NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is lifted atop the Atlas V rocket. Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
[/caption]The “Crown Jewel” of NASA’s solar science research fleet, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, was transported from the Astrotech payload processing facility outside KSC to the Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) at Launch Complex 41 in the overnight hours of Jan 26. It’s standard operating procedure to transport such highly valuable payloads after midnight, when the least amount of traffic is on the road in order to minimize any possibility for an accident. This journey was in preparation for connecting to its Atlas rocket. The $848 million spacecraft was moved at about 10 MPH on a specially designed flat bed truck for a trip lasting roughly four hours.
SDO is bolted onto Centaur Upper Stage. Credit: NASA/Jack PfallerAfter daylight broke, the encapsulated SDO was lifted by crane, hoisted 13 stories to the top of the Atlas V rocket and bolted atop the Centaur upper stage previously erected inside the gantry at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Interface and aliveness tests of the integrated system to verify electrical connections between SDO and the booster rocket are underway.
The Flight Readiness Review is set for Feb. 5 and pad rollout on Feb. 8. NASA is currently targeting Feb 9 as the launch date with a 1 hour launch window starting at 10:30 AM EST, just 2 days after the scheduled Feb. 7 blast off of Shuttle Endeavour and Tranquility module on the STS 130 mission to the ISS. If STS 130 is delayed, SDO would likewise be delayed on a matching day by day basis. A minimum turnaround time of 48 hours is required to reconfigure all telemetry and tracking systems and hardware on the Air Force Eastern range between launches.
In the Vertical Integration Facility at Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the payload fairing enclosing NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, has been secured to the Atlas V rocket. SDO is the first mission in NASA's Living With a Star Program. Credit: NASA/Jack Pfaller
Mission managers for the Mars Exploration Rover program announced this week that the Spirit rover will likely never rove again on Mars. But that doesn’t mean her life is over. However, with the rover virtually immobile and stuck in a sand trap, she currently is in a very vulnerable and potentially “deadly” situation as winter approaches on Mars’ southern hemisphere. Pointing the rover’s solar panels towards the sun is critical if the rover is to survive, and the rover team has just a handful of drives to make it so. And the winters are long and harsh on Mars. “The temperatures will be colder than anything Spirit has experienced before,” said John Callas, project manager for the MER mission. “This is a much more difficult and dangerous situation for Spirit, and we’re heading into a regime where vehicle is going to get colder than it ever has.”
What is Spirit facing, and what are her odds?
“Spirit will be experiencing decreasing power levels, and we will likely see energy levels that will drop below 160 watt hours,” said Callas, which is the level of power the rover needs to maintain so it can communicate daily with Earth. “If we can’t maintain that level, that will trip a low power fault where the rover shuts down or hibernates, taking the necessary steps to preserve as much power as possible. Everything is turned off except the master clock, and all the photons that hit solar arrays go into charging the batteries.”
In this low-power fault, a timer wakes the rover up occasionally to check battery levels, and if there is enough power, Spirit will wake up enough to see how charged the batteries are and attempt to communicate with Earth. “Spirit will be like a polar bear hibernating, possibly for several months, maybe on the order of 6 months that the rover will be in this state,” said Callas. “It won’t be like the Phoenix lander where it shuts down virtually completely. The rover will still be electrically active, but not with enough power to be awake each day.”
Callas predicted it will be in the March-April time frame here on Earth when they run out of ability to communicate with rover because there won’t be enough power.
Normally the rover stays warm enough simply by being “on” and running, like running your car in the winter to warm it up. But since rover will be deeply sleeping, temperatures on the rover will drop.
Callas and his team are concerned that temperatures on the rover will get very cold. Based on past winters, they expect about -40 to -50 C temperatures on Mars during the depths of winter. The electronics on the rover can withstand -40 degrees C when operating and -50 c when the rover is idle. But these standards are for a brand-new out-of-the-box rover, Callas said, not a 6 year-old rover with electronics have gone through many different temperature cycles.
Ironically, the fumaroles or steam vents that likely created the very scientifically rich “Troy” area where Spirit sits would have made it a “hot spot” on Mars. But, of course, the fumaroles are no longer active.
The rovers do have three 1-watt Radioisotope Heater Units (RHUs) which are tiny thermal heating units used to keep motors and batteries warm on the rover, so Spirit’s important insides will not get as cold as the outside.
But power from the solar panels is very important for keeping the computer and other electronics active, and right now, the position of the solar panels is not at all optimal.
“Our primary mission is to get solar panels pointed toward sun improve her chances,” said rover driver Ashley Stroupe. “Ideally the solar panels should be pointed toward the sun, to maximize the energy the rover receives. If we can get enough power to keep the rover warm, that will shorten the amount of time Spirit may have to be in a low power state.”
In upcoming drives, the team will try to get left rear wheel of the rover lifted up, by driving backward and improving its northerly tilt. Spirit is sitting in a small crater with the rim behind her, so as it moves backwards, it is slowly climbing up on the rim, tilting the rover. “On the last drive we saw 1-2 degree improvement in tilt,” Stroupe said on Tuesday. “So we’re going to do as much improvement as we can by continuing to drive backward. We can an also attempt to rotate the rover in place, so that the roll isn’t pointed as much towards the south as it is now.”
The Spirit rover's solar panels were covered with dust until a gust of wind blew it off. Credit: NASA.
Each degree of tilt towards the north gains 5 watt hours of improvement. One upside is that the solar panels are currently fairly free of dust accumulation.
When the rover attempts to wake up each day, it will be at about noon local time on Mars, when the electronics will have warmed up because of sunlight.
But there’s the possibility the team might not hear from the rover for months.
“We have to be prepared to go through a period like this,” said Callas. “We may not hear from rover, and it will be frustrating and challenging for the team, but we’ll have to be disciplined about this, and hopefully when power resumes we can resume communication in the spring.” A look at the nearly buried wheels on the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL
And, worst case scenario, where is a very long period of time where they don’t hear from the rover, how long will the team attempt to communicate with Spirit?
“That’s a very complex problem,” Callas told Universe Today at the Tuesday’s press conference. “The rover will actually experience two levels of fault protection. The rover takes action based on hearing from Earth, and if we go too long without talking to the rover, it trips an up loss timer. We only keep about 6 weeks of communication tables on the rover, so that likely will have run out. All these things make for a complex recovery effort for the rover. It is hard to say how long we would try, because we would have to try many things before we exhaust the list of things we can do.”
Callas didn’t want to give odds if Spirit will make it through the winter. “Spirit’s best chance for survival is when we can stay in contact with her,” he said. “As long as we can maintain communication with rover we can look out for trouble, and advise her on how to best reapportion her limited resources.”
MER PI Steve Squyres said not having a roving rover is a “poignant moment” for the team. “We built the rovers to drive around, so we have shifted our focus to a different class of activities. It is a change and one we’ll have to adapt to. But this is a much better way that having an abrupt end to the mission, which would preclude doing the kind of science we’re looking forward to.” (Read more about the science Spirit can do in our earlier article)
“We have hope that Spirit will survive this cold dark winter that Spirit has ahead of her,” Squyres said.
Artist concept of the Mars Exploration Rover on Mars. Credit: NASA
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The Spirit rover’s driving days are likely over, as efforts to extricate the rover have been curtailed. “We do not believe that Spirit is extractable,” said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. But mission managers stressed that today is not a day of loss at this point, as they hope to continue to make some exciting scientific observations. However, the rover needs to be tilted to gather as much sunlight as possible in order to survive the Martian winter. John Callas, project manager for the MER mission told Universe Today at today’s press briefing that time is short. “We estimate about three weeks of driving activity, and we can’t drive every day,” he said. “So there are just a handful of drives left before there is insufficient power to continue.”
Callas added that around the March-April time frame will be the last images and data the rover can transmit before going into hibernation for the winter.
Spirit has been embedded in a sandtrap for 10 months, and the rover team has been engaged in an ambitious process to extricate the rover. They’ve encountered numerous setbacks, including the loss of use of an additional wheel, making it a four-wheeled rover. (Spirit’s right front wheel has not worked for a couple of years, now the right rear wheel has lost functionality).
A look at the nearly buried wheels on the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL
“Spirit is in a golfer’s worst nightmare, stuck in a sand trap that no matter how many strokes you take you can’t get out of,” said McCuistion.
Pointing the rover’s solar panels towards the sun is critical if the rover is to survive. In past winters, the movable rover has been able to be positioned to allow for maximum sun-gathering but the current embedding of the rover has left it with an unfavorable tilt, 9 degrees to south, when they really want a level rover — or even better — tilted to north.
Rover driver Ashley Stroupe said the rover is now pitched flat and rolled to left. “We want to try to pitch it forward and roll right for best winter survival.”
The last few drives were aimed at trying to improve the rover’s position, and were mildly successful.
“We’ve aimed toward improving northerly tilt,” said Stroupe. “Spirit is sitting in a small crater with the rim behind her, so as it moves backwards, it is slowly climbing up, providing more tilt. On the last drive saw 1-2 degree improvement in tilt.”
In recent drives, the rover has moved approximately 20 centimeters. The team can also attempt to rotate the rover in place, so that the roll isn’t pointed as much towards the south as it currently is.
Mosaic of the area called Home Plate where Spirit remains stuck was made especially for Spaceflight Now, and is used by permission. It shows smooth area, foreground, that concealed slippery water related sulfate material where rover became stuck. Credit: Kenneth Kremer, Marco DiLorenzo, NASA/JPL/Cornell/Spaceflight Now
Should they be successful, and if the rover survives the winter, the science team has some exciting prospects of continuing science with Spirit.
“We have hope that Spirit will survive this cold dark winter that she has ahead of her,” said MER principal investigator Steve Squyres. “The bottom line is we’re not giving up on Spirit.”
Squyres said they are most excited about tracking the radio signal from Spirit in order to determine if Mars has a solid or liquid core. “This is something totally new, something we’ve never done,” Squyres said. “If we can accurately determine the rover’s motion in space in three dimensions, we can see the motions of Mars in orbit and track it precisely, then we can characterize the wobble very precisely. The way Mars wobbles depends on its internal structure. If Mars has a solid core of iron, will wobble one way but if it has a liquid molten core it will wobble another way. We should be able to do this by tracking the stationary rover for six months.”
Squyres said the team is finding new tricks on how to use a stationary rover. Additionally, they should be able to characterize the odd soil at the Home Plate region, and characterize the interactions between the atmosphere and the surface of Mars.
“We’re not giving up on Spirit and we’ll keep squeezing as much science out of the rover as we can,” Squyres said. “We feel there is a lot of really exiting science yet ahead.”
The Cassini mission is just a non-stop faucet of fantastic images! Here are two that were released today, for your viewing pleasure. The first image, above, is an eclipse of Saturn’s moon Tethys, which lies in the background, by Dione. The three images were each taken one minute apart.
As you can see, from Cassini’s perspective Dione passes right in front of Tethys. Make no mistake in thinking that these two Saturnian companions are close together in this shot, however; Dione, the moon in the foreground, is 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from the Cassini spacecraft, while Tethys is 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) away.
An interesting feature of the image is how Tethys appears brighter on the side of the moon opposite the Sun. This is because Saturn, which lies out of the image to the right, is reflecting light from the Sun back onto the moon. Dione is not being backlit by Saturn from the vantage point of Cassini, so its face that is opposite the Sun appears darker.
Visible on Tethys is the Odysseus Crater, which spans a whopping 400km (240 miles). Given that Tethys is only 1,062 kilometers, or 660 miles across, the crater appears very large in comparison to the moon. It also makes the moon very much resemble the Death Star from Star Wars, don’t you think? These images were taken using Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on Nov. 28, 2009.
This second image is a synthetic aperture radar image of the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. In the lower right and upper center of the image, the two wrinkly features are actually small Titanian mountains. What exactly causes the grooves in these mountains has still to be determined.
On Earth, the shifting of tectonic plates can form such structures, as well as the processes of water flowing, freezing, and melting.
Since Titan has an atmosphere composed mostly of methane and ethane, and experiences rain much like here on Earth, it’s quite possible that these processes are the cause of such features.
Because the illumination of this image comes from the radar on Cassini, the peaks of these formations should be the brightest. As is visible, this isn’t the case. Notice how the left side of the upper mountain in the image, and right side of the lower-right mountain are brighter. The materials that make up the darker and lighter areas are the cause for this lighting effect.
The image represents a patch of Titan’s surface 250 km (155 miles) high and 285 km (180 miles) wide, and the resolution is about 350 meters (1,150 feet) per pixel, and it was taken on December 28th, 2009.
The red dot at the center of this image is the first near-Earth asteroid discovered by NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
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Well, that didn’t take long: The WISE spacecraft (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) spotted its first near-Earth asteroid on January 12, 2010, two days before the official start of its all-sky survey. That’s a pretty good catch, considering WISE just popped it lens cover a couple of weeks ago (December 29, 2009) and released its “first light” image on January 6. This is the first of what researchers hope will be thousands of previously undiscovered asteroids in the main asteroid belt, and hundreds of new near-Earth asteroids. By mapping the whole sky in infrared light, it should also be able to capture millions of new stars and galaxies.
WISE’s software picked up the object, 2010 AB78, moving against a background of stationary stars. Researchers followed up and confirmed the discovery with the University of Hawaii’s 2.2-meter (88-inch) visible-light telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea.
This asteroid does not pose any foreseeable impact threat to Earth, but scientists will continue to monitor it. 2010 AB78 is currently about 158 million kilometers (98 million miles) from Earth. It is estimated to be roughly 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter and circles the sun in an elliptical orbit tilted to the plane of our solar system. The object comes as close to the sun as Earth, but because of its tilted orbit, it is not thought to pass near our planet.
SDO and two piece payload fairing inside “clean room” at Astrotech Spaceflight facility near KSC on Jan 21. Fairing protects spacecraft during ascent through earths atmosphere. Credit: Ben Cooper/Spaceflight Now
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NASA’s new solar science satellite, dubbed the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, moved an important step closer to launch when it was encapsulated inside its two piece payload fairing on Thursday (Jan 21) at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility nearby to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). SDO is the most sophisticated spacecraft ever designed and constructed to study the sun and its dynamic behavior.
“SDO will revolutionize our view of the sun. It will reveal how solar activity affects our planet and help us anticipate what lies ahead”, said Madhulika Guhathakurta at a Jan 21 press briefing. She is the SDO program scientist at NASA Headquarters.
The enclosed observatory will be transported on a specially designed trailer to Launch Complex 41 on Tuesday (Jan. 26) and then be hoisted up and bolted atop the two stage booster rocket. The 19 story tall Atlas V will propel the 8,800 pound spacecraft into an inclined geosynchronous orbit where it will study the sun in multiple wavelengths during its 5 year primary mission. It carries sufficient fuel to operate for another 5 years.
An Atlas rocket similar to this vehicle I observed at Cape Canaveral Pad 41 will launch SDO. Credit: Ken KremerSDO arrived at KSC on July 9 for final processing, testing and fueling operations. It was shipped from NASA’s Goddard Space flight Center where it was built by teams of technicians, engineers and scientists at a cost of $848 million.
SDO is the first spacecraft to be launched as part of NASA’s Living with a Star (LWS) science program initiative. The goal is to better understand the causes of solar variability and to create better forecasts for predicting “space weather” which directly affects the Earth and all life inhabiting it. Furthermore, this information will be used to help protect and provide early warning to valuable satellites operating in space as well as astronaut crews working aboard the International Space Station.
When active regions on the sun erupt suddenly and violently in the form of a solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME), they hurl millions of tons of solar material and charged particles toward Earth which can damage orbiting satellites, disrupt navigation systems and cause failures in the power grid.
SDO is equipped with 3 science instruments which will measure and characterize in-depth the Suns interior and atmosphere, magnetic field, hot plasma of the solar corona and the density of the radiation that creates the ionosphere of the planets.
SDO will collect huge volumes of data which amount to a staggering 1.5 terabytes per day. This is the equivalent of downloading a half million songs each day or filling a CD every 36 seconds. “That’s almost 50 times more science data than any other mission in NASA history”, says Dean Pesnell, the SDO project scientist at NASA Goddard.
SDO is enclosed in its payload fairing and ready for transport on Jan 26 to Atlas V launch pad. Credit: NASA/Jim Grossman“SDO is going to send us images ten times better than high definition television” according to Pesnell. “The pixel count is comparable to an IMAX movie — an IMAX filled with the raging sun, 24 hours a day.”
“We’ll be getting IMAX-quality images every 10 seconds,” says Pesnell. “We’ll see every nuance of solar activity.” Because no orbiting spacecraft has ever come even close to this incredible speed, there is a vast potential for ground breaking science discoveries. Scientists hope to learn how storms are generated inside the sun and how they then evolve and propagate outwards through the suns atmosphere and towards earth and the rest of the solar system.
Since SDO has no on-board recording system, the data will be transmitted continuously on a 24/7 basis to dedicated receiving stations on the ground in New Mexico as it maintains position over 22,000 miles high above earths equator.
I will be reporting on site from the Kennedy Space Center in February and directly from the launch pads for both SDO and STS 130. See my earlier STS 130 reports here.
STS 130 Crew of Endeavour at Pad 39 A press briefing. Credit: NASA
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The crew of Endeavour said on Wednesday (Jan 20) that construction of new coolant hoses required to connect the new Tranquility module, or Node 3, to the space station is running ahead of schedule and they are optimistic for an on time launch of the STS 130 mission currently set for Feb 7.
Shortly after I attended the rollout to pad 39 A, the launch was thrown into doubt when a set of the 14 ft long external ammonia jumper hoses, which convey coolent critical for temperature control, ruptured during high pressure testing in early January. Tranquility cannot be fully activated until the ammonia lines are installed and functioning properly. Since then, tiger teams of engineers and technicians working at the hose subcontractor and at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Ala have worked vigorously to qualify four new replacement hoses. They are also working to modify the original ammonia hoses which will be brought along as a back-up “Plan B” in case problems develop with the new replacement hoses.
Endeavour was rolled out to Pad 39 A during a frigid morning on Jan 6, 2010. Credit: Ken Kremer
During a launch pad press conference with reporters, lead Endeavour spacewalker Robert Behnken said, “We’ve been following these ammonia lines and the story associated with them for 13 months. I think folks paying close attention right now haven’t really heard the entire story. So we’ve been watching them closely for a long time now.”
“Last weekend our crew was at Marshall to see the first line as it was coming together and actually put it on a test rig to make sure it was going to do the job that it was intended. We’re expecting this Saturday to fly up and see all four lines in a pretty good configuration, pretty flight representative. Those lines, after that, will come down here to KSC for processing and installation into the orbiter.”
“Right now, the schedule appears for that set of lines to be a couple of days ahead,” Behnken added. “Our original plan was to do our fit check and our opportunity with them next weekend. But they’re ahead now and we’ll be able to do that this Saturday, which is great news.”
“The program is also pursuing a second set of lines that would allow us to launch at a slightly delayed launch date and still maintain a full capability for Node 3 [Tranquility]. So the program is pursuing two courses. Plan 1 is actually ahead of schedule which allows us to do a fit check a week early. That’s really good news as we move forward to flight”, he concluded.
Tranquility is the primary cargo being lofted in the payload bay of shuttle Endeavour and will be delivered to the International Space Station by the six person crew. During three spacewalks, astronaut teams will attach and activate Tranquility and the Cupola observation module which is joined to Tranquility at one end. The modules were loaded into Endeavour’s payload bay on Wednesday (Jan. 20). See my recent photos of Tranquility and Cupola from inside the Space Station Processing Facility at KSC in earlier reports here and here.
Today (Jan 21), the STS 130 astronauts took part in a mock countdown known as the TCDT, or Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test. While dressed in their orange spacesuits they climbed inside Endeavour at pad 39 A to rehearse all the actual launch procedures right up to the T minus 4 minute point , but not including the point of liftoff. They also practiced emergency evacuation safety procedures in case of a launch pad abort requiring them to rapidly depart the orbiter in a life or death situation and enter the slidewire escape baskets. The crew flies back to Houston on Friday for final pre flight training exercises.
The six person crew comprises of commander George “Zambo” Zamka, pilot Terry Virts, and mission specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken.
Senior shuttle managers will meet at KSC on Jan. 27 for an executive-level Flight Readiness Review. They will conduct an in-depth assessment to determine whether the shuttle, crew, payloads and the problematical ammonia lines are fit for launch. Thereafter the team will set an official launch date, which for now is still targeted for Feb 7.
Meanwhile it’s likewise been a busy time up in space for the 5 man crew of Expedition 22 currently in residence aboard the ISS as they conduct essential preparatory work over the next few days which must be completed before Endeavour launches and also to free up the docking port for Tranquility.
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov conducts an EVA on Jan 14 to prepare the Poisk module for future dockings at the ISS. Credit: NASA
Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft moves from the aft port of the International Space Station's Zvezda service module to the Poisk module. Credit: NASA TVISS commander Jeffrey Williams and cosmonaut Max Suraev boarded their Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft today in order to relocate it to a different docking port. First they undocked from the aft port of the Russian built Zvezda service command module and then maneuvered the capsule over to redock at the Poisk module, which is russia’s newest pressurized module and which is connected to Zvezdas zenith, space facing port. This marked the first spacecraft docking at Poisk.
A look at the nearly buried wheels on the Spirit rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL
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Not a peep yet from the Phoenix lander. The Mars Odyssey orbiter has completed all 30 relay overflights of the Phoenix landing site that were scheduled for Jan. 18 to 21, and heard nothing from the lander. Additional listening campaigns will be conducted in February and March. NASA has said repeatedly that hearing from the lander would be highly unlikely, as Phoenix was never designed to withstand the Martian arctic winters.
Meanwhile, the outlook isn’t brilliant for the Spirit rover, either.
Efforts to free the rover have barely budged it, and as the Martian autumn approaches, precious sunlight which provides power to the rover is declining each day. As of now, Spirit is tilted the wrong way to generate enough heat to make it through the winter, although the Free Spirit team is working to change the angle of her solar panels.
The rover team has now begun driving Spirit backward as the next technique for attempting to extricate the rover from the sand trap where it is embedded. The first two backward drives produced about 6.5 centimeters (2.6 inches) of horizontal motion and lifted the rover slightly.
However, the right-rear wheel is still non-functional, along with the right-front wheel (even though that wheel came back to life, briefly), and during a recent extrication drive attempt, the left middle wheel stalled. The team is working to get more diagnostic information about that wheel stall. Even with four working wheels, Spirit would have a very difficult path to get out of her predicament.
And rover fans must be continuing to suggest using the rover’s robotic arm to help push Spirit out, because the latest press release about Spirit included some back-of-the-envelope calculations about using the arm for just such an action. They figured out that by pushing with the arm, only about 30 newtons of lateral force could be achieved, while a minimum of several hundreds of newtons would be needed to move the rover. Further, such a technique risks damaging the arm and preventing its use for high-priority science from a stationary rover. The other technique of re-sculpting the terrain and perhaps pushing a rock in front of or behind the left-front wheel was also assessed to be of little to no help and, again, risks the arm. There is also a large risk of accidentally pushing the rock into the open wheel and jamming it.
When asked if he was discouraged about Spirit’s current situation, NASA’s lead scientist for the Mars exploration program, Michael Meyer said, “You gotta be joyful when something that was only supposed to operate for three months lasts over 6 years.” A 3-D view of Opportunity's view as she leaves Marquette Island, created by Stu Atkinson. Image credit: NASA/JPL/ U of Arizona
The Opportunity rover, on the other side of Mars, continues her approximately 7 mile trek to Endeavour Crater. The rover left the rock called Marquette Island on Sol 2122 (Jan. 12, 2010), and has now crossed the 19-kilometer (11.8-mile) odometer mark. Amazing!
There is a relatively fresh impact crater that has been named “Conception,” and Oppy will stop to investigate, having to detour about 250 meters (820 feet) to the south.
If there were to be an advertisement from NASA for this initiative, it would read as follows: “NASA’s Bargain Basement – Get your artifacts now! For a limited time only, “Crazy Charlie Bolden” is slashing prices at NASA for artifacts from historic space missions!! Act within the next 90 days and pay only shipping!!!”
If you thought obtaining the old Shuttles was cheap, qualified museums, educational institutions and other organizations are able to request over 2,500 artifacts from current and past NASA programs that include the space shuttle, Hubble Space Telescope, Apollo, Mercury and Gemini, all for the cost of shipping and processing.
Unfortunately for space enthusiasts looking to get in on the liquidation, a prescreening registration program will allow only those U.S. institutions that qualify to view and request the items. But, if you are part of one of these qualifying entities, act now, as each artifact is only available for viewing and requests for 90 days, starting last Tuesday, January 19th.
In all seriousness, this is a wonderful opportunity for educational organizations like museums and schools to acquire historic items from human spaceflight programs. The artifacts will include astronaut suits and suit-mockups, some shuttle assembly pieces, and scale models of the various space vehicles used in historic space missions. Any organizations wishing to request artifacts can go to the General Services Administration site that NASA has set up for the program.
After the requests have been processed, each organization will be notified of the status of their request. All items will be provided by NASA as donation, and the organizations receiving the artifacts will only be responsible for shipping and processing, which will vary with the size and type of artifact. Obviously, if you request a spacesuit, the shipping will be far less than for a piece of hardware that was used on one of the shuttles.
This is the second “clearance sale” that NASA has initiated recently. 913 artifacts were screened from October 1st to November 30th of last year, and NASA donated all 913 artifacts to various organizations after that program.
Possible future landing site on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
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The HiRISE science team is now taking requests! A new web tool called HiWish is now available for the high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which allows the public to suggest a location on Mars where the HiRISE instrument should take an image. If you don’t have a particular location, you can use the HiWish site to browse around the planet, examine the locations of other data sets, and find a place that should be imaged. The team will then put into their targeting database, and your suggestion may get selected as an upcoming observation. Furthermore, the HiWish site allows you to track your suggestions and be notified when one of your suggestions gets taken.
Maybe you could even find a really unusual feature on Mars, such as this race-track-like feature that may one day be a landing site for a future mission to the Red Planet. HiRISE images will help determine if this spot is sufficiently safe for landing, such as not too many boulders, steep slopes, or too many high speed MASCAR races — (that’s the Mars Association for Super Cool Aerodynamical Racing). If it is safe, it may be considered for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory or the 2018 rovers that ESA and NASA are working on for a join mission.
The above image is actually a huge shield volcano in the northeast part of Syrtis Major, and near the Northwest rim of Isidis Planitia, a giant impact basin.
So, go create an account at HiWish and get wishing!
