Solar System Archives

February 16, 2011December 24, 2015 by Ken Kremer

NASA’s Stardust Discovers Human made Deep Impact Crater on Comet Tempel 1

Tempel 1, as Seen by Two Spacecraft. These two images show the different views of comet Tempel 1 seen by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft (left) and NASA's Stardust spacecraft (right). Two craters, about 300 meters (1,000 feet) in diameter, help scientists locate the area hit by the impactor released by Deep Impact in July 2005. The dashed lines correlate the features. Stardust approached the comet from a different angle on Feb. 14, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland/Cornell

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NASA’s aging and amazing Stardust space probe has at last discovered the human made crater created on Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 by the history making cosmic smash up with NASA’s Deep Impact penetrator. Stardust streaked past the comet on Feb. 14 at 10.9 km/sec, or 24,000 MPH, and succeeded in briefly photographing the crater as it approached within 178 km (111 mi) during the fleeting moments of the probes closest approach.

The intentional celestial collision in 2005 was designed to violently unleash the buried remnants of the early solar system into an enormous ejecta cloud of dusty debris that scientists could sift for clues to help unlock the secrets of how we all formed and evolved some 4.5 Billion Years ago.

Tempel 1 is the first comet to receive a second visit by probes from Earth.

Comets have continuously smashed into Earth over the eons and delivered vast quantities of key ingredients – such as water and organic molecules – that may have sparked the formation of life on the early Earth.

NASA approved the use of the already orbiting Stardust-NExT spacecraft to follow up on the science discoveries by Deep Impact as the best and most economical way to try and locate the crater blast site, image new terrain and look for changes on the comets surface since the 2005 mission as the comet also completed another orbit around our Sun and eroded due to solar heating.

The human made crater is about 150 meters wide and was formed by a 375 kilogram (800 pound) projectile propelled into the speeding path of Comet Tempel 1 by the Deep Impact mothership in 2005.

Tempel 1 Impact Site.
This pair of images shows the before-and-after comparison of the part of comet Tempel 1 that was hit by the impactor from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. The left-hand image is a composite made from images obtained by Deep Impact in July 2005. The right-hand image shows arrows identifying the rim of the crater caused by the impactor. The crater is estimated to be 150 meters (500 feet) in diameter. This image also shows a brighter mound in the center of the crater likely created when material from the impact fell back into the crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland/Cornell

Stardust-NExT took 72 high resolution science images of the comet during the Valentine’s Day encounter flyby on Feb, 14 at 11:40 p.m. EST (8:40 p.m. PST). The probe absolutely had to be precisely navigated to exactly hit the aim point for sequencing the images to match the right moment in the erratic rotation of the volatile comet.

The results of the Stardust-NExT mission were announced at a post encounter new briefing after most of the images and science data had streamed back to Earth. The science team and NASA said that all the mission objectives were accomplished.

“If you ask me was this mission 100 percent successful in terms of the science, I’d have to say no. It was 1000 percent successful!” said Stardust-NExT principal investigator Joe Veverka of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., at the news briefing.

“We found the Deep Impact crater. We see erosion in comparison to 2005. So we do see changes. Erosion on the scale of 20 to 30 meters of material has occurred in the five or six years since we took the first picture. We are seeing a change, but we have to spend time quantifying the changes and understanding what they mean.”

“We saw a lot of new territory. It’s amazing with lots of layers. There is lots of surface sublimation. We had to arrive at precisely the right time in order to see new and old territory.”

“We had monitored the comets rotation for several years. And we got the longitude almost perfect within 1 or 2 degrees,” Veverka said.

Tempel 1 Impact Site
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland/Cornell

It took a few years of careful study to deduce the comets complex rotational patterns which change as the body orbits in a wide orbital path between Mars and Jupiter and is heated by the sun.

Peter Schultz, a science team co-investigator agreed and showed the comparison images.

“We saw the crater,” said Schultz, of University. “It’s subdued; it’s about 150 meters across and has a small central mound in the center. It looks as if from the impact, the stuff went up and came back down. So we did get it, there’s no doubt. I think one of the bottom-line messages is that this surface of the comet where we hit is very weak. It’s fragile. So the crater partly healed itself.”

“It was about the size we expected. But more subdued.”

The probes mission is almost complete since it has very little fuel left. The remaining science data from the flyby is being sent back and some outbound data is being collected.

“This spacecraft has logged over 3.5 billion miles since launch, and while its last close encounter is complete, its mission of discovery is not,” said Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT project manager at JPL. “We’ll continue imaging the comet as long as the science team can gain useful information, and then Stardust will get its well-deserved rest.”

Stardust-NExT is a repurposed spacecraft that has journeyed nearly 6 billion kilometers since it was launched in 1999.

Initially christened as Stardust, the spaceships original task was to fly by Comet Wild 2 in 2004. It also collected priceless cometary dust particles from the coma which was safely parachuted back to Earth inside a return canister in 2006. High powered science analysis of the precious comet dust will help researchers discern the origin and evolution of our solar system.

This was humanities first revisit to a comet and at a bargain basement price by using an old spacecraft already in space.

“The cost was just $29 Million dollars. A new Discovery class mission costs $300 to 500 Million. So that’s maybe 6% the cost of developing and launching a new mission,” said Ed Weiler, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA HQ in Washington, DC.

Read more about the Stardust-NExT Flyby and mission in my earlier stories here, here, here and here

Changes to Smooth Terrain (Annotated)
This image layout depicts changes in the surface of comet Tempel 1, observed first by NASA's Deep Impact Mission in 2005 (top right) and again by NASA's Stardust-NExT mission on Feb. 14, 2011 (bottom right). Between the two visits, the comet made one trip around the sun. The image at top left is a wider shot from Deep Impact. The smooth terrain is at a higher elevation than the more textured surface around it. Scientists think that cliffs, illustrated with yellow lines to the right, are being eroded back to the left in this view. The cliffs appear to have eroded as much as 20 to 30 meters (66 to 100 feet) in some places, since Deep Impact took the initial image. The box shows depressions that have merged together over time, also from erosion. This erosion is caused by volatile substances evaporating away from the comet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Maryland/Cornell

February 15, 2011December 24, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Stardust-NExT zooms by Comet Tempel 1 for Cosmic Encounter

Comet Tempel 1 imaged by NASA's Stardust on Feb 14, Valentine’s Day. NASA's Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:38 p.m. PST (11:38 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011. . The comet was first visited by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell **Update Feb 15**: Beautifully sharp Comet images now being downlinked. New story upcoming.

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NASA’s Stardust-NExT comet chaser successfully zoomed by Comet Temple 1 exactly as planned a short while ago at 11:37 p.m. EST on Feb. 14.

The cosmic Valentine’s Day encounter between the icy comet and the aging probe went off without a hitch. Stardust snapped 72 science images as it raced by at over 10 km/sec or 24,000 MPH and they are all centered in the cameras field of view. The probe came within 181 km (112 miles) of the nucleus of the volatile comet.

The images are being transmitted back now and it will take a several hours until the highest resolution images are available for the science team and the public to see. The first few images from a distance of over a thousand miles can be seen here

Tempel 1 is the first comet to be visited twice by spaceships from Earth. The primary goal was to find out how much the comet has changed in the five years since she was last visited by NASA’s Deep Impact mission in 2005, says Joe Ververka of Cornell University, who is the principal investigator of the Stardust-NExT mission. Deep Impact delivered a 375 kg projectile which blasted the comet and created an impact crater and an enormous cloud of dust so that scientists could study the composition and interior of the comet.

“We are going to be seeing the comet just after its closest passage to the sun. We know the comet is changing because the ice melts. We hope to see old and new territory and the crater and complete the Deep Impact experiment.”

Stardust-NExT is a repurposed spacecraft. Initially christened as Stardust, the spaceships original task was to fly by Comet Wild 2 in 2004. It also collected priceless cometary dust particles from the coma which were safely parachuted back to Earth inside a return canister in 2006. High powered science analysis of the precious comet dust will help researchers discern the origin and evolution of our solar system.

Stardust-NExt approaching Comet Tempel 1.
Artist concept of NASA's Stardust-NExT mission, which will fly by Comet Tempel 1 on Feb. 14, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LMSS

Stardust was hurriedly snapping high resolution pictures every 6 seconds and collecting data on the dust environment during the period of closest approach which lasted just about 8 minutes. The anticipation was building after 12 years of hard work and a journey of some 6 Billion kilometers (3.5 Billion miles)

“The Stardust spacecraft did a fantastic job,” says Tim Larson, the Stardust-NExT mission project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. “Stardust has already flown past a asteroid and a comet and returned comet particles to Earth”

“Because of the flyby geometry the antenna was pointed away from earth during the encounter. Therefore all the science images and data was stored in computer memory on board until the spacecraft was rotated to point towards Earth about an hour after the flyby.”

Each image takes about 15 minutes to be transmitted back to Earth by the High Gain Antenna at a data rate of 15,800 bits per second and across about 300 million miles of space.

NASA had bracketed five special images from the closest range as the first ones to be sent back. Instead, the more distant images were sent first. It will take about 10 hours to receive all the images.

So everyone had to wait a few hours longer to see the fruit of their long labor. Most of the team from NASA, JPL and Lockheed Martin has been working on the mission for a dozen years since its inception.

“We had a great spacecraft and a great team,” says Ververka. “Apparently, everything worked perfectly. The hardest thing now is we have to wait a couple of hours before we see all the goodies stored on board.”

The entire flyby was carried out autonomously using a preprogrammed sequence of commands. Due to the vast distance from Earth there was no possibility for mission controllers to intervene in real time.

Confirmation of a successful fly by and science imaging was not received until about 20 minutes after the actual event at about 11:58 p.m. EST. The dust flux monitor also registered increased activity just as occurred during the earlier Stardust flyby of Comet Wild 2 in 2004.

The Stardust-NExT science briefing on NASA TV will be delayed a few hours, until perhaps about 4 p.m. EST

Check back here later at Universe Today, on Tuesday, Feb. 15 for continuing coverage of the Valentine’s Day encounter of Stardust-NExT with the icy, unpredictable and fascinating Comet Tempel 1

Comet Tempel 1 imaged by NASA's Stardust on Feb 14, Valentine’s Day.
NASA's Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:36 p.m. PST (11:36 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011, from a distance of approximately 2200 km (1360 miles). The comet was first visited by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Stardust-NExT Spacecraft & Comet Tempel 1.
Artist rendering of upcoming flyby on February, 14, 2011. Credit: NASA

Stardust-NExT: 2 Comet Flybys with 1 Spacecraft.
Stardust-NExT made history on Valentine’s Day - February, 14, 2011 – Tempel 1 is the first comet to be visited twice by spacrecraft from Earth. Stardust has now successfully visited 2 comets and gathered science data: Comet Wild 2 in 2004 (left) and Comet Tempel 1 in 2011 (right). Artist renderings Credit: NASA. Collage: Ken Kremer.

February 13, 2011December 24, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Romantic Valentines Day Encounter Looms with Icy Comet

NASA's Romantic Rendezvous in space on Valentine’s Day - Feb. 14. The planned Valentine's Day (Feb. 14, 2011) rendezvous between NASA's Stardust-NExT mission and Comet Tempel 1 inspired this chocolate-themed artist's concept. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Video and graphics below illustrate the icy encounter and animate the flyby trajectory. NASA TV: Live Coverage listed below. Update: See below the latest navigation camera images taken on Feb. 11 – newly obtained from JPL. These images are crucial for precisely aiming Stardust-NExT

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At last, NASA embraces a romantic rendezvous in the dark void of deep space.

And soon the whole world can watch the up close meet up of the hot Stardust probe and the volatile, icy comet. The historic space tryst is less than a day away!

The Stardust-NExT spacecraft successfully hot fired its thrusters for the final course correction maneuver (TCM-33) on Feb. 12, setting up the fleeting celestial encounter with Comet Tempel 1 on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, Monday, at 11:37 p.m. EST. The space science probe will fly by the speeding comet at a distance of approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles) and at a speed of 10 km/sec.

Naturally, the fleeing comet is icy, unpredictable and exploding with jets of gas and dust particles. So there is some uncertainly at NASA and amongst the science team as to what we’ll actually see when the cameras unveil the hidden secrets of the nucleus of Temple 1.

The encounter phase has begun now (Feb. 13) at 24 hours prior to closest approach (Feb. 14) and concludes 24 hours after closest approach.

“The final TCM burn on Feb. 12 went well,” JPL spokesman DC Agle told me today (Feb.13)

It’s been a long wait and a far flung journey. Stardust has cruised some 6 Billion kilometers through our solar system – looping several times around the sun over a dozen years and is now nearly bereft of fuel.

For three and a half long years, the anticipation has been building since NASA approved the repurposing of the Stardust spacecraft in 2007 and fired the thrusters to alter the probes trajectory to Comet Temple 1 for this bonus extended mission.

But until the photos are transmitted across 300 million kilometers of space back to Earth, we won’t know which face of the comets surface was turned towards the camera as the curtain pulls back for the revealing glimpse.

Everything hinges on how accurately the mission team aims the reliable probe and the finicky rotation of the changeable comet.

The irregularly shaped nucleus of Tempel 1 measures barely 5 to 8 km in diameter.

Stardust-NExT: 2 Comet Flybys with 1 Spacecraft.
Stardust-NExT makes history on Valentine’s Day - February, 14, 2011
Tempel 1 is the first comet to be visited twice by spacecraft from Earth. Stardust will have visited 2 comets and gathered science data: Comet Wild 2 in 2004 (left) and Comet Tempel 1 in 2011 (right).
Artist renderings Credit: NASA. Collage: Ken Kremer.

The Feb. 14 encounter marks the first time in history that a comet has been visited twice by spaceships from Earth. The revisit provides the first opportunity for up-close observations of a comet both before and after a single orbital pass around the sun.

In July 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact probe delivered a 375 kg projectile that penetrated at high speed directly into the comets nucleus. The blast created an impact crater and ejected an enormous cloud of debris that was studied by the Deep Impact spacecraft as well as an armada of orbiting and ground based telescopes.

Somewhat unexpectedly, the new crater was totally obscured from the cameras view by light reflecting off the dust cloud.

“The primary goal is to find out how much the comet’s surface has changed between two close passages to the sun since it was last visited in 2005,” says Joe Ververka of Cornell University, who is the principal investigator of the Stardust-NExT mission.

This time around, researchers hope to determine the size of the crater. Numerous bets hinge on that determination.

It’s also quite possible that the crater itself has significantly changed in the intervening five and one half years as the Jupiter-class comet orbits between Mars and Jupiter.

“Comets rarely behave,” says Tim Larson, the Stardust-NExT mission project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.

“Temple 1 exhibits a complex rotation. The rotation period is about 41 hours. But the trajectory changes due to the comet jets and activity.”

“Ideally we would like to obtain photos of old and new territory and the crater from the Deep Impact encounter in 2005,” Larson explained.

“Tempel 1 is the most observed comet in history using telescopes worldwide as well as the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes.”

Engineers are using all this data to fine tune the aim of the craft and get a handle on which sides of the comet will be imaged. But either way the team will be elated with the science results regardless of whether the images reveal previously seen or new terrain.

Today, Feb. 13, mission controllers at JPL are uplinking the final flyby sequences and parameters for Monday’s (Feb. 14) historic encounter.

Stardust-NExT will take 72 high resolution images of Comet Tempel 1 during the close approach. The team expects the nucleus to be resolved in several of the closest images. These will be stored in an onboard computer and relayed back to Earth starting about three hours later.

“All data from the flyby (including the images and science data obtained by the spacecraft’s two onboard dust experiments) are expected to take about 10 hours to reach the ground,” according to a NASA statement.

3 D stereo view of Comet Wild 2 from Stardust flyby in 2004. Credit: NASA/

Stardust-NExT is a repurposed spacecraft and this will be the last hurrah for the aging probe. Stardust was originally launched way back in 1999 and accomplished its original goal of flying through a dust cloud surrounding the nucleus of Comet Wild 2 on Jan. 2, 2004. During the flyby, the probe also collected comet particles which were successfully returned to Earth aboard a sample return capsule which landed in the Utah desert in January 2006.

Stardust continued its solitary voyage through the void of the space. Until now !

Watch the Stardust-NExT Romantic Rendezvous: Live on NASA TV

NASA has scheduled live mission commentary of the flyby and a post encounter news briefing on Feb. 14 and Feb. 15. These will be televised on NASA TV as follows:

February 14, Monday
11:30 p.m. – 1 a.m. (Feb. 15) – Live Stardust-NExT Mission Commentary (including coverage of closest approach to Comet Tempel 1 and re-establishment of contact with the spacecraft following the encounter) – JPL

February 15, Tuesday
3 – 4:30 a.m. Live Stardust-NExT Mission Commentary (resumes with the arrival of the first close-approach images of Comet Tempel 1) – JPL

1 p.m. – Stardust-NExT Post-Encounter News Briefing – JPL

Five facts you should know about NASA’s Stardust-NExT spacecraft as it prepares for a Valentine’s “date” with comet Tempel 1. From a NASA Press Release

1. “The Way You Look Tonight” – The spacecraft is on a course to fly by comet Tempel 1 on Feb. 14 at about 8:37 p.m. PST (11:37 p.m. EST) — Valentine’s Day. Time of closest approach to Tempel 1 is significant because of the comet’s rotation. We won’t know until images are returned which face the comet has shown to the camera.

Stardust- Earth return capsule with cometary dust particles in 2006. Credit: NASA/JPL

2. “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” – In 2004, Stardust became the first mission to collect particles directly from a comet, Wild 2, as well as samples of interstellar dust. The samples were returned in 2006 via a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground at a targeted area in Utah. Mission controllers then placed the still-viable Stardust spacecraft on a flight path that could reuse the flight system, if a target of opportunity presented itself. Tempel 1 became that target of opportunity.

3. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” – The Stardust-NExT mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comet’s surface that occurred after one orbit around the sun. Tempel 1 was observed in 2005 by NASA’s Deep Impact mission, which put an impactor on a collision course with the comet. Stardust-NExT might get a glimpse of the crater left behind, but if not, the comet would provide scientists with previously unseen areas for study. In addition, the Stardust-NExT encounter might reveal changes to Tempel 1 between Deep Impact and Stardust-Next, since the comet has completed an orbit around the sun.

4. “The Wind Beneath My Wings” – This Tempel 1 flyby will write the final chapter of the spacecraft’s success story. The aging spacecraft approached 12 years of space travel on Feb. 7, logging almost 6 billion kilometers (3.5 billion miles) since launch. The spacecraft is nearly out of fuel. The Tempel 1 flyby and return of images are expected to consume the remaining fuel.

5. “Love is Now the Stardust of Yesterday” – Although the spacecraft itself will no longer be active after the flyby, the data collected by the Stardust-NExT mission will provide comet scientists with years of data to study how comets formed and evolved.

Do you know the artists names who wrote and sing these celestially romantic tunes ?

NASA Stardust NExT Video: Date with a Comet – Tempel 1

13 Feb 2011 Position of STARDUST-NExT probe
Looking Down on the Sun. This image shows the current position of the STARDUST spacecraft and the spacecraft's trajectory (in blue) around the Sun. Credit: NASA

Latest navigation camera images of Comet Temple 1 coma and surrounding stars.
Taken by Stardust-NExT at about 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 11 – newly obtained from JPL. This region is about 1.2 degrees on a side - 351 x 351 pixels. Exposure duration 10 seconds. These images are crucial for precisely aiming Stardust-NExT. Credit: NASA/JPL

Enlargement of latest navigation camera image of Comet Temple 1 coma and surrounding stars showing a small section around the comet. Taken by Stardust-NExT at about 10:30 a.m. on Feb. 11 – newly obtained from JPL. Exposure duration 10 seconds. These images are crucial for precisely aiming Stardust-NExT. Credit: NASA/JPL

February 11, 2011April 26, 2016 by Ken Kremer

NASAs First Orion Capsule Ships for Crucial Deep Space Tests

The Lockheed Martin Orion team at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La., inspects the first Orion crew module known as the Ground Test Article (GTA) prior to shipping to Lockheed Martin’s Denver facilities. In Denver, the GTA will be integrated with an encapsulating aeroshell to provide thermal protection before undergoing rigorous testing to verify it can withstand the harsh environments of a deep space mission. The aeroshell will complete the exterior of the spacecraft, as depicted in the hanging banner displayed in the upper left. Credit: NASA

[/caption]The first Orion spacecraft has just been shipped from NASAs Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orlean’s to a Lockheed Martin manufacturing facility in Denver for crucial tests to simulate the harsh environment of deep space.

The Orion crew cabin – know as the Ground Test Article or GTA – was shipped by truck and will arrive in Denver on Feb. 14 according to a Lockheed Martin spokesperson.

Orion is NASA’s next generation crew vehicle and will eventually replace the Space Shuttle system after the looming retirement of the three orbiter fleet, now reset to mid 2011.

The Orion crew exploration vehicle is capable of supporting missions to low Earth orbit (LEO), the Moon, Asteroids and Deep Space.

The next step at Denver is to install the heat shield and thermal protection backshell. The pathfinding vehicle will then be subjected to performance testing inside the acoustic and environmental testing chamber. The testing exercise ensures the vehicle can meet the challenges of ascent, on-orbit operations and safe landing.

“This is a significant milestone for the Orion project and puts us on the right path toward achieving the President’s objective of Orion’s first crewed mission by 2016,” said Cleon Lacefield, Lockheed Martin vice president and Orion program manager. “Orion’s upcoming performance tests will demonstrate how the spacecraft meets the challenges of deep-space mission environments such as ascent, launch abort, on-orbit operations, high-speed return trajectory, parachute deployment, and water landings in a variety of sea states.”

Engineers for Lockheed Martin successfully finished the initial construction and testing phase for this prototype Orion crew cabin at New Orleans. The final pieces of the Orion GTA were welded together in late May 2010 using a state of the art friction stir welding process. See photos below from my inspection tour of the newly welded Orion GTA.

The spacecraft underwent proof pressure testing this past fall. Several mass and volume simulators including the parachutes were installed by the technical team to ready the capsule for shipment.

Parachutes are installed by Lockheed Martin technicians on the Orion Ground Test Article (GTA) at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Credit: NASA

In Denver, the vehicle will be bombarded with acoustic energy and vibrations to simulate flight like situations that correlate the structural environment inside and outside the vehicle. The tests will determine if the spacecraft was properly designed to survive the harsh rigors of spaceflight. Lessons learned will be incorporated into the tools and manufacturing processes that will eventually lead to a human rated production vehicle.

The GTA vehicle will then be transported to NASA’s Langley Research facility for drop tests to simulate, validate and certify a variety of water landing scenarios at the new Hydro Impact Basin. The Langley facility will be used to test and certify water landing for all human-rated spacecraft for NASA according to Lockheed.

NASA and Lockheed hope to launch the first unmanned Orion test flight in 2013 if the budget allows. Construction of the service module and other key components is in progress.

Orion has achieved other significant development milestones in the past year.

Orion GTA crew cabin with crew hatch and windows after final pieces were welded together using state of the art friction stir welding. Credit: Ken Kremer

360 degree panorama of Orion GTA looking inside crew hatch. Credit: nasatech.net

The emergency abort rocket was successfully tested on May 6, 2010 at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, N.M. The abort rocket is bolted atop the crew cabin and is designed to pull the capsule away from the launcher in a split second in an emergency and save astronauts lives.

“The Phase 1 Safety Review was completed in June 2010 and formally acknowledges that Orion’s design meets all of NASA’s critical safety requirements for a human-rated space flight vehicle for flights to low earth orbit (LEO), lunar and deep space missions,” according to Larry Price, Orion Deputy Program Manager at Lockheed Martin.

In the past year the Orion budget has been cut significantly by NASA due to lack of funding from the federal government and the outlook for future funding is uncertain. The new Congress is aiming to cut NASA’s research and development budget even further.

Orion abort rocket mock up on public exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida next to Orion crew capsule mockup (at left). The emergency rocket will be bolted atop an Orion spaceship for the initial orbital test flight which is currently slated for a 2013 launch. Credit: Ken Kremer

Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company is the prime contractor for Orion and designed and built the GTA as part of a multiyear contract awarded by NASA worth some $3.9 Billion US Dollars. The goal is to produce a new, US-built manned capsule capable of launching American astronauts into space in the post shuttle era.

As soon as the shuttles are retired – for lack of money – the United States will have no capability to loft American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for at least several years. NASA – and all other ISS partners – will be wholly dependent on the Russian Soyuz capsules for launching astronauts to the ISS until either the Orion or commercially developed space taxis such as the Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX are ready for flight. The first operational unmanned Dragon was test flown in Dec 2010.

The Obama Administration sought to cancel Orion in Feb. 2010 as part of NASA’s Project Constellation Return to the Moon program, but then decided to continue Orion’s development after the cancellation proposal met strong bipartisan opposition in Congress.

Orion was to have been launched atop the Ares 1 rocket which has now been officially cancelled. NASA has started the design of a replacement for the Ares 1 which will most likely be a shuttle derived vehicle. Congress has mandated that the first test flight of the still undefined heavy lift rocket must take place by 2016.

Alternatively, Orion could be launched atop a Delta 4 Heavy booster after the rocket is man-rated.

Orion Crew Vehicle Construction Video

Watch this video to see how the first Orion spacecraft was constructed from pieces at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Credit: NASA

Orion crew module processing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Credit: NASA

Lockheed Martin team of aerospace engineers and technicians poses with Orion GTA after welding into one piece. Credit: Ken Kremer.

360 degree panorama of Orion GTA and Lockheed Martin team. Credit: nasatech.net

February 6, 2011December 24, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Earths Entire Star for the First Time on Super SUNday

Latest image of the far side of the Sun based on high resolution STEREO data, taken on February 3, 2011 at 23:56 UT when there was still a small gap between the STEREO Ahead and Behind data. This gap will start to close on February 6, 2011, when the spacecraft achieve 180 degree separation, and will completely close over the next several days. Credit: NASA. Note this STEREO image was taken Feb 3. NASA today released an image taken on Feb 2. New images are taken every day

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Super Bowl SUNday XLV marks a watershed moment in observing our Sun. Today, February 6, 2011, NASA’s twin STEREO solar observatories will reach locations on exact opposite sides of the Sun, called opposition, and they are beaming back uninterrupted images from both the entire front and rear side hemispheres of Earths star in three dimensions and 360 degrees for the first time.

“For the first time in history we can see the entire Sun at one time – both the far side and the near side,” said Joe Gurman, in an interview for Universe Today. Gurman is the Project Scientist for NASA’s STEREO mission at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, MD. This will significant aid space weather forecasting.

To mark this historic milestone, NASA today released images captured by STEREO on Feb. 2 – slightly prior to opposition – which gives humankind our first ever global look at the whole sphere of our Suns surface and atmosphere in extreme ultraviolet light (EUV). The probes were over 179 degrees apart. See location maps and images below

This article features even newer EUV images – compared to NASA’s press release – that were taken even closer to opposition by STEREO on Feb. 3 and today on Feb. 6 and which I downloaded from the STEREO website. The newer EUV images show an ever so slightly more complete solar view as the probes orbit reaches further to the suns far side.

Coincidentally, the STEREO duo may reach opposition – exactly 180 degrees apart – while the Super Bowl XLV half time show is ongoing, at roughly 7:30 p.m. EST in the evening of Sunday, Feb. 6.

The Sun from STEREO A and B on Feb. 3, 2011.
Images taken by the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) at the 304 Angstrom bandpass which is sensitive to the He II singly ionized state of helium, at a characteristic temperature of about 80 thousand degrees Kelvin. These are the most current images used to create the spherical solar view on Feb 3, 2011. Credit: NASA

There is a tiny sliver of unseen solar surface on the far side of the sun at the extreme fringes of the far side EUV images that will fill in over the new few days to give an even better view. As of today that wedge is less than 1 degree. See the solar image collections above and below.

“The currently unseen far side wedge will disappear around February 12,” Gurman told me. “There might still be some small areas at high latitudes we won’t be able to see, but the view from the ecliptic is always limited. It takes about 3 days to get back the high resolution data.”

“On either side of the wedge, the features are smeared out because they’re from the “limbs” (edges) of the Sun as seen from each STEREO spacecraft.”

“The far side resolution will increase as the STEREO twins proceed around the sun.”

“On the near side, we can substitute the much higher resolution SDO AIA image data along the nearside “seam”, said Gurman.

SDO is in Earth orbit on the earth-facing side of the sun and will fill in the gap.

“For the next 8 years we will have a 360 degree view of the Sun by combining STEREO and SDO data,” said Gurman. “We will have that whole sun view until the STEREO spacecraft swing back to the earth side of the Sun.”

The Sun from STEREO A and B on Feb. 6, 2011 on SuperSUNday.
The probes were nearly at opposition 180 degrees apart. These images provide the first 360 degree global view of Earths Star. Images taken by the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) at the 195 Angstrom bandpass is sensitive to the Fe XII ionization state of iron, at a characteristic temperature of about 1.4 million degrees Kelvin. Credit: NASA

Why is it important to image the far side of the sun?

Because scientists can now immediately detect active regions on the far side of the sun which were hidden from our view up until now.

“No active region can hide from us anymore because we will now have this 360 degree view.”

The new far side data will allow much faster detection of solar storms which in turn will enable faster predictions of space weather which potentially can severely impact sensitive technological infrastructure on Earth and throughout the solar system.

Until now, we had to wait about two weeks until the rear side active regions of the sun rotated into our view on the front side. But no longer. On average the sun rotates in about 27 days – faster at the equator and slower at the poles.

“We will now be able to detect the coronal mass ejections, or CMEs as they happen on the far side instead of waiting until they rotate around with no forewarning. The magnetic storms with energetic particles blast out at varying speeds of about 700 to 1000 km/sec and can reach Earth in one to three days,” said Gurman.

These magnetic storms are a threat to air traffic control of airliners, can disrupt the power grip, damage communications systems, space satellites in Earth orbit and around the solar system, effect other sensitive electronics systems and also harm astronauts working aboard the International Space Station.

An artist's concept shows both STEREO surrounding the sun on opposite sides. Credit: NASA

STEREO is comprised of two nearly identical STEREO spacecraft – dubbed STEREO Ahead and STEREO Behind –orbiting around our Sun. One probe – B – trails Earth around the sun and moves a bit slower; the other one – A – leads the Earth traveling slightly faster.

Each probe images half of the suns sphere and broadcasts the data back to Earth continuously, 24 hours each day. STEREO’s solar telescopes are tuned to four different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet radiation (171, 195, 284, 304 Å) selected to trace key aspects of solar activity such as flares, tsunamis and magnetic filaments.

“The images are converted into a spherical projection by researchers on the science teams,” said Gurman. An international group of scientific institutions and governments from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland designed and built STEREO’s science imaging and particle detecting instruments.

The two probes have been slowly separating in opposite directions at about 45 degrees per year ever since they were launched together aboard a Delta II rocket on October 25, 2006 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida.

After hurtling past the moon, the solar powered spacecraft – weighing some 600 kg – were flung into solar orbit on opposite sides of the Earth and have been moving away from Earth and apart from each other. In this way the wedge of unseen solar territory has been diminishing as the probes gain more complete coverage of the sun, thus enabling us to formulate a more complete understanding of the solar environment.

STEREO stands for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory. Their mission is to provide the very first, 3-D “stereo” images of the sun to study the nature of coronal mass ejections.

The STEREO mission is currently funded until 2013.

“The probes have enough fuel to last 100 years,” said Gurman. “The lifetime limiting factor is the spacecraft electronics and funding. The solar arrays will only gradually degrade over decades.”

NASA/STEREO Reveals the Entire Sun

Launched in October 2006, STEREO traces the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth. It also provides unique and revolutionary views of the sun-Earth system. STEREO, when paired with SDO, can now give us the first complete view of the sun’s entire surface and atmosphere

On Super Bowl SUNday - Feb 6, 2011;
The two NASA STEREO spacecraft will see the entire Sun ! Super Bowl SUNday will truly mark a milestone for solar observations. On February 6, the two STEREO spacecrafts will be 180 degrees apart and for the next 8 years the STEREO spacecrafts and SDO will be able to observe the entire 360 degrees of the Sun. Credit: NASA

Positions of STEREO A and B for 6-Feb-2011 17:00 UT. This figure plots the current positions of the STEREO Ahead (red) and Behind (blue) spacecraft relative to the Sun (yellow) and Earth (green). The dotted lines show the angular displacement from the Sun. Units are in A.U.

February 5, 2011April 26, 2016 by Ken Kremer

NASA Robot and First Whole Sun Picture .. Coming on Super Bowl SUNday

The Sun from STEREO and Robonaut 2 holds a football at the Kennedy Space Center. On Super SUNday Feb. 6, 2011, NASA will release humankinds first ever view of the entire Sun and NASA’s Robonaut 2 will make a first ever guest appearance on the NFL’s Super Bowl Pre game show for Super Bowl XLV. Left: The Sun from STEREO taken by the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) at the 304 Angstrom bandpass which is sensitive to the He II singly ionized state of helium, at a characteristic temperature of about 80 thousand degrees Kelvin. Credit: NASA. Right: Robonaut 2 practicing football for the NFL Super Bowl XLV at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in front of the world famous Countdown Clock. Credit & Mosaic: Ken Kremer

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What do NASA, Robots, the Sun and the NFL have in common ?

Well … its Super SUNday … for Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6, 2011

The unlikely pairing of Football and Science face off head to head on Super Bowl SUNday. Millions of television viewers will see NASA’s Robonaut 2, or R2, share the the limelight with the Steelers and the Packers of the NFL. The twin brother of R2 is destined for the International Space Station (ISS) and will become the first humanoid robot in space. It will work side by side as an astronaut’s assistant aboard the space station.

The fearsome looking R2 is set to make a first ever special guest appearance during the FOX Networks Super Bowl pre-game show with FOX sports analyst Howie Long. The pre-game show will air starting at 2 p.m. EST on Feb. 6.

And there’s more.

On Super SUNday Feb. 6, NASA will publish Humankinds first ever image of the ‘Entire Sun’ courtesy of NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft. And given the stunningly cold and snowy weather in Dallas, the arrival of our Sun can’t come soon enough for the ice covered stadium and football fans. See photos above and below.

The two STEREO spacecraft will reach positions on opposite sides of the Sun on Sunday, Feb. 6 at about 7:30 p.m. in the evening, possibly coinciding with the Super Bowl half time show.

At opposition, the STEREO duo will observe the entire 360 degrees sphere of the Sun’s surface and atmosphere for the first time in the history of humankind.

The nearly identical twin brother of R2 is packed aboard Space Shuttle Discovery and awaiting an out of this world adventure from Launch Pad 39 A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Blast off of the first humanoid robot is currently slated for Feb. 24.

R2 is the most dextrously advanced humanoid robot in the world and the culmination of five decades of wide-ranging robotics research at NASA and General Motors (GM).

This newest generation of Robonauts are an engineering marvel and can accomplish real work with exceptionally dexterous hands and an opposable thumb. R2 will contribute to the assembly, maintenance and scientific output of the ISS

“R2 is the most sophisticated robot in the world,” says Rob Ambrose, Chief of NASA’s Johnson Space Center’s (JSC) Robotics Division.

“We hope R2 should help to motivate kids to study science and space,” Ron Diftler told me in an interview at KSC. Diftler is NASA’s R2 project manager at JSC.

Fearsome Robonaut 2 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center prepares to meet the NFL’s best players at Super Bowl XLV on Feb 6, 2011. Credit: Ken Kremer

The amazingly dexterity of the jointed arms and hands enables R2 to use exactly the same tools as the astronauts and thereby eliminates the need for constructing specialized tools for the robots –saving valuable time, money and weight.

The robot is loaded with advanced technology including an optimized overlapping dual arm dexterous workspace, series elastic joint technology, extended finger and thumb travel, miniaturized 6-axis load cells, redundant force sensing, ultra-high speed joint controllers, extreme neck travel, and high resolution camera and IR systems.

R2 weighs some 300 pounds and was manufactured from nickel-plated carbon fiber and aluminum. It is equipped with two human like arms and two hands as well as four visible light cameras that provide stereo vision with twice the resolution of high definition TV.

“With R2 we will demonstrate ground breaking and innovative robotics technology which is beyond anything else out there and that will also have real world applications as GM works to build better, smarter and safer cars,” according to Susan Smyth, GM Director of Research and Development.

“Crash avoidance technology with advanced sensors is a prime example of robonaut technology that will be integrated into GM vehicles and manufacturing processes.”

A team of engineers and scientists from NASA and GM pooled resources in a joint endeavor to create Robonaut 2, the most dexterously advanced robot in history. The NASA/GM team is pictured here at the Kennedy Space Center. R2 will fly aboard Space Shuttle Discovery with the STS-133 crew of humans and become the first humanoid robot in space.
R2 will become an official ISS crew member. Credit: Ken Kremer

Robonaut 2 flight unit poses with the NASA/GM development team inside the Space Station Processing Facility at KSC in this 360 degree panorama from nasatech.net

I was fortunate to meet R2 and the Robonaut team at KSC. R2 is incredibly life like and imposing and I’ll never forget the chance to shake hands. Although its motions, sounds, illuminated hands and muscular chest gives the unmistakable impression of standing next to a lively and powerful 300 pound gorilla, it firmly but gently grasped my hand in friendship – unlike a Terminator.

So its going to make for a mighty match up some day between the fearsome looking R2 and the NFL players.

Well apparently, R2 and Howie will be making some predictions on which player will win the MVP award and a GM Chevrolet. Stay tuned.

So come back on SUNday Feb. 6 for NASA’s release of the first ever images of our entire Sun from the STEREO twins.

Clash of the Titans - R2 and NASA robotics engineer at football practice at KSC. Credit: Ken Kremer

Space Shuttle Discovery awaits launch from Pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Robonaut 2 is loaded inside the Leonardo storage module which will be permanently attached to the ISS by the STS-133 crew. Credit: Ken Kremer

On Super Bowl SUNday - Feb 6, 2011 - the two NASA STEREO spacecraft
will see the entire Sun for the first time! Credit: NASA.

February 2, 2011December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

“Marstinis” Could Help Explain Why the Red Planet is So Small

Proof of Life on Mars — Mars. Credit: NASA Images

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Mars is a small planet. In fact, for scientists who do solar system modeling, the planet is too small. “This is an outstanding problem in terrestrial planet formation,” said Dr. David Minton from the Southwest Research Institute. “Everyone who does simulations of how you form terrestrial planets always ends up with a Mars that is 5-10 times bigger than it is in real life.” Minton has been working alongside colleague Dr. Hal Levison to create new simulations that explain the small size of Mars by including the effect of what is known as planetesimal-driven migration, and additionally, small objects that Minton calls “Marstinis” could stir or shake up our ideas about the early solar system and the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Planetary scientists agree that the terrestrial planets formed very quickly within the first 50-100 million years of the solar system’s history and our Moon formed from an impact between a Mars-sized object and the proto-Earth at some point during that time. Much later was the Late Heavy Bombardment, the time period where a large number of impact craters formed on the Moon within a time span of only seventy million years — and by inference Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars were likely pummeled as well.

Most planetary formation theories can’t account for this intense period of bombardment so late in the solar system’s history, but Levison was part of a team that in 2005 proposed the Nice Model, which suggested how the Late Heavy Bombardment was triggered when the giant planets — which formed in a more compact configuration – rapidly migrated away from each other (and their orbital separations all increased), and a disk of small “planetesimals” that lay outside the orbits of the planets was destabilized, causing a sudden massive delivery of these planetesimals – asteroids and comets — to the inner solar system.

But, according to the model, planetesimals likely also caused the migration of the planets, too. The planets formed from a giant disk of gas, dust, rocky debris and ice surrounding the early Sun. Debris coalesced to form bigger planet-sized objects, and simulations shows that bigger planet-sized object embedded in a disk of smaller objects will migrate as a result of angular momentum and energy conservation as the planets scatter the planetesimals they encounter.

Artists concept of planetesimals and Jupiter.

“Perturbations from small rocky or icy objects surrounding a larger object can cause the larger object to ‘scoot’ along the disk,” Minton told Universe Today. “Every time these little planetesimals encounter the bigger object, they actually cause a little nudge in the position of the bigger object. It turns out if you work out the math, if there is any sort of slight imbalance to the number of objects encountering on the sunward side versus encountering on the anti-sunward side, you can actually cause a net movement of the big body, and it actually happens pretty quickly.”

Minton and Levison have been applying the same physics of planetesimal-driven migration to the formation of the terrestrial planets.

“In the case of Mars, imagine these planetary embryos located in the Earth-Venus zone,” Minton said. “Then you have a one little embryo growing to become Mars-sized, and it would start migrating because of planetesimal-driven migration, and it scoots away from the other guys. So it has left the pack, and as it moves through the disk, it gets stranded away from where all the action is going on.”

So Mars’ growth got stalled at its current size because it migrated away from the planet-building materials.

Minton said their simulations of this work really well.

“We’ve been doing a lot of math and the migration is pretty rapid,” he said, “and Mars could migrate through the disk before any other Mars-sized planet could form. In an early solar system where you have a Mars stranded off at the edge of the disk at 1.5 AU, which is where it is right now and all the other action going on in the Earth-Venus zone, then Earth and Venus were able to grow to the size they are now, where they are both roughly the same size and mass and Mars is stranded on its own.”

And with Mars there is a twist of Marstinis, which could offer an alternate explanation for the Late Heavy Bombardment.

The migrating Mars could have picked up planetesimals in its resonance, where two or more orbiting bodies exert a gravitational influence on each other.

“It is not at all obvious why that is,” Minton said, “but the same thing is thought to have happened in the outer solar system which is what gave Pluto its orbit. We think Pluto was actually picked up in the 3:2 resonance with Neptune when Neptune migrated out, and that’s why Pluto and the other “Plutinos” are living in these resonances with Neptune.”

The Plutinos are other Kuiper Belt objects near Pluto. That resonance means Pluto and the Plutinos go around the Sun three times for every 2 times Neptune does. There are also Two-tinos, which are caught in a 1:2 resonance with Neptune – and which are found towards the outer edge of the Kuiper belt. The new simulations show that these lines of resonances are almost like a snowplow, and as Neptune migrated out it picked up all these little icy bodies, Pluto and the Plutinos.

A graphic of the solar system in its current configuration; Mars is small. Credit: NASA

This also could have happened to Mars, and as Mars migrated through the disk it would have also picked up little objects.

“I’ve decided to calls these Marstinis, to keep in the Plutino and Two-tino, theme,” Minton said with a grin. “I don’t know if that will stick or not.”

But the interesting thing about the Marstinis, Minton said, is that a 3:2 resonance with Mars is actually a very unstable zone.

“There is actually a resonance there with Saturn that only existed in the time of the Late Heavy Bombardment,” he said, “so before that, Saturn — we think — was in a different position, so this particular resonance was in a different position. So it was only after the giant planets migrated to their current location that this resonance location became unstable. So we think that these Marstinis would have been stable and in that interim period between the end of planet formation and the Late Heavy Bombardment, all of a sudden this region became unstable when the planets shifted positions to their current locations.”

So could the Marstinis be responsible for the Late Heavy Bombardment?

“These Marstinis were pushed out from the planet forming regions out to the asteroid belt,” Minton said, “then all of a sudden the planets migrated and this whole region became unstable and so they all could have gone flinging into the inner solar system and end up hitting the Moon.”

Questions abound about the Late Heavy Bombardment.

There are a couple of other arguments, too where the Marstinis fit the profile of what hit the Moon during the Late Heavy Bombardment.

“We have reasons to think that the objects that hit the Moon during the Late Heavy Bombardment were sort of like asteroids but not exactly like the asteroids we have now,” Minton said. “So, there are some chemical arguments you can make, also you can make some arguments from the impact probabilities that may not have been enough mass in the asteroid belt to supply all the asteroids and impacts we see on the Moon.”
But there are other outstanding issues such as how long the Late Heavy Bombardment lasted, when it started, were comets ever important in the bombardment history of the Moon or was it all asteroids? Minton said further exploration of the Moon would answer many of these questions.

“These are all things that we really need to go to the Moon to find out and there is almost nowhere else you can go to do it. It really is one of the best places to go to understand all the solar system history.

Minton will present his findings at the upcoming Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March, 2011.

You can listen to an interview I did with Minton about planetesimal-driven migration for the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast (also available on the 365 Days of Astronomy.)

January 30, 2011April 13, 2022 by Ken Kremer

First Ever Whole Sun View .. Coming Soon from STEREO

On Super Bowl SUNday - Feb 6, 2011; the two NASA STEREO spacecraft willl see the entire Sun ! Superbowl SUNday will truly mark a milestone for solar observations. On Ferbruary 6, the two STEREO spacecrafts will be 180 degrees apart and for the next 8 years the STEREO spacecrafts and SDO will be able to observe the entire 360 degrees of the Sun. Credit: NASA. Watch the cool STEREO Whole Sun Preview Video below. Plus Launch Video and more photos below.

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“For the first time in the history of humankind we will be able to see the front and the far side of the Sun … Simultaneously,” Madhulika Guhathakurta told Universe Today. Guhathakurta is the STEREO Program Scientist at NASA HQ.

Courtesy of NASA’s solar duo of STEREO spacecraft.

And the noteworthy event is timed to coincide just perfectly with ‘Super Bowl SUNday’ – Exactly one week from today on Feb. 6 during Super Bowl XLV !

“This will be the first time we can see the entire Sun at one time,” said Dean Pesnell, NASA Solar Astrophysicist in an interview for Universe Today. Pesnell is the Project Scientist for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, MD.

This remarkable milestone will be achieved when NASA’s two STEREO spacecraft reach position 180 degrees separate on opposite sides of the Sun on Sunday, Feb. 6, 2011 and can observe the entire 360 degrees of the Sun.

“We are going to celebrate by having a football game that night!” Pesnell added in jest.

The nearly identical STEREO spacecraft – dubbed STEREO Ahead and STEREO Behind – are orbiting the sun and providing a more complete picture of the Suns environment with each passing day. One probe follows Earth around the sun; the other one leads the Earth.

STEREO is the acronym for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory. Their mission is to provide the very first, 3-D “stereo” images of the sun to study the nature of coronal mass ejections.

Today, (Jan 30) the twin STEREO spacecraft are 179.1 degrees apart and about 90 degrees from Earth, and thus virtually at the midpoint to the back of the sun. See the orbital location graphics above and below.

Both probes were flung into space some four years ago and have been hurtling towards this history making date and location ever since. The wedge of unseen solar territory has been declining.

As the STEREO probes continue flying around to the back side of the sun, the wedge of unseen solar territory on the near side will be increasing and the SDO solar probe will play a vital gap filling role.

“SDO provides the front side view of the sun with exquisite details and very fast time resolution,” Gutharka told me. For the next 8 years, when combined with SDO data, the full solar sphere will still be visible.

The Whole Sun will be simultaneously Imaged for the First tIme ever on Super Bowl SUNday Feb. 6.
For the past 4 years, the two STEREO spacecraft have been moving away from the Earth and gaining a more complete picture of the sun. On February 9, 2011, NASA will hold a press conference to reveal the first ever images of the entire sun and discuss the importance of seeing all of our dynamic star.
Credit: NASA

The solar probes were launched together aboard a Delta II rocket from Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida on October 25, 2006. See Launch Video and Photos below.

Whole Solar Sphere A Goldmine for Science

I asked Pesnell and Guhathakurta to explain why this first ever whole Sun view is a significant scientific milestone.

“Until now there has always been an unseen part of the Sun,” Pesnell explained. “Although that unseen part has always rotated into view within a week or two, a global model must include all of the Sun to understand where the magnetic field goes through the surface.”

“Also, from the Earth we can see only one pole of the Sun at a time, while with STEREO we can see both poles at the same time.

“The next few years of overlapping coronal images will be a goldmine of information for predicting space weather at the Earth and understanding of how the Sun works. It is like getting the GOES images of the Earth for the first time. We haven’t missed a hurricane since, and now we won’t miss an active region on the Sun,” said Pesnell.

How will the science data collected be used to understand the sun and its magnetic field?

“Coronal loops trace out the magnetic field in the corona,” Pesnell elaborated. “Understanding how that magnetic field changes requires seeing where on the surface each loop starts and stops.”

Why is it important to image the entire Sun ?

“Once images of the entire Sun are available we can model the entire magnetic field of the Sun. This has become quite important as we are using STEREO and SDO to study how the entire magnetic field of the Sun reacts to the explosions of even small flares.”

“By seeing both poles we should be able to understand why the polar magnetic field is a good predictor of solar activity,” said Pesnell.

“Seeing both sides will help scientists make more accurate maps of global coronal magnetic field and topology as well as better forecasting of active regions – areas that produce solar storms – as they rotate on to the front side. Simultaneous observations with STEREO and SDO will help us study the sun as a complete whole and greatly help in studying the magnetic connectivity on the sun and sympathetic flares, ” Guhathakurta amplified.

Latest EUVI Images from STEREO. These Extreme Ultra Violet Images from STEREO Ahead and Behind were taken on Jan. 30, 2011. Credit: NASA

Watch a solar rotation animation here combining EUVI and SDO/AIA:

What is the role and contribution of NASA’s SDO mission and how will SDO observations be coordinated with STEREO?

“As the STEREO spacecraft drift around the Sun, SDO will fill in the gap on the near of the Sun,” explained Pesnell. “For the next 4 or more years we will watch the increase in sunspots we call Solar Cycle 24 from all sides of the Sun. SDO has made sure we are not doing calibration maneuvers for a few days around February 6.”

“On Feb 6th we will view 100% of the sun,” said Guhathakurta.

At a press conference on Feb. 9, 2011, NASA scientists will reveal something that no one has even seen – The first ever images of ‘The Entire Sun’. All 360 degrees

Watch the briefing on NASA TV at 2 PM EST

More about the SDO mission and SDO science
and Coronal holes from STEREO and SDO here

STEREO Website

“3D Sun”
A STEREO Movie in Digital and IMAX was released in 2007
Watch the way cool 3D IMAX trailer below

STEREO spacecraft location map

Caption: Positions of STEREO A and B for 31-Jan-2011 05:00 UT. The STEREO spacecraft are 179.2 degrees apart and about 90 degrees from Earth on Jan. 31, 2011. This figure plots the current positions of the STEREO Ahead (red) and Behind (blue) spacecraft relative to the Sun (yellow) and Earth (green). The dotted lines show the angular displacement from the Sun. Units are in A.U. (Astronomical Units). Credit: NASA

STEREO Launch Video

Launch Video Caption: The Delta II rocket lights the evening sky as STEREO heads into space on October 25, 2006 at 8:52 p.m. The Delta II rocket lights the evening sky as STEREO heads into space. STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) is a multi-year mission using two nearly identical observatories, one ahead of Earth in its orbit and the other trailing behind. The duo will provide 3-D measurements of the sun and its flow of energy, enabling scientists to study the nature of coronal mass ejections and why they happen.

Fully fueled, technicians prepare the STEREO spacecraft for spin testing in the cleanroom in Titusville, Fl, while being prepared for launch. Credit: nasatech.net

Delta Launch Complex 17 comprises two launch pads and towers, 17 A & 17 B, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer

View of Delta II Launch Complex 17 by Ken Kremer

Fully clear of the smoke, STEREO streaks skyward during launch on October 25, 2006 from Pad 17B at Cape Canaveral, FL. Credit: nasatech.net

More STEREO Cleanroom and Launch photos from nasatech.net here

More about the SDO mission and SDO science
and Coronal holes from STEREO and SDO here

STEREO Website

“3D Sun”
A STEREO Movie in Digital and IMAX was released in 2007

Watch the way cool 3D trailer here – Trailer narrated by NASA’s Madhulika Guhathakurta
— be sure to grab hold of your Red-Cyan Glasses

January 29, 2011January 19, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

A Sense of Planetary Scale

This is great! Blogger Brad Goodspeed created an animation which shows different planets in our solar system as they would appear in the sky if it shared an orbit with our Moon, 380,000 km from earth. On his blog, he said he created it “to make you feel small.” You succeeded, Brad!

He explains how he created the video on his blog, BradBlogSpeed.com

January 24, 2011April 26, 2016 by Ken Kremer

7 Years of Opportunity on Mars and a Science Bonanza

The Long Journey of Opportunity to Santa Maria Crater. This collage of three maps (left, top) and a new close up panoramic mosaic of Santa Maria crater on Sol 2464, Dec 29, 2010 (bottom right) shows the route traversed by the Opportunity Mars rover during her nearly 7 year long overland expedition across the Meridiani Planum region of Mars. Opportunity landed inside Eagle crater on Jan. 24, 2004 and has driven over 26 km (16 mi) since then. Opportunity arrived at the western rim of Santa Maria Crater on Dec. 16, 2010 on Sol 2451 and is driving around the edge in a counterclockwise direction on her way to the huge 22 km wide Endeavour crater which shows signatures of water bearing minerals. The rover is visible in top map taken from orbit by MRO spacecraft. The Panoramic Mosaic of Santa Maria Crater on Sol 2464 - at bottom right – was stitched together from raw images taken by Opportunity’s navigation camera. The rover was about 5 meters from the rim and nearing water bearing materials located roughly at the right of this photomosaic. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer

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Today, Jan. 24, 2011 marks the 7th anniversary of the safe landing of the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover (MER). Opportunity will soon celebrate another remarkable milestone – 2500 Sols, or Martian days, roving the red planet. Together with her twin sister Spirit, the NASA rovers surely rank as one of the greatest feats in the annals of space exploration.

“No one expected Spirit or Opportunity to go on this long,” says Ray Arvidson in an interview from Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is the deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

7 Years ago today on Jan. 24, 2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover daringly smashed into the Martian atmosphere at about 12,000 MPH on a one shot, do or die mission with no certainty as to the outcome. Thus began “The Six Minutes of Terror” as the plummeting probes heat shield endured temperatures exceeding 1400°C (2600 F) during the fiery entry, descent and landing phase (EDL).

The spectacular plunge was slowed by atmospheric friction on the heat shield and a complex pre-programmed combination of parachutes and retro rockets, and in the last moments by inflatable airbags designed to allow the robot to bounce about two dozen times and gently and gradually roll to a complete stop.

A Geologist's Treasure Trove at Eagle Crater. Jan 28, 2004.
This high-resolution image captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera on Sol 3 highlights the puzzling rock outcropping that scientists were eagerly planning to investigate after safely landing. Opportunity was on its lander facing northeast; the outcropping lies to the northwest. These layered rocks measure only 10 centimeters (4 inches) tall and are thought to be either volcanic ash deposits or sediments carried by water or wind. Data from the panoramic camera's near-infrared, blue and green filters were combined to create this approximate, true-color image. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Ultimately, Opportunity survived intact just like her twin sister Spirit who landed safely three weeks earlier on Jan. 3, 2004. EDL was the culmination of a seven month interplanetary cruise of over 250 million miles from Earth. Both rovers were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the summer of 2003 on board Delta 2 rockets. The dynamic duo landed on opposite sides of the Red planet.

Opportunity is now 84 months into the 3 month mission – still alive and blazing a trail of Exploration and Discovery across the Meridiani Planum region of Mars.

The amazing Martian robot has driven more than 16.5 miles (26.7 km) and snapped over 148,000 pictures. She has suffered remarkable few mechanical failures and they have only minimally impaired her ability to traverse across the surface and conduct science operations.

Both rovers survived far beyond the mere 3 month “warranty” proclaimed by NASA as the mission began with high hopes following the nail biting “Six Minutes of Terror”. At the time, team members and NASA officials hoped they might function a few months longer.

“The rovers are our priceless assets” says Steve Squyres, of Cornell University who is the Principal Scientific Investigator for the mission. Squyres and the entire rover team treat every day with a “sense of urgency” and as “a gift to science”.

A Hole in One. Jan. 24, 2004. Sol 1.
The interior of a crater surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at Meridiani Planum on Mars can be seen in this color image from the rover's panoramic camera. This is the darkest landing site ever visited by a spacecraft on Mars. The rim of the crater is approximately 10 meters (32 feet) from the rover. The crater is estimated to be 20 meters (65 feet) in diameter. Scientists are intrigued by the abundance of rock outcrops dispersed throughout the crater, as well as the crater's soil, which appears to be a mixture of coarse gray grains and fine reddish grains. Data taken from the camera's near-infrared, green and blue filters were combined to create this approximate true color picture, taken on the first day of Opportunity's journey. The view is to the west-southwest of the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Since 2004, the rover’s longevity has surpassed all expectations and nobody on the science and engineering teams that built and operate the twins can believe they lasted so long and produced so much science.

“We have a new Opportunity overview article publishing shortly in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR). The Spirit overview paper appeared recently. In addition, there will be about 24 new scientific papers coming out in the new few months as JGR special issues covering more of the MER results. ”

The incredible longevity is “way beyond the wildest expectations of even the people who built the twin sisters” according to fellow Cornell University Professor Jim Bell. “To say the rovers have surpassed expectations is an understatement. We’ve blown them out of the water”. Bell is the lead scientist responsible for the rovers’ high resolution color imaging system called Pancam.

“After 7 years it is still very exciting,“ Arvidson told me. “I am delighted to come to work every day. It’s great to work on the engineering plan for driving and operating the rovers and then see the results the next day.”

Spirit and Opportunity have accomplished a remarkable series of scientific breakthroughs, far surpassing the wildest dreams of all the researchers and NASA officials. Indeed both Mars rovers are currently stationed at scientific goldmines.

Opportunity is currently exploring the outskirts of the stadium sized ‘Santa Maria’ Carter – some 295 feet wide (90 m) – which holds deposits of water bearing minerals that will further elucidate the potential for habitability on the red planet.

The rover arrived at the western edge of the relatively fresh impact crater on Dec. 16, 2010 (Sol 2451). This intermediate stop on the rovers 19 km long journey from Victoria Crater to giant 22 km wide Endeavour Crater will provide important ground truth observations to compare with the orbital detection of exposures of hydrated sulfate minerals. Read more on Santa Maria in the next feature story.

Santa Maria is just 6 km from the western rim of Endeavour which shows spectral signatures of phyllosilicates, or clay bearing minerals, which formed in water about 4 billion years ago and have never before been directly analyzed on the Martian surface.

Phyllosilicates form in neutral aqueous conditions that could have been more habitable and conducive to the formation of life than the later Martian episodes of more harshly acidic conditions in which the sulfates formed that Opportunity has already been exploring during her 7 year long overland expedition.

Since the moment she landed inside ‘Eagle’ crater, Opportunity has been on a Martian crater tour her entire lifetime.

Opportunity “scored a 300-million mile interplanetary hole in one,” Steve Squyres said at that time, by improbably rolling to a stop smack inside the small 66 foot wide ‘Eagle’ crater (see map) after bouncing across the virtually flat and featureless dusty plains of Meridiani. She has been a lucky princess from the moment of her birth, spying layered sedimentary rocks in a bedrock outcrop from first light in her cameras a mere 26 feet or so away. That’s unlike any previous lander.

Eagle-eye View of 'Eagle Crater'. March 2004. This image shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's view on its 56th sol on Mars, before it left its landing-site crater. To the right, the rover tracks are visible at the original spot where the rover attempted unsuccessfully to exit the crater. After a one-sol delay, Opportunity took another route to the plains of Meridiani Planum. This image was taken by the rover's navigation camera. Image credit: NASA/JPL

Seven days later she drove off the landing pad, drilled into the outcrops and collected the “ground truth” science data to prove that hematite was present and liquid water had indeed flowed at Meridiani as a lake or shallow sea on ancient Mars.

After completing her science campaign, she climbed up and over the rim, departed ‘Eagle’ and arrived at ‘Endurance’ about 3 months after landing day.

After numerous tests, Opportunity was commanded to slowly crawl down into the crater. She gradually descending about 30 vertical feet, frequently drilling into the sedimentary rocks and layers to reveal Mars watery past in unprecedented scientific detail for about six months.

In Dec. 2004, Opportunity departed for “Victoria” crater, which many believed would be her final destination. The robot nearly perished in a sand trap at Purgatory along the way during a nearly two year drive across the treacherous martian sand dunes.

Opportunity arrived in Sept. 2006 to unveil Victoria’s Secrets in color. The rover actually wound up spending two years driving to different vantage points around the rim of and then inside the half mile wide crater before departing in Sept 2008 for the unimaginable goal of giant ‘Endeavour’ crater.

The rover team hopes to reach the slopes of Endeavour sometime later in 2011 if all goes well – before her 8th anniversary !

See below some of the best images taken by Opportunity during her 7 Year Martian Trek