Posted on by Ian O'Neill

Ulysses Passes Over Sun’s North Pole

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Continuing on its epic journey around the Sun, Ulysses has reached the Sun’s north pole just in the nick of time. In fact, its timing couldn’t be better, just as the Sun begins “Solar Cycle 24”. The probe is in a unique orbit, passing over the solar north and south poles, out of the ecliptic plane of the solar system, giving it an unprecedented view of parts of the Sun we cannot observe on Earth. “Graveyards for sunspots” and mysterious coronal holes lurk in these regions and Ulysses will be perfectly placed, directly above.

The joint NASA and ESA Ulysses mission has been a resounding success in its 18 years of operation since launch on board Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-41) in October 1990. The intrepid spacecraft was helped on it’s way by a gravitational assist by the planet Jupiter which flung it over the poles of the Sun. Quietly travelling in a perpendicular orbit (space missions and the planets usually orbit around the Sun’s equator), Ulysses has been measuring the distribution of solar wind particles emanating from latitudinal locations for one and a half orbits.

As Ulysses passes over the north polar region, the Sun will be observed during a period of minimum activity at this location for the first time. The poles of the Sun are of particular interest to scientists as this is where the fast solar wind originates from open magnetic field lines reaching into space. The dynamics of solar material in this location provides information on how the Sun interacts with interplanetary space and how the solar wind is generated. Observing the solar wind at “solar minimum” will be of massive interest as it may provide some answers as to why the solar wind is accelerated hundreds of kilometers per hour even when activity is at its lowest.

“Just as Earth’s poles are crucial to studies of terrestrial climate change, the sun’s poles may be crucial to studies of the solar cycle.” – Ed Smith, Ulysses project scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The dynamics of low altitude magnetic fields in polar regions are also a focus for interest. As 11-year solar cycles progress, sunspot population increase near the solar equator. As the magnetic field is “wound up”, sunspots (and their associated magnetic flux) drift toward the poles where they slowly disappear as the old magnetic field sinks back into the Sun, quite accurately described as sunspot graveyards. Understanding how this cycle works will help to reveal the secrets of the solar cycle and ultimately help us understand the mechanisms behind Space Weather.

Source: NASA Featured News

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Make Room at the Moon

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Lunar orbit is getting to be a busy place, with several different countries sending spacecraft to the moon. Currently orbiting the Moon are Japan’s Kaguya (also known as SELENE) spacecraft, which has been sending back 3-D movies of the lunar surface, and China’s Chang-e 1, which will gather information on the Moon’s chemical composition with its various cameras, spectrometers and other scientific equipment. In addition, two new missions to the moon will launch this year: India’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Chandrayaan, which means “journey to the moon” in Hindi, will study the moon at many wavelengths, from X-ray, visible and near-infrared to microwave. It will orbit the moon at just 100 km above the surface. The mission is scheduled to launch on April 9.

“The low orbit will give us really high resolution data,” says Detlef Koschny, Chandrayaan project scientist. The principal mission objective is to map the Moon’s surface in unprecedented detail. Current lunar maps show detail from 30 – 100 meters across. Chandrayaan will produce maps with a resolution of between 5 and 10 meters across the whole surface of the moon.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is collaborating with Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for the Chandrayaan-1 mission. A Compact Imaging X-ray Spectrometer will produce x-ray spectroscopic mapping of the moon, and the Infrared Spectrometer will observe the Moon’s chemical composition. Another ESA instrument is the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer, which will study the interaction between electrically charged particles from the solar wind and Moon’s surface.

Eight other instruments complete the suite of science instruments, including a 29-kg landing probe which will be dropped onto the Moon’s surface at the beginning of the mission to conduct investigations.

Meanwhile, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is currently undergoing testing at Goddard Spaceflight Center to get ready for its launch on October 28 of this year. LRO will spend at least a year mapping the surface of the moon. Data from the orbiter will help NASA select safe landing sites for astronauts, identify lunar resources and study how the moon’s environment will affect humans.

Engineers at Goddard are building the orbiter and testing spacecraft components to ready them for the harsh environment of space. After a component or entire subsystem is qualified, it is integrated into the LRO spacecraft. The core suite of avionics for the orbiter is assembled and undergoing system tests.

“This is a major milestone for the mission,” said Craig Tooley, LRO project manager at Goddard. “Our team has been working nearly around the clock to get us to this point. Reaching this milestone keeps us on the path to sending LRO to the moon later this year.”

Once fully integrated, the spacecraft will ship to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida in August in preparation for launch. The orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will launch aboard an Atlas V rocket. LCROSS will study the poles of the moon to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed craters. The trip to the moon for the spacecraft will take approximately four days. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter initially will enter an elliptical orbit, also called the commissioning orbit. Once moved into its final orbit, a circular polar orbit approximately 31 miles above the moon, the spacecraft’s instruments will map the lunar surface.

Original News Sources: Chandrayaan Press Release, LRO press release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

MESSENGER and other Significant Mission Events in 2008

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Today, the MESSENGER spacecraft will perform a significant task in its mission by making its first flyby of Mercury (see more info below). Additionally, other spacecraft that are out doing their jobs in various locations of our solar system will have significant mission events occur in 2008. Let’s take a look at the big events coming up this year.

January 14: MESSENGER Flyby of Mercury

Messenger, the MEercury Surface Space ENvironment GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft, will be the first spacecraft to visit Mercury in almost 33 years. It will explore and take close-up images of parts of the planet that we’ve never seen before. This is the first of three flybys of Mercury the spacecraft will take before settling into orbit in 2011. MESSENGER’s cameras and other instruments will collect more than 1,200 images and make other observations during this approach, encounter and departure. The closest approach of the flyby will occur at 19:04:42 UTC (2:04:42 EST), but mission managers said pictures from the event may not be released for up to a week.

March 12: Cassini flies through the plume of Enceladus’ geyser

The Cassini spacecraft will fly extremely close to Saturn’s moon Enceladus at an altitude of only 23 km (14 mi), and actually fly through the plume of an active geyser on the moon’s south pole. How such a cold moon could host an area warm enough to have erupting water vapor is a mystery. Scientists are pondering if Enceladus has active ice volcanism, and if so, is it due to ice sublimating, like a comet, or due to a different mechanism, like boiling water as in Old Faithful at Yellowstone. This flyby will help answer those questions.

Cassini will also have several relatively close flybys this year of the moon Titan. The flybys will occur on Feb. 22, March 25, and May 12.

May 25: Phoenix lands on Mars

Phoenix will land in the north polar region of Mars and will help characterize the climate and geology of the Red Planet, as well as possibly determine if live ever arose on Mars. Pursuing NASA’s “Follow the Water” strategy, the lander will dig through soil to reach water ice with its robotic arm and perform numerous scientific experiments. Phoenix launched on Aug. 4, 2007. University of Arizona’s Phoenix page

September 5: Rosetta flyby of Asteroid Steins

The Rosetta spacecraft is on its way to orbit comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, but in the meantime it will pass by Asteroid 2867 Steins. During the flyby, Rosetta will study Steins to determine and characterize the asteroid’s surface composition and morphology. Asteroid Steins is roughly 10 km in diameter.

Posted on by Ian O'Neill

SoHO Celebrates its 12th Birthday

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On December 2nd, 1995 a large joint ESA and NASA mission was launched to gain an insight to the dynamics of the Sun and its relationship with the space between the planets. 12 years on, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SoHO) continues to witness some of the largest explosions ever seen in the solar system, observes beautiful magnetic coronal arcs reach out into space and tracks comets as they fall to a fiery death. In the line of duty, SoHO even suffered a near-fatal shutdown (in 1998). As far as astronomy goes, this is a tough assignment.

By the end of 1996, SoHO had arrived at the First Lagrange Point between the Earth and the Sun (a gravitationally stable position balanced by the masses of the Sun and Earth, about 1.5 million km away) and orbits this silent outpost to this day. It began to transmit data at “solar minimum”, a period of time at the beginning of the Solar Cycle, where sunspots are few and solar activity is low, and continues toward the upcoming solar minimum after the exciting firworks of the last “solar maximum”. This gives physicists another chance to observe the majority of a Solar Cycle with a single observatory (the previous long-lasting mission was the Japanese Yohkoh satellite from 1991-2001).

On board this ambitious observatory, 11 instruments constantly gaze at the Sun, observing everything from solar oscillations (“Sun Quakes�), coronal loops, flares, CMEs and the solar wind; just about everything the Sun does. SoHO has become an indispensable mission for helping us to understand how the Sun influences the environment around our planet and how this generates the potentially dangerous “Space Weather�.

The SoHO mission site confidently states that SoHO will remain in operation far into the next Solar Cycle. I hope this is the case as the new Hinode and STEREO probes will be good company for this historic mission.

Source: NASA News Release

Posted on by Ian O'Neill

Hinode Discovers the Sun’s Hidden Sparkle

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Blinking spots of intense light are being observed all over the lower atmosphere of the Sun. Not just in the active regions, but in polar regions, quiet regions, sunspots, coronal holes and loops. These small explosions fire elegant jets of hot solar matter into space, generating X-rays as they go. Although X-ray jets are known to have existed for many years, the Japanese Hinode observatory is seeing these small flares with unprecedented clarity, showing us that X-ray jets may yet hold the answers to some of the most puzzling questions about the Sun and its hot corona.

Although a comparatively small mission (weighing 875 kg and operating just three instruments), Hinode is showing the world some stunning high resolution pictures of our nearest star. In Earth orbit and kitted out with an optical telescope (the Solar Optical Telescope, SOT), Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) and an X-Ray Telescope (XRT), the light emitted from the Sun can be split into its component optical, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. This in itself is not new, but never before has mankind been able to view the Sun in such detail.

It is widely believed that the violent, churning solar surface may be the root cause of accelerating the solar wind (blasting hot solar particles into space at a mind-blowing 1.6 million kilometers per hour) and heating the million plus degree solar atmosphere. But the small-scale processes close to the Sun driving the whole system are only just beginning to come into focus.

Up until now, small-scale turbulent processes have been impossible to observe. Generally, any feature below 1000 km in size has remained undetected. Much like trying to follow a golf ball in flight from 200 meters away, it is very difficult (try it!). Compare this with Hinode, the same golf ball can be resolved by the SOT instrument from nearly 2000 km away. That’s one powerful telescope!

The limit of observable solar features has now been lifted. The SOT can resolve the fine structure of the solar surface to 180 km, this is an obvious improvement. Also, the EIS and XRT can capture images very quickly, one per second. The SOT can produce hi-res pictures every 5 minutes. Therefore, fast, explosive events such as flares can be tracked easier.

Putting this new technology to the test, a team led by Jonathan Cirtain, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, has unveiled new results from research with the XRT instrument. X-ray jets in the highly dynamic chromosphere and lower corona appear to occur with greater regularity than previously thought.

X-ray jets are very important to solar physicists. As magnetic field lines are forced together, snap, and form new configurations, vast quantities of heat and light are generated in the form of a “microflare”. Although these are small events on a solar scale, they still generate huge amounts of energy, heating solar plasma to over 2 million Kelvin, create spurts of X-ray emitting plasma jets and generate waves. This is all very interesting, but why are jets so important?

The solar atmosphere (or corona) is hot. In fact, very hot. Actually, it is too hot. What I’m trying to say is that measurements of coronal particles tell us the atmosphere of the Sun is actually hotter than the Suns surface. Traditional thinking would suggest that this is wrong; all sorts of physical laws would be violated. The air around a light bulb isn’t hotter than the bulb itself, the heat from an object will decrease the further away you measure the temperature (obvious really). If you’re cold, you don’t move away from the fire, you get closer to it!

The Sun is different. Through interactions near the surface of the Sun between plasma and magnetic flux (a field known as “magnetohydrodynamics” – magneto = magnetic, hydro = fluid, dynamics = motion: “magnetic-fluid-motion” in plain English, or “MHD” for short), MHD waves are able to propagate and heat up the plasma. The MHD waves under scrutiny are known as “Alfvén wavesâ€? (named after Hannes Alfvén, 1908-1995, the plasma physics supremo) which, theoretically, carry enough energy from the Sun to heat the solar corona hotter than the solar surface. The one thing that has dogged the solar community for the last half a century is: how are Alfvén waves produced? Solar flares have always been a candidate as a source, but observation suggested that there wasn’t enough flares to generate enough waves. But now, with advanced optics used by Hinode, many small-scale events appear to be common… bringing us back to our X-ray jets…

Previously, only the largest X-ray jets have been observed, putting this phenomenon at the bottom of the priority list. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center group has now turned this idea on its head by observing hundreds of jet events each and every day:

“We now see that jets happen all the time, as often as 240 times a day. They appear at all latitudes, within coronal holes, inside sunspot groups, out in the middle of nowhere–in short, wherever we look on the sun we find these jets. They are a major form of solar activity” – Jonathan Cirtain, Marshall Space Flight Center.

So, this little solar probe has very quickly changed our views on solar physics. Launched on September 23, 2006, by a consortium of countries including Japan, USA and Europe, Hinode has already revolutionized our thinking about how the Sun works. Not only looking deep into the chaotic processes in the solar chromosphere, it is also finding new sources where Alfvén waves may be generated. Jets are now confirmed as common events that occur all over the Sun. Could they provide the corona with enough Alfvén waves to heat the Sun’s corona more than the Sun itself? I don’t know. But what I do know is, the sight of solar jets flashing to life in these movies is awesome, especially as you see the jet launch into space from the original flash. This is also a very good time to be seeing this amazing phenomenon, as Jonathan Cirtain points out the site of solar jets reminds him of “the twinkle of Christmas lights, randomly oriented. It’s very pretty”. Even the Sun is getting festive.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Supernova Generates Enough Dust for 10,000 Earths

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My kids find it fascinating that the gold in the ring on my finger was formed in an instant when a massive star detonated in a supernova explosion. But it’s not just the heavier elements that get produced in a supernova, there’s also dust. Lots and lots of dust that can eventually collect together into new planets. And according to NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, a typical supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A contains enough dust for 10,000 Earths.

This discovery helps solve one of the outstanding mysteries in astronomy: where did all the dust from the early Universe come from? After the Big Bang, the Universe was only made of hydrogen and helium, and a few trace heavier elements. The first stars formed from this primordial material, and then exploded as supernovae, producing the first heavier elements and the dust needed to make terrestrial planets.

Astronomers always thought that supernovae were prime contributors, recycling material in generation after generation, but they weren’t sure – until now.

Another source of this dust seems to be highly energetic black holes, called quasars, which might be firing out high speed jets and dust to seed solar systems.

The Spitzer observations of Cassiopeia A, located about 11,000 light-years away, showed that the warm and cold dust ejected during the supernovae explosion adds up to about 3% the mass of the Sun.

Their observations show that the dust contains proto-silicates, silicon dioxide, iron oxide, pyroxene, carbon, aluminium oxide and other compounds. You could fashion 10,000 planets with the mass of the Earth with that much material.

Although Cassiopeia A is nearby, and not one of those first stars, it wasn’t working with the same raw primordial materials. But the research shows that exploding massive stars do a fine job of turning raw hydrogen and helium into the dust needed to form planets like Earth.

Original Source: Spitzer News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Deep Impact Has a New Target

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It seemed like such a shame. NASA built Deep Impact to see what happens when you smash a refrigerator-sized object into a comet. Mission accomplished, science gathered. But what about the flyby part of the spacecraft? It captured images of the collision with Comet Tempel 1, and then flew on without a target. Well, NASA announced this week that it has a new target: Comet Hartley 2.

Oh, and we don’t call it Deep Impact any more. That was so 2005. Now it’s called EPOXI. And if that sounds like an acronym, you’re right. Here’s the full designation: Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation.

EPOXI was originally supposed to meet up with Comet Boethin, but NASA astronomers lost sight of the comet. They lost a comet? Actually, they think it might have broken up into smaller pieces, which are now too small for detection. Unfortunately, this loss pushed back its next cometary encounter by two years.

So the spacecraft is now heading for Comet Hartley 2. If all goes well, it’ll reach the object on October 11, 2010, passing within 1,000 km (620 miles) of the nucleus. As a target for scientific observation, Comet Hartley 2 will do the job nicely. Just like Boethin, it has a small, bright nucleus.

While it’s making this journey, the spacecraft will point the larger of its two telescopes at nearby extrasolar planetary systems, and help gather additional data. It’ll be looking to study the physical properties of giant planets, search for rings and moons and planets as small as three Earth masses.

One intriguing mission will have EPOXI observe the Earth as if it’s an extrasolar planet, to help refine the techniques and data necessary to characterize future terrestrial planet discoveries.

EPOXI made a three-minute rocket burn on November 1st, 2007, putting it on course to reach Hartley 2. Before this encounter, it’ll make three Earth flybys, gathering the additional velocity it needs to reach its meetup with Hartley 2 in 2010.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

NASA Announces a New Gravity Field Mission to the Moon

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Just in case you’d forgotten that the focus is going to be on the Moon for the next few decades, here’s another mission announcement: the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL). Due to launch in 2011, this mission will fly a pair of spacecraft around the Moon to measure its gravity field in precise detail. By the time GRAIL’s done with the Moon, we’ll know every lump and bump 1,000 times better than before

This new mission was announced by NASA on December 10th at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The mission was selected out of a possible two dozen proposals.

If all goes well, the two spacecraft will launch together some time around September 6, 2011 transferring directly into a lunar orbit. After a few days of orbiting, they’ll conduct a 90-day study of the Moon’s gravity field.

This mission will be very similar to NASA’s previously launched Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). These twin spacecraft were launched 5 years ago, and have measured the Earth’s gravity field in incredible detail. It allows scientists to track melting glaciers, and the changes in the Earth’s crust after powerful earthquakes.

GRAIL will measure the gravity field at certain points around the Moon, finding any changes which are 1 million times less than the Earth’s overall gravity. This data should be about 1,000 times better than the best gravity maps ever made of the Moon.

NASA is estimating that the total budget for the project will be $375 million, including design, development, launch and staffing.

In addition to the handy gravity field information, GRAIL should give scientists better information about the formation of the Moon and the rest of the rocky planets in the Solar System.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Shuttle Launch Delayed Until January 2

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Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-122 mission to the International Space Station has been further delayed and now is targeted to launch no earlier than Jan. 2. The liftoff date hinges on the resolution of a repeat failure of the shuttle’s fuel sensor system. NASA has not yet made a final decision if repairs to the system will be done on the launch pad or if Atlantis will need to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building where the external tank can be removed.

“It would depend on what we find…but we have a lot of options in front of us,� said NASA’s Mission Management Team chairman LeRoy Cain at Sunday morning press briefing. Cain added that if they do decide to roll back, that probably would not support a January 2 launch. However, STS-122 Launch Director Doug Lyons said he couldn’t envision a scenario that would necessitate a rollback. “We have almost limitless access (to the tank) and there are not many things we can’t do on the launch pad that we could do at the VAB.�

Early Sunday, one of the four engine cutoff (ECO) sensors inside the liquid hydrogen section of Atlantis’ external fuel tank gave a false reading while the tank was being filled. NASA’s new and updated Launch Commit Criteria require that all four sensors function properly. Following Friday’s launch scrub, the MMT decided to shorten the launch window to one minute in an effort to work around the sensor problem. Upon launch, this would send the shuttle on a direct trajectory to the space station, and would save fuel. Fuel depletion is what drives the need for the ECO sensors which protect the shuttle’s main engines by triggering engine shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low. But the MMT also added the criteria that a failure of any of the four sensors would prompt a launch scrub.

Previously, the criteria required that three of the four sensors had to function properly. Atlantis’ scheduled launch on Thursday, Dec. 6, was delayed after two liquid hydrogen ECO sensors gave false readings. A third sensor gave a false reading while the tank was being emptied.

Meanwhile, ISS flight controllers informed space station commander Peggy Whitson that she and crewmate Dan Tani likely will be asked to carry out a spacewalk later this month to inspect a problematic solar array rotary joint on the right side of the lab’s main power truss. If the launch of STS-122 had gone as planned, a team of shuttle astronauts would have conducted the inspection.
The crew of STS-122 will come out of quarantine and return to Houston.

The main objective of Atlantis’ mission is to deliver, install and activate the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory, which will provide scientists around the world the ability to conduct a variety of life, physical and materials science experiments.

Following STS-122, the next two flights on the shuttle manifest for space station construction are scheduled for launch in mid February and late April. The next flight after that is an August mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator of spaceflight operations at NASA said that this delay shouldn’t affect NASA’s ability to complete station construction before the shuttle is scheduled to be retired in 2010. “This doesn’t impact the overall manifest. With the remaining time we can accomplish all the flights,� Gerstenmaier said.

Original News Source: NASA TV

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Shuttle Launch No Earlier Than Saturday

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The crew of STS-122 and the Columbus science module will have to wait a little longer for their ride to space. The launch of space shuttle Atlantis has been pushed back to no earlier than Saturday, December 8. After assessing the problem with the engine cutoff sensors that scrubbed Thursday’s scheduled liftoff, NASA’s Mission Management Team decided they needed more time to look at the problem. But even a Saturday launch is a best-case scenario, and further delays loom as a possibility.

Engineers continue to examine the circuitry and NASA will hold a briefing at 5 pm EST today to announce when another launch will be attempted. A Saturday launch would be at 3:43 pm and Sunday at 3:20 pm EST. The forecast for Saturday calls for a 60 percent chance of good weather, improving to 70 percent on Sunday.

Based on data received during fueling on Thursday, engineers believe the problem may involve an open circuit between the sensors in the hydrogen portion of the external fuel tank and an electronic box in the shuttle main engine compartment. Two of four sensors failed in a test that is routinely done during tanking. The fuel cutoff sensor system is one of several that protect the shuttle’s main engines by triggering their shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low. Launch Commit Criteria require that three of the four sensor systems function properly before liftoff. The sensors also gave another false reading while the tank was being emptied, but are now currently indicating correctly the tank is dry.

The current launch window closes on December 13. If the shuttle can’t launch before then, the next earliest launch date wouldn’t be until January 2. While NASA officials initially said they would try to launch today, after a five hour meeting the Mission Management Team decided to hold off for another day. “We need more time,â€? said LeRoy Cain, Chairman of the MMT. “This (problem) is a little bit new, so we want to sleep on it. I can almost guarantee you we will have some new thinking after we let this team go home and rest.”

Since engineers think the problem lies in an open circuit, currently, NASA doesn’t believe any major repairs in hardware will need to be done, which would cause a longer delay for the launch.

“We’re still hoping, and have reason to believe, that we’re going to get off in December,” said Doug Lyons, NASA’s shuttle launch director, “and that’s what we’re shooting for.”

Atlantis will carry the crew of STS-122 to the International Space Station to deliver the Columbus Science Module. Columbus is the European Space Agency’s major contribution the ISS.

Officials from the ESA were disappointed in the delays, but said that safety is most important. “This is perfectly normal,” said Alan Thirkettle, the ESA’s space station program manager, of the launch delay. “We want to launch on time, but we want to launch right.”

Original News Source: NASA TV