Solar System Archives

January 21, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Take a Rollercoaster Ride Around Venus

If you’ve ever wanted to see what it’s like to buzz Venus like only a spacecraft can, here’s your chance: this is a video animation of images taken by ESA’s Venus Express as it makes a pole-to-pole orbit of our neighboring world.

Captured in ultraviolet wavelengths, the images were acquired by the spacecraft’s Venus Monitoring Camera last January over a period of 18 hours. It’s truly a “day in the life” of Venus Express!

From ESA’s description of the video:

We join the spacecraft from a staggering 66,000 km above the south pole, staring down into the swirling south polar vortex. From this bird’s-eye view, half of the planet is in darkness, the ‘terminator’ marking the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet.

Intricate features on smaller and smaller scales are revealed as Venus Express dives to just 250 km above the north pole and clouds flood the field of view, before regaining a global perspective as it climbs away from the north pole.

The observed pattern of bright and dark markings is caused by variations in an unknown absorbing chemical at the Venus cloud tops.

False-color image of cloud features on Venus. Captured by Venus Express from a distance of 30,000 km (18,640 miles) on December 8, 2011. (ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

Source: European Space Agency

January 19, 2013June 5, 2022 by Ken Kremer

Watery Science ‘Jackpot’ Discovered by Curiosity

Curiosity found widespread evidence for flowing water in the highly diverse, rocky scenery shown in this photo mosaic from the edge of Yellowknife Bay on Sol 157 (Jan 14, 2013). The rover will soon conduct 1st Martian rock drilling operation at flat, light toned rocks at the outcrop called “John Klein”, at center. ‘John Klein’ drill site and ‘Sheep Bed’ outcrop ledges to right of rover arm are filled with numerous mineral veins and spherical concretions which strongly suggest precipitation of minerals from liquid water. ‘Snake River’ rock formation is the linear chain of rocks protruding up from the Martian sand near rover wheel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

The Curiosity rover hit the science “jackpot” and has discovered widespread further evidence of multiple episodes of liquid water flowing over ancient Mars billions of years ago when the planet was warmer and wetter, scientists announced. The watery evidence comes in the form of water bearing mineral veins, cross-bedded layering, nodules and spherical sedimentary concretions.

Any day now NASA’s mega robot will be instructed to drill directly into veined rocks where water once flowed, the team announced at a media briefing this week.

Delighted researchers said Curiosity surprisingly found lots of evidence for light-toned chains of linear mineral veins inside fractured rocks littering the highly diverse Martian terrain – using her array of ten state-of-the-art science instruments. Veins form when liquid water circulates through fractures and deposit minerals, gradually filling the insides of the fractured rocks over time.

Sometime in the next two weeks or so, NASA’s car sized rover will carry out history’s first ever drilling inside a Martian rock that was “percolated” by liquid water – an essential prerequisite for life as we know. A powdered sample will then be delivered to the robots duo of analytical chemistry labs (CheMin & SAM) to determine its elemental composition and ascertain whether organic molecules are present.

The drill target area is named “John Klein” outcrop, in tribute to a team member who was the deputy project manager for Curiosity at JPL for several years and who passed away in 2011.

“We identified a potential drill target and are preparing to do drill activities in the next two weeks. We are ready to go,” said Richard Cook, the project manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

“Drilling [into a rock] is the most significant engineering activity since landing. It is the most difficult aspect of the surface mission, interacting with an unknown surface terrain, and has never been done on Mars. We will go slowly. It will take some time to deliver samples to CheMin and SAM and will be a great set of scientific measurements.”

Image caption: Mineral veins of calcium sulfate discovered by Curiosity at ‘Sheepbed’ Outcrop. These veins form when water circulates through fractures, depositing minerals along the sides of the fracture, to form a vein. These vein fills are characteristic of the stratigraphically lowest unit in the “Yellowknife Bay” area where Curiosity is currently exploring and were imaged on Sol 126 (Dec. 13, 2012) by the telephoto Mastcam camera. Image has been white-balanced. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

“The scientists have been let into the candy store,” said Cook referring to the unexpected wealth of science targets surrounding the rover at this moment.

“There is a high diversity of rocks types here to characterize,” added Mike Malin, Mastcam principal investigator of Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS). “We see layering, veins and concretions. The area is still undergoing some changes.”

Curiosity is just a few meters away from ‘John Klein’ and will drive to the site shortly from her location inside ‘Yellowknife Bay’ beside the ‘Snake River’ rock formation. To see where Curiosity is in context with ‘John Klein’ and “Snake River’, see our annotated context mosaic (by Ken Kremer & Marco Di Lorenzo) as the rover collects data at a rock ledge.

The white colored veins were discovered over the past few weeks- using the high resolution mast- mounted imaging cameras and ChemCam laser firing spectrometer -at exactly the vicinity where Curiosity is currently investigating ; around a shallow basin called Yellowknife Bay and roughly a half mile away from the landing site inside Gale Crater.

“This lowest unit that we are at in Yellowknife Bay, the very farthest thing we drove to, turns out to be kind of the ‘jackpot’ unit here,” said John Grotzinger, the mission’s chief scientist of the California Institute of Technology. “It is literally shot through with these fractures and vein fills.”

Image caption: ‘John Klein’ Site Selected for Curiosity’s Drill Debut. This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site. The rover’s right Mast Camera equipped with a telephoto lens, was about 16 feet (5 meters) away from the site when it recorded this mosaic on sol 153 (Jan. 10, 2013). The area is shot full of fractures and veins, with the intervening rock also containing concretions, which are small spherical concentrations of minerals. Enlargement A shows a high concentration of ridge-like veins protruding above the surface. Some of the veins have two walls and an eroded interior. Enlargement B shows that in some portions of this feature, there is a horizontal discontinuity a few centimeters or inches beneath the surface. The discontinuity may be a bed, a fracture, or potentially a horizontal vein. Enlargement C shows a hole developed in the sand that overlies a fracture, implying infiltration of sand down into the fracture system. Image has been white-balanced. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Shortly after landing the team took a calculated gamble and decided to take a several months long detour away from the main destination of the towering, sedimentary mountain named Mount Sharp, and instead drive to an area dubbed ‘Glenelg’ and home to ‘Yellowknife Bay’, because it sits at the junction of a trio of different geologic terrains. Glenelg exhibits high thermal inertia and helps put the entire region in better scientific context. The gamble has clearly payed off.

“We chose to go there because we saw something anomalous, but wouldn’t have predicted any of this from orbit,” said Grotzinger.

The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument found elevated levels of calcium, sulfur and hydrogen. Hydrogen is indicative of water.

The mineral veins are probably comprised of calcium sulfate – which exists in several hydrated (water bearing) forms.

“The ChemCam spectra point to a composition very high in calcium. These veins are likely composed of hydrated calcium sulfate, such as bassinite or gypsum, depending on the hydration state,” said ChemCam team member Nicolas Mangold of the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes in France. “On Earth, forming veins like these requires water circulating in fractures and occur at low to moderate temperatures.”

The newly found veins appear quite similar to analogous veins discovered in late 2011 by NASA’s Opportunity rover – Curiosity’s older sister – inside Endeavour crater and nearly on the opposite side of Mars. See our Opportunity vein mosaic featured at APOD on Dec. 11, 2011 to learn more about veined rocks.

“What these vein fills tell us is water moved and percolated through these rocks, through these fracture networks and then minerals precipitated to form the white material which ChemCam has concluded is very likely a calcium sulfate, probably hydrated in origin,” Grotzinger explained.

“So this is the first time in this mission that we have seen something that is not just an aqueous environment, but one that also results in precipitation of minerals, which is very attractive to us.”

Yellowknife Bay and the ‘John Klein’ drilling area outcrop are chock full of mineral veins and sedimentary concretions.

“When you put all this together it says that basically these rocks were saturated with water. There may be several phases to this history of water, but that’s still to be worked out.”

“This has been really exciting and we can’t wait to start drilling,” Grotzinger emphasized.

Curiosity can drill about 2 inches (5 cm) into rocks. Ultimately a powdered sample about half an aspirin tablet in size will be delivered to SAM and CheMin after a few weeks. All rover systems and instruments are healthy, said Cook.

Grotzinger said that Curiosity will be instructed to drive over the veins to try and break them up and expose fresh surfaces for analysis. Then she will drill directly into a vein and hopefully catch some of the surrounding material as well.

“This will reveal the mineralogy of the vein filling material and how many hydrated mineral phases are present. The main goal is this will give us an assessment of the habitability of this environment.”

As the rover has driven down the shallow depression to deeper stratigraphic layers, the units are older in time.

After the first drill sample is fully analyzed, Grotzinger told me that the team will reevaluate whether to drill into a second rock.

The team doesn’t yet know whether the flowing water from which the veins precipitated was a more neutral pH or more acidic. “It’s too early to tell. We need to drill into the rock to tell and determine the mineralogy,” Grotzinger told me. Neutral water is more hospitable to life.

How long the episodes of water flowed is not yet known and it’s a complex history. But the water was at least hip to ankle deep at times and able to transport and round the gravel.

“There are a broad variety of sedimentary rocks here, transported from elsewhere. Mars was geologically active in this location, which is totally cool !,” said Aileen Yingst, MAHLI deputy principal investigator. ”There are a number of different transport mechanisms in play.”

Image caption: Curiosity’s Traverse into Different Terrain. This image maps the traverse of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity from “Bradbury Landing” to “Yellowknife Bay,” with an inset documenting a change in the ground’s thermal properties with arrival at a different type of terrain. credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona/CAB(CSIC-INTA)/FMI

Drilling goes to the heart of the mission and will mark a historic feat in planetary exploration – as the first time that an indigenous sample has been cored from the interior of a rock on another planet and subsequently analyzed by chemical spectrometers to determine its elemental composition and determine if organic molecules are present .

The high powered hammering drill is located on the tool turret at the end of the car-sized robots 7 foot (2.1 meter) long mechanical arm . It is the last of Curiosity’s ten instruments that remains to be checked out and put into action.

Curiosity landed on the Red Planet five months ago inside Gale Crater to investigate whether Mars ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life, past or present and is now nearly a quarter of the way through her two year prime mission.

Curiosity might reach the base of Mount Sharp by the end of 2013, which is about 6 miles (10 km) away as the Martian crow flies.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Calcium-Rich Veins in Martian Rocks. This graphic shows close-ups of light-toned veins in rocks in the “Yellowknife Bay” area of Mars together with analyses of their composition. The top part of the image shows a close-up of the rock named “Crest,” taken by the remote micro-imager (RMI) on Curiosity’s Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument above the analysis of the elements detected by using ChemCam’s laser to zap the target. The spectral profile of Crest’s light-colored vein is shown in red, while that of a basaltic calibration target of known composition is shown in black. The bottom part of the image shows ChemCam’s close-up of the rock named “Rapitan” with the analysis of its elemental composition. The spectral profile of Rapitan’s light-colored vein is shown in blue, while that of a basaltic calibration target of known composition is shown in black. These results suggest the veins are unlike typical basaltic material. They are depleted in silica and composed of a calcium-bearing mineral. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS

Image caption: Curiosity will carry out 1st rock drilling at ‘John Klein’ outcrop visible in this time lapse mosaic showing movements of Curiosity rover’s arm on Sol 149 (Jan. 5, 2013) at Yellowknife Bay basin where the rover has found widespread evidence for flowing water. Curiosity discovered hydrated mineral veins and concretions around the rock ledge ahead . She next drove there for contact science near the slithery chain of narrow protruding rocks known as ‘Snake River. Photomosaic stitched from Navcam raw images and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

January 15, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A Hi-Res Mosaic of Mercury’s Crescent

A view of Mercury from MESSENGER’s October 2008 flyby (NASA / JHUAPL / Gordan Ugarkovic)

Every now and then a new gem of a color-composite appears in the Flickr photostream of Gordan Ugarkovic, and this one is the latest to materialize.

This is a view of Mercury as seen by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft during a flyby in October 2008. The image is a composite of twenty separate frames acquired with MESSENGER’s narrow-angle camera from distances ranging from 18,900 to 17,700 kilometers and colorized with color data from the spacecraft’s wide-angle camera. (North is to the right.)

Click the image for a closer look, and for an even bigger planet-sized version click here. Beautiful!

The images that made up this mosaic were taken two and a half years before MESSENGER entered orbit around Mercury on March 19, 2011 UT, becoming the first spacecraft ever to do so and making Mercury the final “classical” planet to be orbited by a manmade spacecraft.

Since that time MESSENGER has completed well over 1,000 orbits and taken more than 100,000 images of the first planet in the Solar System, which filled in most of our gaps in Mercury’s map and showed us many never-before-seen features of the planet’s Sun-scoured surface. And just this past year MESSENGER’s extended mission helped confirm what could be called its most important discovery of all: water ice on Mercury’s north pole.

This was even selected by Scientific American as one of the Top 5 Space Stories of 2012.

With all that’s been achieved by MESSENGER in 2011 and 2012, 2013 is looking to be an interesting year!

“We learned a great deal about Mercury over the past year,” said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “The team published three dozen scientific and technical papers and delivered more than 150 presentations at national and international meetings. New measurements continue to stream back from our spacecraft, and we can look forward with excitement to many additional discoveries in 2013.”

Follow the MESSENGER mission news here and see more of Gordan’s space images here.

Inset image: 12 Mercurial discoveries by MESSENGER in 2012. Click to review.

January 14, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A Moon With Two Suns: Making Art from Science

A view of Kepler 47c and binary stars. ©Digital Drew. All rights reserved.

What would it look like on a hypothetical icy moon orbiting the exoplanet Kepler 47c? Perhaps something like this.

This is an illustration by an artist who goes by the name Digital Drew on Flickr. Drew creates landscapes of imagined alien worlds orbiting stars (and sometimes planets) that actually exist in the Universe. With 3D software, a little science and a lot of imagination, Drew shows us what skies might look like on other planets.

Kepler 47c (KOI-3154.02) is a Neptune-sized exoplanet orbiting a binary star pair 4,600 light-years away. It is part of the first circumbinary system ever discovered — one of at least two planets orbiting a pair of stars. In the image here, Kepler 47c is seen at upper left.

What makes this exoplanet so exciting is that it is within the habitable zone around the stellar pair. So even though the planet itself may be a gas giant and thus not particularly suitable for life, any moons it has in orbit just might be.

While its slightly smaller planetary companion Kepler 47b orbits much too closely to the twin suns for water to exist as a liquid, 47c’s orbit is much farther out, completing one revolution every 303 days. Mainly illuminated by a star like our Sun but about 15% dimmer, this is a region where you could very well find a large rocky moon with conditions similar to Earth’s.

Fly a spacecraft over its higher elevations and you just might see a scene like this, a double sunset over a glacier-filled valley with a crescent gas giant dominating the sky. (Makes one wonder what the balmier regions might look like!)

“Unlike our sun, many stars are part of multiple-star systems where two or more stars orbit one another. The question always has been — do they have planets and planetary systems? This Kepler discovery proves that they do. In our search for habitable planets, we have found more opportunities for life to exist.”

– William Borucki, Kepler mission principal investigator (Sept. 2012)

And as more giant planets are discovered within their system’s habitable zones, the more there’s a chance that habitable moons could exist — or perhaps even be more common than habitable planets! Just recently the citizen science project Planet Hunters announced the potential exoplanet PH2 b, a Jupiter-sized world that orbits within a habitable zone. In our Solar System Jupiter has lots of moons; PH2 b could very well have a large number of moons of its own, any number of them with liquid water on their surfaces and temperatures “just right” for life.

While it will likely be quite some time before we see any direct observations of an actual exomoon, and possibly never from one, we must rely on the work of artists like Digital Drew to illustrate the many possibilities that exist.

See more of Drew’s work on his Flickr page here, and read more about the discovery of the Kepler 47 system here.

Inset image: Diagram of the Kepler 47 system compared to the inner Solar System. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle.

January 14, 2013April 13, 2022 by Ken Kremer

Rover Team Chooses 1st Rock Drilling Target for Curiosity

Image caption: Time lapse mosaic shows Curiosity rover’s arm movement from raised position to surface deployment on Sol 149 (Jan. 5) for contact science near the lower point of the slithery chain of narrow protruding rocks known as ‘Snake River’ – located inside the basin called “Yellowknife Bay’. The rover team will soon conduct historic first rock drilling in these surroindings. Curiosity has now driven to the larger, broken rock just above, right of the sinuous ‘Snake River’ rock formation. Photomosaic was stitched from Navcam raw images and is colorized with patches of sky added to fill in image gaps. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

A team of Mars scientists and engineers have chosen the 1st rock drilling target for NASA’s Curiosity rover after carefully considering a range of options over the past several weeks at the robots current location inside a shallow depression known as ‘Yellowknife Bay’, which is replete with light toned rocks.

An official NASA announcement with further information is forthcoming on Tuesday this week, according to a source for this report.

Curiosity is now conducting a detailed science evaluation of the vicinity around a slithery chain of rocks called ‘Snake River’, jutting up from the sandy, rock strewn Martian floor – see our illustrative photo mosaics above & below and earlier story here.

The first report of the drill target selection came just a day ago from Craig Covault at NASA Watch/Spaceref in an article, here – featuring our ‘Snake River’ time lapse mosaic (by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo). The mosaic shows the arm in action deploying its science instruments and rotating to capture pictures with the MAHLI microscopic imager and contact science with the APXS mineral spectrometer.

The exact drilling spot has not been divulged but is likely near ‘Snake River’ and visible in our mosaics from Sol 149 and earlier Sols inside the ‘Yellowknife Bay’ basin – which exhibits cross bedding and is reminiscent of a dried up shoreline. Curiosity has now driven to the larger, broken rock just above, right of the sinuous ‘Snake River’ rock formation for up-close contact science investigations.

Image Caption: Before and after comparison of images of 1st ever rock brush off by Curiosity’s Dust Removal Tool (DRT) on Sol 150 (Jan 6, 2013), nearby to Snake River. Images taken by the high resolution Mastcam 100 camera, contrast enhanced. The brushed patch of rock target called “Ekwir_1” ‘is about 1.85 inches by 2.44 inches (47 millimeters by 62 millimeters). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer

The Mars Science Lab (MSL) team is coordinating with top JPL & NASA management to get approval for the drilling location chosen or select another rock.

The high powered hammering drill is located on the tool turret at the end of the car-sized robots 7 foot (2.1 meter) long mechanical arm.

The percussive drill is the last component of Curiosity’s ten state-of-the-art science instruments that remains to be checked out and put into action.

Rock samples collected from the first test bore holes will be pulverized and the powdery mix will initially be used to rinse the interior chambers of the drill mechanisms and cleanse out residual earthly contaminants – and then dumped. The same procedure was carried out at the windblown ‘Rocknest’ ripple with the initial scoops of soil to cleanse the CHIMRA sample processing systems.

So it’s likely to take several weeks and possible a month or more until sieved samples are finally delivered to the CheMin and SAM analytical chemistry labs on the rover deck for analysis of their inorganic and organic chemical composition.

Image caption: Photo mosaic shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover reaching out to investigate rocks at a spot inside Yellowknife Bay on Sol 132, Dec 19, 2012. In search of first drilling target the rover drove to a spot at the right edge of this mosaic called Snake River rock. Curiosity’s navigation camera captured the scene surrounding the rover with the arm deployed and the APXS and MAHLI science instruments on tool turret collecting imaging and X-ray spectroscopic data. Base of Mount Sharp visible at right. The mosaic is colorized with patches of sky added to fill in gaps. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

As a prelude on Sol 150 (Jan 6.), the rover successfully brushed off one of the flat rocks around Snake River for the first time by using the motorized, wire-bristle brush on the Dust Removal Tool (DRT), built by Honeybee Robotics of NYC.

The brushing was completed on a rock target called ‘Ekwir_1’ – see our mosaic showing a before and after comparison of rock surface images snapped by the Mastcam-100 high resolution color camera.

Brushing is a key step prior to rock drilling and allows the team to much more easily gain insight into the rocks composition with the science instruments compared to the obscured view of a dust blanketed rock. Spirit & Opportunity also have Honeybee Robotics built brushes that have still endured throughout their years’ long miraculous lifetimes.

The team then commanded the rover to bump a bit closer to “slightly younger rocks in front of the rover,” says MSL team member Ken Herkenhoff.

“The contact science activities in the current location went well, including the first brushing of the surface. In order to characterize the geology and chemistry of the rocks at the edge of Yellowknife Bay, we intend to repeat the set of brushing, APXS, MAHLI, ChemCam and Mastcam activities at the new location starting on Sol 152.”

“We are studying chemical and textural differences in the rocks near Snake River,” says Herkenhoff.

On Sol 152 (Jan. 8), Curiosity drove 2.5 meters closer to the area surrounding ‘Snake River’ and began snapping high resolution color imagery.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle,” says John Grotzinger, the mission’s chief scientist of the California Institute of Technology. “It has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed after the deposition of the layer that it transects.”

Grotzinger and the team are excited because Curiosity is a sort of time machine providing a glimpse into the Red Planets ancient history when the environment was warmer and wetter billions of years ago and much more conducive to the origin of life.

Ken Kremer

Image caption: Diagram shows all instruments on Tool turret on robotic arm. Credit: NASA

January 6, 2013April 13, 2022 by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Touches Mars at Yellowknife Bay and Drives to Snake River for Drilling

Image Caption: Photo mosaic shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in action reaching out to investigate rocks at a location called Yellowknife Bay on Sol 132, Dec 19, 2012 in search of first drilling target. The view is reminiscent of a dried up shoreline. Curiosity’s navigation camera captured the scene surrounding the rover with the arm deployed and the APXS and MAHLI science instruments on tool turret collecting microscopic imaging and X-ray spectroscopic data. The mosaic is colorized. See the full 360 degree panoramic and black & white versions below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Following the Christmas season break for panoramic imaging of her surroundings, NASA’s Curiosity robot has resumed roving around the shallow depression she reached before the holidays called ‘Yellowknife Bay’ and just arrived at a slithery rock called ‘Snake River’.

The top priority is to locate a target rock to drill into – and that momentous event could at last take place in the next week or so. The drill is the last of Curiosity’s suite of ten science instruments to be fully checked out and commissioned for use.

The drilling scene will look a lot like our photo mosaics, above and below, showing the robotic arm deployed for action. The drill is located on the tool turret at the end of the 7 foot (2.1 meter) long mechanical marvel.

The Curiosity research team is using the newly collected cache of high resolution color images to scan her surroundings in search of scientifically interesting rocks for the historic inaugural use of the high powered hammering drill.

Image Caption: Photo mosaic shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in action reaching out to investigate rocks at a location called Yellowknife Bay on Sol 132, Dec 19, 2012. In search of first drilling target the rover drove to a spot at the right edge of this mosaic called Snake River rock. Curiosity’s navigation camera captured the scene surrounding the rover with the arm deployed and the APXS and MAHLI science instruments on tool turret collecting imaging and X-ray spectroscopic data. Base of Mount Sharp visible at right.The mosaic is colorized with patches of sky added to fill in gaps. Click to enlarge. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

The percussive drill will collect the first ever powdered samples from the interior of Martian rocks for analysis by a pair of state-of-the-art analytical chemistry instruments located inside the rover named SAM and CheMin.

“We are firing on all cylinders now and our last thing to do is drilling, and we really hope to start on that process beginning next week,” said John Grotzinger, the mission’s chief scientist of the California Institute of Technology, in an interview with Jonathan Amos of the BBC.

The rover is also using the APXS X-ray mineral spectrometer, ChemCam rock blasting laser and MAHLI hand lens imager to gather science characterization data helpful in choosing the drill target.

Today (Jan. 5) marks exactly 5 months since Curiosity’s hair-raisingly successfully touchdown on Aug. 5, 2012 on the gravelly plains of Gale Crater beside the towering foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3 mi (5 km) high layered mountain holding deposits of hydrated minerals. Mount Sharp is the main destination of Curiosity’s mission.

On Jan. 3 (Sol 147), Curiosity drove another 10 feet (3 meters) northwestward and pulled up to a sinuous rock feature called “Snake River” as part of a campaign to survey a variety of rocks from which to select the drilling site.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle,” says John Grotzinger. “It has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed after the deposition of the layer that it transects.”

‘Snake River’ sinuous Rock Feature Viewed by Curiosity Mars Rover on Sol 133. On Sol 147 (Jan 3. 2013), the rover drove to within arm’s reach of Snake river for up close examination as possible drill target. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Snake River is a thin curving line of darker rock cutting through flatter rocks and jutting above sand, says NASA. It’s located at the right side edge of our Sol 132 photo mosaic stitched together from raw images by the image processing team of Ken Kremer & Marco Di Lorenzo to provide a context view of the scenery – and were also featured at NBC News by Alan Boyle, BBC News, NASA Watch and the NY Daily News.

So far the robot has driven a total of 2,303 feet (702 meters) and snapped nearly 36,000 pictures.

Yellowknife Bay is a basin inside an area dubbed ‘Glenelg’ that features a flatter and lighter-toned type of terrain from what the mission crossed during its first four months inside Gale Crater. The rover descended about 2 feet (0.5 m) down a slight incline to reach the inside of the depression in December 2012.

“We’re down at the very lowest layer – what would be the oldest layer that we would see in this succession that might be five to eight meters thick, and that is very likely where we are going to choose our first drilling target, because suddenly we’ve come into an area that represents a very high diversity of things we haven’t seen before,” said Grotzinger to the BBC.

“The place where Curiosity is right now is a small stack of layers – very impressive – and they could be 3-3.5 billion years old, and so we’re very excited about this because unlike the soil which we were analyzing before the holiday season – a loose, windswept patch of dirt on the surface of Mars – we’re now going to start digging down into the very ancient bedrock which we really built the rover to look at,” explained Grotzinger.

Image caption: Curiosity peaks around Yellowknife Bay on Sol 125, Dec 12, 2012. The rover has continued driving inside the basin in search of 1st rock drill target in Jan 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

The mission goal is to search for habitats and determine if Mars ever could have supported microbial life in the past or present during the 2 year primary mission phase.

“We use these layers as a sort of recording device of past events and conditions, and the rover has the same kind of analytical capability that we would use here on Earth to tell us about the early environmental conditions; and, if life had ever evolved, [whether it would] be the kind of environment that would have been conducive towards sustaining that life,” Grotzinger elaborated to the BBC.

Stay tuned.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Photo mosaic shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in action reaching out to investigate rocks at a location called Yellowknife Bay on Sol 132, Dec 19, 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

January 1, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

New Study Shows Cosmic Rays Could Cause Alzheimer’s

Humans explore Mars in “Distant Shores,” an illustration by NASA artist Pat Rawlins

Cosmic rays from deep space could pose serious health risks to future astronauts on long-duration missions to Mars — even bringing on the memory-destroying symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, according to the results of a new study from the University of Rochester Medical Center.

While NASA has its sights set on the human exploration of Mars within the next several decades, even with the best propulsion technology currently available such a mission would take about three years. Within that time, crew members would be constantly exposed to large amounts of radiation that we are protected from here by Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere. Some of this radiation comes in the form of protons from the Sun and can be blocked by adequate spacecraft shielding materials, but a much bigger danger comes from heavy high-energy particles that are constantly whipping across the galaxy, shot out of the hearts of exploding giant stars.

“Because iron particles pack a bigger wallop it is extremely difficult from an engineering perspective to effectively shield against them. One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete.”

– M. Kerry O’Banion, M.D., Ph.D.

While health risks from these high-mass, high-charged (HZE) particles have long been known, the exact nature of the damages they can cause to human physiology is still being researched — even more so now that Mars and asteroid exploration is on NASA’s short list.

Now, a team from the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) in New York has announced the results of their research linking high-energy radiation — just like what would be encountered during a trip to Mars — to the degeneration of brain function, and possibly even the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

“Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts,” said M. Kerry O’Banion, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and the senior author of the study. “The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

In particular the team focused on iron ions, which are blasted into space by supernovae and are massive enough to punch through a spacecraft’s protective shielding.

“Because iron particles pack a bigger wallop it is extremely difficult from an engineering perspective to effectively shield against them,” O’Banion said. “One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete.”

By exposing lab mice to increasing levels of radiation and measuring their cognitive ability the researchers were able to determine the neurologically destructive nature of high-energy particles, which caused the animals to more readily fail cognitive tasks. In addition the exposed mice developed accumulations of a protein plaque within their brains, beta amyloid, the spread of which is associated with Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

“These findings clearly suggest that exposure to radiation in space has the potential to accelerate the development of Alzheimer’s disease,” said O’Banion. “This is yet another factor that NASA, which is clearly concerned about the health risks to its astronauts, will need to take into account as it plans future missions.”

While Mars explorers could potentially protect themselves from cosmic radiation by setting up bases in caves, empty lava tubes or beneath rocky ledges, which would offer the sort of physical shielding necessary to stop dangerous HZE particles, that would obviously present a new set of challenges to astronauts working in an already alien environment. And there’s always the trip there (and back again) during which time a crew would be very much exposed.

While this won’t — and shouldn’t — prevent a Mars mission from eventually taking place, it does add yet another element of danger that will need to be factored in and either dealt with from both health and engineering standpoints… or accepted as an unavoidable risk by all involved, including the public.

How much risk will be considered acceptable for the human exploration of Mars — and beyond? (NASA/Pat Rawlings)

Read more on the URMC news page here, and see the full experiment report here.

Illustrations for NASA by Pat Rawlings. See more of Rawling’s artwork here. Inset image: comparison of human brains without and with Alzheimer’s. Source: WHYY.

December 26, 2012April 13, 2022 by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Celebrates 1st Martian Christmas at Yellowknife Bay

Image Caption: Curiosity Scans ‘Yellowknife Bay’ on Sol 130. NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrated her 1st Christmas on the Red Planet at ‘Yellowknife Bay’ and is searching for her 1st rock target to drill into for a sample to analyze. She snapped this panoramic view on Dec. 17 which was stitched together from navigation camera (Navcam) images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Today (Dec. 25) Curiosity celebrates her 1st Christmas on Mars at a spot called ‘Yellowknife Bay’. It’s Sol 138 and nearly 5 months since the pulse pounding landing on Aug. 6, 2012 inside Gale Crater. The robot is in excellent health.

Meanwhile her older sister Opportunity will soon celebrate an unfathomable 9 Earth years on Mars in a few short weeks on Jan. 24, 2013 – on the other side of the planet.

NASA’s Curiosity rover reached the shallow depression named ‘Yellowknife Bay’ on Sol 130 (Dec. 17, 2012) after descending about 2 feet (0.5 m) down a gentle slope inside a geologic feature dubbed ‘Glenelg’. See our panoramic mosaics from Yellowknife Bay – above and below for a context view.

The science team is searching for an interesting rock for the inaugural use of the high powered hammering drill.

According to a new report in SpaceRef, the drilling has been delayed due to concerns that frictional heating may potentially cause liquification of the rock to a gooey “Martian Honey” that could potentially clog and seriously damage the sample handling sieves and mechanisms. So the team is carefully re-evaluating the type of rock target and the drilling operation procedures before committing to the initial usage of the percussive drill located on the turret at the terminus of the robotic arm.

The team chose to drive to ‘Yellowknife Bay’ because it features a different type of geologic terrain compared to what Curiosity has driven on previously. The ‘Glenelg’ area lies at the junction of three different types of geologic terrain and is Curiosity’s first extended science destination.

Curiosity arrived at the lip of Yellowknife Bay on Sol 124 and entered the basin on Sol 125 (Dec. 12) and snapped a scouting panoramic view peering into the inviting locale. The rover is also using the APXS X-ray mineral spectrometer, ChemCam laser and MAHLI hand lens imager to gather initial science characterization data.

Curiosity peaks around Yellowknife Bay on Sol 125, Dec 12, 2012. The rover continued driving inside the basin in search of 1st rock drill target. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

So far the rover has traversed a total driving distance of some 0.43 mile (700 meters).

Most of the science and engineering team is getting a much needed break to spend time with their families after uploading 11 Sols worth of activities ahead of time to keep the robot humming during the Christmas holiday season. A skeleton crew at JPL is keeping watch to deal with any contingencies.

One of the top priorities is acquiring a high resolution 360 degree Mastcam color panorama. This will be invaluable for selection of the very 1st rock target to drill into and acquire a sample from the interior – a feat never before attempted on Mars.

“We decided to drive to a place with a good view of the outcrops surrounding Yellowknife Bay to allow good imaging of these outcrops before the holiday break,” says rover science team member Ken Herkenhoff. “As the images are returned during the break, we can use them to help decide where to perform the first drilling operation.”

The team expects to choose a drill target sometime in January 2013 after a careful selection process.

The 7 foot (2 m) long robotic arm will deliver that initial, pulverized rock sample to inlet ports on the rover deck for analysis by the high powered duo of miniaturized chemistry labs named Chemin & SAM.

Image Caption: Curiosity deploys robotic arm on Sol 129 and examines rock with APXS and MAHLI science instruments to characterize rock and soil composition. This composite mosaic was stitched from Navcam images from Sol 129 (Dec. 16) and earlier sols- and shows the location of the Chemin sample inlet port on the rover deck. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Curiosity will spend at least another month or more investigating Glenelg before setting off on the nearly year long trek to her main destination – the sedimentary layers of the lower reaches of the 3 mile (5 km) high mountain named Mount Sharp.

Image caption: Scanning Mount Sharp from Yellowknife Bay on Sol 136. This photo mosaic assembled from Mastcam 100 camera images was snapped by Curiosity on Sol 136 (Dec. 23) – from her current location. It shows a portion of the layered mound called Mount Sharp, her main destination. Acquiring a 360 high resolution color panorama from Yellowknife Bay is a high priority task for the rover during the Christmas holiday season. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer

As the Martian crow flies, the breathtaking environs of Mount Sharp are some 6 miles (10 km) away.

The mission goal is to search for habitats and determine if Mars ever could have supported microbial life in the past or present during the 2 year primary mission phase.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Curiosity Traverse Map, Sol 130. This map traces where Curiosity drove between landing at a site named “Bradbury Landing,” and the position reached during Sol 130 (Dec. 17, 2012) at a spot named “Yellowknife Bay” which is inside an area called “Glenelg”. The inset shows the most recent legs of the traverse in greater detail. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

December 24, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A Color View of Darling Dione

Color-composite of Dione made from raw Cassini images acquired on Dec. 23, 2012. (NASA/JPL/SSI. Composite by J. Major.)

Although made mostly of ice and rock, Saturn’s moon Dione (pronounced dee-oh-nee) does have some color to it, as seen in this color-composite made from raw images acquired by Cassini on December 23.

700 miles (1120 km) wide, Dione is covered pole-to-pole in craters and crisscrossed by long, bright regions of “wispy line” terrain — the reflective faces of sheer ice cliffs and scarps that are too steep for darker material drifting in from Saturn’s E ring to remain upon.

The composite was assembled from raw images captured in red, green and blue visible light wavelengths by Cassini from a distance of 154,869 miles (249,238 km).

The view above looks at a region on Dione’s mid-northern hemisphere. The bright-walled crater in the center surrounded by warmer-hued terrain is named Creusa, and the long rift system next to it is Tibur Chasmata, which runs north-to-south. Dione’s north pole is to the upper left.

Dione’s heavily cratered areas are most common on its trailing hemisphere. Logically, a moon’s leading hemisphere should be the more heavily cratered, so it has been hypothesized that a relatively recent impact spun Dione around 180 degrees. The moon’s small size mean that even a modest-scale impact could have done the job.

Relative sizes of Earth, Moon and Dione (J. Major)

Dione orbits Saturn at a distance of 209,651 miles (377,400 km), closer than our Moon is to us.

See more images and news from the Cassini mission here. And for more on Dione, see some of my previous posts on Lights in the Dark.

December 23, 2012December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Orion assemblage on track for 2014 Launch

Image caption: Orion EFT-1 crew cabin construction ongoing inside the Structural Assembly Jig at the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). This is the inaugural space-bound Orion vehicle due to blastoff from Florida in September 2014 atop a Delta 4 Heavy rocket. Credit: Ken Kremer

NASA is thrusting forward and making steady progress toward launch of the first space-bound Orion crew capsule -designed to carry astronauts to deep space. The agency aims for a Florida blastoff of the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 mission (EFT-1) in September 2014 – some 20 months from now – NASA officials told Universe Today.

I recently toured the Orion spacecraft up close during an exclusive follow-up visit to check the work in progress inside the cavernous manufacturing assembly facility in the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Vehicle assemblage is run under the auspices of prime contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems Corporation.

A lot of hardware built by contractors and subcontractors from all across the U.S. is now arriving at KSC and being integrated with the EFT-1 crew module (CM), said Jules Schneider, Orion Project manager for Lockheed Martin at KSC, during an interview with Universe Today beside the spacecraft at KSC.

“Everyone is very excited to be working on the Orion. We have a lot of work to do. It’s a marathon not a sprint to build and test the vehicle,” Schneider explained to me.

My last inspection of the Orion was at the official KSC unveiling ceremony on 2 July 2012 (see story here). The welded, bare bones olive green colored Orion shell had just arrived at KSC from NASA’s Michoud facility in New Orleans. Since then, Lockheed and United Space Alliance (USA) technicians have made significant progress outfitting the craft.

Workers were busily installing avionics, wiring, instrumentation and electrical components as the crew module was clamped in place inside the Structural Assembly Jig during my follow-up tour. The Jig has multiple degrees of freedom to move the capsule and ease assembly work.

“Since July and to the end of 2012 our primary focus is finishing the structural assembly of the crew module,” said Schneider.

“Simultaneously the service module structural assembly is also ongoing. That includes all the mechanical assembly inside and out on the primary structure and all the secondary structure including the bracketry. We are putting in the windows and gussets, installing the forward bay structure leading to the crew tunnel, and the aft end CM to SM mechanism components. We are also installing secondary structures like mounting brackets for subsystem components like avionics boxes and thruster pods as parts roll in here.”

Image caption: Window and bracket installation on the Orion EFT-1 crew module at KSC. Credit: Ken Kremer

“A major part of what we are doing right now is we are installing a lot of harnessing and test instrumentation including alot of strain gauges, accelerometers, thermocouples and other gauges to give us data, since that’s what this flight is all about – this is a test article for a test flight.

“There is a huge amount of electrical harnesses that have to be hooked up and installed and soldered to the different instruments. There is a lot of unique wiring for ground testing, flight testing and the harnesses that will be installed later along with the plumbing. We are still in a very early stage of assembly and it involves alot of very fine work,” Schneider elaborated. Ground test instrumentation and strain gauges are installed internally and externally to measure stress on the capsule.

Construction of the Orion service module is also moving along well inside the SM Assembly Jig at an adjacent work station. The SM engines will be mass simulators, not functional for the test flight.

Image caption: Orion EFT-1 crew cabin and full scale mural showing Orion Crew Module atop Servivce Module inside the O & C Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer

The European Space Agency (ESA) has been assigned the task of building the fully functional SM to be launched in 2017 on NASA’s new SLS rocket on a test flight to the moon and back.

Although Orion’s construction is proceeding apace, there was a significant issue during recent proof pressure testing at the O & C when the vehicle sustained three cracks in the aft bulkhead of the lower half of the Orion pressure vessel.

“The cracks did not penetrate the pressure vessel skin, and the structure was holding pressure after the anomaly occurred,” Brandi Dean, a NASA Public Affairs Officer told me. “The failure occurred at 21.6 psi. Full proof is 23.7 psi.”

“A team composed of Lockheed Martin and NASA engineers have removed the components that sustained the cracks and are developing options for repair work. Portions of the cracked surface were removed and evaluated, letting the team eliminate problems such as material contamination, manufacturing issues and preexisting defects from the fault tree. The cracks are in three adjacent, radial ribs of this integrally machined, aluminum bulkhead,” Dean stated.

Image caption: NASA graphic of 3 cracks discovered during recent proof pressure testing. Credit: NASA

The repairs will be subjected to rigorous testing to confirm their efficacy as part of the previously scheduled EFT-1 test regimen.

A great deal of work is planned over the next few months including a parachute drop test just completed this week and more parachute tests in February 2013. The heat shield skin and its skeleton are being manufactured at a Lockheed facility in Denver, Colorado and shipped to KSC. They are due to be attached in January 2013 using a specialized tool.

“In March 2013, we’ll power up the crew module at Kennedy for the first time,” said Dean.

Orion will soar to space atop a mammoth Delta IV Heavy booster rocket from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Construction and assembly of the triple barreled Delta IV Heavy is the pacing item upon which the launch date hinges, NASA officials informed me.

Following the forced retirement of NASA’s space shuttles, the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy is now the most powerful booster in the US arsenal and heretofore has been used to launch classified military satellites. Other than a specialized payload fairing built for Orion, the rocket will be virtually identical to the one that boosted a super secret U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) spy satellite to orbit on June 29, 2012 (see my launch story here).

Orion will fly in an unmanned configuration during the EFT-1 test flight and orbit the Earth two times – reaching an altitude of 3,600 miles which is 15 times farther than the International Space Station’s orbital position. The primary objective is to test the performance of Orion’s heat shield at the high speeds and searing temperatures generated during a return from deep space like those last experienced in the 1970’s by the Apollo moon landing astronauts.

The EFT-1 flight is not the end of the road for this Orion capsule.

“Following the EFT-1 flight, the Orion capsule will be refurbished and reflown for the high altitude abort test, according to the current plan which could change depending on many factors including the budget,” explained Schneider.

“NASA will keep trying to do ‘cool’ stuff”, Bill Gerstenmaier, the NASA Associate Administrator for Human Space Flight, told me.

Stay tuned – Everything regarding human and robotic spaceflight depends on NASA’s precarious budget outlook !

Ken Kremer

Image caption: Orion EFT-1 crew cabin assemblage inside the Structural Assembly Jig at the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC); Jules Schneider, Orion Project Manager for Lockheed Martin and Ken Kremer. Credit: Ken Kremer