The face of Earth aimed toward Cassini during imaging on July 19, 2013
So along with the rest of the world, you smiled. You waved. You went outside on July 19, wherever you were, and looked upwards and out into the solar system knowing that our robotic representative Cassini would be capturing a few pixels’ worth of photons bouncing off our planet when they eventually reached Saturn, 900 million miles away. But did Cassini actually capture any photons coming from where you were? The image above will tell you.
Assembled by the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo (where the enormous 305-meter radio telescope is located) this image shows what side of Earth was facing Cassini when its “pale blue dot” images were obtained, at approximately 22:47 UTC (Cassini time.)
Didn’t make it into Cassini’s photo? That’s ok… maybe MESSENGER had already caught you earlier that very same day:
The view of Earth seen by MESSENGER from Mercury on July 19, 2013
Before Cassini took its images — several hours before, in fact — the MESSENGER spacecraft was holding some photo shoots of its own from 61 million miles in the other direction!
The image above shows the side of Earth that was facing Mercury on the morning of July 19, 2013, when MESSENGER was acquiring images in our direction during a hunt for any possible satellites of the innermost planet.
Earth was as bright (-4.8 magnitude) as the maximum brightness of Venus at the moment the image was taken from Mercury.
Of course, in both series of images specific details of our planet can’t be made out — Earth was barely more than a pixel in size (regardless of any bloom caused by apparent brightness.) Clouds, countries, continents, oceans… the entire population of our world, reduced to a single point of light — a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
For both portrayals, high-resolution black and white images from the GOES East and Meteosat meteorological satellites were combined with color information from NASA Visible Earth to generate true-color images of our planet as it would have looked to each respective imaging spacecraft… if they had the impossibly-precise optics to resolve Earth from such distances, of course.
But it’s ok that they don’t… we can still use our imaginations.
Earth from the geostationary weather satellite GOES East on July 19, 2013 at 5 PM EST. This is approximately the view that Cassini would have had of Earth during imaging.
Image credits: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington, NERC Satellite Station, Dundee University, Scotland. Thanks to Prof. Abel Méndez (PHL/UCR) for the heads-up on these.
A look at what Cassini's point of view will be at the time of the #WaveAtSaturn event. Image courtesy Mike Smithwick and Distant Suns.
You’ve hopefully heard about the chance to have your picture taken this Friday – along with the rest of humanity – by the Cassini spacecraft, currently about 1 billion km away as it orbits Saturn. But now another spacecraft has joined in on the fun.
Inspired in part by the Cassini team, scientists from the MESSENGER mission at Mercury realized their upcoming orbital parameters has Earth coincidentally in the crosshairs of its cameras as it takes images to search for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20. So we’ve got not one, but TWO spacecraft to smile at, pose for, and generally be on good behavior as they take pictures of planet Earth. Here’s when you should be smiling and waving:
MESSENGER will be taking images at 11:49, 12:38, and 13:41 UTC (4:49 a.m., 5:38 a.m. and 6:41 a.m. PDT or 7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. EDT, or) on both days, July 19 and 20. Parts of Earth not illuminated in the Cassini images, including all of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, will appear illuminated in the MESSENGER images. MESSENGER’s images also will take a few days to process prior to release, the team said.
The image taken from the Saturn system by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will occur between 21:27 and 21:47 UTC (2:27 and 2:42 PDT, 5:27 and 5:42 p.m. EDT) on Friday, July 19. Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles (nearly 1.5 billion kilometers) away from Earth. NASA is encouraging the public to look and wave in the direction of Saturn at the time of the portrait and share their pictures via the Internet.
The ‘Wave at Saturn” event will be the first time Earthlings have had advance notice that their picture will be taken from interplanetary distances. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Also, at the exact time the Cassini spacecraft is snapping pics of Earth, the Slooh Space Camera will be snapping images of Saturn – live and in true color – with live broadcast team. Their feed starts at 2:30 PM PDT / 5:30 PM EDT / 21:30 UTC with live views of Saturn from the Canary Islands.
Astronomers Without Borders is also sponsoring a special Saturn Observing Program, and they are encouraging people and organizations to either organize a special observing event for July 19 (you can register it as an official event here) or to attend an event near you. You can find TDTES events here. This can be a full-blown observing event with telescopes, or just an excuse to get together with friends to go out and look at Saturn in the night sky.
Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater - is the primary destination of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission to Mars. Curiosity landed on the right side of the mountain as shown here, near the dune field colored dark blue. Mount Sharp dominates Gale Crater. It is 3.4 mile (5.5 km) high. Gale Crater is 154 km wide. This image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) of ESA’s Mars Express orbiter. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
As NASA’s 1 ton Curiosity Mars rover sets out on her epic trek to the ancient sedimentary layers at the foothills of mysterious Mount Sharp, Universe Today conducted an exclusive interview with the Curiosity Project Manager Jim Erickson, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to get the latest scoop so to speak on the robots otherworldly adventures.
The science and engineering teams are diligently working right now to hasten the rovers roughly year long journey to the 3.4 mile (5.5 km) high Martian mountain – which is the mission’s chief destination and holds caches of minerals that are key to sparking and sustaining life.
“We have departed Glenelg and the Shaler outcrop and started to Mount Sharp,” Erickson told me.
Mount Sharp lies about 5 miles (8 kilometers) distant – as the Martian crow flies.
Curiosity Sets Sail for Mount Sharp
This photomosic shows NASA’s Curiosity departing at last for Mount Sharp- her main science destination. Note the wheel tracks on the Red Planet’s surface. The navcam camera images were taken on July 4, 2013 (Sol 324). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)/Marco Di Lorenzo
Curiosity will have to traverse across potentially treacherous dune fields on the long road ahead to the layered mountain.
“Things are going very well and we have a couple of drives under our belt,” said Erickson.
Curiosity just completed more than half a year’s worth of bountiful science at Glenelg and Yellowknife Bay where she discovered a habitable environment on the Red Planet with the chemical ingredients that could sustain Martian microbes- thereby already accomplishing the primary goal of NASA’s flagship mission to Mars.
Curiosity’s handlers are upgrading the rovers ‘brain’ with new driving software, making her smarter, more productive and capable than ever before, and also far more independent since her breathtaking touchdown inside Gale Crater nearly a year ago on Aug. 6, 2012.
“We continue to drive regularly. The next drive is planned tomorrow and will be executed the following day.”
As of today (Sol 336, July 17), Curiosity has driven six times since leaving Glenelg on July 4 (Sol 324), totaling more than 180 meters.
Curiosity’s Traverse Map Through Sol 333
This map shows the route driven by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity through Sol 333 of the rover’s mission on Mars (July 14, 2013). Numbering of the dots along the line indicate the sol number of each drive. North is up. The scale bar is 200 meters (656 feet). From Sol 331 to Sol 333, Curiosity had driven a straight line distance of about 45.05 feet (13.73 meters). The base image from the map is from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera (HiRISE) in NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Scientists specifically targeted Curiosity to Gale Crater and Mount Sharp because it is loaded with deposits of clay minerals that form in neutral water and that could possibly support the origin and evolution of simple Martian life forms, past or present.
Erickson has worked in key positions on many NASA planetary science missions dating back to Viking. These include the Galileo mission to Jupiter, both MER rovers Spirit & Opportunity, as well as a stint with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Here is Part 1 of my wide ranging conversation with Jim Erickson, Curiosity Project Manager of JPL. Part 2 will follow.
I asked Erickson to describe the new driving software called autonomous navigation, or autonav, and how it will help speed Curiosity on her way. Until now, engineers on Earth did most of the planning for her.
Jim Erickson: We have put some new software – called autonav, or autonomous navigation – on the vehicle right after the conjunction period back in March 2013. This will increase our ability to drive.
The reason we put it on-board is that we knew it would be helpful when we started the long drive to Mount Sharp. And we are itching to check that out. Over the next few weeks we will be doing various tests with the autonav.
Ken Kremer: How will autonav help Curiosity?
Jim Erickson: The rover will have the ability to understand how far it’s driving, whether its slipping or not, and to improve safety.
And then the next step will be in effect to allow the rover to drive on its own.
Ken: How often will Curiosity drive?
Jim Erickson: Somewhere like every other day or so. We plan a drive, see how it goes and whether it went well and then we move further to the next drive. We are implementing that as it stands while we do the checkouts of autonav.
We might have to stop driving for part of the autonav checkout to complete the testing.
Basically we are limited mainly by the amount of days that we have successful completion of the previous day’s drive. And whether we have the information come back down [to Earth] so that we can plan the next day’s drive.
In some circumstances Mars time can rotate so that we don’t get the data back in time, so therefore we won’t be driving that day.
Ken: Can you ever drive two days in a row?
Jim Erickson: Yes we can, if the timing is right. If we get the results of the day’s drive (n) in time before we have to plan the next day’s drive (n+1) – almost as if you’re on Mars time. Then that would work fine.
Also, when we get the autonav capability we can plan two days in row. One day of directed driving and the second day can be ‘OK here’s your target from wherever you end up, try and go to this spot’.
This will increase the productivity!
Ken: When will autonav be up and running?
Jim Erickson: Something like two to three weeks. We need to thoroughly look at all the tests and validate them first so that we’re all comfortable with autonav.
Ken: What’s the Martian terrain on the floor of Gale crater like right now and for the next few miles?
Jim Erickson: It’s a mix of sand and different flagstone areas. As we get into it we’ll need to be able to drive comfortably on both. There aren’t too many large rocks that would be a problem right now. There is some shelf area that we’ll be going around.
Right now the area we’re in is actually a good thing to give us practice identifying obstacles and getting around them. This will help us later on when we see obstacles and want to be driving quicker.
Ken: What’s the overall plan now, a focus on driving or stopping and investigating?
Jim Erickson: – It’s not the intent to be stopping. This will be a good couple of weeks driving.
In Part 2 of my conversation with Jim Erickson we’ll discuss more about the rover’s traverse across alien territory that’s simultaneously a science gold mine and a potential death trap, as well as drilling and sampling activities, Comet ISON observations and upcoming science objectives.
Previous experience with rovers on Mars will be enormously helpful in studying how the rover interacts with dune fields. Autonav was first employed on the MER rovers.
The rover drivers and science team gained lots of experience and know how while driving both Spirit & Opportunity through numerous gigantic fields of dunes of highly varying composition and complexity.
NASA’s Curiosity rover reaches out in ‘handshake’ like gesture with dramatic scenery of Mount Sharp in the background. This mosaic of images was snapped by Curiosity on Sol 262 (May 2, 2013) and shows her flexing the robotic arm. Two drill holes are visible on the surface bedrock below the robotic arm’s turret. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer-(kenkremer.com)/Marco Di LorenzoCuriosity Route Map From ‘Glenelg’ to Mount Sharp
This map shows where NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity landed in August 2012 at “Bradbury Landing”; the area where the rover worked from November 2012 through May 2013 at and near the “John Klein” target rock in the “Glenelg” area; and the mission’s next major destination, the entry point to the base of Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
This image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on July 8, 2013, captures Opportunity traversing south (at the end of the white arrow) to new science targets and a winter haven at "Solander Point," another portion of the Endeavour rim. The relatively level ground between Cape York and Solander Point is called "Botany Bay." The image was taken 10 years after Opportunity was launched from Florida on July 7, 2013, EDT and PDT (July 8, Universal Time). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.
Ten years to the day after the Opportunity rover launched to Mars, the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped this image of the rover, still toiling away on the surface of Mars. The white dot in the image is Oppy, as the rover was crossing the level ground called “Botany Bay” on its way to a rise called “Solander Point.” We’re looking into whether there’s a way to determine if the rover was actually moving at the time the image was taken.
This, of course, is not the first time HiRISE has found the various rovers on Mars’ surface. Images from orbit help rover drivers find safe routes, as well as helping to identify enticing science targets for future investigation.
“The Opportunity team particularly appreciates the color image of Solander Point because it provides substantially more information on the terrains and traverse that Opportunity will be conducting over the next phase of our exploration of the rim of Endeavour crater,” said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist Matt Golombek, from JPL.
an oblique, northward-looking view based on stereo orbital imaging, shows the location of Opportunity on its journey from Cape York to Solander Point when HiRISE took the new color image. Endeavour Crater is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. The distance from Cape York to Solander Point is about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers). The red line indicates the path the rover has driven. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.
Opportunity currently holds the US space program’s all-time record for distance traversed on another planetary body at greater than 36 kilometers or 22 miles. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team recently confirmed that the Lunokhod 2 rover traveled 42 km (26 miles) on the Moon.
Opportunity was launched from on July 7, 2003, PDT and EDT (July 8, Universal Time). Opportunity has been on the western rim of 20-kilometer-diameter Endeavour Crater in Meridiani Planum for about two years investigating the 3 to 4 billion-year-old sedimentary layers of Cape York. Now the rover is traversing south to new science targets and a winter haven at Solander Point.
New Horizons LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) composite image showing the detection of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, cleanly separated from Pluto itself. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
The New Horizons spacecraft is still about 880 million kilometers (550 million miles) from Pluto, but on July 1 and 3, 2013, the spacecraft’s LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) was able to detect not only Pluto, but its largest moon, Charon, visible and cleanly separated from Pluto itself. Charon orbits about 19,000 kilometers (12,000 miles) away from Pluto, and seen from New Horizons, that’s only about 0.01 degrees away.
“The image itself might not look very impressive to the untrained eye, but compared to the discovery images of Charon from Earth, these ‘discovery’ images from New Horizons look great!” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver. “We’re very excited to see Pluto and Charon as separate objects for the first time from New Horizons.”
The frame on the left in the grouping of images above is an average of six different LORRI images, each taken with an exposure time of 0.1 second. The frame to the right is the same composite image but with Pluto and Charon circled; Pluto is the brighter object near the center and Charon is the fainter object near its 11 o’clock position. The circles also denote the predicted locations of the objects, showing that Charon is where the team expects it to be, relative to Pluto. No other Pluto system objects are seen in these images.
These images are just a hint of what’s to come when New Horizons gets closer to the Pluto system. On July 14, 2015, the spacecraft is scheduled to pass just 12,500 kilometers (7,750 miles) above Pluto’s surface, where LORRI will be able to spot features about the size of a football field.
“We’re excited to have our first pixel on Charon,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, “but two years from now, near closest approach, we’ll have almost a million pixels on Charon –and I expect we’ll be about a million times happier too!”
IBEX observations of spectral slope, where red and yellow indicate lower energy particles and green and blue higher energy ones. The central portion (circle) is looking down the heliotail and shows two lower energy “lobes” on the port and starboard sides and high energy regions at higher northern and southern latitudes.
Figure taken from McComas et al. , Astrophysical Journal, 2013.
Our Solar System is moving through interstellar space and scientists have long thought that the “bubble” around our Solar System – called the heliosphere – might have a tail, similar to how a comet has a tail or how other stars have astrospheres. But that has all been conjecture…. until now.
The IBEX spacecraft (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) has now seen the tail and has mapped out its structure. IBEX scientists were surprised to see the tail has twists and turns, with four separate “lobes,” making it appear somewhat like a four-leaf clover. This downwind region of the heliosphere is called the heliotail.
“Scientists have always presumed that the heliosphere had a tail,” said Eric Christian, IBEX mission scientist, speaking during a Google+ Hangout announcing the new findings. “But this is actually the first real data that we have to give us the shape of the tail.”
IBEX measures the neutral particles created by collisions at the solar system’s boundaries. This technique, called energetic neutral atom imaging, relies on the fact that the paths of neutral particles are not affected by the solar magnetic field. Instead, the particles travel in a straight line from collision to IBEX. Consequently, observing where the neutral particles came from describes what is going on in these distant regions.
“By collecting these energetic neutral atoms, IBEX provides maps of the original charged particles,” said David McComas, lead author on the team’s paper and principal investigator for IBEX at Southwest Research Institute. “The structures in the heliotail are invisible to our eyes, but we can use this trick to remotely image the outermost regions of our heliosphere.”
What they found was unexpected, McComas said.
“By very carefully assembling the statistical observations from the first three years of IBEX data we’ve been able to fill in what we couldn’t see before,” McComas said during the Hangout, “and what we found was that the heliotail was a much larger structure with a much more interesting configuration.
What they found was a tail that appears to have a combination of fast and slow moving particles. There are two lobes of slower particles on the sides, with faster particles above and below. The entire structure is twisted from the pushing and pulling of magnetic fields outside the solar system. McComas likened it to a how a beach ball might twist around if it was attached to a bungee cord.
The IBEX scientists speaking during the Hangout today said this new information will help us understand what the Voyager spacecraft may encounter as they reach the edge of our Solar System.
“IBEX and Voyager are incredibly complimentary missions,” said Christian. “I’ve often said that IBEX is like an MRI, where it can take an image to understand the big picture of what is going on, where the Voyagers are like biopsies, where we can see what is going on in the local area.”
This was the first time a NASA used a Google+ Hangout to broadcast a press briefing. You can watch the full Hangout below:
You can read David McComas’ blog post on the new findings here, and NASA’s press release here.
Opportunity rover’s view across Botany Bay to Solander Point - her next destination - as NASA celebrates 10 Years since blastoff for Mars on July 7, 2003. The rover will climb up Solander Point because it which may harbor clay minerals indicative of a past Martian habitable environment. This pancam mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3348 (June 24, 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)
Opportunity rover’s view across Botany Bay to Solander Point – her next destination – as NASA celebrates 10 Years since blastoff for Mars on July 7, 2003. The rover will climb up Solander Point because it which may harbor clay minerals indicative of a past Martian habitable environment. This pancam mosaic was assembled from raw images taken on Sol 3348 (June 24, 2013.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)[/caption]
Today, NASA’sOpportunity rover marks a magical moment celebrating 10 years since launching to Mars on July 7, 2003 and with her impending Mountain destination filling the camera’s eye view.
The now legendary robot has vastly exceeded everyone’s expectations. Back in 2003 the science team promised us a mere 90 day ‘warranty’ following the suspenseful airbag landing on Jan. 24, 2004 at Meridiani Planum.
Today is Martian Day (or Sol) 3360. That amounts to a life expectancy and exploration ‘bonus’ of more than 37 times beyond the design lifetime.
Launch of NASA’s 2nd Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, aboard a Delta II Heavy rocket to Mars on July 7, 2003 at 11:18 p.m. EDT from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Credit: NASA
Opportunity’s twin sister Spirit blasted off three weeks earlier in June 2003 and continued functioning until 2010.
“I never thought we’d achieve nine months!” Principal Investigator Prof. Steve Squyres of Cornell University told me recently on the occasion of the rovers 9th anniversary on Mars in January 2013.
As you read this, the now decade old rover Opportunity is blazing a trail toward’s the oldest geological deposits she has ever explored – at a place called Solander Point, a raised ridge along the eroded rim of huge Endeavour Crater.
Opportunity has surpassed the halfway point in the traverse from the rim segment she has explored the past 22 months at ‘Cape York’ to her next rim segment destination at Solander.
From tip to tip, Cape York and Solander Point lie 1.2-mile (2-kilometer) apart along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Both are raised portions of 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour.
The rover has less than half a mile (800 meters) to go to finish the Martian dash from one rim segment to the next across an area called ‘Botany Bay’.
This view from July 2, 2013 (Sol 3355) shows the terrain that NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is crossing in a flat area called “Botany Bay” on the way toward “Solander Point,” which is visible on the horizon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“We are making very good progress crossing ‘Botany Bay,’ said John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who is project manager for the mission now entering its 2nd decade.
The flat terrain of fractured, light-toned bedrock is devoid of treacherous dunes and is easy to drive across, almost like a highway, which simplifies the daily planning by the rovers Earthly handlers.
“The surface that Opportunity is driving across in Botany Bay is polygonally fractured outcrop that is remarkably good for driving,” said Brad Joliff, an Opportunity science team member and long-term planner at Washington University in St. Louis. “The plates of outcrop, like a tiled mosaic pavement, have a thin covering of soil, not enough to form the wind-blown ripples we’ve had to deal with during some other long treks. The outcrop plates are light-toned, and the cracks between them are filled with dark, basaltic soil and our old friends the ‘blueberries.”
The “blueberries” are hematite-rich, erosion-resistant concretions about the size of BB’s that Opportunity discovered when she first opened her eyes at her Eagle crater landing site. During the multi year crater hopping tour that ensued, the rover continued finding patches of blueberries all the way to Endeavour crater.
1st color panorama taken by Opportunity after landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan. 24, 2004. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Opportunity is expected to arrive at Solander’s foothills sometime in August – before the onset of the next southern hemisphere Martian winter, her 6th altogether.
Opportunity will scale Solander to continue the science quest in search of additional evidence of habitable environments with the chemical ingredients necessary to sustain Martian microbial life.
“Right now the rover team is discussing the best way to approach and drive up Solander,” Ray Arvidson told Universe Today. Arvidson is the mission’s deputy principal scientific investigator from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
‘Solander Point’ offers roughly about a 10 times taller stack of geological layering compared to ‘Cape York.’
Solander also offers north facing slopes where Opportunity’s solar wings can more effectively soak up the sun’s rays to generate life giving electrical power.
The robot remains in excellent health.
The total driving distance exceeds 23 miles (37 kilometers). She has snapped over 181,000 images.
Meanwhile on the opposite side of Mars at Gale Crater, Opportunity’s younger sister rover Curiosity also discovered a habitable environment originating from a time when the Red Planet was far warmer and wetter billions of years ago.
Opportunity captures spectacular panoramic view ahead to her upcoming mountain climbing goal, the raised rim of “Solander Point” at right, located along the western edge of Endeavour Crater. It may harbor clay minerals indicative of a habitable zone. The rise at left is “Nobbys Head” which the rover just passed on its southward drive to Solander Point from Cape York. This pancam photo mosaic was taken on Sol 3335, June 11, 2013 shows vast expanse of the central crater mound and distant Endeavour crater rim. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com) Traverse Map for NASA’s Opportunity rover from 2004 to 2013
This map shows the entire path the rover has driven during more than 9 years and over 3360 Sols, or Martian days, since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan 24, 2004 to current location heading south to Solander Point from Cape York ridge at the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer
July 4 Morning Fireworks from NASA. A NASA Black Brant V Sounding Rocket launches in support of the Daytime Dynamo Mission on July 4, 2013 from NASA Wallops Flight Facility, VA, Credit NASA/J. Eggers
July 4 Morning Fireworks from NASA!
A NASA Black Brant V Sounding Rocket launches in support of the Daytime Dynamo Mission on July 4, 2013 from NASA Wallops Flight Facility, VA. Credit: NASA/J. Eggers[/caption]
WALLOPS ISLAND, VA – Today, July 4, NASA celebrated America’s Independence Day with a spectacular fireworks display of a dynamic duo of sounding rockets – blasting off barely 15 seconds apart this morning from the agencies NASA Wallops Island facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia on a science experiment to study the ionosphere.
The goal of the two rocket salvo was an in depth investigation of the electrical currents in Earth’s ionosphere – called the Daytime Dynamo.
The Dynamo electrical current sweeps through the ionosphere, a layer of charged particles that extends from about 30 to 600 miles above Earth.
Disruptions in the ionosphere can scramble radio wave signals for critical communications and navigations transmissions that can impact our every day lives.
The launches suffered multiple delays over the past 2 weeks due to weather, winds, errant boats and unacceptable science conditions in the upper atmosphere.
A Black Brant V launches first in support of Daytime Dynamo. Terroer improved Orion (at right) followed 15 seconds later from NASA Wallops on July 4, 2013. Credit: NASA/P. Black
At last, the Fourth of July was the irresistible charm.
The liftoff times were 10:31:25 a.m. for the Black Brant V and 10:31:40 a.m. (EDT) for the Terrier-Improved Orion.
The experiment involved launching two suborbital rockets and also dispatching a NASA King Air airplane to collect a stream of airborne science measurements.
Daytime Dynamo is a joint project between NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, or Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said Robert Pfaff to Universe Today in an exclusive interview inside Mission Control at Wallops. Pfaff is the principle investigator for the Dynamo sounding rocket at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
“The dynamo changes during the day and varies with the season,” Pfaff told me.
But they only have one chance to launch. So the science team has to pick the best time to meet the science objectives.
“We would launch every month if we could and had the funding, in order to even more fully characterize the Dynamo.”
Two rocket salvo comprising a Black Brant V (left) and a Terrier-Improved Orion (right) sit ready to launch as part of the Daytime Dynamo mission in this panoramic view from NASA Wallops Flight Facility at Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The 35 foot tall single-stage Black Brant V launched first. It carried a 600 pound payload to collect the baseline data to characterize the neutral and charged ionospheric particles as it blasted skyward.
The 33 foot tall two-stage Terrier-Improved Orion took off just 15 seconds later in the wake of the exhaust of the Black Brant V.
Exhaust trails from Black Brant V and a Terrier-Improved Orion launched in support of Daytime Dynamo mission on July 4, 2013. Credit: NASA/P. Black
The Terrier-Improved Orion successfully deployed a lengthy trail of lithium gas from a pressurized canister that created a chemical tracer to track how the upper atmospheric winds vary with altitude. These winds are believed to be the drivers of the dynamo currents.
Both rockets fly for about five minutes to an altitude of some 100 miles up in the ionosphere. They both splashed down in the ocean after about 15 minutes.
NASA’s King Air aircraft was essential to the mission. I toured the airplane on the Wallops runway for an up-close look inside. It is outfitted with a bank of precisely aimed analytical instruments peering through the aircraft windows to capture the critical science data – see my photos herein.
“The King Air launches about an hour before the scheduled liftoff time,” Pfaff told me.
“It uses special cameras and filters to collect visible and infrared spectroscopic data from the lithium tracer to characterize the daytime dynamo.”
The science instruments are newly developed technology to make the daytime measurements of the lithium tracer and were jointly created by NASA, JAXA and scientists at Clemson University.
“Everything worked as planned,” Pfaff announced from Wallops Mission Control soon after the magnificent Fourth of July fireworks show this morning.
Black Brant V (left) and Terrier-Improved Orion (right) rockets sit on launch pads as part of the Daytime Dynamo mission in this up close view from NASA Wallops Flight Facility at Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comInside cabin view of NASA King Air aircraft outfitted with science instrument mounts to support a bank of cameras to capture visible and infrared spectroscopic measurements in support of Daytime Dynamic launches on July 4, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.comRobert Pfaff (right), Science Principle Investigator and Ken Kremer of Universe Today (left) discuss NASA’s Daytime Dynamo mission inside NASA Wallop’s Mission Control. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
More bad news on the exoplanet-hunting front: While the final fate of the Kepler spacecraft remains unknown, the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Planetary Transits) satellite has now been officially shut down. CoRoT suffered a computer failure on November, 2, 2012 and although the spacecraft is capable of receiving navigational commands, the French Space Agency CNES reports it can no longer retrieve data from its 30-centimeter telescope. After a valiant effort to try and restore the computer, CNES announced this week that the spacecraft has been retired. CoRoT’s journey will come to a fiery end as it will be deorbited and it will burn up on re-entry in Earth’s atmosphere.
While it’s always hard to see the end of successful mission, we can’t be too sad about CoRoT, however. The mission lasted twice as long as expected and it gathered a remarkable haul of exoplanets. CoRoT looked for planetary transits — a dimming in brightness of the host star as a planet crossed in front. CoRoT was the first mission to find a planet using the transit method.
In all, CoRoT has spotted 32 confirmed planets and at least 100 more are awaiting confirmation. The mission also allowed astronomers to study the stellar physics and the interior of stars.
This is not the first computer failure for the mission. CoRoT launched in December of 2006, and in 2009 the main computer failed and has since been running on the backup computer. When the second computer failed in November, engineering teams have tried to reboot both computers, with no success.
But space radiation is tough on spacecraft, and after enduring 6 years of intense bombardment by high-energy particles in space, both computers have been deemed unrecoverable.
CNES said a series of operations will be performed to lower CoRoT’s orbit and conduct some technology experiments before passivating and deorbiting the satellite. Its journey will end as it burns up on re-entry in Earth’s atmosphere.
Family portrait of the first 15 CoRoT planets. Credit: Patrice Amoyel (CNES)
CoRoT discovered a diverse array of planets, mostly gas giants. Some of the planets discovered, like CoRoT-7b, orbit their star in less than 24 hours and have a blistering hot surface, while others like CoRoT-9b have an orbital period of 95 days and is one of very few known “warm” transiting exoplanets.
CoRoT was also the first to obtain measurements of the radius of brown dwarves, intermediate objects between a planet and a star, and literally opened up a whole new field of study of temporal analysis of the micro-variability of stars by measuring the frequencies and amplitudes of stellar vibrations with unprecedented precision.
CNES did not provide a timetable for CoRoT’s demise, but we’ll keep you posted.
In the end, everything dies, even plucky space robots. Today we examine the last days of a series of missions. How do spacecraft tend to die, and what did in such heroes as Kepler, Spirit, and Galileo (the missions… not the people).
