Space and astronomy news
For those following all the habitability results from the Curiosity rover lately, here’s a special treat — the Discovery Channel will air a behind-the-scenes documentary on the mission tonight (Dec. 18) at 10 p.m. Eastern.
Continue reading “Curiosity Mars Rover Stars In Discovery Television Documentary Tonight”
For the 18 teams racing to put a robot on the Moon, some good news — they have an extra year to get the job done. Citing the groups’ difficulty in technology and raising money, the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition said the teams will now have until Dec. 31, 2016 to accomplish their missions.
The challenge was first announced in 2007 and the number of teams has stayed fairly steady since at least 2010, when 21 teams were reported in a Universe Today story. Some of the groups are competing for milestone prizes, the latest of which will be announced Jan. 15.
Astrobiotic won two previous competitions for $500,000 (in mobility) and $250,000 (for imaging). The grand prize is still open to everybody, regardless if they choose to pursue the milestone prizes.
“We know the mission we are asking teams to accomplish is extremely difficult and unprecedented, not only from a technological standpoint, but also in terms of the financial considerations,” stated Robert Weiss, XPRIZE’s vice-chairman and president.
“It is for this reason that we have decided to extend the competition timeline. We firmly believe that a whole new economy around low-cost access to the Moon will be the result of the Google Lunar XPRIZE.”
While the deadline has been extended, the goal is the same: the winning team must ferry a robotic machine to the Moon, move 500 meters (1,640 feet) somehow (on, above or below the surface) and send two “mooncasts” back to Earth. In 2013, Weiss told Universe Today that some of the teams had signed launch contracts, but declined to provide many details due to confidentiality concerns.
You can see more details about the teams and their progress on the XPRIZE website. The grand prize is $20 million and there is an additional $10 million available in other prizes.
Here’s your rare chance to leave a lasting mark on a piece of the Solar System. The team behind the MESSENGER spacecraft — that machine orbiting Mercury since 2011 — is asking the public to help them name craters on the planet, in an open contest.
Fifteen finalists will be forwarded to the official arbitrator of astronomical names on Earth, the International Astronomical Union, which will pick five names in time for the end of the MESSENGER mission this spring.
“This brave little craft, not much bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, has travelled more than 8 billion miles [12.8 billion kilometers] since 2004—getting to the planet and then in orbit,” stated Julie Edmonds of the Carnegie Institution for Science, who leads the MESSENGER education and public outreach team.
“We would like to draw international attention to the achievements of the mission and the guiding engineers and scientists on Earth who have made the MESSENGER mission so outstandingly successful.”
Here are some guidelines to increase your chances of success:
– Make sure the name does not have significance politically, religiously or for the military;
– Focus on names of writers, artists and composers and research them thoroughly, as you will be expected to provide a justification;
– Don’t pick a name that has been used elsewhere in the Solar System.
Some additional hints come from the official contest website, which adds that the competition is open to everyone except MESSENGER’s education and public outreach team and that entries close Jan. 15.
Impact craters are named in honor of people who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to the Arts and Humanities (visual artists, writers, poets, dancers, architects, musicians, composers and so on). The person must have been recognized as an art-historically significant figure for more than 50 years and must have been dead for at least three years. We are particularly interested in submissions that honor people from nations and cultural groups that are under-represented amongst the currently-named craters.
This isn’t the first planet with recent open invitations for the public to name craters. Earlier this year, astronomy education group Uwingu began asking for suggestions to name craters on Mars for maps that will be used by the Mars One team as it plans to land a private crewed mission on the planet in the coming years. Those names, however, will likely not be recognized by the IAU (the official statement is here.)
Update, Dec. 18, 8:09 a.m. EST: Lunar Mission One closed its fundraising mission the night before at £672,447 ($1,052,413), short of its stretch goal of £700,000.
With just over a day to go in their crowdfunding campaign, a British group hoping to put a robotic lander on the moon in 2024 reached their fundraising goal of $932,000 (£600,000) overnight.
The money is supposed to move the project into more concrete phases after the founders spent seven years quietly developing their concept, but many of the details about the design and funding have yet to be unveiled.
“We plan to send an unmanned robotic landing module to the South Pole of the Moon – an area unexplored by previous missions,” the mission says on its Kickstarter page. “We’re going to use pioneering technology to drill down to a depth of at least 20m – 10 times deeper than has ever been drilled before – and potentially as deep as 100m.
“By doing this,” the statement adds, “we will access lunar rock dating back up to 4.5 billion years to discover the geological composition of the Moon, the ancient relationship it shares with our planet and the effects of asteroid bombardment. Ultimately, the project will improve scientific understanding of the early Solar System, the formation of our planet and the Moon, and the conditions that initiated life on Earth.”
“Stretch goals” for the organization include rewards for backers such as an e-commerce program, a massive open online course for educational purposes, a party for backers in London, and being “a leading role” in World Space Week 2015. The additional money, however, will also be used for drilling studies, putting together the science team and making a work plan.
With the money raised, the project now has the ambitious target of getting their lander on the moon by 2024. According to the schedule, the main mission contract should be awarded by 2017, design and development begins by 2018, and the final build commences in 2021.
RAL Space (which assisted with the Philae comet landing and 200 other space missions, according to the page) is serving as a technical advisor to the board. The project chair of Lunar Missions Ltd. (which is responsible for the project) is Ian Taylor, a former United Kingdom government science minister and co-chair of the parliamentary space committee.
As with other private ventures in space such as Mars One, however, Lunar Mission One is dealing with long timelines, a risky goal and a not-certain guarantee of success.
Stand in the same spot every day. Take a picture of the Sun. What happens? Slowly, you see our closest star shifting positions in the sky. That motion over an entire year is called an analemma. The Opportunity rover on Mars even captured one on the Red Planet, which you can see above, and it’s a different shape than what you’ll find on Earth.
An April Astronomy Picture of the Day post (highlighted this weekend on Reddit) explains that Earth’s analemma of the Sun is figure-8-shaped, while that on Mars looks somewhat like a pear (or a teardrop, we think.) The Earth and Mars each have about the same tilt in their orbit — that same tilt that produces the seasons — but the orbit of Mars is more elliptical (oval) than that of Earth.
“When Mars is farther from the Sun, the Sun progresses slowly in the martian sky creating the pointy top of the curve,” the APOD post stated. “When close to the Sun and moving quickly, the apparent solar motion is stretched into the rounded bottom. For several sols some of the frames are missing due to rover operations and dust storms.”
The picture you see at the top of the post was taken every third sol (or Martian day, which is 24 hours and 37 minutes) between July 2006 and June 2008. The landscape surrounding the analemma is from Victoria Crater, where Opportunity was roaming at that time. (The rover is now on the rim of Endeavour Crater, still trucking after nearly 11 full years on the surface.)
In 2006, APOD also published a simulated analemma from Sagan Memorial Station, the landing site of the Sojourner spacecraft and tiny Pathfinder rover. In this case, the simulation showed the Sun’s movements every 30 sols. A Martian year is 668 sols.
You can read more details about analemmae in this past Universe Today post by David Dickinson, which relates the phenomenon to the passage of time.
We’re sure going to miss the MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury when it concludes its mission in 2015, because it keeps bringing us really unexpected news about the Sun’s closest planet. Here’s the latest: Mercury may get a periodic meteor shower when it passes through the debris trail of Comet Encke.
Why do scientists suspect this? It’s not from patiently watching for shooting stars. Instead, they believe the signature of calcium in Mercury’s tenuous atmosphere may be pointing to a pattern.
MESSENGER (which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) has been orbiting the planet for three Earth years and sees regular “surges” in calcium abundance on a predictable schedule. The researchers suspect it’s because of bits of dust colliding with Mercury and ricocheting bits of calcium up from the surface.
Mercury also picks up bits of dust from interplanetary debris, but the scientists say it’s not enough to account for the amounts of calcium they see. Extrapolating, the researchers suspect it must occur as the planet passes through debris left behind from a comet or asteroid. There are a small number of such small bodies that do this, and the scientists narrowed it down to Encke.
Computer simulations of the comet’s debris showed a slight difference from what researchers predicted, but they believe it’s because of variations in Mercury’s orbit as it gets tugged by larger planets, particularly Jupiter. Encke itself takes about 3.3 years to do one lap around the Sun, and has been photographed by MESSENGER in the past.
“The possible discovery of a meteor shower at Mercury is really exciting and especially important because the plasma and dust environment around Mercury is relatively unexplored,” stated lead author Rosemary Killen, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
MESSENGER, meanwhile, is burning off the last of its fuel to stay in orbit; the final engine maneuver is expected for Jan. 21. Once that’s finished, the spacecraft will slowly spiral down towards the planet for an expected impact in March, ending the mission.
Source: NASA
When Apollo 17 lifted off from the moon, a camera captured the movements of the spacecraft — even though nobody was left behind to, say, establish a lunar base. How was that possible? With a camera on the lunar rover that could be controlled — or even programmed — from Earth.
Pretty impressive technology for the takeoff 42 years ago yesterday (Dec. 14) in 1972, although it took three tries to get the technique right.
As the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum explains in a 2011 blog post, the camera was available on Apollos 15, 16 and 17. The television camera communicated from Earth using a high-gain antenna on the rover, but there was a slight time delay for the radio waves to travel (a couple of seconds) between the Earth and the Moon.
So the engineers suggested moving the rover a certain distance from the lunar module and setting the camera to automatically tilt to show the lunar liftoff when commanded from Earth.
That was the plan, at least. On Apollo 15, the tilt mechanism malfunctioned and the camera never moved upwards, allowing the lunar module to slip out of sight. And while the attempt on Apollo 16 gave a longer view of the lunar module rising up, the astronauts actually parked the rover too close to it, which threw off the calculations and timing of the tilt upwards so it left view just a few moments into the flight.
Ed Fendall was the person doing the controlling. In an oral history for NASA done in 2000, he recalled how complex the procedure was.
Now, the way that worked was this. Harley Weyer, who worked for me, sat down and figured what the trajectory would be and where the lunar rover would be each second as it moved out, and what your settings would go to. That picture you see was taken without looking at it [the liftoff] at all. There was no watching it and doing anything with that picture. As the crew counted down, that’s a [Apollo] 17 picture you see, as [Eugene] Cernan counted down and he knew he had to park in the right place because I was going to kill him, he didn’t — and Gene and I are good friends, he’ll tell you that — I actually sent the first command at liftoff minus three seconds. And each command was scripted, and all I was doing was looking at a clock, sending commands. I was not looking at the television. I really didn’t see it until it was over with and played back. Those were just pre-set commands that were just punched out via time. That’s the way it was followed.
Video Caption: Last moments of Orion descent as viewed from the recovery ship USS Anchorage. Credit: NASA/US Navy
Relive the final moments of the first test flight of NASA’s Orion spacecraft on Dec. 5, 2014, through this amazing series of up close videos showing the spacecraft plummeting back to Earth through the rollicking ocean recovery by dive teams from the US Navy and the USS Anchorage amphibious ship.
The two orbit, 4.5 hour flight maiden test flight of Orion on the Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission was a complete success.
It was brought back to land to the US Naval Base San Diego, California.
Orion’s test flight began with a flawless launch on Dec. 5 as it roared to orbit atop the fiery fury of a 242 foot tall United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket – the world’s most powerful booster – at 7:05 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The unpiloted test flight of Orion on the EFT-1 mission ignited NASA’s roadmap to send Humans to Mars by the 2030s by carrying the capsule farther away from Earth than any spacecraft designed for astronauts has traveled in more than four decades.
Humans have not ventured beyond low Earth orbit since the launch of Apollo 17 on NASA’s final moon landing mission on Dec. 7, 1972.
Video Caption: NASA TV covers the final moments of Orion spacecraft descent and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean approximately 600 miles southwest of San Diego on Dec. 5, 2014, as viewed live from the Ikhana airborne drone. Credit: NASA TV
The spacecraft was loaded with over 1200 sensors to collect critical performance data from numerous systems throughout the mission for evaluation by engineers.
EFT-1 tested the rocket, second stage, and jettison mechanisms as well as avionics, attitude control, computers, environmental controls, and electronic systems inside the Orion spacecraft and ocean recovery operations.
It also tested the effects of intense radiation by traveling twice through the Van Allen radiation belt.
After successfully accomplishing all its orbital flight test objectives, the capsule fired its thrusters and began the rapid fire 10 minute plummet back to Earth.
During the high speed atmospheric reentry, it approached speeds of 20,000 mph (32,000 kph), approximating 85% of the reentry velocity for astronauts returning from voyages to the Red Planet.
The capsule endured scorching temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a critical and successful test of the 16.5-foot-wide heat shield and thermal protection tiles.
The entire system of reentry hardware, commands, and 11 drogue and main parachutes performed flawlessly.
Finally, Orion descended on a trio of massive red and white main parachutes to achieve a statistical bulls-eye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles southwest of San Diego, at 11:29 a.m. EST.
It splashed down within one mile of the touchdown spot predicted by mission controllers after returning from an altitude of over 3600 miles above Earth.
The three main parachutes slowed Orion to about 17 mph (27 kph).
Here’s a magnificent up close and personal view direct from the US Navy teams that recovered Orion on Dec. 5, 2014.
Video Caption: Just released footage of the Orion Spacecraft landing and recovery! See all the sights and sounds, gurgling, and more from onboard the Zodiac boats with the dive teams on Dec. 5, 2014. See the initial recovery operations, including safing the crew module and towing it into the well deck of the USS Anchorage, a landing platform-dock ship. Credit: US Navy
Navy teams in Zodiac boats had attached a collar and winch line to Orion at sea and then safely towed it into the flooded well deck of the USS Anchorage and positioned it over rubber “speed bumps.”
Next they secured Orion inside its recovery cradle and transported it back to US Naval Base San Diego where it was off-loaded from the USS Anchorage.
The Orion EFT-1 spacecraft was recovered by a combined team from NASA, the U.S. Navy, and Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
Orion has been offloaded from the USS Anchorage and moved about a mile to the “Mole Pier” where Lockheed Martin technicians have conducted the first test inspection of the crew module and collected test data.
It will soon be hauled on a flatbed truck across the US for a nearly two week trip back to Kennedy where it will arrive just in time for the Christmas holidays.
Technicians at KSC will examine every nook and cranny of Orion and will dissemble it for up close inspection and lessons learned.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.
Mars today is a planet that appears to be mostly shaped by wind, but that wasn’t always the case. A new map adds information to the hypothesis that “marsquakes” affected at least a part of the planet’s vast canyon, Valles Marineris, while the area contained spring-filled lakes.
When the damp sand got shaken up, it deposited itself in hills. NASA says the new map, based on observations from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (which you can see below), adds credence to the theory that it was water that made these deposits.
“The conditions under which sedimentary deposits in it formed have been an open issue for decades,” NASA wrote in a press release. “Possibilities proposed have included accumulation in lakebeds, volcanic eruptions under glaciers within the canyons, and accumulation of wind-blown sand and dust.”
The map you see below was created by the U.S. Geological Survey, which has more extensive information on the findings at this website. The observations also produced a suite of research in recent years, such as this 2009 paper led by Scott Murchie at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Research Laboratory.
Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and is constantly surprising scientists as the Cassini spacecraft probes under its thick atmosphere. Take its dunes, for example, which are huge and pointed the wrong way.
Why are they pointing opposite to the prevailing east-west winds? It happens during two rare wind reversals during a single Saturn year (30 Earth years), investigators suggest.
Investigators repurposed an old NASA wind tunnel to simulate how Titan is at the surface, watching how the wind affects sand grains. (They aren’t sure what kind of sand is on Titan, so they tried 23 different kinds to best simulate what they think it is, which is small hydrocarbon particles that are about 1/3 the density of what you find on Earth.)
After two years of work with the model — not to mention six years of refurbishing the tunnel — the team determined that the wind must blow 50% faster than believed to get the sand moving.
“It was surprising that Titan had particles the size of grains of sand—we still don’t understand their source—and that it had winds strong enough to move them,” stated Devon Burr, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s earth and planetary science department, who led the research. “Before seeing the images, we thought that the winds were likely too light to accomplish this movement.”
The winds reverse when the Sun moves over the equator, affecting Titan’s dense atmosphere. And the effects are powerful indeed, creating dunes that are hundreds of yards (or meters) high and stretch across hundreds of miles (or kilometers).
To accomplish this, the winds would need to blow no slower than 3.2 miles per hour (1.4 meters per second), which sounds slow until you consider how dense Titan’s atmosphere is — about 12 times thicker surface pressure than what you would find on Earth. More information on the research is available in the journal Nature.
Sources: Arizona State University and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.