Elizabeth Howell, Author at Universe Today

February 7, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Robots And Astronauts Feature In First Glimpse of Canada’s New Space Policy

The robotic Canadarm2 is routinely used to berth spacecraft to the International Space Station, such as SpaceX's Dragon. Credit: NASA

About six years ago, the Canadarm — Canada’s iconic robotic arm used in space — was almost sold to a company in the United States, along with other space technology from MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates. The Canadian government blocked the sale and swiftly came out with a promise: a space policy to better support Canada’s industry.

That promise was made in September 2008. “Time is of the essence,” then-Industry Minister Jim Prentice told reporters upon announcing a space policy would be created. Today, 65 months later, the government released the high-level framework of that policy. Astronauts, telescopes and yes, the Canadarm are all prominently mentioned in there.

A lot has happened in six years. Policy-makers used to cite successor Canadarm2’s role in space station construction. Now the arm also does things that were barely imaginable in 2008 — namely, berthing commercial spacecraft such as SpaceX’s Dragon at the International Space Station. It shows how quickly space technology can change in half a decade.

At 13 pages, there isn’t a lot of information in Canada’s framework yet to talk about, but there are some statements about government priorities. Keep the astronaut program going (which is great news after the success of Chris Hadfield). A heavy emphasis on private sector collaboration. And a promise to keep funding Canada’s contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s next large observatory in space.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield prior to his world-famous Expedition 34/35 mission in 2013. Credit: NASA

These are the Top 5 priorities listed in the plan:

Canada First: Serving Canada’s interests of “sovereignty, security and prosperity.” As an example: The country has a huge land-mass that is sparsely populated, so satellites are regularly used to see what ship and other activity is going on in the territories. This is a big reason why the Radarsat Constellation of satellites is launching in 2018.
Working together globally: Canada has a tiny space budget ($488.7 million in 2013-14, $435.2 million in 2014-15 and $382.9 million in 2015-16), so it relies on other countries to get its payloads, astronauts and satellites into space. This section also refers to Canada’s commitment to the International Space Station, which (as with other nations) extends to at least 2024. That’s good news for astronauts Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques, who are waiting for their first trip there.
Promoting Canadian innovation: The James Webb Telescope (to which Canada is contributing optics and a guidance system) is specifically cited here along with the Canadarm. Priority areas are Canada’s historic strengths of robotics, optics, satellite communications, and space-based radar, as well as “areas of emerging expertise.”
Inspiring Canadians: Basically a statement saying that the government will “recruit, and retain highly qualified personnel,” which in more real terms means that it will need to keep supporting Canadian space companies financially through contracts, for example, to make this happen.

That last point in particular seemed to resonate with at least one industry group.

James Webb Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL

“A long-term strategic plan for Canada’s space program is critical for our industry. In order to effectively invest in innovation, technology and product development, we rely heavily on knowing what the government’s priorities for the space program are,” stated Jim Quick, president of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada (a major group that represents the interests of private space companies.)

While we wait for more details to come out, here’s some valuable background reading. The space-based volume of the Emerson Report (the findings of a government-appointed aerospace review board listed in 2012) called for more money for and more stable funding of the Canadian Space Agency, among other recommendations.

And here’s the government’s point-by-point response in late 2013. In response to funding: “The CSA’s total funding will remain unchanged and at current levels. The government will also leverage existing programs to better support the space industry.” Additionally, the CSA’s space technologies development program will be doubled to $20 million annually by 2015-16, which is still below the Emerson report’s recommendation of adding $10 million for each of the next three years.

What are your thoughts on the policy? Let us know in the comments.

February 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Surprise! Brown Dwarf Star Has Dusty Skies, Appearing Strangely Red

Artist's impression of brown dwarf ULAS J222711-004547, which has a very thick cloud layer of mineral dust. The dust is making the brown dwarf appear redder than its counterparts. Credit: Neil J. Cook, Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire

Dust clouds on a brown dwarf or “failed star” are making it appear redder than its counterparts, new research reveals. Better studying this phenomenon could improve the weather forecast on these objects, which are larger than gas giant planets but not quite big enough to ignite nuclear fusion processes to become stars.

“These are not the type of clouds that we are used to seeing on Earth. The thick clouds on this particular brown dwarf are mostly made of mineral dust, like enstatite and corundum,” stated Federico Marocco, who led the research team and is an astrophysicist at the United Kingdom’s University of Hertfordshire.

Using the Very Large Telescope in Chile as well as data analysis, “not only have we been able to infer their presence, but we have also been able to estimate the size of the dust grains in the clouds,” he added.

The brown dwarf (known as ULAS J222711-004547) has an unusual concoction in its atmosphere of water vapor, methane, (likely) ammonia and these mineral particles. While scientists are only beginning to wrap their head around what’s going on in the atmosphere, they noted that the size of the dust grains can influence the color of the sky and make it turn redder.

Size comparison of stellar vs substellar objects. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCB).

“Being one of the reddest brown dwarfs ever observed, ULAS J222711-004547 makes an ideal target for multiple observations to understand how the weather is in such an extreme atmosphere,” stated Avril Day-Jones, an astrophysicist at the University of Hertfordshire who co-authored the paper.

“By studying the composition and variability in luminosity and colours of objects like this, we can understand how the weather works on brown dwarfs and how it links to other giant planets.”

You can read more about the research in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society or in preprint version on Arxiv.

And by the way, there’s been other exciting work lately in brown dwarfs; another group recently released the first weather map of another failed star (and we have some information on Universe Today on how that was done, too!) Also, there are other weird brown star atmospheres out there, as this 2013 find shows.

Source: Royal Astronomical Society

February 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Martian Avalanches And Defrosting Dunes Among New Gorgeous HiRISE Images

"Defrosting of dunes with large gullies", one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

As NASA’s missions at the Red Planet age, it’s so important not to take any of the pictures beamed back to Earth for granted.

The latest release of raw images from the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005) is as close as most of us will get to seeing the Red Planet, and each picture captures a planet in action.

Snow, dust and wind are combining to make the incredible images you will see below. These shots, by the way, are close-ups colorized at the source; to see the full raw image, click on each picture you see below.

"Avalanche monitoring at steep chasma boreale headscarp", one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona — “Avalanche monitoring at steep chasma boreale headscarp”, one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

"Avalanche monitoring at steep north polar scarp", one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona — “Avalanche monitoring at steep north polar scarp”, one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

"Dunes with serious slope streaks dubbed tleilax", one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. ("Tleilax" is a reference to Dune, a science-fiction book series most famous for the eponymous first one concerning a desert planet.) Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona — “Dunes with serious slope streaks dubbed tleilax”, one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. (“Tleilax” is a reference to Dune, a science-fiction book series most famous for the eponymous first one concerning a desert planet.) Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

"Cerberus region intracrater dune and ripple changes", one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona — “Cerberus region intracrater dune and ripple changes”, one of the images released in February 2014 from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

February 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Milky Way-Mapping Telescope Nabs Its First Pictures In Space

The Large Magellanic Cloud is visible in this calibration image for the European Space Agency's Gaia telescope taken in 2014. Credit: ESA/DPAC/Airbus DS

From a lonely outpost in space, the European Space Agency’s Gaia telescope is getting ready to map out the Milky Way. It will take some time to calibrate the instruments to make sure they’re ready for work, however, and that’s why you’re looking at the image above.

Controllers aimed the telescope at the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way, and snapped this picture of star cluster NGC 1818.

“This test picture, taken as part of commissioning the mission to ‘fine tune’ the behaviour of the instruments, is one of the first proper ‘images’ to be seen from Gaia, but ironically, it will also be one of the last, as Gaia’s main scientific operational mode does not involve sending full images back to Earth,” ESA stated.

This is one crucial step along the road to making sure Gaia’s measurements are accurate. In the next five years, it will examine a billion stars (an astounding number, but still only 1 percent of the galaxy’s population). Gaia will build up a database of key stellar properties such as brightness, what it is made of and temperature.

For more information on Gaia, check out this past Universe Today story from its Dec. 19 launch as well as the official Gaia blog.

Source: ESA

February 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Nearly 40 Teams At Starting Line Of Inspiration Mars Mission Competition

An artist’s concept of how the spacecraft for the Inspiration Mars Foundation’s “Mission for America” might be configured. Credit: Inspiration Mars.

It won’t be long before we start to get the technical details of Inspiration Mars’ daring proposition to send a married couple on a round-trip journey to the Red Planet. The private organization, along with the Mars Society, announced that 38 teams have expressed an intention to participate in a design competition that will see public presentations this spring.

A full list of the university groups is available here, with 56 post-secondary institutions represented from 15 countries (the United States, Canada, Russia, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Poland, Mauritius, India, Bangladesh, Japan and Colombia.)

“We want to engage the explorers of tomorrow with a real and exciting mission, and demonstrate what a powerful force space exploration can be in inspiring young people to develop their talent. This contest will accomplish both of those objectives,” stated Dennis Tito, who is Inspiration Mars executive director.

Now that the teams are announced, their next job is to submit the actual proposals. Design reports are due March 15. Once the top 10 are selected, those teams will go to the NASA Ames Research Center to make public presentations and compete in April 2014. Six judges will be drawn equally from the Mars Society, Inspiration Mars and NASA.

For more details on how the mission works, read this past Universe Today story.

February 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Black Holes Warmed Up Space Slower Than Previously Thought: Study

This picture was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. It shows the rich region of sky around the young open star cluster NGC 2547 in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Black holes are big influencers for the early universe; these singularities that were close to ancient stars heated up gas and affected star formation across the cosmos. A new study, however, says that heating happened later than previously thought.

“It was previously believed that the heating occurred very early, but we discovered that this standard picture delicately depends on the precise energy with which the X-rays come out,” stated Rennan Barkana, a co-author of the paper who is an astronomer at Tel Aviv University.

“Taking into account up-to-date observations of nearby black-hole binaries changes the expectations for the history of cosmic heating. It results in a new prediction of an early time (when the universe was only 400 million years old) at which the sky was uniformly filled with radio waves emitted by the hydrogen gas.”

These so-called “black-hole binaries” are star pairs where the larger star exploded into a supernova and left behind a black hole. The strong gravity then yanked gas away from the stellar companion, emitting X-rays in the process. The radiation, as it flows across the universe, is cited as the factor behind gas heating in other parts of space.

You can read more details of the model in the journal Nature. The study was led by Anastasia Fialkov, a fellow TAU researcher.

February 5, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Astronomy Podcast Enters Sixth Year — And We’d Love For You To Contribute!

A part of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is dazzling in this new view from NASA's Great Observatories. The Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, is a small galaxy about 200,000 light-years way that orbits our own Milky Way spiral galaxy. Credit: NASA.

If you love talking about space — and as a reader of Universe Today, I really hope you do — there’s an awesome podcast for you to add to your playlist. 365 Days of Astronomy puts out an astronomy-themed episode every single day of the year, covering everything from recent discoveries, to folklore, to community events.

If you’ve got a microphone and a desire to contribute, or have at least some coffee money to contribute to charity, they’d really love to hear from you as they enter a sixth (sixth!) year of operation. More details are below the jump.

Full disclosure here: Universe Today is a big supporter of 365 Days of Astronomy, and I’ve been contributing podcasts myself since last year. It is an awesome experience. Pamela Gay (who oversees the project through her astronomy education organization, Cosmoquest) is inspiring to work for as she is a tireless supporter of bringing the joy of space to the general public.

Nancy Atkinson (a fellow contributor and UT senior editor) joked to me today, “It’s kind of like the Mars rovers — the Energizer Bunny of podcasts.” And it’s through your support that we can keep going, and going, and going. Here’s the official press release with information about contributions:

365 Days of Astronomy will continue its service in 2014! This time we will have more days available for new audio. Have something to share? We’re looking for content from 10 minutes long up to an hour! Since 2009, 365 Days of Astronomy has brought a new podcast every day to astronomy lovers around the world to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. Fortunately, the project has continued until now and we will keep going for another year in 2014. This means we will continue to serve you for a 6th year.

Through these years, 365 Days Of Astronomy has been delivering daily podcasts discussing various topics in the constantly changing realm of astronomy. These include history of astronomy, the latest news, observing tips and topics on how the fundamental knowledge in astronomy has changed our paradigms of the world. We’ve also asked people to talk about the things that inspired them, and to even share their own stories, both of life doing astronomy and science fiction that got them imagining a more scientific future.

365 Days of Astronomy is a community podcast that relies on a network of dedicated podcasters across the globe who are willing to share their knowledge and experiences in astronomy with the world and it will continue that way. In 2013, 365 Days of Astronomy started a new initiative with CosmoQuest. We now offer great new audio every weekend, while on weekdays we serve up interesting podcasts from CosmoQuest and other dedicated partners. We also have several monthly podcasts from dedicated podcasters and have started two new series: Space Stories and Space Scoop. The former is a series of science fiction tales, and the latter is an astronomy news segment for children.

From the universe to the solar system, we’ve had an interesting journey, especially the ostensibly legendary comet ISON which finally ended its days by breaking apart and vaporizing. We hope we won’t end like ISON did! As for 2014, we will have more available days for new podcasts.

A widefield view of Comet ISON, taken from New Mexico Skies at 11h 59m UT using an FSQ 106 ED telescope and STL11K camera on a PME II mount. 1 x 10 min exposures. Credit and copyright: Joseph Brimacombe.

For this upcoming year, the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is looking for individuals, organizations, schools, companies, and clubs to sign-up for their 5 – 60 minutes of audio for the new daily podcast which will be aired on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. As for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we will air audio podcasts from CosmoQuest and partners’ Google+ hangouts. We’ll also post the matching video submissions on our YouTube Channel.

We will once again continue our quest in the podcasting arena, but we need your support to be a success. The project is now accepting financial support from individuals as well as organizations to cover our audio engineering and website support costs. The podcast team invites people and organizations to sponsor shows by donating to support one day of the podcast. It costs us about $45 per show. For your donation of $30, a dedication message will be announced in the beginning of the show. For a $15 donation a sponsorship message will be heard at the end of the show. Alternatively, for a $100 donation a sponsor may request a dedication message at the end of a whole week of programs. These donations are essential to cover the price for editing and posting podcasts.

The 365 Days of Astronomy podcast is heard by 5,000 listeners per day and by 2013 we have surpassed 6,8 million downloads. In 2009, the project was awarded a Parsec Award as “The Best Infotainment” podcast and a year later, in 2010-2012, it was nominated for the “Best Fact Behind the Fiction” award.

February 5, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Astronomers Look “Inside” an Asteroid for the First Time

Itokawa, a peanut-shaped asteroid that has different densities in its small body. Credit: ESO/JAXA

From directly inferring the inside of an asteroid for the first time, astronomers have discovered these space rocks can have strange variations in density. The observations of Itokawa — which you may remember from the Japanese Hayabusa mission that landed on the asteroid in 2005 — not only teach us more about how asteroids came to be, but could help protect Earth against stray space rocks in the future, the researchers said.

“This is the first time we have ever been able to to determine what it is like inside an asteroid,” stated Stephen Lowry, a University of Kent scientist who led the research. “We can see that Itokawa has a highly varied structure; this finding is a significant step forward in our understanding of rocky bodies in the solar system.”

It’s not clear why Itokawa has such different densities at opposite sides of its peanut shape; perhaps it was two asteroids that rubbed up against each other and merged. At just shy of six American football fields long, the space rock has density varying from 1.75 to 2.85 grams per cubic centimetre. This precise measurement came courtesy of the European Southern Observatory’s New Technology Telescope in Chile.

The telescope calculated the speed and speed changes of Itokawa’s spin and combined that information with data on how sunlight can affect the spin rate. Asteroids are generally tiny and irregularly shaped sorts of bodies, which means the effect of heat on the body is not evenly distributed. That small difference makes the asteroid’s spin rate change.

This heat effect (more properly called the Yarkovsky-O’Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack effect) is slowly making Itokawa’s spin rate go faster, at a rate of 0.045 seconds every Earth year. This change, previously unexpected by scientists, is only possible if the peanut bulges have different densities, the scientists said.

“Finding that asteroids don’t have homogeneous interiors has far-reaching implications, particularly for models of binary asteroid formation,” added Lowry. “It could also help with work on reducing the danger of asteroid collisions with Earth, or with plans for future trips to these rocky bodies.”

More details on the research will be available in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Source: European Southern Observatory

February 4, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

‘Wobbly’ Alien Planet Has Weird Seasons And Orbits Two Stars

Diagram of Kepler-413b's unusual orbit around red and orange dwarf stars. Its orbit "wobbles" or precesses around the stars every 11 years. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)

We’re lucky to live on a planet where it’s predictably warmer in the summer and colder in the winter in many regions, at least within a certain range. On Kepler-413b, it’s a world where you’d have to check the forecast more frequently, because its axis swings by a wild 30 degrees every 11 years. On Earth, by comparison, it takes 26,000 years to tilt by a somewhat lesser amount (23.5 degrees).

The exoplanet, which is 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, orbits two dwarf stars — an orange one and a red one — every 66 days. While it would be fun to imagine a weather forecast on this planet, in reality it’s likely too hot for life (it’s close to its parent stars) and also huge, at 65 Earth-masses or a “super-Neptune.”

What’s even weirder is how hard it was to characterize the planet. Normally, astronomers spot these worlds either by watching them go across the face of their parent star(s), or by the gravitational wobbles they induce in those stars. The orbit, however, is tilted 2.5 degrees to the stars, which makes the transits far more unpredictable. It took several years of Kepler space telescope data to find a pattern.

“What we see in the Kepler data over 1,500 days is three transits in the first 180 days (one transit every 66 days), then we had 800 days with no transits at all,” stated Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the observation. “After that, we saw five more transits in a row,” added Kostov, who works both with the the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md.

It will be an astounding six years until the next transit happens in 2020, partly because of that wobble and partly because the stars have small diameters and aren’t exactly “edge-on” to our view from Earth. As for why this planet is behaving the way it does, no one is sure. Maybe other planets are messing with the orbit, or a third star is doing the same thing.

The next major question, the astronomers added, is if there are other planets out there like this that we just can’t see because of the gap between transit periods.

You can read more about this finding in The Astrophysical Journal (a Jan. 29 publication that doesn’t appear to be on the website yet) or in preprint version on Arxiv.

Source: Space Telescope Science Institute

February 4, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Mars Space Colony Rockets Could Be Ready In 10 Years: SpaceX CEO

U.S. president Barack Obama (foreground, left) with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk during a 2010 tour at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Credit: Chuck Kennedy)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a huge fan of Mars exploration and Mars colonies, and in a new interview he says a launch system to send people to the Red Planet could be available in 10 to 12 years. Requirements: it has to be big, and it has to be launched frequently to send millions of people and tons of cargo spaceward.

“We need to develop a much larger vehicle, which would be a sort of Mars colonial transport system, and this would be, we’re talking about rockets on a bigger scale than has ever been done before. It will make the Apollo moon rocket look small,” said Musk in a recent CBS interview, referring to the 363-foot (110-meter) behemoth that was the Saturn V.

In the short term, Musk said he is focused on making a crew transportation system that will reduce NASA’s reliance on Soyuz vehicles to bring astronauts into space (a situation that arose in 2011 after the agency retired the shuttle.) SpaceX is one of three companies funded by NASA to develop a spacecraft able to launch people (with the other two being Boeing and Sierra Nevada.)

Musk said SpaceX’s Dragon should be ready to do that in a couple of years. Meanwhile, there are abort tests to perform and other steps this year to get the spacecraft ready for that milestone.

Check out the entire Musk interview on the CBS website. Naturally, he doesn’t have the only vision for human Mars exploration out there, as private ventures Mars One and Inspiration Mars demonstrate.