward and accelerates particles to high energies, and another that moves backward and heats the stellar debris. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, took this image in 2005.

Learn more about the image here.

And I’m sorry about the delay in posting the answer.

November 4, 2008June 15, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

NASA News Too Depressing for a Headline

OK, I give up. I’ve sat here for about a half an hour trying to come up with a headline for this news piece. Actually, there are three different news items I’m combining into one article. One is fairly good news, the other two are very depressing.

First the good news: Today, the first major flight hardware of the Ares I-X rocket arrived in Florida to begin preparation for the inaugural test flight of NASA’s next-generation launch system. But amid this tangible event of moving toward the future comes bad financial news about the Constellation program. Congressional investigators have concluded that the Constellation program is likely to cost $7 billion more than budgeted if it is going to be ready to fly by its target date of March 2015. Without extra money, it could be delayed by 18 months or more.

At the same time another report concludes that NASA would need an extra $2 billion a year to keep its shuttle fleet flying beyond 2010, a measure which would shorten the gap where NASA wouldn’t have a human rated vehicle available for access to space. But doing so would hamper plans to convert a launch pad and other facilities for moon missions, likely delaying Constellation even more.

More money for either Constellation or the shuttle program is just not in NASA’s budget, and shifting money around from other programs “would be disastrous,” NASA shuttle program manager John Shannon said. “What we’re trying to do is find a path that continues to keep Americans flying on American vehicles, but does not mortgage the future of manned space flight,” he said. “We really have to step back and think very hard about what we want the future to look like, and make sure that we’re not going to make it something that is not achievable.”

I need ideas for a headline for this article. Readers — comments?

Both Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama have said they would increase NASA’s budget by $2 billion to minimize the gap between shuttle retirement and the first piloted flights of Ares 1 rockets and Orion crew capsules. (This is being written before the election results are in.) But even that won’t be enough to solve all of the problems.

The Congressional Budget Office report listed several of problems facing the Ares I rocket and the Orion capsule, which NASA hopes will return astronauts to the moon by 2020. Among them are difficulties in developing an engine for Ares and a heat shield for Orion. “NASA has identified several problems associated with the Ares I that could delay successful development of the vehicle,” according to the 18-page report. Read the report here.

We’ve discussed all the issues previously on Universe Today, including intense shaking on liftoff, and concerns that Ares could crash into the launch gantry.

NASA officials said they were studying the report. But agency managers insist the program is on track.

At a news conference NASA held last week to counter reports of Constellation’s problems, Steve Cook, Ares project manager said, “The Ares I rocket is a sound design that not only meets the high safety standards required for a manned spacecraft, it is within budget, on schedule, and meets its performance requirements with margin.”

So what’s the real story? I’m not certain anymore. I desperately want to believe that the media (is that me, too?) overblowing the problems and NASA isn’t just looking through rose colored glasses. But the bad news keeps coming from all fronts.

NASA’s options other than the Ares appear limited.

One proposed option would extend the current space shuttle flight schedule through 2012, using the giant external fuel tanks and other hardware NASA has already planned to build. A second option calls for NASA to build more fuel tanks and hardware to keep flying three shuttle missions per year until 2015.

The CBO report also cautioned that the cost of more shuttle flights could only hurt Constellation under NASA’s limited budget.

Even by throwing more money at Constellation, the investigators also don’t think that NASA could speed up Constellation’s development, at least in the near term. They said NASA told them that “additional funding can no longer significantly change” the March 2015 target date of a first launch.

Even so, the Orlando Sentinel reports that NASA is looking at radical changes in the program to see if it can speed up development.

According to former astronaut Eileen Collins, currently a member of the NASA Advisory Council, one option under consideration would eliminate features needed to go to the moon and turn it a simple craft that could ferry crew and cargo to the space station. That would mean further delays for the real reason for Constellation: returning to the moon.

I thought we had some good news about Constellation last week. But this seems depressing. Too depressing for a headline.

Sources: NASA, Orlando Sentinel, Florida Today