Elizabeth Howell, Author at Universe Today

March 7, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Kepler’s Weirdest Exoplanets

Artist's concept of Kepler in action. NASA/Kepler mission/Wendy Stenzel.

Captain Kirk has nothing on the “strange new worlds” the Kepler space telescope has found.

NASA’s planet-probing orbiting observatory launched its quest to find more Earths four years ago this week. Since then, it’s found thousands of planets ranging from ginormous gas giants to tiny rocky worlds that are even smaller than our planet. NASA extended its mission to 2016 last year, putting the telescope into planet-hunting overtime and, we assume, scientists into overdrive.

Along the way, Kepler has revealed some bizarre star systems. Check out some of the weirdest exoplanets Kepler has found so far:

‘Tatooine’ (Kepler-16b)

Kepler 16b. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — Kepler-16b. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Circumbinary” is the scientific explanation for Kepler-16b’s 2 star-system. But “Tatooine” is the name that took the public by storm (or is that Stormtrooper?) when this world, orbiting two stars, was revealed in 2011. Although it’s named after Luke Skywalker’s home in Star Wars, proving Kepler-16b is habitable would be a bit of a stretch. The planet’s mass is about one-third that of Jupiter, and surface temperatures reach an estimated and frigid -100 degrees Celsius.

Deciphering a tune (Kepler-37b)

Kepler-37b, a moon-sized exoplanet. Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Scientists found Kepler 37-b through listening to its parent star sing. Seriously. The planet (just slightly larger than our moon) was revealed through measuring oscillations in brightness caused by star-quakes, then converting those to sound. “The bigger the star, the lower the frequency, or ‘pitch’ of its song,” said Steve Kawaler, a research team member from Iowa State University in a past Universe Today interview.

The 6-planet swarm (Kepler-11b, 11c, 11d, 11e, 11f, 11g)

Kepler's planets displayed by size comparison. The six new planets around Kepler 11 are on the bottom. Image credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel — Kepler’s planets displayed by size comparison. The six new planets around Kepler 11 are on the bottom. Image credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel

It’s sure crowded around the star Kepler-11. There are six planets orbiting in circles smaller than Venus’ orbit around the Sun. Not only that, but five of those planets are even closer to their parent star than Mercury is to our sun. Excited astronomers said the system will rewrite planetary formation theories. “We really were just amazed at his gift that nature has given us,” said Jack Lissauer, co-investigator of the Kepler mission, in 2011. “With six transiting planets, and five so close and getting the sizes and masses of five of these worlds, there is only one word that adequately describes the new finding: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

The warring siblings (Kepler-36b and 36c)

In this artist’s conception, a “hot Neptune” known as Kepler-36c looms in the sky of its neighbor, the rocky world Kepler-36b. The two planets have repeated close encounters, experiencing a conjunction every 97 days on average. At that time, they are separated by less than 5 Earth-Moon distances. Such close approaches stir up tremendous gravitational tides that squeeze and stretch both planets, which may promote active volcanism on Kepler-36b. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA) — In this artist’s conception, a “hot Neptune” known as Kepler-36c looms in the sky of its neighbor, the rocky world Kepler-36b. The two planets have repeated close encounters, experiencing a conjunction every 97 days on average. At that time, they are separated by less than 5 Earth-Moon distances. Such close approaches stir up tremendous gravitational tides that squeeze and stretch both planets, which may promote active volcanism on Kepler-36b.
Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

Take a planet the size of Neptune and put it near Earth, and you’d have some scary results. Tides from the constant interaction would raise the water and the ground, causing fissures and no end of local zoning headaches for municipal authorities as the ground shifts, to say the least. Seriously, though, Kepler-36b (the rocky world) comes within less than 5 Earth-Moon distances of Kepler 36-c (a gaseous world about 8 times larger) every 97 days or so. They’ll never crash into each other, but just like young human siblings, they can cause quite a bit of chaos.

The mirror (Kepler-7b)

Kepler 7b, at right, was one of the first planets discovered by Kepler. Credit: NASA

Well, Kepler-7b isn’t quite as reflective as a mirror, but it certainly catches more sunlight than scientists expected. This “hot Jupiter” was among the first planets that Kepler spotted. In 2011, however, it was revealed that its albedo, or reflectivity, flirted with the upper limit for these humongous planets. What’s causing this? Could be clouds, or could be the composition of its atmosphere. Shows we still have a lot to learn about these exoplanets.

March 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Book Review: African Cosmos

In 1986, Halley’s Comet captivated a teenager living in a small South African town. Curious about what his nation does in astronomy, he scoured books at the local library and asked questions of his teachers.

It was, however, a tough time to learn about it. Under apartheid, African science was seen as “nothing of merit” until the Westerners colonized the continent two centuries ago.

This tale, told in African Cosmos: Stellar Arts, portrays part of the difficulty of reporting on African science. Turn back to when Egyptians built the pyramids, and you can understand that astronomy goes back thousands of years on the continent. Yet, Africa is under-represented in discussions about popular astronomy. Language, scattered cultures, and distance from the Western world are all barriers.

Creating this volume must have been daunting for Christine Mullen Kreamer and her collaborators, who gathered 20 essays about African astronomy.

But you can see for yourself, as this book is available for free on iPad, and you can download it here.

Africa is a large continent with humans living anywhere from crowded cities to sparse grassland. There are at least 3,000 ethnic groups on that landmass, according to Baylor University, with many of these cultures having separate views in astronomical culture and history.

It’s hard to gather all that information into a single book, but the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art does its best.

The book opens with lengthy explanations of the Egyptian and Babylonian contributions to astronomy. The Babylonians, for example, observed the strange backwards motion of Mars when our planet “catches up” in our smaller orbit to Mars’ larger one. The Egyptians used the sky to develop a 12-month calendar to track important feasts and the time for harvests.

Retrograde motion of Mars. Image credit: NASA

This information is readily accessible elsewhere, but the art makes it stand out. Flip the pages, and you’ll gaze at period art, maps and even astronomical tables that were on display at the museum for a 2012 exhibition.

Perhaps the most fascinating historical chapter is Cosmic Africa, which traces the development of a film of the same title. Anne Rogers and her film team did field research in seven countries to narrow down which tribes to focus on. Eventually, they settled on the Ju/’hoansi in Namibia, the Dogon in Mali and (through archaeology) the area of Nabta Playa in Egypt.

There aren’t many explanations of these peoples in the historical record, so it’s neat to see how their culture is shaped by the stars and nebulas they see. Adding to the interest, the team deliberately visited the Ju/’hoansi during a partial solar eclipse to learn how the tribe reacts to more rare astronomical events.

You’ll see a lot of tribes in this large volume, and will also get hints of the latest art and science surrounding African astronomy. The most current astronomical information is sparse, perhaps out of recognition that the information would go out of date very quickly. It might have been interesting nevertheless to include more information about the Square Kilometer Array, the world’s largest telescope, that is under development in both Africa and Australia.

For more information on the book, check out the online exhibition from the Smithsonian.

March 4, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

How Do You Build a Holodeck?

Star Trek first officer William Riker steps into a simulated jungle on the USS Enterprise-D's holodeck. Credit: Paramount Pictures/CBS Studios, via Memory alpha

What would it be like to step in an ordinary room and feel a gentle, computer-generated jungle breeze, with trees swaying nearby that you could touch?

AMD, a micro processor manufacturer, is trying to figure that out. The company has been doing a conference circuit in recent weeks promoting its research in heterogeneous system architecture, which is essentially a method to bind parallel computing processes together for greater efficiency.

The “holy grail” of these efforts, according to AMD’s Phil Rogers, would be building something like the holodeck — the computer deck on Star Trek (notably in The Next Generation) where characters would play immersive games. They could dial up a mystery novel, for example, then find themselves in a seedy bar with virtual-yet-real-looking holograms in 1940s-style clothing.

Rogers, a corporate fellow at AMD, has spent years working in 3-D technologies. It’s only recently that the company felt comfortable enough to speculate about the holodeck, he says. Other entities are also working on holodeck-like technologies, such as Microsoft and Stony Brook University, so perhaps that helped.

AMD believes it could be only 10 to 15 years before a holodeck becomes real. What would it take to get there?

A better-than-Imax video experience. We hope you’ve had the experience of sitting back in a domed Imax theatre and watching the shuttle launch in Hubble 3-D. Yet despite the awesome wrap-around view, it doesn’t feel like reality. A holodeck would need 360-degree fidelity. It would need to understand that objects get closer when you step towards them, and further when you step away. Perspective must tilt as you move your head. “You inevitably have to combine multiple video feeds to do that and stitch them together seamlessly,” Rogers said.

The highest-fidelity audio ever. You know those people who swear that records produce better music than MP3s? “People are very much more fussy about video than audio,” Rogers points out. To make the holodeck feel real, the audio not only has to be immersive, but also directional and able to change as the person moves. The latest in surround-sound technologies doesn’t even close to that, he said.

The sensation of touch. Sure, Captain Jean-Luc Picard can slug a virtual villain in the head, but it wouldn’t have that same oomph unless Picard could feel his hand making contact with the other guy. “We still need to develop the tactile feedback, as somebody in a holodeck interacts with an object and another person they need to touch, and they need to feel that they touched,” Rogers said. “The most likely way that we’d do that is with targeted air jets, and transducers that haven’t been developed yet.”

Efficient memory allocation. While the blue screen of death in three dimensions would be rather epic, that’s not what holodeck designers want. The best way to keep the holodeck humming will be sharing memory between the central processing unit and the graphics processing unit, Rogers said. We’ve already made strides in this direction. Still, millions of parallel processes will have to happen simultaneously, so there’s quite a ways to go.

Lots of processing power. It will take mega computer juice to sync up the images, audio and other features that make the holodeck real. Remember that line in the movie Apollo 13 when Tom Hanks refers to the impressive computer “in a single room”? It’s laughable now when glancing at an iPhone, but we face a similar challenge now with holodecks. “The problem is it would take racks and racks of mainframe-like computers,” points out Rogers. A holodeck can’t be commercially available until the components fit to a small rack and draw small amounts of power.

Find paying customers. Naturally, a holodeck won’t happen without a captive market. We’ve had at least one petition asking the White House to build the Enterprise, but looks like that won’t happen anytime soon. Luckily for humanity, AMD has a backup. The firm believes business conference calls could really use a boost from holodeck-like technologies. Instead of having a talking head and a standard PowerPoint presentation, imagine how much more interesting the report would look if said person could, say, grab a virtual model of the solar system and spin it before your eyes.

Target the open-source community. For those people who want to channel their inner Wesley Crusher, AMD plans to leave at least some of the holodeck architecture open to amateur programmers. It’s hard to predict what computer languages will take hold at that time, but it would be the equivalent of letting somebody with C++ or Java experience into the hardware. Perhaps it will let you set your phasers to … whatever you choose.

March 1, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

5 Landsat Pictures That Changed the World

Mount St. Helens shortly after its eruption in 1980. Credit: Landsat

Turn a camera to a location for four decades, and you can see a lot of change. Streets appear or disappear. Trees grow and eventually, die. Houses spring up and slowly decay.

Landsat is the longest-running Earth observation program, with four decades of observations behind it. Today, to celebrate the launch of Landsat 5 on this day in 1984, here are five Landsat images that helped us better understand the Earth and at times, how humans affect its environment.

Mount St. Helens

When Washington State’s Mount St. Helens exploded in May 1980, it killed 57 people and obliterated much of the surrounding countryside. For American volcanologists, however, St. Helens was an easy target to study both up close and with the Landsat satellite. This 1980 image shows the devastated countryside in the weeks after the eruption. Landsat photos from every year since demonstrate how the area has recovered in the past two decades.

3-D Antarctica

A 3-D map of Antarctica using 1,100 images from the Landsat 7 satellite. Credit: Landsat/USGS

That image up there was years in the making. First, scientists collected 1,100 images of Antarctica using the Landsat 7 satellite. That process took three years, between 1999 and 2001. They combined elevation data and field measurements. Next came the painstaking process of stitching it together. It was finally released to the public in 2007. An unexpected benefit? Spying the continent from space allowed scientists to better track Emperor penguins. That brown stain on the image is actually where the penguins were sitting when the pictures were taken.

Rushing to Kuwait’s rescue

Oil well fires burn in Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Credit: Landsat/USGS

As Iraq pulled out from Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraqi troops set fire to some 650 oil wells. The environmental devastation was enormous. This Landsat image, among many others, was crucial for Kuwaiti emergency responders to figure out where the fires were burning and how best to approach them.

Landsat’s Van Gogh image

NASA once compared this image of phytoplankton surrounding Gotland to Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Credit: Landsat — NASA once compared this image of phytoplankton surrounding Gotland to Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Credit: Landsat/USGS

Are those stars and nebulas we see above? Not quite, but NASA points out it does look very similar to the Vincent Van Gogh image “Starry Night.” That 2005 snapshot from Landsat 7 actually shows phytoplankton surrounding the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The picture was voted the top snapshot by NASA visitors to the “Earth As Art” contest held in 2012.

Shrinking Aral Sea

The Aral Sea has shrunk to half its size in just 40 years. Credit: Landsat/USGS

The series of Landsat images above show just how much of the Aral Sea disappeared between 1977 and 2006. The body of water, located between Uzbekistan (south) and Kazakhstan, used to be the fourth-largest lake in the world. The Soviets tapped into the sea several decades ago to irrigate the surrounding area. While local authorities are working to reverse the damage, the sea is still about half the size it used to be.

There’s more Landsat magic to come in the next few years. The Landsat Data Continuity Mission left Earth last month and will take more pictures of the Earth in even better resolution than its ancestors. Take a look at its launch video below.

February 28, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

The Men Who Didn’t Go to the Moon

Elliott See (left) and Charlie Bassett, who were slated to fly aboard the Gemini 9 mission. Credit: NASA

On this day (Feb. 28) in 1966, the Gemini 9 prime crew was in a T-38 airplane making a final approach to a McDonnell Aircraft plant in St. Louis, Missouri. Amid deteriorating weather conditions, Elliot See tried to make a landing. His airplane collided with the factory building in which his spacecraft was under construction. The plane crashed, killing both See and his crewmate Charlie Bassett.

The accident sent shockwaves through the small astronaut corps, and also necessitated some hasty reassignments. The Gemini 9 backup crew of Tom Stafford and Eugene Cernan immediately became the prime crew and launched into space on May 17, 1966 on a mission that included a challenging spacewalk for Cernan.

But according to Deke Slayton, who was responsible for crew selections at the time, the deaths of See and Bassett even affected the Moon missions of Apollo.

“I … had a lot of plans for Charlie Bassett — after GT-9 [Gemini 9] he would have moved on to command module pilot for Frank Borman’s Apollo crew. Elliott was going to be backup commander for GT-12,” wrote Slayton in his memoir Deke!, which he created with help from Twilight Zone writer (and multiple book author) Michael Cassutt.

In Slayton’s mind, the loss of this one crew affected assignments all the way to the first crew who landed on the Moon: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11. (Michael Collins was also on the mission, but remained in orbit in the command module.)

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon for Apollo 11. Credit: NASA

“All the backups were changed, and Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin wound up being pointed at GT-12,” Slayton wrote. “Without flying GT-12, it was very unlikely that Buzz would have been in any position to be lunar module pilot on the first landing attempt.”

It’s possible this crash could even have affected Apollo 13, which happened four years later.

Jim Lovell flew on Apollo 8 as the command module pilot. While Slayton didn’t state it, Lovell’s experience on that mission likely led to his appointment as commander for Apollo 14. Fate then shifted him forward a flight to the ill-fated Apollo 13, which was crippled by an oxygen tank explosion, after the original commander of that flight, Al Shepard, required a little more time for training.

As for See and Bassett, their remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery, which is also home to many other fallen crews. Several crew members from Apollo 1, the Challenger disaster and the Columbia disaster have been laid to rest there.

February 27, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

3 Comets That Fizzled

An artist's conception of a comet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Take a dirty snowball in space and hurl it towards the Sun. I dare you… and then make a prediction as to how that will look.

This is the problem comet scientists face when talking about how bright a comet will appear from Earth. They’re imaging a conglomerate of dust, ice and other materials millions of miles away. After figuring out where the comet will go, then they have to predict how it will behave.

It’s a science, to be sure, but an unpredictable one. That’s why it’s so hard to figure out how Comet ISON will fare when it gets closer to the Sun in November 2013. It could blow into pieces before arriving. It could break up when it gets close to the Sun. Or, it could live up to wildest expectations and shine so brightly you’ll be able to see it in daylight.

Veteran comet-gazers can name a few visitors that didn’t perform as well as predicted. Michael Mumma, who is with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s solar system exploration division, was the lead for the agency’s scientific campaign on many comets of the past few decades. In an e-mail to Universe Today, he shared what made three comets less spectacular than predictions.

Comet Kohoutek (1973)

Comet Kohoutek in 1973. Credit: NASA/University of Arizona

Billed by some as the comet of the century, Comet Kohoutek was predicted to pass close to the Sun after it was discovered in March 1973. NASA initiated “Operation Kohoutek” to keep an eye on the comet from a network of observatories in the sky, on the ground and even telescopes in mid-air.

Mumma joked that Kohoutek was a great career launcher for him, as a spectrometer that searched for ammonia ended up getting sustained funding for further development. But the comet was a visual disappointment, he acknowledged.

“The hype surrounding Comet Kohoutek was inspired by two predictions of its possible brightness, made by a recognized senior comet scientist. The NASA spokesman chose to promote the brighter of the two, that predicted the comet would become as ‘bright as the full Moon’. He usually mentioned (softly) that we couldn’t be certain it would actually brighten that much – but the press usually ignored that disclaimer,” Mumma wrote.

“Actually, the comet really did fizzle, failing to reach even the fainter estimate – probably because at discovery it was far from the Sun and activated by something other than water ice. Under those circumstances, any prediction was bound to be highly uncertain.”

Halley’s Comet (1986)

Halley's Comet in 1986. Credit: NASA — Halley’s Comet in 1986. Credit: NASA

Halley’s is the most famous periodic comet, meaning that it returns to the inner solar system over and over again. Its bright appearance made it show up repeatedly in the historical record, most famously in the Bayeux Tapestry after it arrived in 1066 shortly before William the Conquerer successfully led the Norman Conquest of England. However, astronomers in each era saw the comet’s appearance as separate, unpredictable events.

English astronomer Edmond Halley, in examining the astronomical record in 1705, supposed that a comet with similar properties that appeared every 75 years or so was probably the same comet. Ever since then, astronomers and the public alike eagerly await each appearance. The 1910 visit was particularly spectacular, making the press set high expectations for 1986. However, the comet was much further away from the Sun in the 1980s and was fainter.

According to Mumma, the comet did not actually fizzle. Many press reports just got the brightness of the comet wrong, leading the public to believe the comet was less spectacular than predicted.

“It was a bright comet, just as scientists predicted. However, it was much brighter in the southern hemisphere than in the northern, as predicted. From Christchurch (New Zealand), and again from Cairns (Australia), it was large and the brightest object in the sky – easily seen with the unaided eye.”

As a scientific sidenote, Mumma’s team probed the comet with NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory and, using infrared fluorescence spectroscopy that Mumma developed, found water for the first time in a comet.

Comet Austin (1990)

A negative image of Comet Austin. Credit: European Southern Observatory

In 1989, Sky & Telescope published a cover article on Comet Austin with the eye-catching headline: “Monster Comet is Coming!” As with Halley, many people anticipated this would be a bright comet, easily visible with the naked eye. In the book Hunting and Imaging Comets, United Kingdom amateur astronomer Martin Mobberley pointed out it was a great object in telescopes or binoculars, but not so much with the eye alone.

“Austin was less bright than some had predicted, but it was bright enough to permit major scientific successes,” Mumma added in his e-mail to Universe Today. “My team detected CO (carbon monoxide) and methanol in that comet, among the first detections of these molecules in comets at infrared wavelengths.”

All in all, these comets show that it’s really hard to figure out what they look like when they get by Earth. This means that nobody knows exactly how ISON will behave until it’s almost upon us.

February 25, 2013April 26, 2016 by Elizabeth Howell

The Mars Spacecraft That Was Almost Destroyed On The Launchpad

Artist's conception of Mariner 6. Credit: NASA

On this day (Feb. 25) in 1969, Mariner 6 was hefted off of Earth on a path to Mars. What’s less known is the spacecraft nearly was destroyed only 10 days beforehand as the rocket began to collapse. This NASA account succinctly summarizes what must have been a terrifying moment:

A faulty switch opened the main valves on the Atlas stage. This released the pressure which supported the Atlas structure, and as the booster deflated it began to crumple. Two ground crewman started pressurizing pumps, saving the structure from further collapse. The Mariner 6 spacecraft was removed, put on another Atlas/Centaur, and launched on schedule. The two ground crewman, who had acted at risk of the 12-story rocket collapsing on them, were awarded Exceptional Bravery Medals from NASA.

Who were these exceptional people? Universe Today asked around at NASA for some answers, and got the gentlemen’s names: Billy McClure and Charles Beverlin, who were NASA contractors at General Dynamics. It appears that these two men were the first to receive an Exceptional Bravery Medal from the agency.

McClure, a Second World War veteran, died in 2009 at the age of 85. It appears that the medal was a highlight in McClure’s life, according to an account by his great-granddaughter Hanna Smith, who referred to him as “Grandad”:

“Grandad was flown to California to receive copies of the first pictures ever taken of Mars and to be personally thanked by the Vice President of the United States,” she wrote in a 2012 article. McClure retired from General Dynamics after 31 years of service. His son, also named Billy McClure, was a worker on the U.S. shuttle program.

The agency had no contact information for Beverlin given that he was not a NASA employee.

As for Mariner 6, the mission made it to Mars at a time when spacecraft failures were fast and frequent. The spacecraft’s closest approach to Mars was 2,131 miles (3,431 km) and it successfully beamed images and information back to Earth. It’s images finally squashed the notion of Martian “canals” — once proposed by astronomer Percival Lowell — and showed the surface of Mars to be very different from that of the Moon, in contrast to the results from Mariner 4. Mariner 6 also helped identify the makeup of the south polar cap (predominantly carbon dioxide, and its radio science refined estimates of the mass, radius and shape of Mars.

Just think, this cratered image of Mars below was only possible through an act of bravery from two men.

Mariner 6 image of Sinus Sabaeus and Deucalionis Regio on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL

February 25, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Fire! How the Mir Incident Changed Space Station Safety

Jerry Linenger dons a mask during his mission on Mir in 1997. Credit: NASA

Sixteen years ago, a fire on the Russian space station Mir erupted after a cosmonaut routinely ignited a perchlorate canister that produced oxygen to supplement the space station’s air supply. Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut aboard Mir at that time, wrote about the incident that occurred on February 24, 1997 in his memoir Off the Planet:

As the fire spewed with angry intensity, sparks – resembling an entire box of sparklers ignited simultaneously – extended a foot or so beyond the flame’s furthest edge. Beyond the sparks, I saw what appeared to be melting wax splattering on the bulkhead opposite the blaze. But it was not melting max. It was molten metal. The fire was so hot that it was melting metal.

Linenger famously had some trouble donning gas masks, which kept malfunctioning, but he and the rest of the crew managed to put out the blaze before it spun out of control. The cause was traced to a fault in the canister.

Mir itself was deorbited in 2001, but the fire safety lessons are still vivid in everyone’s mind today.

Outside view of the Mir space station. Credit: NASA

NASA fire expert David Urban told Universe Today that a fire is among the most catastrophic situations that a crew can face.

You can’t go outside, you’re in a very small volume, and your escape options are limited. Your survival options are limited. That space can tolerate a much smaller fire than you can tolerate in our home. The pressure can’t escape easily, and the heat stays there, and the toxic products are there as well.

Urban, who is chief of the combustion and reacting systems branch of the research and technology directorate of the NASA Glenn Research Center, said NASA and Russia have learned several things from the incident that they have implemented on the International Space Station today:

– Changing fabrication procedures for the canisters. NASA officials and their Russian counterparts “took a good hard look” at the canisters and determined they were still the best solution given their modest weight and easy portability. They did, however, put stricter guidelines into the fabrication in the Russian facility. “The most likely cause was contamination during assembly of the cassette, the cartridge that contains the perchlorate. So, much stronger control there and more testing of the units as they make them. ”

– Better insulation. Urban noted the canisters are now in specially designed cases, a sort of high-temperature insulation package that can absorb the “blow torch effect” that happens if a unit fails. “It protects the rest of the vehicle … like a fire in a fireplace.”

– Clearing the way. Just before the Mir fire happened, the crew happened to clean up trash from the immediate area near the faulty canister. The procedure was just a coincidence, but it could have ended up saving the ship, Urban said. Today’s space station crews are very careful to keep a buffer between the canisters on board and any items. “In the shuttle era, it was different because it came back in 16 days or less. The space station or Mir, it’s like your house. You can’t let clutter accumulate. We’ve learned a lot in Mir about how to manage a long-duration vehicle.”

– Keeping up with the latest research. There are, in fact, two fire suppression systems on the International Space Station: a water foam system in the Russian sections, and a carbon dioxide system in the United States area. NASA is now working on a more modern “water mist” fire suppression method, based on an ongoing trend seen protecting terrestrial areas such as electronics and shipping rooms. This system emits fine particles, sort of like a sprinkler, that are just tens of microns across and act almost like a gas. Urban said the system is late in the design review part of development and should be ready for use on station within the next couple of years.

One 2011 NASA report on the incident also highlighted the importance of emergency preparation and safety drills to mitigate fires as they happen. “More effective warning systems could save several seconds of reaction time, which, in a crisis, could mean the difference between success and failure,” it stated. You can read the rest of that report here.

February 23, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Satellite Swarm — Including an Asteroid Hunter — Readies For Spaceflight

The Canadian asteroid-hunting NEOSSAT is among the fleet of satellites launched on Feb. 25, 2013.Credit: Canadian Space Agency

Early next week, an Indian rocket will launch into space carrying seven satellites on board. Among them will be a small but mighty asteroid-hunting telescope called NEOSSat. Built by the Canadian Space Agency, it will mainly focus on the Atira class of asteroids, which are made up of space rocks within Earth’s orbit, to figure out their size and distribution. The suitcase-sized NEOSSat will orbit approximately 800 kilometers above Earth, searching for near-Earth asteroids that are difficult to spot using ground-based telescopes.

Here’s a full rundown of what’s soaring to space on Monday (Feb. 25), if all goes to plan. Check out the launch from India at this link; it’s supposed to go into space around 7:25 a.m. Eastern (12:25 p.m. UTC).

– NEOSSat (Canada). Short for Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, the satellite is actually split into two different missions. For half the time, it will be keeping a sharp eye out for asteroids that may swing by Earth at some point. The telescope will spend its other science mission watching satellites and space debris in orbit, to better track their movements.

“NEOSSat will discover many asteroids much faster than can be done from the ground alone,” said Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary. “Its most exciting result, however, will probably be discovering new targets for exploration by both manned and unmanned space missions.”

– SARAL (India/France). This is by far the largest satellite of the fleet; the rest of the mini sats listed below are hitching a ride to share launch costs. The satellite is supposed to take altimeter measurements of water and ice to watch the movement of waves and to add more data into climate change databases, among other objectives.

– CanX-3 BRITE (Canada). The BRIght Target Explorer is billed as the smallest astronomical telescope, at just 8 inches (20 centimeters) across. Unlike bigger observatories that focus on very faint objects, BRITE will — as the name suggests — watch over brighter stars that we commonly use on Earth to connect the dots in constellations. Oddly enough, despite their prominence in our sky, these brighter stars are poorly studied, astronomers said.

– Sapphire (Canada). A military mission, this satellite will keep track of objects orbiting between 3,800 and 25,000 miles (6,000 and 40,000 kilometers) from Earth. The Canadians will share this information with their close military ally, the Americans.

– TUGSat-1 BRITE (Austria). This will be the first Austrian satellite. Like CanX-3, it will investigate bright stars by watching the changes in brightness using a technique called photometry (measuring visible light.) The satellite is equipped with a high-resolution CCD imager to take pictures.

– AAUSat 3 (Denmark). This satellite will test the capabilities of automatic identification of ships (AIS) technology, following the beacons that ships are required to send out with information about their cargo and destination. Most of the testing will focus on the water around Greenland.

– STRaND-1 (United Kingdom). This satellite is literally a screamer, as it will be broadcasting the sound of human screams into space to see if anyone nearby can hear them. (This is to test the oft-repeated phrase that in space, nobody can hear you scream.) Besides monitoring shrieks, the satellite makers will be testing how well the satellite is controlled by a smartphone. The acronym is short for Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator.

February 22, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

In Reality, Nebulae Offer No Place for Spaceships to Hide

The nebulas in Battlestar: Blood and Chrome make for nice scenery, but they're a lot brighter than the truth, according to a Harvard astronomer. Credit: Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome/Machinima (screencap)

In the Battlestar: Galactica universe, nebulas are a nifty spot to hide from the Cylons that are plotting to kill humanity. There’s just one problem with the hypothesis, though — these diffuse areas of gas in our universe are actually very faint, even if you get close up. Probably too faint for a hiding spot.

Prequel Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome (released on DVD this week) shows the young William Adama flying around the universe with pretty nebulas in the background. That’s not anywhere near the truth, Harvard astronomer Peter Williams told Universe Today.

In an e-mail, Williams explained that bright nebulas are a common misperception seen in Star Wars, Star Trek and a host of other sci-fi series.

The big issue is that nebulae are just too faint for the human eye to see. And while it’s tempting to think that they’d look brighter from up close, in fact this isn’t actually true — they actually look just as bright from any distance! This is a law of optics, known in the jargon as the “conservation of surface brightness”. The key is that there are two competing effects in play. Imagine that you can see a nebula that’s, say, the size of the full moon.

Yes, if you get closer, your eye will receive more total power from the nebula. But the nebula will also look bigger, so that energy will be spread out over a larger visual area (technically: “solid angle”). The physics tells you that the power per solid angle in fact stays exactly the same, and this quantity is precisely the “brightness” of an object. So if nebula are too faint for to see from Earth with the naked eye — and they are — getting up close and personal doesn’t help any.

Those bright colors surrounding Battlestar's ships are not actually what you would see if nestled in a nebula, according to Harvard astronomer. Credit: Battlestar Galactica/SciFi (screencap) — The opening sequence in Battlestar: Galactica shows the ships hiding in a bright nebula. Credit: Battlestar Galactica/SciFi (screencap)

Further, Williams, explains, the bright colors we’re used to seeing in Hubble Space Telescope images are just an approximation of what a nebula actually looks like.

Reproduced images of nebulae don’t portray their colors accurately. As you may know, some astronomical images use “false color” to represent wavelengths of light that humans can’t even see. This does happen with images of nebulae, but nebulae really are colorful, and many nebula images try to reproduce those colors faithfully. No current reproduction, however, can be truly accurate.

The Crab Nebula. Image credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope.

The problem is that the colorful nebular emission comes from reactions that produce light at a few, specific wavelengths; meanwhile, our inks and pixels emit over much broader wavelength ranges. We can mix these broad ranges in ways that approximate the narrow ones, but the results aren’t quite the same.

For an entertaining look at the science of nebulas, Williams recommends this entertaining video by astronomer Phil Plait, a long-time friend of Universe Today who is best known for his Bad Astronomy blog (now at Slate). “If you were inside [the nebula and looked down], you wouldn’t see it,” Plait says in this 2008 clip.

Guess it’s time to find another spot to hide.