Delta II Heavy rocket and GRAIL Lunar mappers unveiled at night at Launch Pad 17B. GRAIL liftoff was postponed to Sept. 10 at 8:29 a.m EDT after high levels winds scrubbed the Sept 8 launch attempt. Credit: Ken Kremer
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NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) moon mapping twins and the mighty Delta II rocket that will blast the high tech physics experiment to space on a lunar science trek were magnificently unveiled in the overnight darkness in anticipation of a liftoff that had originally been planned for the morning of Sept. 8.
Excessively high upper level winds ultimately thwarted Thursday’s launch attempt.
NASA late today has just announced a further postponement by another day to Saturday Sept. 10 to allow engineers additional time to review propulsion system data from Thursday’s detanking operation after the launch attempt was scrubbed to Friday. Additional time is needed by the launch team to review the pertinent data to ensure a safe blastoff of the $496 Million GRAIL mission.
There are two instantaneous launch opportunities at 8:29:45 a.m. and 9:08:52 a.m. EDT at Cape Canaveral, eight minutes earlier than was planned on Sept. 8. The weather forecast for Sept. 10 still shows a 60 percent chance of favorable conditions for a launch attempt.
GRAIL A and B enclosed in nose cone atop Delta II rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Umbilical’s connect from Delta 2 to Fixed Umbilical Tower (FUT).
Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
Despite a rather poor weather prognosis, the heavy space coast cloud cover had almost completely cleared out in the final hours before launch, the surface winds were quite calm and we all expected to witness a thunderous liftoff. But measurements from weather balloons sent aloft indicated that the upper level winds were “red” and violated the launch criteria.
Mobile Service Tower is retracted from around Delta II rocket at Pad 17B. Credit: Ken Kremer
As the launch gantry was quickly retracted at Launch Complex 17B on Sept. 7, the Delta was bathed in xenon spotlights that provided a breathtaking light show as the service structure moved a few hundred feet along rails.
The cocoon like Mobile Service Tower (MST) provides platforms to access the rocket at multiple levels to prepare the vehicle and spacecraft for flight. The MST also protects the rocket from weather and impacts from foreign debris.
The Delta II rocket stands 128 feet tall and is 8 feet in diameter. The first stage liquid and solid rocket fueled engines will generate about 1.3 million pounds of thrust.
During the Terminal Countdown, the first stage is fueled with cryogenic liquid oxygen and highly refined kerosene (RP-1).
GRAIL is an extraordinary first ever journey to the center of the moon that will — with its instruments from orbit — peer into the moons interior from crust to core and map its gravity field by 100 to 1000 times better than ever before. The mission employs two satellites flying in tandem formation some 50 km in near circular polar orbit above the lunar surface.
GRAIL A and B will perform high precision range-rate measurements between them using a Ka-band instrument. The mission will provide unprecedented insight into the formation and thermal evolution of the moon that can be applied to the other rocky planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
After a 3.5 month journey to the moon, the probes will arrive about a day apart on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day 2012 for an 82 day science mapping phase as the moon rotates three times beneath the GRAIL orbit.
Photojournalists watch as Mobile Service Tower is retracted from around Delta II rocket at Pad 17B.
Credit: Ken Kremer Xenon spotlights bathe Delta II rocket as Mobile Service Tower is retracted at Pad 17 and photojournalists watch from nearby at Pad 17B. Credit: Ken Kremer
GRAIL and its Delta 2 rocket on the launchpad. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.
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High upper level winds put a damper on hopes for launching the GRAIL mission on its first attempts on Thursday, September 8. While the weather looked perfect on the ground at Kennedy Space Center, weather balloons showed high winds in the region of the atmosphere where the Delta 2 launcher would normally experience the most turbulence.
NASA will try again on Friday, September 9 with two one-second launch windows available at 8:33 and 9:12 EDT (12:33 or 13:12 UT). There were two one-second launch windows for Thursday, and both were “red” because of the winds aloft.
The dynamic duo twin-spacecraft Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission is designed to map the Moon’s gravity with extreme precision.
Delta II Heavy rocket will blast GRAIL missions to the moon from Launch Pad 17B. Delta II rocket and twin GRAIL satellites are enclosed inside the Mobile Service Tower at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Credit: Ken Kremer
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Another American rocket Era is about to end. The venerable Delta II rocket, steeped in history, will fly what is almost certainly its final mission from Cape Canaveral. And it will do so quite fittingly by blasting twin satellites to the moon for NASA on a unique path for a truly challenging mission to do “extraordinary science”.
On Sept. 8, the most powerful version of the Delta II, dubbed the Delta II Heavy, is slated to launch NASA’s duo of GRAIL lunar mappers on an unprecedented science mission to unlock the mysteries of the moons deep interior. There are two instantaneous launch windows at 8:37:06 a.m. and 9:16:12 a.m. EDT lasting one second each.
“GRAIL simply put, is a journey to the center of the moon,” said Ed Weiler, NASA Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington,DC at a pre-launch briefing for reporters on Sept. 6.
“It will probe the interior of the moon and map its gravity field by 100 to 1000 times better than ever before. We will learn more about the interior of the moon with GRAIL than all previous lunar missions combined.”
View of Delta II rocket looking out to Atlantic Ocean from upper level of Launch Complex 17. ULA and GRAIL logos painted on side of 8 ft diameter Delta rocket. Credit: Ken Kremer
GRAIL will depart Earth from Space Launch Complex 17B (SLC-17B) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, which is also the last scheduled use of Pad 17B.
GRAIL logo painted on the side of Delta II Rocket 1st Stage. Photo taken from inside upper level of launch gantry. GRAIL stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory. Credit: Ken Kremer
“Trying to understand how the moon formed, and how it evolved over its history, is one of the things we’re trying to address with the GRAIL mission,” says Maria Zuber, principal investigator for GRAIL from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But also, (we’re) trying to understand how the moon is an example of how terrestrial planets in general have formed.”
“GRAIL is a mission that will study the inside of the moon from crust to core,” Zuber says.
Delta II Heavy rocket is augmented by 9 wider diameter solid rocket motors providing more thrust. Credit: Ken Kremer
So far there have been 355 launches of the Delta II family, according to NASA’s Delta II Launch Manager Tim Dunn. The Delta II is built by United Launch Alliance.
“GRAIL is the last contracted Delta II mission to be launched from Complex 17. And it will be the 356th overall Delta to be launched. Complex 17 at the Cape has a proud heritage of hosting 258 of those 355 total Delta launches to date.
Hypergolic propellants have been loaded onto the 2nd stage after assessing all the preparations for the rocket, spacecraft, the range and facilities required for launch.
“The Launch Readiness Review was successfully completed and we can proceed with the countdown,” said Dunn.
The Delta II Heavy is augmented with nine larger diameter ATK solid rocket motors.
The Mobile Service Tower will be rolled back from the Delta II rocket tonight, starting at about 10:30 p.m. EDT depending on the weather.
The weather forecast for launch remains very iffy at a 60% percent chance of “NO GO” according to NASA and Air Force officials.
A launch decision will be made tomorrow morning Sept. 8 right after the weather briefing but before fueling begins at 6:30 a.m.
The weather forecast for rollback of the Mobile Service Tower tonight remains generally favorable. There is a 40% chance of a weather issue at 10:30 p.m. which drops to 30% after midnight. Tower rollback can be pushed back about 2 hours without impacting the countdown, says NASA.
Weather remains at 60% NO GO in case of a 24 hour delay but improves over the weekend. The team has about 42 days time in the launch window.
After entering lunar orbit, the two GRAIL spacecraft will fly in a tandem formation just 55 kilometers above the lunar surface with an average separation of 200 km during the three month science phase.
Stay tuned to Universe Today for updates overnight leading to liftoff at 8:37 a.m.
See my photo album from a recent tour of Launch Complex 17 and the Mobile Service Tower
GRAIL Flying in Formation. Using a precision formation-flying technique, the twin GRAIL spacecraft will map the moon's gravity field. The mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon, including the size of a possible inner core, and it should provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed. GRAIL is a part of NASA's Discovery Program.
Instead of a conventional picture, the EUV variability Experiment (EVE) on board SDO produces graphs like this, called spectra, that show the total intensity of any given extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelength of light coming off of the sun. This image shows a single moment from May 5, 2010. Instead of a conventional picture, the EUV variability Experiment (EVE) on board SDO produces graphs like this, called spectra, that show the total intensity of any given extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelength of light coming off of the sun. This image shows a single moment from May 5, 2010. The height of each vertical line represents how much energy is present in that particular wavelength. Spectra like this can measure energy from the sun more comprehensively than instruments that can only “see” a single wavelength. Credit: NASA/SDO/EVE
The Sun’s surface dances. Giant loops of magnetized solar material burst up, twist, and fall back down. Some erupt, shooting radiation flares and particles out into space. Forced to observe this dance from afar, scientists use all the tools at their disposal to look for patterns and connections to discover what causes these great explosions. Mapping these patterns could help scientists predict the onset of space weather that bursts toward Earth from the Sun, interfering with communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.
Analysis of 191 solar flares since May 2010 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has recently shown a new piece in the pattern: some 15 percent of the flares have a distinct “late phase flare” some minutes to hours later that has never before been fully observed. This late phase of the flare pumps much more energy out into space than previously realized.
“We’re starting to see all sorts of new things,” says Phil Chamberlin, deputy project scientist for SDO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We see a large increase in emissions a half-hour to several hours later, that is sometimes even larger than the original, traditional phases of the flare. In one case on November 3, 2010, measuring only the effects of the main flare would mean underestimating the amount of energy shooting into Earth’s atmosphere by 70 percent.”
The entire space weather system, from the Sun’s surface to the outer edges of the solar system, is dependent on how energy transfers from one event to another – magnetic reconnection near the Sun transferred to movement energy barreling across space to energy deposited into Earth’s atmosphere, for example. Better understanding of this late phase flare will help scientists quantify just how much energy is produced when the sun erupts.
The team found evidence for these late phases when SDO first began collecting data in May of 2010 and the Sun decided to put on a show. In that very first week, in the midst of an otherwise fairly quiet time for the sun, there sprouted some nine flares of varying sizes. Flare sizes are divided into categories, named A, B, C, M and X, that have long been defined by the intensity of the X-rays emitted at the flare’s peak as measured by the GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) satellite system. GOES is a NOAA-operated network of satellites that has been in geosynchronous orbit near Earth since 1976. One of the GOES satellites measures only X-ray emissions and is a crucial source of information on space weather that the sun sends our way.
That May 2010, however, SDO observed those flares with its multi-wavelength vision. It recorded data indicating that some other wavelengths of light weren’t behaving in sync with the X-rays, but peaked at other times.
“For decades, our standard for flares has been to watch the x-rays and see when they peak,” says Tom Woods, a space scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo. who is first author on a paper on this subject that goes online September 7 in the Astrophysical Journal. “That’s our definition for when a flare goes off. But we were seeing peaks that didn’t correspond to the X-rays.” Woods says that at first they were worried the data were an anomaly or a glitch in the instruments. But as they confirmed the data with other instruments and watched the patterns repeat over many months, they began to trust what they were seeing. “And then we got excited,” he says.
Over the course of a year, the team used the EVE (for Extreme ultraviolet Variability Experiment) instrument on SDO to record data from many more flares. EVE doesn’t snap conventional images. Woods is the principal investigator for the EVE instrument and he explains that it collects all the light from the sun at once and then precisely separates each wavelength of light and measures its intensity. This doesn’t produce pretty pictures the way other instruments on SDO do, but it provides graphs that map out how each wavelength of light gets stronger, peaks, and diminishes over time. EVE collects this data every 10 seconds, a rate guaranteed to provide brand new information about how the sun changes, given that previous instruments only measured such information every hour and a half or didn’t look at all the wavelengths simultaneously – not nearly enough information to get a complete picture of the heating and cooling of the flare.
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Recording extreme ultraviolet light, the EVE spectra showed four phases in an average flare’s lifetime. The first three have been observed and are well established. (Though EVE was able to measure and quantify them over a wide range of light wavelengths better than has ever been done.) The first phase is the hard X-ray impulsive phase, in which highly energetic particles in the sun’s atmosphere rain down toward the sun’s surface after an explosive event in the atmosphere known as magnetic reconnection. They fall freely for some seconds to minutes until they hit the denser lower atmosphere, and then the second phase, the gradual phase, begins. Over the course of minutes to hours, the solar material, called plasma, is heated and explodes back up, tracing its way along giant magnetic loops, filling the loops with plasma. This process sends off so much light and radiation that it can be compared to millions of hydrogen bombs.
The third phase is characterized by the Sun’s atmosphere — the corona –losing brightness, and so is known as the coronal dimming phase. This is often associated with what’s known as a coronal mass ejection, in which a great cloud of plasma erupts off the surface of the Sun.
But the fourth phase, the late phase flare, spotted by EVE was new. Anywhere from one to five hours later for several of the flares, they saw a second peak of warm coronal material that didn’t correspond to another X-ray burst.
“Many observations have spotted an increased extreme ultraviolet peak just seconds to minutes after the main phase of the flare, and this behavior is considered a normal part of the flare process. But this late phase is different,” says Goddard’s Chamberlin, who is also a co-author on the paper. “These emissions happen substantially later. And it happens after the main flare exhibits that initial peak.”
To try to understand what was happening, the team looked at the images collected from SDO’s Advanced Imaging Assembly (AIA) as well. They could see the main phase flare eruption in the images and also noticed a second set of coronal loops far above the original flare site. These extra loops were longer and become brighter later than the original set (or the post-flare loops that appeared just minutes after that). These loops were also physically set apart from those earlier ones.
“The intensity we’re recording in those late phase flares is usually dimmer than the X-ray intensity,” says Woods. “But the late phase goes on much longer, sometimes for multiple hours, so it’s putting out just as much total energy as the main flare that typically only lasts for a few minutes.” Because this previously unrealized extra source of energy from the flare is equally important to impacting Earth’s atmosphere, Woods and his colleagues are now studying how the late phase flares can influence space weather.
The late phase flare is, of course, just one piece of the puzzle as we try to understand the star with which we live. But keeping track of the energy, measuring all the different wavelengths of light, using all the instruments NASA has at its disposal, such information helps us map out all the steps of the Sun’s great dance.
Low periapsis Narrow Angle Camera image of the Apollo 17 Landing Site. Image is 150 meters wide, Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.
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New images of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites are the highest resolution pictures ever of human forays onto another world, as seen from a bird’s eye view — or in this case, a satellite’s eye view. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter dipped to a lower altitude, just 21 kilometers (13 miles) over the lunar surface.
“We like to look at the Apollo landing site images because it’s fun,” said LRO principal investigator Mark Robinson at a media briefing today. “But LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera) is looking at the whole Moon, and we have now taken 1,500 of these very high resolution images from all around the Moon which will help scientists and engineers to plan where we want to go in the future.”
Apollo 17 landing site taken by LRO in its lower orbit, with 25 cm per pixel. Credit: NASA/Goddard/ASU
Apollo 17 landing site from the regular 50 km altitude and about 50 cm per pixel. Credit: NASA/ Goddard/ ASU Compare in the images above the Apollo 17 landing site with 25 cm per pixel (top) and 50 cm per pixel (bottom).
Most notable are the tracks where the astronauts walked show up better, and details of the landers/descent stages can be resolved better.
Robinson said he was looking at the new images of the Apollo 17 landing site in Taurus Littrow Valley with Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt and Schmitt said “You need to image the whole valley at this resolution!”
This is the third resolution of Apollo sites that the LRO team has released — the first came from LRO’s commissioning phase where the altitude was about 100 km and the resolution was about 1 meter per pixel; next came the release of images from an altitude of about 50 km, with a resolution of about 50 cm per pixel; and now from about 21-22 km altitude with a resolution of 25 cm per pixel.
“These are the sharpest images of Apollo landing sites we’ll probably ever get with LRO,” said Rich Vondrak, LRO project scientist, “as we’ll never go as low in altitude as we were in the past month.”
LRO has now returned to its circular orbit of 50 km above the surface. This altitude requires monthly reboosts and since keeping LRO in that orbit would quickly exhaust the remaining fuel, in mid-December, LRO will move to an elliptical orbit, (30 km over south pole and 200 km over north pole). LRO will be able to stay in this orbit for several more years.
“This has been a highly productive mission, releasing a total of 245 terabytes of data — which would be a stack of 52,000 DVDs,” Vondrak said. Next week the science team will put out their 7th public release of data to the Planetary Data System, making all that data available to the public.
The paths left by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell on both Apollo 14 moon walks are visible in this image. (At the end of the second moon walk, Shepard famously hit two golf balls.) The descent stage of the lunar module Antares is also visible. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ASU
Robinson noted that the details of what pieces of equipment are in each location are verified by images taken from the surface by the astronauts. He was asked about the flags and if they are still standing: “All we can really see is the spots where the flag was planted because the astronauts tramped down the regolith. I’m not sure if the flags still exist, given the extreme heat and cold cycle and the harsh UV environment. The flags were made of nylon, and personally I would be surprised if anything was left of them since it has been over 40 years since they were left on the Moon and the flags we have here on Earth fade after they are left outside for one summer. If the flags are still there they are probably in pretty rough shape.”
The tracks made in 1969 by astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean, the third and fourth humans to walk on the moon, can be seen in this LRO image of the Apollo 12 site. The location of the descent stage for Apollo 12's lunar module, Intrepid, also can be seen. Credit: NASA/Goddard/ASU
Since we can still see the tracks and equipment looking unchanged (at least from this vantage point) one reporter asked if these items will be on the Moon forever. “Forever is a long time, so no, they won’t be there forever,” Robinson replied. “The Moon is constantly bombarded by micrometeorites, and slowly over time the tracks will disappear, then the smaller pieces of equipment will disappear, and eventually the decent stages will probably get blasted by an a larger asteroid. The estimate is that rocks erode 1 mm per million years. In human terms it may seems like forever, but geologic terms, there will be no traces of Apollo exploration in 10 to 100 million years.”
This video shows more info and a “zoom in” of the sites:
The 'Rock Garden' at the rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars as seen by the Opportunity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech, color by Stu Atkinson
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Last week we shared a 3-D view of the area being studied by the Opportunity rover on Mars; now here’s a color view of this stunning landscape on Mars. Both views are the handiwork of Stu Atkinson, a member of Unmanned Spaceflight and author of the Road to Endeavour blog. This is actually an ejecta field of rocks thrown about after the impact that created this huge crater where the rover is now traversing, and is an exciting region for the MER scientists to explore. Look for more great views of this region as Oppy makes her way around, and eventually inside the crater.
Stu tells us that no one should get too excited about the “green stuff” showing up on some of the rocks, as it certainly is not algae or moss or anything like that. “It’s just the colour balance I’ve gone with and the techniques I use,” he said. “Other versions by people with better software and processing skills than myself will no doubt show that green stuff isn’t anything of the kind, but this is the best I can do. And I unashamedly and apologetically go for ‘pretty picture’ rather than ‘scientifically 100% accurate’. That’s NASA’s job. When their version of this scene appears, it’ll be rather different, I’m sure.”
Are you ready for a fascinating virtual experience? Then check out “Eyes on the Solar System”! This clever compilation of visualizations and real images takes you on a journey that’s sure to keep you entertained for hours!
If you’ve had the chance to use high dollar astronomy software, you’ll appreciate this free program. Inside is a 3-D environment full of real NASA mission data which lets you explore the cosmos from the comfort of your computer. You can choose exploring an asteroid, scouring around a planet or taking a look at Earth from above. Fly with NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft or join Cassini. You can even see the entire solar system moving in real time! Just check out a very small part of the features in this introductory video…
There’s so much more there, too. Imagine the possibilities of Kepler, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Spitzer Space Telescope! Move forward and backward in time… You’re in command of this space journey! According to the developers, the awesome modeling team is currently working on a number of spacecraft models. In the near future, expect to see finished models of Phoenix (cruise), Mars Exploration Rovers (cruise), Mars Science Laboratory (cruise), Mars Odyssey, and Mars Express. There are many spacecraft in the pipeline, so be patient!
While NASA’s “Eyes on the Solar System” is compatible with Windows and Mac OS X, the partially Java-scripted format has a certain dependence on what browser is used. Firefox is recommended for smoothest operation, but it also works with IE and Safari. (I personally use Opera and encountered no problems – but avoid Chrome.) Other than that? Grab and comfy seat and take flight!
Opportunity investigates Tisdale 2 rock showing indications of ancient Martian water flow. NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its front hazard-avoidance camera to take this picture showing the rover's arm extended toward a light-toned rock, "Tisdale 2," during Sol 2695 of the rover's work on Mars (Aug. 23, 2011). The composition of Tisdale 2 is unlike any rock studied by Opportunity since landing 7.5 years ago. It is about 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists directing NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover gushed with excitement as they announced that the aging robot has discovered a rock with a composition unlike anything previously explored on the Red Planet’s surface – since she landed on the exotic Martian plains 7.5 years ago – and which offers indications that liquid water might have percolated or flowed at this spot billions of years ago.
Barely three weeks ago Opportunity arrived at the rim of the gigantic 14 mile ( 22 km) wide crater named Endeavour after an epic multi-year trek, and for the team it’s literally been like a 2nd landing on Mars – and the equivalent of the birth of a whole new mission of exploration at an entirely ‘new’ landing site.
“This is like having a brand new landing site for our veteran rover,” said Dave Lavery, program executive for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It is a remarkable bonus that comes from being able to rove on Mars with well-built hardware that lasts.”
Opportunity has traversed an incredible distance of 20.8 miles (33.5 km) across the Meridiani Planum region of Mars since landing on January 24, 2004 for a 3 month mission – now 30 times longer than the original warranty.
“Tisdale 2” is the name of the first rock that Opportunity drove to and investigated after reaching Endeavour crater and climbing up the rim at a low ridge dubbed ‘Cape York’.
This rock, informally named "Tisdale 2," was the first rock the NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity examined in detail on the rim of Endeavour crater. It has textures and composition unlike any rock the rover examined during its first 90 months on Mars. Its characteristics are consistent with the rock being a breccia -- a type of rock fusing together broken fragments of older rocks. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU
Endeavour’s rim is heavily eroded and discontinuous and divided into a series of segmented and beautiful mountainous ridges that offer a bonanza for science.
“This is not like anything we’ve ever seen before. So this is a new kind of rock.” said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for Opportunity at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y at a briefing for reporters on Sept. 1.
“It has a composition similar to some volcanic rocks, but there’s much more zinc and bromine than we’ve typically seen. We are getting confirmation that reaching Endeavour really has given us the equivalent of a second landing site for Opportunity.”
Tisdale 2 is a flat-topped rock about the size of a footstool that was blasted free by the impact that formed the tennis court sized “Odyssey” crater from which it was ejected.
“The other big take-away message, and this is to me the most interesting thing about Tisdale, is that this rock has a huge amount of zinc in it, way more zinc than we have ever seen in any Martian rock. And we are puzzling, we are thinking very hard over what that means,” Squyres speculated.
Bright veins cutting across outcrop in a section of Endeavour crater's rim called "Botany Bay" are visible in the foreground and middle distance of this view assembled from images taken by the navigation camera on Opportunity during Sol 2,681on Mars (Aug. 9, 2011). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Squyres said that high levels of zinc and bromine on Earth are often associated with rocks in contact with flowing water and thus experiencing hydrothermal activity and that the impact is the source of the water.
“When you find rocks on Earth that are rich in zinc, they typically form in a place where you had some kind of hydrothermal activity going on, in other words, you have water that gets heated up and it flows through the rocks and it can dissolve out and it can get redeposited in various places,” Squyres explained.
“So this is a clue, not definitive proof yet, but this is a clue that we may be dealing with a hydrothermal system here, we may be dealing with a situation where water has percolated or flowed or somehow moved through these rocks, maybe as vapor, maybe as liquid, don’t know yet.”
“But it has enhanced the zinc concentration in this rock to levels far in excess of anything we’ve ever seen on Mars before. So that’s the beginning of what we expect is going to be a long and very interesting story about these rocks.”
Endeavour crater was chosen three years ago as the long term destination for Opportunity because it may hold clues to a time billions and billions of years ago when Mars was warmer and wetter and harbored an environment that was far more conducive to the formation of life beyond Earth.
Endeavour Crater Panorama from Opportunity, Sol 2681, August 2011
Opportunity arrived at the rim of Endeavour on Sol 2681, August 9, 2011 and climbed up the ridge known as Cape York. Odyssey crater is visible at left. The rover has driven to Tisdale 2 rock at the outskirts of Odyssey to investigate the ejecta blocks which may hold clues to ancient water flow on Mars. Distant portions of Endeavour’s rim - as far as 13 miles away – visible in the background. The rover will likely drive eventually to the Cape Tribulation rim segment at right which holds a mother lode of clay minerals. This photo mosaic was stitched together from raw images taken by Opportunity on Sol 2681.
Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
Signatures of clay minerals, or phyllosilicates, were detected at several spots at Endeavour’s western rim by observations from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
“The motherlode of clay minerals is on Cape Tribulation. The exposure extends all the way to the top, mainly on the inboard side,” said Ray Arvidson, the rover’s deputy principal investigator at Washington University in St. Louis.
Opportunity Traverse Map: 2004 to 2011. The yellow line on this map shows where NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity has driven from the place where it landed in January 2004 -- inside Eagle crater, at the upper left end of the track -- to a point approaching the rim of Endeavour crater. The map traces the route through the 2,670th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars (July 29, 2011). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NMMNHS.
Phyllosilicates are clay minerals that form in the presence of pH neutral water and which are far more hospitable to the possible genesis of life compared to the sulfate rich rocks studied in the more highly acidic aqueous environments examined by both the Opportunity and Spirit rovers thus far.
“We can get up the side of Cape Tribulation,” said Arvidson. It’s not unlike Husband Hill for Spirit. We need to finish up first at Cape York, get through the martian winter and then start working our way south along Solander Point.
The general plan is that Opportunity will probably spend the next several months exploring the Cape York region for before going elsewhere. “Just from Tisdale 2 we know that we have something really new and different here,” said Squyres.
“On the final traverses to Cape York, we saw ragged outcrops at Botany Bay unlike anything Opportunity has seen so far, and a bench around the edge of Cape York looks like sedimentary rock that’s been cut and filled with veins of material possibly delivered by water,” said Arvidson. “We made an explicit decision to examine ancient rocks of Cape York first.”
So far at least the terrain at Cape York looks safe for driving with good prospects for mobility.
Opportunity approaches Tisdale 2 rock at Endeavour Crater rim
Opportunity Mars rover climbed up the ridge known as Cape York and drove to the flat topped Tisdale 2 rock at upper left to analyze it with the science instruments on the robotic arm. This photo mosaic was stitched together from raw images taken by Opportunity on Sol 2685, August 2011.
Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
“The good news is that, as predicted, we have hard packed soils like the plains at Gusev that Spirit saw before getting to the Columbia Hills,” said Arvidson. “The wheel tracks at Cape York are very, very shallow. So if anything we will have some skid going downhill the slopes of 5 to 10 degrees on the inboard side which we can correct for.”
“We are always on the lookout for sand traps. We are particularly sensitized to that after the Spirit situation. So far it’s clear sailing ahead.”
Opportunity will then likely head southwards towards an area dubbed “Botany Bay” and eventually drive some 1.5 km further to the next ridge named Cape Tribulation and hopefully scale the slopes in an uphill search for that mother lode of phyllosilicates.
“My strong hope – if the rover lasts that long – is that we will have a vehicle that is capable of climbing Cape Tribulation just as we climbed Husband Hill with Spirit. So it’s obvious to try if the rover is capable, otherwise we would try something simpler. But even if we lose a wheel we still have a vehicle capable of a lot of science,” Squyres emphasized. “Then we would stick to lower ground and more gently sloping stuff.”
“The clear intention as we finish up at Cape York, and look at what to do next, is that we are going to work our way south. We will focus along the crater’s rim. We will work south along the rim of Endeavour unless some discovery unexpectedly causes us to do something else.”
“We will go where the science takes us !” Squyres stated.
Opportunity is in generally good health but the rover is showing signs of aging.
“All in all, we have a very senior rover that’s showing her age, she has some arthritis and some other issues but generally, she’s in good health, she’s sleeping well at night, her cholesterol levels are excellent and so we look forward to productive scientific exploration for the period ahead,” said John Callas, project manager for Opportunity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“This has the potential to be the most revealing destination ever explored by Opportunity,” said Lavery. “This region is substantially different than anything we’ve seen before. We’re looking at this next phase of Opportunity’s exploration as a whole new mission, entering an area that is significantly different in the geologic context than anything we’ve seen with the rovers.”
This image taken from orbit shows the path of the path driven by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in the weeks around the rover's arrival at the rim of Endeavour crater. The sol number (number of Martian days since the rover landed on Mars) are indicated along the route. Sol 2674 corresponds to Aug. 2, 2011; Sol 2688 corresponds to Aug. 16, 2011. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of ArizonaElevated Zinc and Bromine in Tisdale 2 Rock on Endeavour Rim. This graphic presents information gained by examining part of the Martian rock called "Tisdale 2" with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on Mars rover Opportunity and comparing the composition measured there with compositions of other targets examined by Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit. The comparison targets are soil in Gusev crater, examined by Spirit; the relatively fresh basaltic rock Adirondack, examined by Spirit; the stony meteorite Marquette examined by Opportunity; and Gibraltar, an example of sulfate-rich bedrock examined by Opportunity. The target area on Tisdale 2, called "Timmins 1," contains elevated levels of bromine (Br), zinc (Zn), phosphorus (P), sulfur (S) and chlorine (Cl) relative to the non-sulfate-rich comparison rocks, and high levels of zinc and phosphorus relative to Gibraltar. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Max Planck Institute/University of Guelph
The book Lunar and Planetary Rovers offers a bit of a primer before NASA's Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars this November. Image Credit: NASA/Spinger/Praxis
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Ordinarily if a book attempts to cover crewed and unmanned missions – the book is a compilation of space flight history in general. This is not the case when it comes to Springer/Praxis’ offering Lunar and Planetary Rovers. Written by Anthony Young, the book details both crewed (the Apollo “J” missions) and unmanned rovers (Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers and Curiosity). The book is not a perfect blending of the two interconnected, yet separate programs – but it does have much to offer.
First published in 2010, the book is a well-researched, detailed account of the lunar rovers that flew on Apollos 15, 16 and 17 and the robotic explorers that have scoured the face of the red planet – Mars.
Lunar and Planetary Rovers covers both the manned rovers used on the final three Apollo lunar missions and the unmanned rovers used to explore the surface of Mars - under one book. Photo Credit: NASA/Jack Schmitt
Lunar and Planetary Rovers fills a need for an account of efforts to get wheels on other worlds. The book is filled with numerous photographs (both color and black and white) that have never been published before. In terms of the Apollo Program, Lunar and Planetary Rovers is replete with quotes from the astronauts that drove the lunar rovers on the Moon. In terms of the unmanned planetary rovers, the book pulls from the engineers and scientists that made (and make) these machines work.
The book is 305 pages long. It could have stood to be a few pages longer. One glaring omission in the general body of the book is that of the Lunokhods (these amazing machines are mentioned in the appendix of the book). Given that the Lunokhods bridge the gap between the Apollo Program’s manned lunar rovers (in that they both rolled across the lunar regolith) and the robotic planetary rovers – this is a fairly significant gap in coverage of the topic. The book also does not tie these two, separate, programs together very well (the jump from one topic to the other is jarring and not done consistently).
For some reason, Russia's Lunokhod Rover, the first unmanned rover to explore another world, is only mentioned in passing - at the very end of the book. Photo Credit: NASA
Even when one considers this slight flaw – the book still provides an accurate and useful history of rovers. Lunar and Planetary Rovers can be purchased on the secondary market (Amazon) for approximately $5 (that is including shipping and handling) the book is a good buy for those wanting information concerning the topic. For those that are not interested in the traditional, paper, format a Kindle edition is available for around $25.
With the launch of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) or Curiosity as it is more commonly known currently scheduled to take place this November – this book serves as a historical reminder as to how the technology employed by Curiosity was both developed and refined.
Lunar and Planetary Rovers details all of the rovers to traverse the surface of the red planet, from the Mars Pathfinder; seen here, to Curiosity - currently set to launch on Nov. 25, 2011. Photo Credit: NASA.gov
Jane Houston Jones from JPL provides information on what’s up for September, focusing on the Moon. The next few days will be a good time to look for the Apollo landing sites — and no, you won’t be able to see any details from Earth, even with a good telescope, but it is fun to try and locate the areas humans have walked on the Moon. Jane shows you how. And of course, the GRAIL mission to the Moon is scheduled to launch on Sept. 8. Learn more about the mission here.
And as a heads up, look for new images of the Apollo landing sites from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that will be released next week. LRO recently moved closer to the Moon to take new and improved images of these historic sites. We’ll share them as soon as they are available.
