The New Moon occurs when the Moon and Sun are at the same geocentric ecliptic longitude. The part of the Moon facing us is completely in shadow then. Pictured here is the traditional New Moon, the earliest visible waxing crescent, which signals the start of a new month in many lunar and lunisolar calendars. Credit: NASA Goddard SVC
We don’t always have the time or ability to see the Moon every night of the year, but this video, from the Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, uses data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and compresses one month into 12 seconds and one year into 2.5 minutes. This is how the Moon will look to us on Earth during the entire year of 2011. While the Moon always keeps the same face to us, it’s not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt in its axis and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month, and the year. Normally, we don’t see how the Moon “wobbles” in its orbit, but seeing the Moon’s year this quickly, we can see the changes in libration, and axis tilt — as well as the most noticeable changes, the Moon’s phases.
This animation is the most accurate to date, showing shadows and other features on the Moon in incredible detail. This is thanks to the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard LRO. The shadows are based on the global elevation map being developed from measurements by the LOLA, and the instrument has already taken more than 10 times as many elevation measurements as all previous missions combined.
If you want to know what the Moon looks like “right now” this page from the SVC is updated every hour showing the Moon’s geocentric phase, libration, position angle of the axis, and apparent diameter of the Moon. It also has images showing the different phases of the Moon, too.
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Celestial north is up in these images, corresponding to the view from the northern hemisphere. The descriptions of the print resolution stills also assume a northern hemisphere orientation. To adjust for southern hemisphere views, rotate the images 180 degrees, and substitute “north” for “south” in the descriptions.
Spirit’s last panoramic from Mars was taken during February 2010 before her death. Featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on 30 May 2011. Spirit’s final panoramic picture show from Mars was snapped on Sol 2175 in February 2010 before entering hibernation mode in March 2010 just prior to the onset of her 4th Martian winter. Spirit was just 500 feet from her next science target - dubbed Von Braun – center of the mosaic. The Columbia Hills form the backdrop to the mosaic from Spirits final resting place. Spirit never awoke. NASA ceased all communications attempts with Spirit on May 25, 2011. Credit: Mosaic by Marco De Lorenzo and Ken Kremer, images NASA/JPL/Cornell University.
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Scientists leading NASA’s Mars rover team have selected “Spirit Point” as the name for the spot where the “Opportunity” Mars rover will arrive at her next destination – Endeavour Crater. The site was named in honor of the death of the “Spirit” Mars Exploration Rover, which NASA recently declared has ceased all communications with Earth.
Spirit’s passing comes after more than six highly productive years roving the surface of the red planet as humankind’s surrogate. NASA concluded the last attempt to communicate with Spirit in a transmission on May 25, 2011.
“First landfall at Endeavour will be at the southern end of Cape York [at Spirit Point],” Steve Squyres told me. Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is principal investigator for the rovers. Read tributes from the Spirit rover science team below.
In memory of Spirit, the last panorama she snapped on Sol 2175 in February 2010 was featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on May 30, 2011 and is the lead image here. The photo mosaic was created by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer and shows some of the last scenes that Spirit ever photographed.
Spirit approaches von Braun mound in April 2009
This mosaic of images was collected on Sol 1869 in April 2009 as Spirit approached a mysterious circular volcanic mound known as Von Braun, at left. Foreground at center, left ahead shows where Spirit became stuck in a concealed sand trap of slippery, water related sulfate minerals lying adjacent to the eroded volcanic plateau named Home Plate. Columbia Hills in the background.
Mosaic Credit: Kenneth Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo/NASA/JPL/Cornell
Endeavour’s massive rim consists of a series of ridges. Cape York is a 400 foot wide (120 meters) rim fragment at the western edge of Endeavour. Opportunity should reach “Spirit Point” before the end of this year, 2011.
“Spirit Point” was chosen as the site at Endeavour to commemorate the scientific achievements of Opportunity’s twin sister “Spirit”. Endeavour Crater was determined to be Opportunity’s long term destination nearly three ago after she departed the environs of Victoria crater.
“The Initial exploration plan will be decided when we get closer. The [science] priorities will depend on what we find,” Squyres added.
Since August 2008, the blistering pace of Opportunity’s long overland trek of about 11 miles (18 kilometers) has brought the golf cart sized robot to within about 2 miles (3 kilometers) of the rim of the humongous Endeavour crater – some 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. Endeavour is more than 20 times wider than Victoria crater and by far the largest feature the Opportunity will ever explore – see route maps below.
This oblique view with moderate vertical exaggeration shows the portion of the rim of Endeavour crater given the informal name "Spirit Point." This is the location where the team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity plans to drive the rover to its arrival at the Endeavour rim. As of mid-June 2011, Opportunity was about 2 miles away from the rim of Endeavour. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
“Spirit achieved far more than we ever could have hoped when we designed her,” according to Squyres in a NASA statement. “This name will be a reminder that we need to keep pushing as hard as we can to make new discoveries with Opportunity. The exploration of Spirit Point is the next major goal for us to strive for.”
The imaging team of Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer created a series of Spirit photomosaics from publically available images to illustrate the location and hazardous nature of Spirits final resting place – which fortuitously turned out to be a scientific goldmine revealing new insights into the flow of liquid water on Mars billions of years ago.
Mosaic of microscopic images of Spirit’s underbelly on Sol 1925 in June 2009
Mosaic shows predicament of being stuck at Troy with wheels buried in the sulfate-rich Martian soil. This false color mosaic has been enhanced and stretched to bring out additional details about the surrounding terrain and embedded wheels and distinctly shows a pointy rock perhaps in contact with the underbelly.
Mosaic Credit: Marco Di Lorenzo/ Kenneth Kremer/NASA/JPL/Cornell
The western rim of Endeavour possesses geological deposits far older than any Opportunity has investigated before and which may feature environmental conditions that were more conducive to the potential formation of ancient Martian life forms.
Spirits last transmissions to Earth took place in March 2010, before she entered hibernation mode due to ebbing solar power and succumbed to the likely damaging effects of her 4th Martian winter.
Spirit was closing in on her next science target, a mysterious volcanic feature named Von Braun, when she became mired in a sand trap named “Troy” on the outskirts of the eroded volcano named “Home Plate, just about 500 feet away. See our mosaics.
Spirit embedded at sand trap in February 2010 on Sol 2174
Numerous attempts by the rover team failed to extricate Spirit from the sand trap at Troy in which she became mired in May 2009 on the western edge of Home Plate. Mosaic shows last robotic arm maneuver before hibernation and above bright toned soil containing hydrated sulfates. Mosaic Credit: Marco Di Lorenzo/ Kenneth Kremer/ NASA/JPL/Cornell
Unable to escape and absent of sufficient power to run critical survival heaters, Spirit experienced temperatures colder than ever before that probably crippled fragile electronics components and connections and prevented further communications – although no one knows for sure.
NASA’s twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been exploring the Martian terrain on opposite sides of the red planet since the dynamic duo successfully landed over 7 years ago in January 2004.
Both robots were expected to last just three months but have accumulated a vast bonus time of exploration and discovery in numerous extended mission phases.
*** Several top members of the rover science team kindly provided me some comments (below) to sum up Spirits achievements and legacy and what’s ahead for Opportunity at Endeavour.
Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St Louis, Deputy Principal Investigator for the rovers:
“Spirit’s last communication with Earth was in March 2010 as the southern hemisphere winter season began to set in, the sun was low on the horizon, and the rover presumably stopped communicating to use all available solar power to charge the batteries.
Von Braun was one of the two destinations Spirit was traveling to when the rover became embedded in soft sands in the valley to the west of Home Plate.
Von Braun is a conically-shaped hill to the south of Home Plate, Inner Basin, Columbia Hills. Goddard is an oval-shaped shallow depression to the west of von Braun and was the second area to be visited by Spirit. Both von Braun and Goddard are suspected to be volcanic features.
Spirit is the brightest spot in this image taken on 31 March 2011 from Mars orbit. Spirit is gleaming in the sun beside Home Plate inside Gusev Crater. The solar panels are not covered by an optically thick layer of dust. Spirit last communicated on 22 March 2010. Credit: NASA/JPL/UA
During Spirit’s six year and two month mission the vehicle acquired remote sensing and in-situ observations that conclusively demonstrated that the ancient Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater expose materials that have been altered in water-related environments, including ground water corrosion and generation of sulfate and opaline minerals in volcanic steam vents and perhaps hydrothermal pools.
Together with its sister rover, Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, was designed to “follow the water” and return data that would allow us to test the hypothesis that water was at and near the surface during previous epochs.
Opportunity is still exploring the evidence in Meridiani for ancient shallow lakes and is on the way to outcrops on the rim of Endeavour crater, a ~20 km wide crater that exposes the old Noachian crust that shows evidence from orbital data for hydrated clay minerals.
These two rovers have performed far beyond expectations, unveiled the early, wet history of Mars, and have made an enormous scientific return on investment.”
Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., Principal Investigator for the rovers:
“Our best hope for hearing from Spirit was last fall. When that didn’t happen, we began a long, careful process of trying every possible approach to re-establishing contact. But it slowly became clear that it was unlikely, and I personally got used to the idea that Spirit’s mission was probably over several months ago.
Once that right front wheel failed, Spirit’s days were numbered in that kind of terrain. It wouldn’t have made any difference if we had tried to move Spirit sooner. We were very lucky to have survived as long as we did.
One of the lessons learned is to try to keep the wheels from failing.
It’s very sad to lose Spirit. But two things have softened the blow. First we’ve had a long time to get used to the idea. Second, even though Spirit is dead, she died an honorable death. If we’d lost her early in the mission, before she accomplished so much, it would have been much harder. But she accomplished so much more than any of us expected, the sadness is very much tempered with satisfaction and pride.
The big scientific accomplishments are the silica deposits at Home Plate, the carbonates at Comanche, and all the evidence for hydrothermal systems and explosive volcanism. What we’ve learned is that early Mars at Spirit’s site was a hot, violent place, with hot springs, steam vents, and volcanic explosions. It was extraordinarily different from the Mars of today.
Opportunity is heading at high speed for the rim of Endeavour Crater. First landfall will be at the southern end of Cape York. She should be there in not too many more months.
It hasn’t yet been decided where Opportunity will attempt to climb up Endeavour… we’ll see when we get there.
The phyllosilicates are a high priority, but the top priority depends on what we find.
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 about 2.2 miles (3.5 kilometers) away from reaching the rim of Endeavour crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
I hope Spirits legacy will be the inspiration that people, especially kids, will take away from Spirit’s mission. I have had long, thoughtful conversations about Spirit with kids who have had a rover on Mars as long as they can remember. And my fondest hope for Spirit is that somewhere there are kids who will look at what we did with her, and say to themselves “well, that’s pretty cool… but I bet when I grow up I can do better. That’s what we need for the future of space exploration.
Spirit existed, and did what she did, because of the extraordinary team of engineers and scientists who worked so hard to make it possible. It’s a team that I’m incredibly proud to have been a small part of. Working with them has been quite literally the adventure of a lifetime.”
Jim Bell of Arizona State University, lead scientist for the rovers Pancam stereo panoramic camera:
“It is with a bittersweet sense of both sadness and pride that NASA announced the official end of the mission for the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
The Spirit team has seen the end coming since communications were lost with the rover in March 2010. Mission engineers made heroic efforts to reestablish contact. In the end Spirit was conquered by the extremely cold Martian winter and its two broken wheels, which prevented its dusty solar panels from pointing toward the Sun.
But what a mission! Designed to last 90 days, Spirit kept going for more than six years, with the team driving the rover almost 5 miles (8 km) across rocky volcanic plains, climbing rugged ancient hills, and scurrying past giant sand-dune fields. It eventually spent most of the mission near the region known as Home Plate, which is full of layered, hydrated minerals.
Data from the rover enabled dozens of scientific discoveries, but three stand out to me as most important:
Hydrated sulfate and high-silica soils in the Columbia Hills and around Home Plate.
These minerals, and the environment in which they occur (Home Plate is a circular-shaped, finely layered plateau that may be the eroded remains of a volcanic cone or other hydrothermal deposit), tell us that at some point in the past history of Gusev there was liquid water and there were heat sources — two key ingredients needed to consider the area habitable for life as we know it.
Carbonate minerals in some of the rocks within the Columbia Hills.
Carbonates were expected on Mars, if indeed the climate was warmer and wetter in the past. However, their detection has been elusive so far. Indeed, the Spirit team had to work hard to uncover the signature of carbonates years after the rover made the measurements. As the analysis continues the results for Mars in general could be profound.
An incredible diversity of rock types, from all over Mars, that Spirit was able to sample in Gusev crater.
Some of the rocks appear to be from local volcanic lava flows or ash deposits. But others have likely been flung in to the area over time by distant impacts or volcanoes, and a few even appear to be meteorites, flung in from outer space. Spirit’s instruments provided the team with the ability to recognize this amazing diversity, and thus to learn much more about Mars in general, not just Gusev in particular.
Spirit also helped us test an experiment: If we put all the rover’s images out on the Web for everyone in the world to see, in near real-time, would people follow along? They did!
I wonder if, maybe 10 or 15 years from now, I’ll meet some young colleagues who were turned on to space exploration by being able to check out the latest Spirit images from Mars from their classroom, or living room, every day when they were a kid. That would be extremely satisfying — and a great testament to the power of openly sharing data from space exploration missions like Spirit’s.
Meanwhile, Opportunity continues to rove on to city-size Endeavour crater, where orbital measurements have identified, for the first time in either rover’s mission, the signatures of clay minerals in the crater’s rim. Clays are also formed in water, but in less acidic, perhaps more life-friendly water than the sulfates that Opportunity has been mapping thus far.”
Rob Manning, Jet Propulsion laboratory, Pasadena, CA., Mars Rover Spacecraft System Engineering team lead
“Although Opportunity has proven her endurance, Spirit was the one we struggled with the hardest to get what she earned. Suffering from late repair and modification, a blown fuse in her power system and with possibly damaged circuits, she was very late getting out the door and onto the pad in Florida.
Unlike Opportunity, whose Hematite-laden Meridiani destination had been established long before launch, Spirit was launched with a great deal of uncertainty on where she would find herself on Mars. Would it be the flat and safe plains of Elysium? Would the intriguing but rough ancient Gusev crater with what appears to have been an ancient river flowing into a giant but now dry lake?
If Opportunity failed to get on her way to Mars, would her destination become Meridiani? Would Spirit have also been as lucky to find herself bouncing into a tiny rock-outcropped crater as Opportunity had?
Only after the successful launch of Opportunity followed by further successful rocket and airbag tests to confirm that the landing system design would work in the rougher terrain inside Gusev crater allowed us to seal her fate and her permanent home.
She would go Gusev and test the Gusev lake hypothesis. Sadly the surface of Gusev where she came to rest revealed a meteor impact-tilled lake of ancient lava. Any signs of ancient water lake beds and other fantastic discoveries would have to wait until she surmounted many more obstacles including summiting a formidable hill her designers never intended her to attempt.
Spirit, her designers, her builders, her testers, her handlers and I have a lot to be thankful for.
That NASA, the congress and the public were willing to trust us with this daunting feat is perhaps a statement about the persistent spirit of discovery that remains in all of us.
I think that Spirit is alive and well.”
Map mosaic shows 7 Year and 30 Kilometer Long Journey of Opportunity approaching Endeavour Crater. Opportunity is being targeted to Spirit Point on the rim of Endeavour Crater, to honor her now dead sister. Photo mosaic of Santa Maria crater at top right was featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day on 29 January 2011. Mosaic shows Opportunity self portrait at the rim of Santa Maria where she investigated signatures of hydrated mineral deposits.
Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
Surfer waves -- initiated in the sun, as they are in the water, by a process called a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability -- have been found in the sun's atmosphere. Credit: NASA/SDO/Astrophysical Journal Letters
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Surf’s up on the Sun! Our favorite gnarly spacecraft, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has caught conclusive evidence of classic “surfer waves” in the Sun’s atmosphere. But these waves trump ‘Hawaii Five-O’ surfing big time, as they are about the same size as the continental U.S. Spotting these waves will help our understanding of how energy moves through the solar atmosphere, known as the corona and maybe even help solar physicists be able to predict events like Coronal Mass Ejections.
Just like a surfing wave on Earth, the solar counterpart is formed by the same fluid mechanics — in this case it is a phenomenon known as a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. Since scientists know how these kinds of waves disperse energy in water, they can use this information to better understand the corona. This in turn, may help solve an enduring mystery of why the corona is thousands of times hotter than originally expected.
“One of the biggest questions about the solar corona is the heating mechanism,” says solar physicist Leon Ofman of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and Catholic University, Washington. “The corona is a thousand times hotter than the sun’s visible surface, but what heats it up is not well-understood. People have suggested that waves like this might cause turbulence which cause heating, but now we have direct evidence of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves.”
Even though these waves occur frequently in nature here on Earth, no one had seen them on the Sun. But that was before SDO.
Ofman and colleagues spotted these waves in images taken on April 8, 2010 in some of the first images caught on camera by SDO, which launched in Feburary last year and began capturing data on March 24, 2010. Ofman & team have just published a paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities occur when two fluids of different densities or speeds flow by each other. In the case of ocean waves, that’s the dense water and the lighter air. As they flow past each other, slight ripples can be quickly amplified into the giant waves loved by surfers. In the case of the solar atmosphere, which is made of a very hot and electrically charged gas called plasma, the two flows come from an expanse of plasma erupting off the sun’s surface as it passes by plasma that is not erupting. The difference in flow speeds and densities across this boundary sparks the instability that builds into the waves.
On the sun, the two fluids are both plasmas — expanses of super hot, charged gases — which interact. One is erupting from the surface and shooting past a second plasma that is not erupting. The resulting turbulence is a Kelvin-Helmholtz wave form.
The erupting plasma is likely from a Coronal Mass Ejection, such as was seen earlier this week, where the Sun violently propels massive amounts of high-speed plasma particles into space. So, knowing more about the how the corona is heated and what the conditions are just before the KH waves form might give scientists the ability to predict a the next CME, which is a long-standing goal of solar scientists.
But figuring out the exact mechanism for heating the corona will likely keep solar physicists busy for quite some time. However, SDO’s ability to capture images of the entire sun every 12 seconds with such precise detail will certainly provide the data needed.
You can follow Universe Today senior editor Nancy Atkinson on Twitter: @Nancy_A. Follow Universe Today for the latest space and astronomy news on Twitter @universetoday and on Facebook.
Artist's interpretation depicting the new view of the heliosphere. The heliosheath is filled with “magnetic bubbles” (shown in the red pattern) that fill out the region ahead of the heliopause. In this new view, the heliopause is not a continuous shield that separates the solar domain from the interstellar medium, but a porous membrane with fingers and indentations. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
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The barrier at the edge of our Solar System may not be the smooth shield that scientists once thought. The venerable Voyager spacecraft have detected a huge, turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles in the heliosheath — the interface between the heliosphere and interstellar space — similar to an actively bubbling Jacuzzi tub. At a briefing today, scientists said the finding is significant as “we now will have to change our view of how the Sun interacts with the Solar System,” said Arik Posner, Voyager program scientist at NASA Headquarters. But it also means that the “force field” that surrounds the entire Solar System may be letting in more harmful cosmic rays and energetic particles than previously thought.
Over 30 years into their mission, the Voyagers are still monitoring their environment and sending back data. In 2007, scientists noticed that Voyager 1 recorded dramatic dips and rises in the amount of electrons it encountered as it traveled through the heliosphere, the barrier that surrounds the entire Solar System and is created by the Sun’s magnetic field. Voyager 2 made similar observations of these charged particles in 2008.
Computer simulation of the magnetic reconnection in the heliosheath, which look like bubbles, or sausages. Credit: NASA/J.F. Drake, M. Swisdak, M. Opher
Using a new computer model to analyze the data, scientists found the Sun’s distant magnetic field is likely made up of bubbles approximately 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) wide — “like long sausages,” said Merav Opher at the briefing, an astronomer at Boston University who is the lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal.
And the bubbles are moving around, with oscillations of plus or minus 10 to 20 km. “It is very bubbly as far as we can tell,” Jim Drake from the University of Maryland said at the press conference. “The entire thing is bubbly, like where the jets come out from a Jacuzzi.”
Opher said the bubbles, while not visible from Earth, cover a large portion of the sky at about 38 degrees latitude and as the solar winds “bumps” up against the heliopause, the bubbles fill up the entire region next to the heliopause.
Like Earth, our Sun has a magnetic field with a north pole and a south pole. The field lines are stretched outward, and as the sun rotates, the solar wind twists them into a spiral as they are carried outward.
The bubbles are created when magnetic field lines reorganize. The new model suggests the field lines are broken up into self-contained structures disconnected from the solar magnetic field.
These magnetic bubbles should act as electron traps, so the spacecraft would experience higher than normal electron bombardment as they traveled through the bubbles.
But the implications of this new finding, said Opher, is also that the heliosheath is very different from what scientists expected. She prefaced by saying that any earlier ideas about the region was only conjecture since no spacecraft has been there before. “We thought heliopause would be a smooth surface and shield us from intergalactic cosmic rays,” she said. “It is not a shield but more like a membrane that is a sea of bubbles.”
One argument would say the bubbles would seem to be a very porous shield, allowing lots of cosmic rays through the gaps. But another view would be that cosmic rays could get trapped inside the bubbles, making the bubbling froth a very good shield indeed.
However, the scientists are still working on figuring out exactly what these bubbles are. The Voyagers’ instruments, while still working fine, are being tested in this new region of space. “The magnetic instruments on Voyager were designed to measure magnetic fields, but they are right at very edge of what the instruments are capable of sensing,” said Drake. “The magnetic field is very weak. While trying to find out what these magnetic bubbles are, we haven’t reached that moment where we say, ‘yes, that is it.’ We’d like to be able to pin it down much better.”
This video from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center helps to visually explain the new findings:
You can follow Universe Today senior editor Nancy Atkinson on Twitter: @Nancy_A. Follow Universe Today for the latest space and astronomy news on Twitter @universetoday and on Facebook.
The 7 Year and 30 Kilometer Long Journey of Opportunity to June 1, 2011. This collage of martian surface mosaics and orbital maps shows the entire route traversed by NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover from landing on Jan 24, 2004 to surpassing the 30 kilometer driving mark on June 1, 2011(see map notation). Opportunity is on an overland expedition driving to Endeavour Crater, some 22 km in diameter. Photo mosaic of Santa Maria crater at bottom shows one of the last spots investigated by Opportunity on Sol 2519, Feb. 23, 2011 before departing for Endeavour in March 2011. The exposed rock named Ruiz Garcia showed signatures of hydrated mineral deposits located at southeast portion of Santa Maria crater. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer
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With her most recent drive of 482 feet (146.8 meters) on June 1, 2011 (Sol 2614), NASA’s Opportunity Mars Rover has zoomed past the unimaginable 30 kilometer (18,64 miles) mark in total odometry since safely landing on Mars nearly seven and one half years ago on Jan 24, 2004. That’s 50 times beyond the roughly quarter mile of roving distance initially forseen.
Opportunity is now 88 months into the original 3 month mission “warranty” planned by NASA and the rover team. That’s over 29 times beyond the original design lifetime and an achievement that no one on the rover teams ever expected to observe.
And Opportunity is still going strong, in good health and has abundant solar power as she continues driving on her ambitious overland trek across the martian plains of Meridiani Planum. She is heading to the giant Endeavour crater, some 22 km (14 miles) in diameter.
Opportunity snaps Skylab Crater in 3 D during approach to Endeavour Crater
This stereo view of Skylab Crater was captured by Opportunity on Mars on Sol 2594, or May 12, 2011, along the rovers route to giant Endeavour Crater. This young crater is about 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter.and was likely formed within the past 100,000 years. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
At this point Endeavour is barely 2 miles (3.5 km) away since Opportunity departed from Santa Maria Crater in March 2011. Landfall at Endeavour is expected sometime later this year.
Endeavour is a long awaited and long sought science target because it is loaded with phyllosilicate clay minerals. These clays have never before been studied and analyzed first hand on the red planets surface.
Opportunity snaps Skylab Crater in 2 D during approach to Endeavour Crater
This view of Skylab Crater was captured by Opportunity’s navigation camera on Mars on Sol 2594, or May 12, 2011, along the rovers route to giant Endeavour Crater. This young crater is about 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter. The blocks of material ejected from the crater-digging impact sit on top of the sand ripples near the crater. This suggests, from the estimated age of the area's sand ripples, that the crater was formed within the past 100,000 years. The dark sand inside the crater attests to the mobility of fine sand in the recent era in this Meridiani Planum region of Mars. The rover view spans 216 degrees from northwest on the right to south on the right. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Phyllosilicate clays formed in neutral watery environments, which are much more conducive to the formation of life compared to the highly acidic environments studied up to now by Spirit and Opportunity. NASA’s Curiosity rover is due to land on Mars in 2012 at a site the science team believes is rich in Phyllosilicates.
In recent weeks, Opportunity has passed by a series and small young craters as she speeds to Endeavour as fast as possible. One such crater is named “Skylab”, in honor of America’s first manned Space Station, launched in 1973.
Now whip out your 3 D glasses and check out NASA’s newly released stereo images of “Skylab” and another named “Freedom 7” in honor of Alan Shepard’s flight as the first American in space. Be sure to also view Opportunity’s dance steps in 3 D performed to aid backwards driving maneuvers on the Red planet
Freedom 7 Crater on Mars 50 Years after Freedom 7 Flight
Opportunity recorded this stereo view of a crater informally named Freedom 7 shortly before the 50th anniversary of the first American in space: astronaut Alan Shepard's flight in the Freedom 7 spacecraft on May 5, 1961. Opportunity took this image on Sol 2585 on Mars on May 2, 2011. The crater is about 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. It is the largest of a cluster of about eight craters all formed just after an impactor broke apart in the Martian atmosphere perhaps 200,000 years ago. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Skylab” is about 9 meters (30 feet) in diameter. The positions of the scattered rocks relative to sand ripples suggest that Skylab is young for a Martian crater. Researchers estimate it was excavated by an impact within the past 100,000 years.
“Freedom 7” crater is about 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. During her long overland expedition, Opportunity is examining many craters of diverse ages at distant locales to learn more about the past history of Mars and how impact craters have changed over time.
Opportunity was just positioned at a newly found rock outcrop named “Valdivia” and analyzing it with the robotic arm instruments including the Microscopic Imager and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).
Opportunity leaves dance step on Mars
A dance-step pattern is visible in the wheel tracks near the left edge of this scene recorded in stereo by the navigation camera during Sol 2554 on Mars (April 1, 2011). The pattern comes from use of a new technique for Opportunity to autonomously check for hazards in its way while driving backwards. For scale, the distance between the parallel tracks of the left and right wheels is about 1 meter (about 40 inches). Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechSkylab, America’s First manned Space Station
Photo taken by departing Skylab 4 crew in Feb. 1974. Credit: NASA
Space Shuttle Endeavour landed safely at the Kennedy Space Center on June 1, 2011 at 2:35 a.m. EDT. During the 16 day STS-134 mission, Endeavour delivered the $2 Billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station and journeyed more than sixteen million miles. Endeavour was towed back to the Orbiter Processing Facility in preparation for display at her new retirement home at the California Science Center. Credit: Ken Kremer
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – Space Shuttle Endeavour and her six man crew landed safely today at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2:35 a.m. EDT following a 16 day journey of more than sixteen million miles.
The STS-134 mission marked the end of Endeavour’s space exploration career. It was the 25th and last space mission by NASA’s youngest orbiter. Altogether, Endeavour has logged 299 days in space, orbited Earth 4,671 times and traveled 122,883,151 miles.
The crew was led by Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly. Also aboard were Pilot Greg H. Johnson and Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Drew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and the European Space Agency’s Roberto Vittori. Vittori is the last non NASA astronaut to fly on a shuttle mission.
The night landing capped a highly productive flight highlighted by the delivery of the $2 Billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) to the International Space Station. AMS is a cosmic ray detector that seeks to unveil the invisible universe and search for evidence of dark matter, strange matter and antimatter.
5 of 6 crew members of STS-134 mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour at post landing press briefing. Credit: Ken Kremer
“What a great ending to this really wonderful mission,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operation at a briefing today for reporters “They’re getting great data from their instrument on board the space station. It couldn’t have gone any better for this mission.”
Mike Leinbach, the Space Shuttle Launch Director, said, “It’s been a great morning at the Kennedy Space Center. Commander Kelly and his crew are in great spirits.”
During the flight, Mike Fincke established a new record of 382 days for time a U.S. astronaut has spent in space. He broke the record on May 27, his 377th day on May 27, by surpassing previous record holder Peggy Whitson.
STS-134 was the 134th space shuttle mission and the 36th shuttle mission dedicated to ISS assembly and maintenance.
“You know, the space shuttle is an amazing vehicle, to fly through the atmosphere, hit it at Mach 25, steer through the atmosphere like an airplane, land on a runway, it is really, really an incredible ship,” said Kelly.
“On behalf of my entire crew, I want to thank every person who’s worked to get this mission going and every person who’s worked on Endeavour. It’s sad to see her land for the last time, but she really has a great legacy.”
After the landing at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) , Endeavour was towed back into the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) where she will be cleaned and “safed” in preparation for her final resting place – Retirement and public display at the California Science Center in Los Angelos, California.
With the successful conclusion of Endeavour’s mission, the stage is now set for blastoff of the STS-135 mission on July 8, the very final flight of the three decade long shuttle Era.
“We’ve had a lot going on here,” said Mike Moses, space shuttle launch integration manager, “Being able to send Atlantis out to the pad and then go out and land Endeavour was really a combination I never expected to have.
It’s been a heck of a month in the last 4 hours !”
Shuttle Endeavour Landing Photos by Mike Deep for Universe Today
STS-134 Space Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly. Credit: Ken Kremer STS-134 Endeavour Post Landing Press Briefing.
Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Mike Moses, Space Shuttle launch integration manager at NASA KSC, Mike Leinbach, Space Shuttle Launch Director at NASA KSC, laud the hard work and dedication of everyone working on the Space Shuttle program. Credit: Ken Kremer
Read my related stories about the STS-134 mission here:
The Spirit rover's last panoramic image, taken before its fourth Martian winter on on Sol 2175, or February, 2010. Credit: Mosaic by Marco De Lorenzo and Ken Kremer, image NASA/JPL/Cornell University.
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Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) features an image mosaic put together in part by Universe Today’s Ken Kremer, along with his imaging partner Marco De Lorenzo. It’s the last thing the Spirit rover ever saw: a panoramic view of the Home Plate region of Gusev Crater where the rover now silently sits. In the background are the Columbia Hills, where Spirit climbed and investigated Husband Hill. Visible are parts of Spirit herself and the stark but enticing landscape where Spirit will be forever mired in sand.
Congrats to Ken and Marco for being featured on APOD!
Thanks to Space.com and the Tech Media Network for sharing this infographic showing how NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will reach out and grab a sample from asteroid RQ26 in 2020. Source SPACE.com:
Artist's concept of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collecting a sample from asteroid 1999 RQ36. OSIRIS-Rex would launch in 2016 and was just selected as NASA’s next science mission. Credit: NASA
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NASA officials announced the selection of OSIRIS-Rex as the next US robotic planetary science mission and which will pave the way for an eventual manned mission to an asteroid. OSIRIS-Rex will be the first US mission to collect and return samples of an asteroid to Earth.
OSIRIS-Rex is planned for launch to the near Earth asteroid designated as 1999 RQ36 in September 2016 and will return up to four pounds of prisitine asteroidal material to Earth in 2023. The precious sample would land arrive at Utah’s Test and Training Range in a sample return canister similar to the one for the Stardust spacecraft.
“We are absolutely delighted to announce the selection of OSIRIS-Rex,” said Jim Green, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, at a briefing for reporters.
“This asteroid is a time capsule from the birth of our solar system and ushers in a new era of planetary exploration. The knowledge from the mission also will help us to develop methods to better track the orbits of asteroids.”
OSIRIS-Rex is the acronym for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer.
The asteroid is an unchanged remnant from the collapse of the solar nebula and birth of our solar system some 4.5 billion years ago, little altered over time.
Asteroid 1999 RQ36 is likely rich in carbon, the key constituent of organic molecules and one of the building blocks of life. Organic molecules have been found in meteorite and comet samples, which indicates that some of life’s ingredients can be created in space.
The science team will determine if organics also are present on RQ36.
Osiris-REx collects pristine asteroid regolith
Asteroids like 1999 RQ36 may have seeded Earth billions of years ago with organic molecules that are the building blocks of life and perhaps eventually led to living organisms. Samples from the asteroids may help scientists unlock the mysteries of the origin of life on Earth.
Three years after launch, OSIRIS-Rex would arrive at Asteroid 1999 RQ36 in 2020 and study the 1900 foot wide space rock in detail for at least six months of comprehensive surface examinations with four science instruments.
The science team will also use the time – perhaps up to one year – to look for the optimal place to touch the surface and collect a sample of at least two ounces of surface material with a robotic arm.
“We are bringing back what we believe is the type of material that led to the building blocks of life, that led to us,” said Michael Drake, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission from the University of Arizona.
OSIRIS-REx releases a sample canister - similar to Stardust - for re-entry back into Earth's atmosphere and landing by parachute in Utah.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona“We’re going for something rich in organics, which might have had something to do with life getting started.”
“OSIRIS-REx will explore our past and help determine our destiny,” said Drake. “It will return samples of pristine organic material that scientists think might have seeded the sterile early Earth with the building blocks that led to life. Such samples do not currently exist on Earth. OSIRIS-REx will also provide the knowledge that will guide humanity in deflecting any future asteroid that could collide with Earth, allowing humanity to avoid the fate of the dinosaurs.”
The small asteroid RQ36 has also attracted interest because there is a 1-in-1,800 chance of impacting the Earth in the year 2182.
Drake added that the team will carefully practice the sample collection before conducting the actual retrieval of a surface material of a mixture of soil and rocks with a pogo stick like device. He said it would be more like “kissing” the surface than a actual landing of the spacecraft.
The sampling device at the end of the robot arm looks like a car air filter. It will haul in the pristine regolith into the sample acquisition mechanism within 5 seconds in a “touch and go” maneuver as the spacecraft slowly descends at 0.1 m/sec. Up to 3 attempts are possible.
Check the sampling sequence video below.
Because the samples are expected to possess organic molecules, they will be subject to stringent planetary protection protocols. The OSIRIS-REx sample capsule will be stored for analysis at a special curation facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. By returning the asteroid samples to Earth, they can be studied by the most advanced science equipment available.
“I think we’ll get some much needed info on the composition and physical properties of asteroid surface material. I’m particularly interested in water content for future resource use. The photos should be spectacular,” said former Astronaut Tom Jones in exclusive comments for Universe Today.
“This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space,” said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden in a statement. “It’s robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations.”
When the mission is complete, the spacecraft is expected to have sufficient fuel reserves to be retargeted to a new destination according to Michael Drake.
OSIRIS-Rex is expected to cost $800 million according to Jim Green, minus the cost of the launch vehicle which he said has not yet been determined. This is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program following the Pluto-Charon mission and the Juno Jupiter Orbiter.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. Overall mission management will be provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
The sun has set for the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA
If you’re feeling a little sad today at the news that the Spirit rover is “dead,” you’re not alone. And we all know we’re anthropomorphizing here, but it is hard not to. As MER project manager John Callas said at yesterday’s press conference, the MER rovers are “the cutest darn things out in the solar system,” and yes, we’ve become attached to them. Below are a few quotes we’ve gathered from Steve Squyres, Scott Maxwell, and some of the other people who have been involved with the MER mission in various capacities.
Feel free to add your best memories of Spirit’s mission in the comment section.
Rover Driver Scott Maxwell with a model of MER. Photo courtesy Scott Maxwell
Rover Driver Scott Maxwell. Maxwell has been part of the rover driving team since before the MER rovers lauched. He is publishing the diary he has kept, five years delayed on his Mars and Me blog.
“My take on this is that I know I’m supposed to be sad and I know that at some point I will be really sad, but at the moment it is hard to be sad because that feeling is overwhelmed by the pride of what Spirit accomplished,” Maxwell told Universe Today. “She accomplished an enormous amount in the six years plus that she was active on Mars, and we have every good reason to be proud of her. That is dominating my reaction to this announcement today. It terrible that she’s gone but I’m so proud of her, she did so much, she lived so long and accomplished such great things it’s hard to feel any other way.”
Will Spirit’s official loss put a big hole in Maxwell’s day?
“In terms of my practical day to day operations, not so much,” he said. “My day is filled with taking care of Opportunity and working on the upcoming Mar Science Lab mission, so actually I didn’t have that much to do with Spirit the past year. The way it will affect me is that I won’t be getting the weekly planning schedule for Spirit anymore, so in that way Spirit is going to disappear out of my world.”
Maxwell’s cat died a few months ago he finds he sometimes has an unconscious expectation that the cat will greet him when Maxwell returns home, but then he realizes the cat isn’t there anymore. “That’s the kind of hole that Spirit will leave in my life, where I’ll be unconsciously looking for scheduling emails, or data or information about Spirit, and it is not going to be there, and that place that she has occupied in my life is just not going to be there anymore. I’ve had time to get used to that over the past year, of not actively driving her, so I’ve gone through that transition and I’ll go through this transition next.”
MER PI Steve Squyres. Credit: NASA
Steve Squyres, MER Principal Investigator
“What’s most remarkable to me about Spirit’s mission is just how extensive her accomplishments became,” Squyres said in a JPL press release. “What we initially conceived as a fairly simple geologic experiment on Mars ultimately turned into humanity’s first real overland expedition across another planet. Spirit explored just as we would have, seeing a distant hill, climbing it, and showing us the vista from the summit. And she did it in a way that allowed everyone on Earth to be part of the adventure.”
Squyres said Spirit’s unexpected discovery of concentrated silica deposits was one of the most important findings by either rover.
“It showed that there were once hot springs or steam vents at the Spirit site, which could have provided favorable conditions for microbial life,” he said.
The silica-rich soil was next to a low plateau called Home Plate, which was Spirit’s main destination after the traverse long distances and climbed up and down Husband Hill. “What Spirit showed us at Home Plate was that early Mars could be a violent place, with water and hot rock interacting to make what must have been spectacular volcanic explosions. It was a dramatically different world than the cold, dry Mars of today,” said Squyres.
Chris Potts points to Gusev Crater on Mars on January 4, 2004, after the MER navigation team landed the Spirit rover on Mars with unprecedented accuracy. Photo courtesy of Chris Potts
Chris Pottswas the Deputy Navigation Team Chief for both MER rovers.
“My thoughts immediately go back to the night Spirit landed in Gusev Crater on Jan. 3, 2004,” Potts told Universe Today. “It was a nerve wracking evening, thinking about the dangers involved with bringing Spirit from 12,000 mph to a safe landing via menacing bounces inside the airbags. No one could dare imagine that Spirit would continue on to explore Mars for over 6 years. Such an engineering feat requires the best from everyone involved, from the early designers to the operations team that extracted every last bit that Spirit had to offer. Spirit overcame so many obstacles on the journey, that the rover seemed to have a destiny that would not be denied. Spirit has finally reached the inevitable mission end, but I like to imagine the future when space tourists will follow Spirit’s tracks and continue to marvel at what the rover was able to accomplish.”
Doug Ellison, founder of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, where imaging enthusiasts get together to work with data being produced by robotic missions. He started the website, in part, because of the remarkable images being returned by the MER mission.
“I’ve been trying to figure out the words to describe how it feels,” Ellison told Universe Today. “Like losing a family member isn’t that short of the mark. When those early raw JPG’s were put onto their website so quickly I just couldn’t help myself. I found myself making color composites, panoramas, anaglyphs…and that’s what triggered the making of what became UMSF. It’s been a 7 year adventure that’s been shared through more than 125,000 images. We all lived that adventure through those pictures, together.”
Ellison said it is heartbreaking to see Spirit’s part of the mission come to an end. “Mars always had the power to end things, and she did, on her terms and not ours,” he said. “That’s as it should be, Spirit went down fighting in the battle against freezing temperatures on a barren near airless planet. My only regret is that we’ll never truly know exactly what caused Spirit to stay quiet.”
“We think of ‘Spirit’ as that robot on Mars,” he continued. “Without the team of scientists and engineers here on the ground who figured out what to do with that robot, the adventure we’ve been on, together, would never have happened. She’s part of this large team. She’s the teams feet with every drive she made. She’s their eyes with every picture she took. She’s their hands with every rock she studied. And, for many of us, she’s also its heart. The sol-to-sol rhythm of seeing new pictures and planning new adventures was the heartbeat of this large family that wasn’t just the mission personnel at JPL, Cornell and elsewhere – it wasn’t even just Spirit – it was all of us. That family was the thousands and thousands of people who followed along all over the world, it was the robot that did the dirty work, the engineers who kept her safe and the scientists who made the most of her. That family is now one member short – but it still exists. It formed around this little robot called Spirit, and will carry on through other projects.”
“Spirit didn’t die. She just moved on. I feel so very very sorry for the engineers who spent so long designing, building, and then for more than 6 years, using that little robot. But most of all, I feel sorry for Curiosity. As someone at UMSF suggested – that rover’s now sat in the clean room thinking ‘How the heck am I supposed to follow an act like that?'”
Neil Mottinger.
Neil Mottingerfrom JPL worked on the navigation team for the launch and trajectory of the two spacecraft that brought Spirit and Opportunity to Mars.
“It’s an incredible testimony to engineering that this plucky little craft survived 3 winters, when it wasn’t designed to survive any such weather conditions at all,” Mottinger told Universe Today. “Dust storms didn’t drown its ability to generate electricity thanks to the dust devils that repeatedly cleaned the panels. May its tenacity remind us all to strive for greater goals and push on way beyond the immediate horizons before us.”
Stu Atkinson,member of UMSF, poet and writer penned this poem about the end of Spirit’s mission. You can also read a short story he wrote about a year ago of what could have happened in some households when Spirit died.
MER Project Manager John Callas. Credit: JPL
John Callas has written a letter to his MER team, and in part said, “But let’s remember the adventure we have had. Spirit has climbed mountains, survived rover-killing dust storms, rode out three cold, dark winters and made some of the most spectacular discoveries on Mars. She has told us that Mars was once like Earth. There was water and hot springs, the conditions that could have supported life. She has given us a foundation to further explore the Red Planet and to understand ourselves and our place in the universe.
“But in addition to all the scientific discoveries Spirit has given us in her long, productive rover life, she has also given us a great intangible. Mars is no longer a strange, distant and unknown place. Mars is now our neighborhood. And we all go to work on Mars every day. Thank you, Spirit. Well done, little rover. And to all of you, well done, too.”
We’ll be adding more quotes about Spirit as they come in.
