Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Cassini Is About To Graze Saturn’s Rings In Mission Endgame

A lovely view of Saturn and its rings as seen by the Cassini spacecraft on Aug. 12, 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

There is a Twitter-bot that randomly tweets out “NOOOOOOOO Cassini can’t be ending!” (with varying amounts of “O’s”). @CassiniNooo represents the collective sigh of sadness and consternation felt by those of us who can’t believe the the historic and extensive Cassini mission will be over in just a matter of months.

And next week is the beginning of the end for Cassini.

On November 30, Cassini will begin a phase of the mission that the science team calls “Cassini’s Ring-Grazing Orbits,” as the spacecraft will start skimming past the outer edge of the rings, coming within – at times — 4,850 miles (7,800 kilometers) of the rings.

“The scientific return will be incredible,” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, told me earlier this year. “We’ll be studying things we just couldn’t do any other place.”

Between November 30, 2016 and April 22, 2017 Cassini will circle high over and under the poles of Saturn, diving every seven days for a total of 20 times through the unexplored region at the outer edge of the main rings.

During the close passes, Cassini’s instruments will attempt to directly sample the icy ring particles and molecules of faint gases that are found close to the rings. Cassini will also capture some of the best high-resolution images of the rings, and garner the best views ever of the small moons Atlas, Pan, Daphnis and Pandora, which orbit near the rings’ outer edges.

During the first two ring-grazing orbits, the spacecraft will pass directly through an extremely faint ring produced by tiny meteors striking the two small moons Janus and Epimetheus. Later ring crossings in March and April will send the spacecraft through the dusty outer reaches of the F ring.

“Even though we’re flying closer to the F ring than we ever have, … there’s very little concern over dust hazard at that range,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL.

Of course, the ultimate ‘endgame’ is that Cassini will plunge into Saturn with its “Grand Finale,” ending the mission on September 15, 2017. Since Cassini is running out of fuel, destroying the spacecraft is necessary to ensure “planetary protection,” making sure any potential microbes from Earth that may still be attached to the spacecraft don’t contaminate any of Saturn’s potentially habitable moons.

This graphic illustrates the Cassini spacecraft's trajectory, or flight path, during the final two phases of its mission. The view is toward Saturn as seen from Earth. The 20 ring-grazing orbits are shown in gray; the 22 grand finale orbits are shown in blue. The final partial orbit is colored orange. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
This graphic illustrates the Cassini spacecraft’s trajectory, or flight path, during the final two phases of its mission. The view is toward Saturn as seen from Earth. The 20 ring-grazing orbits are shown in gray; the 22 grand finale orbits are shown in blue. The final partial orbit is colored orange. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

To prepare for the Grand Finale, Cassini engineers have been slowly adjusting the spacecraft’s orbit since January of this year, doing maneuvers and burns of the engine to bring Cassini into the right orbit so that it can ultimately dive repeatedly through the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings, before making its mission-ending plunge. During some of those final orbits, Cassini will pass as close as 1,012 miles (1,628 kilometers) above the cloudtops of Saturn.

One question for Cassini’s engineering team is how much fuel is actually left in the tank for Cassini’s main engines, which do the majority of the work for orbit adjustments. Each time they’ve used the main engines this past year, the team has held their breath, hoping there is enough fuel.

One final burn of the main engine remains, on December 4. This maneuver is important for fine-tuning the orbit and setting the correct course to enable the remainder of the mission, said Maize.

“This will be the 183rd and last currently planned firing of our main engine,” he said. “Although we could still decide to use the engine again, the plan is to complete the remaining maneuvers using thrusters,” said Maize.

A montage of images from Cassini of various moons and the rings around Saturn. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
A montage of images from Cassini of various moons and the rings around Saturn. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

When I visited with Maize and Spilker earlier this year, Spilker wistfully said that they had begun to experience some of the “lasts” of the mission — the final flyby of Enceladus and other moons. And there’s one big “last” coming up: on Nov. 29, 2016, Cassini will come within 6,800 miles (11,000 km) of Titan, the final flyby of this eerily Earthlike but yet totally alien moon.

This final flyby, named Flyby T-125 has two primary goals: Mapmaking of Titan’s surface, and enabling the change in Cassini’s orbit to begin the end of the mission. But it also might be the most daring and thrilling part of Cassini’s nearly 20-year mission.

But still ….. NOOOOOO!

Keep track of Cassini’s latest endeavours at the Cassini website

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Soar Over Ceres With New Images From the Dawn Spacecraft

This image of the limb of dwarf planet Ceres shows a section of the northern hemisphere. Prominently featured is Occator Crater, home of Ceres' intriguing brightest areas. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

There’s one thing that could mean the end of the Dawn mission: if the hydrazine fuel for its maneuvering thruster system runs out. Now, engineers for the Dawn mission have figured out a way to save on this fuel while still sending Dawn to a new science orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. They are effectively extending the mission while expanding on the science Dawn can do.

And in the meantime, Dawn’s cameras can take stunning new images, like the one above of Occator Crater on Ceres and its intriguing, mysterious bright regions.

“This image captures the wonder of soaring above this fascinating, unique world that Dawn is the first to explore,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This image has the cameras on the Dawn spacecraft looking straight down at Occator Crater on Ceres, with its signature bright areas. Dawn scientists have found that the central bright spot, which harbors the brightest material on Ceres, contains a variety of salts. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This image has the cameras on the Dawn spacecraft looking straight down at Occator Crater on Ceres, with its signature bright areas. Dawn scientists have found that the central bright spot, which harbors the brightest material on Ceres, contains a variety of salts. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Dawn started making its way to a sixth science orbit earlier this month, raising its orbital height to over 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers) from Ceres. For previous changes in its orbit, Dawn needed to make several changes in direction while it spiraled either higher or lower. But Dawn’s ever-ingenious engineers have figured out a way for the spacecraft to arrive at this next orbit while the ion engine thrusts in the same direction that Dawn is already going. This uses less hydrazine and xenon fuel than Dawn’s normal spiral maneuvers.

Previously, Dawn’s engineers have done things nothing short of miraculous, such as figuring out how to operate the spacecraft with only two reaction wheels (when at least three are needed, normally), they have developed new, emergency flight paths on short notice, and they keep figuring out ways to conserve the hydrazine. Earlier in the mission, they analyzed more than 50 different options to figure out how to reduce their fuel usage by a whopping 65 percent.

Occator Crater, with its central bright region and other reflective areas, provides evidence of recent geologic activity. The latest research suggests that the bright material in this crater is comprised of salts left behind after a briny liquid emerged from below, froze and then sublimated, meaning it turned from ice into vapor.

The impact that formed the crater millions of years ago unearthed material that blanketed the area outside the crater, and may have triggered the upwelling of salty liquid.

Another new image from Dawn scientists at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin shows how the dwarf planet’s colors would appear to the human eye. The color was calculated based on the way Ceres reflects different wavelengths of light.

This image of Ceres approximates how the dwarf planet's colors would appear to the eye. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This image of Ceres approximates how the dwarf planet’s colors would appear to the eye. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Dawn scientists say that one goal of Dawn’s sixth science orbit is to refine previously collected measurements. The spacecraft’s gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, which has been investigating the composition of Ceres’ surface, will characterize the radiation from cosmic rays unrelated to Ceres. This will allow scientists to subtract “noise” from measurements of Ceres, making the information more precise.

This image of the limb of dwarf planet Ceres shows a section of the northern hemisphere. A shadowy portion of Occator Crater can be seen at the lower right -- its bright "spot" areas are outside of the frame of view. Part of Kaikara Crater (45 miles, 72 kilometers in diameter) is visible at top left. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This image of the limb of dwarf planet Ceres shows a section of the northern hemisphere. A shadowy portion of Occator Crater can be seen at the lower right — its bright “spot” areas are outside of the frame of view. Part of Kaikara Crater (45 miles, 72 kilometers in diameter) is visible at top left. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The spacecraft has gathered tens of thousands of images and other information from Ceres since arriving in orbit on March 6, 2015. After spending more than eight months studying Ceres at an altitude of about 240 miles (385 kilometers), closer than the International Space Station is to Earth, Dawn headed for a higher vantage point in August. Then, in October, Dawn raised its orbit to about 920-mile (1,480 km) altitude, returning more images and other valuable data about Ceres.

Thanks to the ingenuity of Dawn’s engineers, we’ll have more time to study Ceres.

See all of Dawn’s latest images here.

Oxo Crater and its surroundings are featured in this image of Ceres' surface from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Dawn took this image on Oct. 18, 2016, from its second extended-mission science orbit (XMO2), at a distance of about 920 miles (1,480 kilometers) above the surface. The image resolution is about 460 feet (140 meters) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Oxo Crater and its surroundings are featured in this image of Ceres’ surface from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Dawn took this image on Oct. 18, 2016, from its second extended-mission science orbit (XMO2), at a distance of about 920 miles (1,480 kilometers) above the surface. The image resolution is about 460 feet (140 meters) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft features a lobe-shaped flow feature in Ghanan Crater on Ceres. The flow feature is a place where a crater rim has collapse and material has flowed across the surface. Several small craters are visible on top of the flow; the number of craters can help scientists estimate the feature's age. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
This view from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft features a lobe-shaped flow feature in Ghanan Crater on Ceres. The flow feature is a place where a crater rim has collapse and material has flowed across the surface. Several small craters are visible on top of the flow; the number of craters can help scientists estimate the feature’s age. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Pluto Has a Subsurface ‘Antifreeze’ Ocean

New Horizon's July 2015 flyby of Pluto captured this iconic image of the heart-shaped region called Tombaugh Regio. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

The evidence keeps growing for a large subsurface ocean at Pluto, which also provides clues how the iconic ‘heart’ of Pluto was formed.

We reported in early October that thermal models of Pluto’s interior and tectonic evidence suggest an ocean may exist beneath Pluto’s heart-shaped Sputnik Planitia. Now, new research on data from the New Horizons mission shows more indications of an ocean just below Pluto’s surface that consists of a slushy, viscous liquid, kept warm from Pluto’s interior and a hint of anti-freeze.

“As far as we can tell, there’s no tidal heating helping to keep the ocean liquid,” Francis Nimmo from UC Santa Cruz told Universe Today. He is the first author of a paper on the new findings published today in Nature. “The main heat source keeping the ocean liquid is radioactive decay in Pluto’s rocky interior, although it certainly helps if there is an ‘antifreeze’ present.”

This cutaway image of Pluto shows a section through the area of Sputnik Planitia, with dark blue representing a subsurface ocean and light blue for the frozen crust. Artwork by Pam Engebretson, courtesy of UC Santa Cruz.
This cutaway image of Pluto shows a section through the area of Sputnik Planitia, with dark blue representing a subsurface ocean and light blue for the frozen crust. Artwork by Pam Engebretson, courtesy of UC Santa Cruz.

Nimmo said he suspects the ocean is mostly water with ammonia acting as an antifreeze. This subsurface ocean is also bulging, similar to the ‘mascons’ on the Moon, putting stress on Pluto’s icy outer shell, causing fractures consistent with features seen in the New Horizons images.

Another paper also published in Nature today from James Keane at the University of Arizona, also shows how a bulging subsurface ocean made Pluto’s heart ‘heavy,’ reorienting Pluto on its axis, so that Pluto’s heart is always pointing away from the moon Charon.

High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015, reveal features as small as 270 yards (250 meters) across, from craters to fractures and faulted mountain blocks, to the textured surface of the vast basin informally called Sputnik Planitia. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
High-resolution images of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft just before closest approach on July 14, 2015, reveal features as small as 270 yards (250 meters) across, from craters to fractures and faulted mountain blocks, to the textured surface of the vast basin informally called Sputnik Planitia. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI

Sputnik Planitia forms one side of the prominent heart-shaped feature seen in some of the first close-up images from New Horizons July 2015 flyby. It was likely created by the impact of a giant meteorite, which would have blasted away a huge amount of Pluto’s icy crust.

But a deep basin is just a “big, elliptical hole in the ground,” Nimmo said, that would not provide the extra mass needed to cause that kind of reorientation. “So, the extra weight must be hiding somewhere beneath the surface. And an ocean is a natural way to get that.”

These schematic diagrams show how the gravity anomaly at Sputnik Planitia is affected by an uplifted ocean and the thickness of the nitrogen layer. Either a nitrogen layer more than 40 km thick (panel b) or an uplifted ocean (panel c) could result in a present-day positive gravity anomaly at Sputnik Planitia; otherwise, the gravity anomaly will be strongly negative (panel a). (Image from Nimmo et al., Nature, 2016)
These schematic diagrams show how the gravity anomaly at Sputnik Planitia is affected by an uplifted ocean and the thickness of the nitrogen layer. Either a nitrogen layer more than 40 km thick (panel b) or an uplifted ocean (panel c) could result in a present-day positive gravity anomaly at Sputnik Planitia; otherwise, the gravity anomaly will be strongly negative (panel a). (Image from Nimmo et al., Nature, 2016)

But Pluto is cold, with temperatures ranging from -387 to -369 Fahrenheit (-233 to -223 Celsius). How could there be an ocean?

“Pluto is small enough that it’s just about almost cooled off but still has a little heat, and it’s about 2 percent the heat budget of the Earth, in terms of how much energy is coming out,” said co-author Richard Binzel, from MIT. “So we calculated Pluto’s size with its interior heat flow, and found that underneath Sputnik Planitia, at those temperatures and pressures, you could have a zone of water-ice that could be at least viscous. It’s not a liquid, flowing ocean, but maybe slushy. And we found this explanation was the only way to put the puzzle together that seems to make any sense.”

The massive basin also appears extremely bright relative to the rest of the planet, and the data from New Horizons suggest it is filled with frozen nitrogen ice.

Previous research from the the mission showed evidence that the liquid nitrogen may be constantly refreshing, or convecting, as a result of a weak spot at the bottom of the basin, and this weak spot may let heat rise through Pluto’s interior to continuously refresh the ice.

Additionally, the extra weight of an underground ocean could help explain the longstanding question of why Pluto’s heart aligns almost exactly opposite from Charon. Nimmo said this alignment is “suspicious” and that the likelihood of this being just a coincidence is only 5 percent. Therefore, the alignment suggests that extra mass in that location interacted with tidal forces between Pluto and Charon to reorient Pluto, putting Sputnik Planitia directly opposite the side facing Charon.

A thick, heavy ocean, the new data suggest, may have served as a “gravitational anomaly,” which would factor heavily in Pluto and Charon’s gravitational tug-of-war, the researchers said. Over millions of years, the planet would have spun around, aligning its subsurface ocean and the heart-shaped region above it, almost exactly opposite along the line connecting Pluto and Charon.

While scientists are still studying the data from New Horizons, it is safe to say that Pluto keeps surprising everyone, even the scientists who know it best.

“Pluto is hard to fathom on so many different levels,” said Binzel.

Further reading:
UC Santa Cruz
MIT
Nature Paper: Reorientation of Sputnik Planitia implies a subsurface ocean on Pluto
Nature Paper: Reorientation and faulting of Pluto due to volatile loading within Sputnik Planitia

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

November 2016 Super Moon Images from Around the World

Moonrise over the London, as see from Waterloo Bridge on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Owen Llewellyn.

Now updated with more great images!

Although there’s been quite a bit of hype about the Super Moon on November 13, 2016, to many, the full Moon tonight may have appeared quite similar to other full Moon’s you’ve seen. Yes, the “super-ness” of this Moon, while noteworthy, is fairly imperceptible. While, as our own David Dickinson noted in his preview article, this full Moon is not only the closest for the year, but the nearest Full Moon for a 80 year plus span. However, the closest full moon of 2017 will be only 0.02% farther away than this one.

But any chance to get the public to look up at the night sky is a good one! And we’ll also take this opportunity to share some of the great images from around the world posted on Universe Today’s Flickr page, as well as on social media. Enjoy!

Here’s a “classic” but gorgeous look at the Moon:

The Moon just before full on November 13, 2016 imaged through cloud from London. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
The Moon just before full on November 13, 2016 imaged through cloud from London. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
Supermoon over Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, England on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Tim Graham/TJG Photography.
Supermoon over Glastonbury Tor, Somerset, England on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Tim Graham/TJG Photography.
Some astrophotographers took this opportunity to take close-ups of the Moon's surface. Pythagoras and Babbage Craters are seen here in this image from the UK on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Alun Halsey.
Some astrophotographers took this opportunity to take close-ups of the Moon’s surface. Pythagoras and Babbage Craters are seen here in this image from the UK on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright:
Alun Halsey.
The 'Super Moon' over Rome on November 14, 2016. Credit and copyright: Gianluca Masi.
The ‘Super Moon’ over Rome on November 14, 2016. Credit and copyright: Gianluca Masi.
A view of the supermoon as seen from Lahore, Pakistan, with color added for contrast. Credit and copyright: Roshaan Bukhari.
A view of the supermoon as seen from Lahore, Pakistan, with color added for contrast. Credit and copyright: Roshaan Bukhari.
Moon and clouds as seen from the UK on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.
Moon and clouds as seen from the UK on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.

Pale Moon rising, as seen from North Bedfordshire, UK on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Dawn Sunrise on Flickr.
Pale Moon rising, as seen from North Bedfordshire, UK on Nov. 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Dawn Sunrise on Flickr.

Noted NASA photographer Bill Ingalls is in Russia for the next launch of astronauts to the International Space Station. He took this image from Baikonur, Kazakhstan and also provided some tips on photographing the Moon.

And former astronaut Clayton Anderson shared this images from Houson, Texas:

Moonrise near Keene, Ontario on November 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Rick Stankiewicz.
Moonrise near Keene, Ontario on November 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Rick Stankiewicz.

A comparison of ‘super’ and ‘mini’ Moons and how they appear in the sky:

A perigee 'Supermoon' versus an apogee 'Minimoon'. Image credit and copyright: Raven Yu.
A perigee ‘Supermoon’ versus an apogee ‘Minimoon’. Image credit and copyright: Raven Yu.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their images, and be sure to check out UT’s Flickr pool for the most recent shots.

Link to the lead image by Owen Llewellyn can be found here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Some Of The Deepest & Sharpest Shots of The Moon from Earth

An incredibly sharp image of Copernicus Crater on the Moon, as seen from the Alps. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Who doesn’t love to gaze at the Moon on a clear night? But astrophotographer Thierry Legault now taken Moon-gazing to new heights. Legault traveled to the Alps in August and set up his Celestron C14 Edge HD and ZWO ASI1600MM camera. The results are absolutely stunning.

“These are the largest and sharpest quarters ever,” Legault said via email, adding that he created mosaic images of 10 fields for a definition of 150 million pixels!

Above you can see incredible detail in the 58 mile-wide (93 km) impact crater Copernicus.

Below is a lunar quarter taken on August 24, 2016:

Image of the Moon taken on August 24, 2016 from the Alps. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
Image of the Moon taken on August 24, 2016 from the Alps. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Legault has been known to travel wherever it takes to get the best shots, for example traveling through Germany, France and Spain to capture shots of space shuttle Endeavour on its final mission, or finding the best locations for stunning and sometimes ground-breaking shots of the International Space Station crossing the Sun or Moon, or views of spy satellites in orbit.

In his book, “Astrophotography,” Legault said that for clear close-ups of the Moon, good atmospheric conditions are a must, as well as having a finely tuned or collimated telescope. Below is a close-up view of Triesnecker crater and the surrounding region near the central part of the Moon’s near side, including sharp view of the rilles.

Triesnecker crater in the central part of the Moon's near side is 26 km in diameter and 2.7 km deep. A system of rilles can also be seen. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
Triesnecker crater in the central part of the Moon’s near side is 26 km in diameter and 2.7 km deep. A system of rilles can also be seen. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

For processing these images Legault used AutoStakkert!2 (AS!2), PTGui stitching software and Photoshop.

You can see more of these stunning shots at Legault’s website, where he says he’ll have posters of these images available soon.

Of course, you can try seeing these features on the Moon yourself. Even binoculars or a small telescope can provide wonderful views of our closest companion in space. An upcoming full Moon (Super Moon!) on November 14, 2016, will feature the closest full Moon (356,509 kilometers away) until November 25, 2034 (356,448 kilometers away.)

Our thanks to Thierry Legault for sharing these wonderful new images of the Moon!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

China Just Launched Its Largest Rocket Ever

China's brand-new heavy-lift Long March-5 rocket blasts off from Wenchang Space Launch on Nov. 3, 2016. Credit: Xinhua/Li Gang.

China’s newest and biggest heavy-lift rocket was successfully launched today, Nov 3, 2016, testing out China’s latest rocket along with bringing an experimental satellite designed to test electric-propulsion technology.

The Long March 5 rocket blasted off from the Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island, off China’s southern coast, at 8:43 a.m. EDT (12:43:14 UTC; 8:43 p.m. Beijing time).

Although Chinese space officials have not released many details about the mission or the new rocket, reportedly the Long March-5, (or the Chang Zheng-5, CZ-5) gives China a launch vehicle with similar launch capability to the Delta 4 Heavy or ESA’s Ariane 5, which is twice the capability of China’s Long March-3 (CZ-3).

The 187-foot-tall (57-meter) Long March-5 is powered by 10 liquid-fueled engines, which reportedly generate about 2.4 million pounds of thrust.

The increase in capability is seen as essential for China’s long-range space goals for a bigger and permanently-staffed space station, missions to the Moon, a robotic mission to Mars and the launch of commercial satellites.

The @ChinaSpaceflight Twitter account tweeted this image the launch control center when the YZ-2 upper stage fired:

The Long March-5 is a large, two-stage rocket with a payload capacity of 25 tons to low-Earth orbit. According to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the developer of the Long March-5, the rocket uses kerosene, liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, moving away from more toxic propellants like hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. This makes the new rocket not only less expensive to launch but more environmental friendly.

Today’s launch is the second from the new Wenchang launch complex. This past summer, on June 25, China’s new medium-sized Long March-7 made its initial launch from the site.

Source: Xinhuanet

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Pure Metal Asteroid Has Mysterious Water Deposits

An artist’s concept of the Psyche spacecraft, a proposed mission for NASA’s Discovery program that would explore the huge metal Psyche asteroid from orbit. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Water has been showing up in all sorts of unexpected places in our Solar System, such as the Moon, Mercury and Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Add one more place to the list: Asteroid 16 Psyche. This metal-rich asteroid may have traces of water molecules on its surface that shouldn’t be there, researchers say.

Psyche is thought to be the largest metallic asteroid in the Solar System, at 300 km (186 miles) across and likely consists of almost pure nickel-iron metal. Scientists had thought Psyche was made up of the leftover core of a protoplanet that was mostly destroyed by impacts billions of years ago, but they may now be rethinking that.

“The detection of a 3 micron hydration absorption band on Psyche suggests that this asteroid may not be metallic core, or it could be a metallic core that has been impacted by carbonaceous material over the past 4.5 Gyr,” the team said in their paper.

While previous observations of Psyche had shown no evidence for water on its surface, new observations with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility found evidence for volatiles such as water or hydroxyl on the asteroid’s surface. Hydroxyl is a free radical consisting of one hydrogen atom bound to one oxygen atom.

“We did not expect a metallic asteroid like Psyche to be covered by water and/or hydroxyl,” said Vishnu Reddy, from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, a co-author of the new paper about Psyche. “Metal-rich asteroids like Psyche are thought to have formed under dry conditions without the presence of water or hydroxyl, so we were puzzled by our observations at first.”

Asteroids usually fall into two categories: those rich in silicates, and those rich in carbon and volatiles. Metallic asteroids like Psyche are extremely rare, making it a laboratory to study how planets formed.

he asteroid Psyche is one of the larger asteroids. Credit: Lindy T. Elkins-Tanton
he asteroid Psyche is one of the larger asteroids. Credit: Lindy T. Elkins-Tanton

For now, the source of the water on Psyche remains a mystery. But Redddy and his colleagues propose a few different explanations. One is, again, Psyche may not be as metallic as previously thought. Another option is that the water or hydroxyl could be the product of solar wind interacting with silicate minerals on Psyche’s surface, such as what is occurring on the Moon.

The most likely explanation, however is that the water seen on Psyche might have been delivered by carbonaceous asteroids that impacted Psyche in the distant past, as is thought to have occurred on early Earth.

“Our discovery of carbon and water on an asteroid that isn’t supposed to have those compounds supports the notion that these building blocks of life could have been delivered to our Earth early in the history of our solar system,” said Reddy.

If we’re lucky, we won’t have to wait too long to find out more about Psyche. A mission to Psyche is on the short list of mission proposals being considered by NASA, with a potential launch as early as 2020. Reddy and team said an orbiting spacecraft could explore this unique asteroid and determine if whether there is water or hydroxyl on the surface.

Sources: Europlanet, University of Arizona, paper: Detection of Water and/or Hydroxyl on Asteroid (16) Psyche.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Here’s What Happens When NASA Engineers Carve Their Pumpkins

The 6th annual pumpkin carving at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory included this 'Mars sample return pumpkin.' Credit: JPL.

Every workplace should have this much fun! A group of engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory held their sixth annual pumpkin carving contest, and this year’s entries did not disappoint. Using a combination of engineering savvy and creative license, the JPL engineers carved up several different types of themed pumpkins, including a cow abduction by aliens, a geyser-spewing Europa, unique depictions of several different space missions and much more.

Halloween is actually a special holiday at JPL because October 31, 1936 was the beginning of JPL’s history, when several grad students studying at Caltech and some amateur rocket enthusiasts drove out to a dry canyon tested out a liquid rocket engine. To celebrate JPL’s 80th anniversiary, here’s a link to a gallery of images pairs that shows vintage views from JPL’s history with images that show what the lab looks like today.

In addition, JPL held a Halloween costume contest that really was out of this world. See all the fun below:

This pumpkin was turned into a spooky alien abduction scene:

Abduction by pumpkin

A pale pumpkin Europa, complete with geysers. Behind it, Juno orbits Jupiter.

Juno and Europa

Wheee! A Halloween carnival:

Halloween carnival

JPL’s Starshade was turned into a chainsaw massacre.

Just a scratch

The pictures of the costume contest are courtesy JPL mechanical engineer Aaron Yazzie’s Twitter feed:

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

It Took 15 Months, but all of New Horizons’ Data Has Finally Been Downloaded

New Horizon's July 2015 flyby of Pluto captured this iconic image of the heart-shaped region called Tombaugh Regio. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

Finally, the New Horizons team has their entire “pot of gold.” 15 months after the mission’s flyby of the Pluto system, the final bits of science data from the historic July 2015 event has been safely transmitted to Earth.

“The New Horizons mission has required patience for many years, but we knew the results would be well worth the wait,” New Horizons project scientists Hal Weaver told me earlier this year.

Because of New Horizons’ great distance from Earth and the spacecraft’s low power output (the spacecraft runs on just 2-10 watts of electricity), it has a relatively low ‘downlink’ rate at which data can be transmitted to Earth, just 1-4 kilobits per second. That’s why it has taken so long to get all the science data back to Earth.

Pluto Explored! In 2006, NASA placed a 29-cent 1991 ‘Pluto: Not Yet Explored’ stamp in the New Horizons spacecraft. With the new stamp, the Postal Service recognizes the first reconnaissance of Pluto in 2015 by NASA’s New Horizon mission. The two separate stamps show an artists’ rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft and the spacecraft’s enhanced color image of Pluto taken near closest approach. Credits: USPS/Antonio Alcalá © 2016 USPS
Pluto Explored! In 2006, NASA placed a 29-cent 1991 ‘Pluto: Not Yet Explored’ stamp in the New Horizons spacecraft. With the new stamp, the Postal Service recognizes the first reconnaissance of Pluto in 2015 by NASA’s New Horizon mission. The two separate stamps show an artists’ rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft and the spacecraft’s enhanced color image of Pluto taken near closest approach.
Credits: USPS/Antonio Alcalá © 2016 USPS

“This is what we came for – these images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time,” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said a few months ago during an interview. “We’re seeing that Pluto is a scientific wonderland. The images have been just magical. It’s breathtaking.”

Because it was a flyby, and the spacecraft had just one chance at gathering data from Pluto, New Horizons was designed to gather as much data as it could, as quickly as it could – taking about 100 times more data on close approach to Pluto and its moons than it could have sent home before flying onward. The spacecraft was programmed to send select, high-priority datasets home in the days just before and after close approach, and began returning the vast amount of remaining stored data in September 2015.

New Horizons is now over 3.1 billion miles (5 billion km) away from Earth as it continues its journey through the Kuiper Belt. That translates to a current radio signal delay time of five hours, eight minutes at light speed.
The science team created special software to keep track of all the data sets and schedule when they would be returned to Earth.

New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Pluto and Charon when it snapped this portrait late on July 8, 2015. Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI
New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Pluto and Charon when it snapped this portrait late on July 8, 2015.
Credits: NASA-JHUAPL-SWRI

The final item that was received was a portion of a Pluto-Charon observation sequence taken by the Ralph/LEISA imager. It arrived at New Horizons’ mission operations at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, at 5:48 a.m. EDT on Oct. 25. The downlink came via NASA’s Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia. It was the last of the 50-plus total gigabits of Pluto system data transmitted to Earth by New Horizons over the past 15 months.

“We have our pot of gold,” said Mission Operations Manager Alice Bowman, of APL.

Bowman also said the team will conduct a final data-verification review of New Horizons two onboard recorders before sending commands to erase all the data on the spacecraft. New Horizons has more work to do, so erasing the “old” data will clear space for new data to be taken during its Kuiper Belt Extended Mission (KEM). The spacecraft will do a series of distant Kuiper Belt object observations as well as perform a close encounter flyby with with a small Kuiper Belt object, 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019.

“There’s a great deal of work ahead for us to understand the 400-plus scientific observations that have all been sent to Earth,” said Stern. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do—after all, who knows when the next data from a spacecraft visiting Pluto will be sent?”

You can see all of New Horizons images at the New Horizons/APL website.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

How Will We Get to Mars? New Book and TV Series Provide the Details

What is it going to take to really get humans to Mars? A new television series and a companion book take a detailed and hard look at the future of Mars exploration. The six-part documentary series on the National Geographic Channel and the book by veteran, award-winning space journalist Leonard David are both titled, “Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet.”

The TV series debuts on November 14, 2016 and was produced by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ron Howard (Apollo 13) and NASA scientist Brian Grazer. It combines interviews with some of the prominent ‘movers and shakers’ in the space community along with a scripted drama that portrays a human mission to Mars in the year 2033. Together, the show “tells the story of how we will one day call the Red Planet home through groundbreaking research and innovation.”

Watch the trailer:

Leonard David’s thoroughly researched book contains a wealth of information on the technological and sociological hurdles that need to be surmounted to make humans on Mars a reality, as well as revealing what work is currently being done on the road to the Red Planet. The books is large format, filled with stunning, full-color images throughout that provide a feast for the eye, including actual images from our spacecraft as well as illustrations of what future missions might entail.

While the book includes some portrayals of the television series’ drama of the crew of the Daedalus mission as they land on Mars and set up the first human base, the real drama comes from David’s interviews with real-life experts, the men and women who are fervently working towards the day an actual human mission goes to Mars.

I had the chance to talk with David about his new book, and asked what it was like to write a book in conjunction with a television series.

Author Leonard David speaking at the Mars Society meeting in Washington, DC. Image courtesy Leonard David.
Author Leonard David speaking at the Mars Society meeting in Washington, DC. Image courtesy Leonard David.

“It was a really interesting experience,” he said, “and we had a close-knit team that had telecons every week to try and synchronize the themes we were using. There were a few topics I wanted to make sure I was able to include, and there were several themes that the whole team wanted to make sure was included in both the book and the show.”

For example, the imagery in the book and the premise of the show reflect that a mission to Mars is likely going to be a global endeavor. “I wanted to make sure to emphasize this will not be just a US or NASA enterprise, and also that a lot of other countries are exploring Mars with spacecraft right now,” David said.

And so, the images in the book come from multi-national sources, and several are pictures I had never seen before, including the latest images from spacecraft, unique illustrations, and distinctive maps of potential human landing sites on Mars that are almost impossible to stop looking at.

Destination Mars: a detailed map of Mars from National Geographic. Credit: National Geographic.
Destination Mars: a detailed map of Mars from National Geographic. Credit: National Geographic.

David said that with the book, he didn’t want to take a stand on all the issues but combine as much information as possible to make it all available for people to think about.

He also said he wanted to portray the true realities of a human expedition to Mars.

“I wanted to make sure people understand that it’s not just throwing a bunch of tin cans on the surface of Mars and then jamming people in them,” he said. “There are so many other issues: sociological issues, there are cultural issues, and there are ethics issues particularly on the topic of possibly terraforming Mars. I just wanted to write a book that I haven’t already read, and I hit on themes that I don’t recall other books getting to.”

For example, David interviews Frank White, author of the seminal book “The Overview Effect,” and that title is now used as an evocative term to explain how seeing Earth from space has changed the human perspective and experience. But David asks White to consider what The Overview Effect will mean for human Martians.

“The Martians will soon develop their own culture and seem like true ‘aliens’ to Earthlings,” envisions White, leading ultimately to a “declaration of independence” from Earth by Mars.

Similarly, David’s discussions with Nick Kanas, professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, covers what Kanas calls “Earth out of view,” which means that since Earth is so far away, any future human Martians will have to solve their own problems. Therefore, any physical or mental issues that arise will have to be dealt with locally.

It could highlight a sense of isolation, being distant and away from everything, [Kanas adds]. “It’s a different sort of state. Whether that will produce depression, or psychosis, or extreme homesickness… I don’t know. We have a lot of questions that Mars is going to raise, and we don’t have the answers.”

And there are other realities that need to be considered.

“There will be death,” David said. “Mars is out to kill you to begin with, and there will be accidents and people will likely lose their life in some way. It’s going to call upon the pioneering spirit, and it will challenge us not only technologically, but psychologically and physiologically.”

David looks at the technology that will be required: the potential propulsion systems, how to ramp up current entry, descent and landing (EDL) systems for larger human-sized payloads, and the imperative of using what’s called In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU).

Future missions to Mars and other locations in the Solar System may depend heavily on the skills of planetary geologists. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center
Future missions to Mars and other locations in the Solar System may depend heavily on the skills of planetary geologists. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center

“If we are going to try to avoid having these missions be just flags and footprints like the Apollo missions, it’s going to require living off the land on Mars,” David said.

Again, the experts David interviewed – called “The Heroes” in the book — provide an incredible depth of insight on all the issues facing a human mission to Mars. The Heroes include people such as historian John Logsdon, policy experts like Marcia Smith, entrepreneurs and innovators like Elon Musk, Mars engineers like JPL’s Rob Manning, planetary scientists such as NASA’s Chris McKay and Planetary Protection Officer Catherine Conley, then astronauts like Stanley Love who have already been on the front lines of long duration spaceflight and veteran Buzz Aldrin whose lifetime of experiences provide a unique perspective on human exploration. Reading the words of these experts was perhaps my favorite part of the book (besides those intriguing maps!)

With NASA and other space agencies now embracing Mars as the ultimate human destination, David said the time is now ripe for looking at all the issues that lie ahead on the path to Mars.

“This is a unique time,” he said. “I believe we are in a period that I call ‘now history.’ Never before in our history have we had the potential for the technology, communications and all the other things we need to go off the planet; we’ve never been here before. I think we have an opportunity to create this ‘now history,’ and what we do here and now is going to be a flagship for the future as far as our ability to not only go to Mars, but to go beyond to other planets as well.”

David said he hadn’t yet seen all the footage from the television series, but he was impressed with what he has watched so far. “Ron Howard is pretty good at this stuff, and so the quality is definitely there.” David also indicated there is a bit of a surprise ending to the show, so make sure to stay tuned.

Leonard David is a long-time contributor to Space.com and he writes a column for that site called Space Insider. He is also the coauthor of Buzz Aldrin’s book, “Mission to Mars.” You can find more articles by David at his website, Inside Outer Space.

More information on the book and how to purchase it can be found at the Nat Geo website, or at Amazon, and additional information on the television series can be found here.

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