Universe Today

November 26, 2014December 23, 2015 by Tim Reyes

New Analysis Sets a Space & Time Zone for Complex Life

A new research paper reveals more details of the effect gamma ray bursts (GRB) have had on the development of complex life throughout the cosmos. Illustration depicts a beam from a GRB as might have been directed toward early life on Earth during the Cambrian or Ordovician periods, ~500 million years ago. (Illustration Credit: T. Reyes)

If too close to an environment harboring complex life, a gamma ray burst could spell doom for that life. But could GRBs be the reason we haven’t yet found evidence of other civilizations in the cosmos? To help answer the big question of “where is everybody?” physicists from Spain and Israel have narrowed the time period and the regions of space in which complex life could persist with a low risk of extinction by a GRB.

GRBs are some of the most cataclysmic events in the Universe. Astrophysicists are astounded by their intensity, some of which can outshine the whole Universe for brief moments. So far, they have remained incredible far-off events. But in a new paper, physicists have weighed how GRBs could limit where and when life could persist and evolve, potentially into intelligent life.

In their paper, “On the role of GRBs on life extinctions in the Universe”, published in the journal Science, Dr. Piran from Hebrew University and Dr. Jimenez from University of Barcelona consider first what is known about gamma ray bursts. The metallicity of stars and galaxies as a whole are directly related to the frequency of GRBs. Metallicity is the abundance of elements beyond hydrogen and helium in the content of stars or whole galaxies. More metals reduce the frequency of GRBs. Galaxies that have a low metal content are prone to a higher frequency of GRBs. The researchers, referencing their previous work, state that observational data has shown that GRBs are not generally related to a galaxy’s star formation rate; forming stars, including massive ones is not the most significant factor for increased frequency of GRBs.

As fate would have it, we live in a high metal content galaxy – the Milky Way. Piran and Jimenez show that the frequency of GRBs in the Milky Way is lower based on the latest data available. That is the good news. More significant is the placement of a solar system within the Milky Way or any galaxy.

The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen in X-rays temporarily blinded Swift's X-ray Telescope on 21 June 2010. This image merges the X-rays (red to yellow) with the same view from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which showed nothing extraordinary. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler — The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen in X-rays temporarily blinded Swift’s X-ray Telescope on 21 June 2010. This image merges the X-rays (red to yellow) with the same view from Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which showed nothing extraordinary. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

The paper states that there is a 50% chance of a lethal GRB’s having occurred near Earth within the last 500 million years. If a stellar system is within 13,000 light years (4 kilo-parsecs) of the galactic center, the odds rise to 95%. Effectively, this makes the densest regions of all galaxies too prone to GRBs to permit complex life to persist.

The Earth lies at 8.3 kilo-parsecs (27,000 light years) from the galactic center and the astrophysicists’ work also concludes that the chances of a lethal GRB in a 500 million year span does not drop below 50% until beyond 10 kilo-parsecs (32,000 light years). So Earth’s odds have not been most favorable, but obviously adequate. Star systems further out from the center are safer places for life to progress and evolve. Only the outlying low star density regions of large galaxies keep life out of harm’s way of gamma ray bursts.

The paper continues by describing their assessment of the effect of GRBs throughout the Universe. They state that only approximately 10% of galaxies have environments conducive to life when GRB events are a concern. Based on previous work and new data, galaxies (their stars) had to reach a metallicity content of 30% of the Sun’s, and the galaxies needed to be at least 4 kilo-parsecs (13,000 light years) in diameter to lower the risk of lethal GRBs. Simple life could survive repeated GRBs. Evolving to higher life forms would be repeatedly set back by mass extinctions.

Piran’s and Jimenez’s work also reveals a relation to a cosmological constant. Further back in time, metallicity within stars was lower. Only after generations of star formation – billions of years – have heavier elements built up within galaxies. They conclude that complex life such as on Earth – from jelly fish to humans – could not have developed in the early Universe before Z > 0.5, a cosmological red-shift equal to ~5 billion years ago or longer ago. Analysis also shows that there is a 95% chance that Earth experienced a lethal GRB within the last 5 billion years.

The question of what effect a nearby GRB could have on life has been raised for decades. In 1974, Dr. Malvin Ruderman of Columbia University considered the consequences of a nearby supernova on the ozone layer of the Earth and on terrestrial life. His and subsequent work has determined that cosmic rays would lead to the depletion of the ozone layer, a doubling of the solar ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface, cooling of the Earth’s climate, and an increase in NOx and rainout that effects biological systems. Not a pretty picture. The loss of the ozone layer would lead to a domino effect of atmospheric changes and radiation exposure leading to the collapse of ecosystems. A GRB is considered the most likely cause of the mass extinction at the end of the Ordovician period, 450 million years ago; there remains considerable debate on the causes of this and several other mass extinction events in Earth’s history.

The paper focuses on what are deemed long GRBs – lGRBs – lasting several seconds in contrast to short GRBs which last only a second or less. Long GRBs are believed to be due to the collapse of massive stars such as seen in supernovas, while sGRBs are from the collision of neutron stars or black holes. There remains uncertainty as to the causes, but the longer GRBs release far greater amounts of energy and are most dangerous to ecosystems harboring complex life.

The paper narrows the time and space available for complex life to develop within our Universe. Over the age of the Universe, approximately 14 billion years, only the last 5 billion years have been conducive to the creation of complex life. Furthermore, only 10% of the galaxies within the last 5 billion years provided such environments. And within only larger galaxies, only the outlying areas provided the safe distances needed to evade lethal exposure to a gamma ray burst.

This work reveals how well our Solar System fits within the ideal conditions for permitting complex life to develop. We stand at a fairly good distance from the Milky Way’s galactic center. The age of our Solar System, at approximately 4.6 billion years, lies within the 5 billion year safe zone in time. However, for many other stellar systems, despite how many are now considered to exist throughout the Universe – 100s of billions in the Milky Way, trillions throughout the Universe – simple is probably a way of life due to GRBs. This work indicates that complex life, including intelligent life, is likely less common when just taking the effect of gamma ray bursts into consideration.

References:

On the role of GRBs on life extinction in the Universe, Tsvi Piran, Raul Jimenez, Science, Nov 2014, pre-print

November 26, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Rosetta Comet Sounds Make ‘Across The Universe’ Song Oh So Spooky

Four image montage of comet 67P/C-G, using images taken on 2 September. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

It’s not quite across the universe from us, but Rosetta’s comet is a fair distance away — outside the orbit of Mars and drawing slightly closer to the Sun by the day. Recently, the team behind the probe released a “song” the comet produced, as picked up by the Rosetta Plasma Consortium instruments on the spacecraft. Now a YouTube artist has decided to take that a step further and play the sounds as background to a famous Beatles tune.

“When I first heard that the ESA had not only landed on but recorded audio from a comet, I knew I had to make something out of it,” wrote Andrew Huang, the creator of the video, on YouTube. “This is my reworking of the Beatles’ awesome cosmic ballad “Across the Universe” which, apart from my singing, was created entirely with sounds from the Rosetta space probe’s recording of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.”

It’s a spooky rendition that makes you think of the dots you see in the sky as actual worlds or stars, producing energy and sounds and other phenomena that make them unique. Huang also created a video showing how he designed the song. What other Sirens will call to us from the cosmos?

(h/t io9, The Mary Sue)

November 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Antares Orb-3 Rocket Explosion and Frightening Incineration Captured by Up Close Launch Pad Videos/Photos: Pt. 2

Antares destruction after the first stage propulsion system at the base of Orbital Sciences’ rocket exploded moments after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Video Caption: This up close launch pad camera view is a time lapse sequence of images showing the sudden catastrophic explosion of Orbital Sciences Antares Orb 3 rocket seconds after blastoff and destructive incineration as it plummets into a hellish inferno at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014, at 6:22 p.m. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Universe Today/AmericaSpace/Zero-G News.
Story and images expanded

NASA WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, VA – Moments after a seemingly glorious liftoff on Oct. 28, 2014, the Orbital Sciences Corp. commercial Antares rocket suffered a catastrophic failure as one of the Soviet-era first stage engines exploded and cascaded into a spectacular aerial fireball just above the launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the doomed Orb-3 mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Although I witnessed and photographed the launch failure from the media viewing area on site at NASA Wallops from a distance of about 1.8 miles away, myself and a small group of space journalists working together from Universe Today, AmericaSpace, and Zero-G News had also placed sound activated cameras directly at the launch pad to capture the most spectacular up close views for what we all expected to be a “nominal” launch. Our imagery had been impounded by accident investigators – until being released to us now.

Now in part 2 of this exclusive series of video and photos our team can show you the terrible fate suffered by Antares after its destructive descent and frightening incineration as it was consumed by a hellish inferno.

My time lapse video above clearly shows the explosion and incendiary descent of Antares into a mammoth fireball.

As I reported in Part 1, all of our team’s cameras and image cards were impounded for nearly a month by Orbital’s official and independent Accident Investigation Board (AIB) that was assembled quickly in the aftermath of the Antares launch failure disaster and charged with determining the root cause of the launch failure.

The videos and photos captured on our image cards were used as evidence and scrutinized by the investigators searching for clues as to the cause and have only just been returned to us in the past few days.

One image clearly shows that the south side engine nozzle of the AJ26 first stage engine was intact and had shut down after the initial explosion and during the plummet. Therefore it was the north side engine that blew up and led to the launch failure. See my up close AJ26 engine photo below.

Video Caption: AmericaSpace and Zero-G News video compilation of four cameras surrounding the launch pad to capture liftoff. The video runs through each at full speed before slowing down to give viewers a slow motion replay of the explosion. One of the cameras was right in the middle of the fireball, with chunks of broken rocket showering down around. CREDITS: Mike Barrett / Jeff Seibert / Matthew Travis / Elliot Severn / Peter Greenwood for www.ZeroGNews.com and www.AmericaSpace.com

Similar launch pad photos taken by NASA and Orbital Sciences cameras have not been publicly released and may not be released for some time to come.

The videos and images collected here are the work of my colleagues Matthew Travis, Elliot Severn, Alex Polimeni, Charles Twine, Jeff Seibert, Mike Barrett, and myself, and show exquisite, heretofore unreleased, views of the explosion, fireball, and wreckage from various positions all around the launch pad.

Our remote cameras were placed all around the Antares pad OA at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, VA, and somehow miraculously survived the rocket’s destruction as it plunged to the ground very near and just north of the seaside launch pad.

A turbopump failure in one of the rocket’s Soviet-era first stage engines has been identified as the most likely cause of the Antares’ destruction according to official statements from David Thompson, Orbital’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

The AJ26 engines were originally manufactured some 40 years ago in the then Soviet Union as the NK-33.

They were refurbished and “Americanized” by Aerojet Rocketdyne.

“While still preliminary and subject to change, current evidence strongly suggests that one of the two AJ26 main engines that powered Antares’ first stage failed about 15 seconds after ignition. At this time, we believe the failure likely originated in, or directly affected, the turbopump machinery of this engine, but I want to stress that more analysis will be required to confirm that this finding is correct,” said Thompson.

Antares loses thrust after rocket explosion and begins falling back after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014, at 6:22 p.m. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Close up view of Antares descent into hellish inferno shows south side first stage engine intact after north side engine at base of Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded moments after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com — Close up view of Antares’ descent into a hellish inferno shows the south side first stage engine intact after the north side engine at the base of Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket exploded moments after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Overall this was the 5th Antares launch using the AJ26 engines.

Antares was carrying Orbital’s privately developed Cygnus pressurized cargo freighter loaded with nearly 5000 pounds (2200 kg) of science experiments, research instruments, crew provisions, spare parts, spacewalk and computer equipment and gear on a critical resupply mission dubbed Orb-3 bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

Antares doomed descent to incendiary destruction after first stage propulsion system of Orbital Sciences’ rocket exploded moments after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

It was the heaviest cargo load yet lofted by a Cygnus. Some 800 pounds additional cargo was loaded on board compared to earlier flights. That was enabled by using the more powerful ATK CASTOR 30XL engine to power the second stage for the first time.

The astronauts and cosmonauts depend on a regular supply train from the ISS partners to kept it afloat and productive on a 24/7 basis.

The Orbital-3, or Orb-3, mission was to be the third of eight cargo resupply missions to the ISS through 2016 under the NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract award valued at $1.9 Billion.

Orbital Sciences is under contract to deliver 20,000 kilograms of research experiments, crew provisions, spare parts, and hardware for the eight ISS flights.

Examine the video and photo gallery herein.

Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes into a fireball seconds after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014 at 6:22 p.m. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com — Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes into a fireball seconds after blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, VA, on Oct. 28, 2014, at 6:22 p.m. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Watch here for Ken’s ongoing reporting about Antares and NASA Wallops.

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer

Pre-launch seaside panorama of Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket at the NASA's Wallops Flight Facility launch pad on Oct 26 - 2 days before the ??Orb-3? launch failure on Oct 28, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com — Pre-launch seaside panorama of Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket at the NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility launch pad on Oct 26 – 2 days before the Orb-3 launch failure on Oct 28, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Remote cameras set up around launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia captured incredible up-close views of an Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket exploding seconds after liftoff several weeks ago. The mission was to deliver the company’s Orb-3 Cygnus spacecraft to deliver supplies and experiments to the orbiting International Space Station. Photo Credits: Elliot Severn / Matthew Travis / Mike Barrett / Jeff Seibert for Zero-G News and AmericaSpace

Up Close Launch Pad remote camera photographers during prelaunch setup for Orb-3 mission at NASA Wallops launch pad. Credit: Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com Antares priuor to — Up Close Launch Pad remote camera photographers during prelaunch setup for Orb-3 mission at NASA Wallops launch pad. Credit: Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

November 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Matt Williams

The Search for Dark Energy Just Got Easier

The Victor M. Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) in the Chilean Andes. Credit: Berkeley Lab

Since the early 20th century, scientists and physicists have been burdened with explaining how and why the Universe appears to be expanding at an accelerating rate. For decades, the most widely accepted explanation is that the cosmos is permeated by a mysterious force known as “dark energy”. In addition to being responsible for cosmic acceleration, this energy is also thought to comprise 68.3% of the universe’s non-visible mass.

Much like dark matter, the existence of this invisible force is based on observable phenomena and because it happens to fit with our current models of cosmology, and not direct evidence. Instead, scientists must rely on indirect observations, watching how fast cosmic objects (specifically Type Ia supernovae) recede from us as the universe expands.

This process would be extremely tedious for scientists – like those who work for the Dark Energy Survey (DES) – were it not for the new algorithms developed collaboratively by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley.

“Our algorithm can classify a detection of a supernova candidate in about 0.01 seconds, whereas an experienced human scanner can take several seconds,” said Danny Goldstein, a UC Berkeley graduate student who developed the code to automate the process of supernova discovery on DES images.

Currently in its second season, the DES takes nightly pictures of the Southern Sky with DECam – a 570-megapixel camera that is mounted on the Victor M. Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) in the Chilean Andes. Every night, the camera generates between 100 Gigabytes (GB) and 1 Terabyte (TB) of imaging data, which is sent to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and DOE’s Fermilab in Illinois for initial processing and archiving.

A Type Ia supernova occurs when a white dwarf accretes material from a companion star until it exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit and explodes. By studying these exploding stars, astronomers can measure dark energy and the expansion of the universe. CfA scientists have found a way to correct for small variations in the appearance of these supernovae, so that they become even better standard candles. The key is to sort the supernovae based on their color. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss — *By studying Type Ia supernova, astronomers can measure dark energy and the expansion of the universe. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss*

Object recognition programs developed at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and implemented at NCSA then comb through the images in search of possible detections of Type Ia supernovae. These powerful explosions occur in binary star systems where one star is a white dwarf, which accretes material from a companion star until it reaches a critical mass and explodes in a Type Ia supernova.

“These explosions are remarkable because they can be used as cosmic distance indicators to within 3-10 percent accuracy,” says Goldstein.

Distance is important because the further away an object is located in space, the further back in time it is. By tracking Type Ia supernovae at different distances, researchers can measure cosmic expansion throughout the universe’s history. This allows them to put constraints on how fast the universe is expanding and maybe even provide other clues about the nature of dark energy.

“Scientifically, it’s a really exciting time because several groups around the world are trying to precisely measure Type Ia supernovae in order to constrain and understand the dark energy that is driving the accelerated expansion of the universe,” says Goldstein, who is also a student researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Computational Cosmology Center (C3).

UC Berkeley / Berkeley Lab graduate student Danny Goldstein developed a new code using the machine learning technique Random Forest to vet detections of supernova candidates automatically, in real time, optimizing it for the Dark Energy Survey. Credit: Danny Goldstein, UC Berkeley / Berkeley Lab) — *Goldstein’s new code uses machine learning techniques to vet detections of supernova candidates. Credit: Danny Goldstein, UC Berkeley/Berkeley Lab)*

The DES begins its search for Type Ia explosions by uncovering changes in the night sky, which is where the image subtraction pipeline developed and implemented by researchers in the DES supernova working group comes in. The pipeline subtracts images that contain known cosmic objects from new images that are exposed nightly at CTIO.

Each night, the pipeline produces between 10,000 and a few hundred thousand detections of supernova candidates that need to be validated.

“Historically, trained astronomers would sit at the computer for hours, look at these dots, and offer opinions about whether they had the characteristics of a supernova, or whether they were caused by spurious effects that masquerade as supernovae in the data. This process seems straightforward until you realize that the number of candidates that need to be classified each night is prohibitively large and only one in a few hundred is a real supernova of any type,” says Goldstein. “This process is extremely tedious and time-intensive. It also puts a lot of pressure on the supernova working group to process and scan data fast, which is hard work.”

To simplify the task of vetting candidates, Goldstein developed a code that uses the machine learning technique “Random Forest” to vet detections of supernova candidates automatically and in real-time to optimize them for the DES. The technique employs an ensemble of decision trees to automatically ask the types of questions that astronomers would typically consider when classifying supernova candidates.

*Evolution of a Type Ia supernova. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Feild*

At the end of the process, each detection of a candidate is given a score based on the fraction of decision trees that considered it to have the characteristics of a detection of a supernova. The closer the classification score is to one, the stronger the candidate. Goldstein notes that in preliminary tests, the classification pipeline achieved 96 percent overall accuracy.

“When you do subtraction alone you get far too many ‘false-positives’ — instrumental or software artifacts that show up as potential supernova candidates — for humans to sift through,” says Rollin Thomas, of Berkeley Lab’s C3, who was Goldstein’s collaborator.

He notes that with the classifier, researchers can quickly and accurately strain out the artifacts from supernova candidates. “This means that instead of having 20 scientists from the supernova working group continually sift through thousands of candidates every night, you can just appoint one person to look at maybe few hundred strong candidates,” says Thomas. “This significantly speeds up our workflow and allows us to identify supernovae in real-time, which is crucial for conducting follow up observations.”

“Using about 60 cores on a supercomputer we can classify 200,000 detections in about 20 minutes, including time for database interaction and feature extraction.” says Goldstein.

Goldstein and Thomas note that the next step in this work is to add a second-level of machine learning to the pipeline to improve the classification accuracy. This extra layer would take into account how the object was classified in previous observations as it determines the probability that the candidate is “real.” The researchers and their colleagues are currently working on different approaches to achieve this capability.

Opportunity Mars Rover Pushes Past 41 Kilometers Of Driving On Red Planet

The Opportunity rover's view on Sol 3,839 on Nov. 11, 2014, shortly after it pushed past 41 kilometers (nearly 28.5 miles) of driving on the Red Planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ. (panorama: Elizabeth Howell)

Opportunity is the rover that keeps on going and going. It recently broke an extraterrestrial driving record after 10 years of working on the Red Planet.

And even as the rover works through aging problems, the science team is still able to push it further — it just crested 41 kilometers (25.48 miles) on Sol Sol 3,836 (around Nov. 9)! Check out some recent pictures from the rover below.

The NASA machine is roaming the west edge of Endeavour Crater on its way to an area nicknamed “Marathon Valley”, which could contain clay minerals. Clays are considered a sign of water being in a region in the ancient past, which feeds into NASA’s ongoing search for habitable environments on Mars.

By the way, Opportunity is now just shy of a marathon’s worth of driving on Mars (which would be 26 miles, or 41.8 kilometers). In the meantime, we’ve collected some raw images from Opportunity to share. What new horizons will the plucky rover find next, as it draws close to its 11th anniversary on Mars in January?

The Opportunity rover continues to make tracks after passing 41 kilometers (28.5 miles) on Mars. View from Sol 3,846 in November 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

Solar panels from the Opportunity Mars rover shine against the mottled ground on Sol 3,846 in November 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

The wind-swept plains of Mars as seen by the Opportunity rover on Sol 3,846 in November 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

A close-up of the cracked Martian ground taken by the Opportunity rover on Sol 3,846 in November 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

The shadow of the Opportunity rover (bottom) lies dark against Mars ground on Sol 3,841 in November 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

November 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

NASA Wants To Launch Tiny Moon Satellites On Its Next-Generation Rocket

Artist's conception of NASA's Space Launch System with Orion crewed deep space capsule. Credit: NASA

As the space community counts down the days to the long-awaited Dec. 4 uncrewed launch of the Orion spacecraft — that vehicle that is supposed to bring astronauts into the solar system in the next decade — NASA is already thinking ahead to the next space test in 2017 or 2018.

Riding atop the new Space Launch System rocket, if all goes to plan, will be a suite of CubeSats that will explore the Moon as Orion makes its journey out to our largest closest celestial neighbor. NASA announced details of the $5 million “Cube Quest” challenge yesterday (Nov. 24).

CubeSats are tiny satellites that are so small that they are often within the reach of universities and similar institutions that want to perform science in space without the associated cost of operating a huge mission. The concept has been so successful that some companies are basing their entire business model on it, such as Planet Labs — a company that is performing Earth observations with the small machines.

NCube-2 cubesat, a typical configuration for this kind of satellite (although the outer skin is missing.) Credit: ARES Institute

The competition will be divided into several parts, including a ground tournament to see if the CubeSats can fly on the SLS, a lunar derby to ensure they can communicate at a distance of 10 times the Earth-moon distance, and a deep-space derby to put the CubeSat in a “stable lunar orbit” and work well there.

“The Cube Quest Challenge seeks to develop and test subsystems necessary to perform deep space exploration using small spacecraft. Advancements in small spacecraft capabilities will provide benefits to future missions and also may enable entirely new mission scenarios, including future investigations of near-Earth asteroids,” NASA stated.

For more details on the competition, check out this link.

November 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Mercury Spacecraft Moves To Testing Ahead Of 2016 Launch To Sun’s Closest Planet

Artist's impression of the European Space Agency/JAXA BepiColombo mission in operation around Mercury. Credit: Astrium

After facing down a couple of delays due to technical difficulties, Europe’s and Japan’s first Mercury orbiter is entering some of the final stages ahead of its 2016 launch. Part of the BepiColombo orbiter moved into a European testing facility this past week that will shake, bake and otherwise test the hardware to make sure it’s ready for its extreme mission.

Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, BepiColombo is going to have a particularly harsh operating environment. Temperatures there will soar as high as 350 degrees Celsius (662 degrees Fahrenheit), requiring officials to change the chamber to simulate these higher temperatures. Time will tell if the spacecraft is ready for the test.

BepiColombo is also special because it includes not one orbiting spacecraft, but two. Flying in different orbits, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter will try to learn more about this mysterious planet. NASA’s MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft has spent the past few years orbiting Mercury, but before then, we had very little information on the planet. (And before MESSENGER, only brief flybys from NASA’s Mariner 10 in the 1970s turned up spacecraft-based information on Mercury.)

MESSENGER has turned up quite a few surprises. It’s showed us more about the nature of Mercury’s tenuous atmosphere and it’s discovered probable water ice (!) in permanently shadowed areas, among other things. The European Space Agency and Japan hope to push our understanding of the Sun’s closest planet when BepiColombo gets there in 2024.

On Oct. 30, 2014, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (part of the BepiColombo mission) was moved into the European Space Agency's space simulator for testing ahead of the expected 2016 launch. Credit: ESA–A. Le’Floch — On Oct. 30, 2014, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (part of the BepiColombo mission) was moved into the European Space Agency’s space simulator for testing ahead of the expected 2016 launch. Credit: ESA–A. Le’Floch

There are so many questions that Mercury presents us, and BepiColombo is trying to answer a few of those. For example, Mercury’s density is higher than the rest of the other terrestrial planets for reasons that are poorly understood. Scientists aren’t sure if its core is liquid or solid, or even it has active plate tectonics as Earth does. Its magnetic field is a mystery, given that Mars and Venus and the Moon don’t have any. And there are tons of questions too about its atmosphere, such as how it is produced and how the magnetic field and solar wind work together.

The two spacecraft will be carried together to Mercury’s orbit along with a component called the Mercury Transfer Model (MTM), which will push the spacecraft out there using solar-electric propulsion. Just before BepiColombo enters orbit, MTM will be jettisoned and the Mercury Polar Orbiter will ensure the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter receives the needed resources to survive until the two spacecraft move into their separate orbits, according to the European Space Agency.

As for why it takes so long to get out there, to save on fuel the mission will swing by Earth, Venus and Mercury to get to the right spot. Once the two spacecraft are ready to go, they’re expected to last a year in orbit — with a potential one-year extension.

November 25, 2014April 26, 2016 by Paul Patton

Communicating Across the Cosmos, Part 3: Bridging the Vast Gulf

The cover of the phonograph record on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, which contains an interstellar message encoded on a phonographic record. The encoded instructions attempt to explain to extraterrestrials how to play the record. Credit: NASA JPL

If extraterrestrial civilizations exist, the nearest is probably at least hundreds or thousands of light years away. Still, the greatest gulf that we will have to bridge to communicate with extraterrestrials is not such distances, but the gulf between human and alien minds.

In mid-November, the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California sponsored an academic conference on interstellar communication, “Communicating across the Cosmos“. The conference drew 17 speakers from a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, archeology, mathematics, cognitive science, radio astronomy, and art. In this installment we will explore some of the formidable difficulties that humans and extraterrestrials might face in constructing mutually comprehensible interstellar messages.

Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) Flight System, the first laser communication from space. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

If we knew where they were, and we wanted to, the information revolution has given us the capability to send an extraterrestrial civilization a truly vast amount of information. According to SETI Institute radio astronomer Seth Shostak, with broadband microwave radio we could transmit the Library of Congress, or the contents of the World Wide Web in 3 days; with broadband optical (a laser beam for space transmission) we could transmit this same amount of information in 20 minutes. This transmission would, of course, take decades or centuries to cross the light years and reach its destination. These truly remarkable capabilities give us the ability to send almost any message we want to the extraterrestrials. But transmitting capabilities aren’t the hard part of the problem. If the aliens can’t interpret it, the entire content of the World Wide Web is just a mountain of gibberish.

Many conference participants felt that the problems involved in devising a message that could be understood by a non-human mind were extremely formidable, and quite possibly insurmountable.

Having its own separate origin, extraterrestrial life could be different from Earthly life all the way down to its biochemical foundations. The vast diversity of life on Earth gives us little reason to think that aliens will look like us. Given the different conditions of another planet, and the contingencies of a different history, evolution will have produced a different set of results. For interstellar messaging to be possible at all, these results must include an alien creature capable of language, culture, and tool-making. But if these abilities are founded on a different biology and different perceptual systems, they might differ from their human counterparts in ways that we would find hard to even imagine. Looking to our own possible future development, we can’t even be sure that extraterrestrials will be biological creatures. They might be intelligent machines.

According to cognitive scientist Dominique Lestel, who presented at the conference, understanding extraterrestrials poses an unprecedented set of problems. We face all of the problems that ethologists (scientists who study animal behavior) face when they study perception and signaling in other animal species. These are compounded with all of the problems that ethnologists face when they study other human cultures. Lestel worries that humans might not be smart enough to do it. He wasn’t alone in that opinion.

Explanation of the symbols on the cover of the Voyager record Credit: NASA JPL — Explanation of the symbols on the cover of the Voyager record. Credit: NASA JPL

Linguist and conference presenter Sheri-Wells Jensen said that humans have created more than 7,000 different spoken and signed languages. No one knows whether all human languages sprung from a single instance of the invention of language or whether several human groups invented language independently. Given the ease with which children learn a language, many linguists think that our brain has a specialized language “module” underlying the “universal” grammar of human languages. These special features of the human brain might pose a formidable barrier to learning the language of a creature with a different brain produced by a different evolutionary history. An alien language might make demands on our short term memory or other cognitive abilities that humans would find impossible to meet.

When human beings talk to one another, they rely on a system of mutually understood conventions. Often gestures and body language are essential to conveying meaning. Conference presenter Klara Anna Capova, a cultural anthropologist, noted that interstellar messaging poses unique problems because the conventions to be followed in the message can’t be mutually arranged. We must formulate them ourselves, without knowing anything about the recipients. The intended recipients are distant in both time and space. The finite speed of light ensures that query and response will be separated by decades or centuries. With so little to go on, the message will inevitably reflect our cultural biases and motives. In 1962, the Soviet Union transmitted a message towards the planet Venus. It was in Morse code, and consisted of the Cyrillic characters “Lenin”, “CCCP” (USSR), and “MIR” (the Russian word for “peace”). But the posited Venusians couldn’t possibly have known the conventions of Morse code, the Cyrillic alphabet, human names, countries, or possible relationships between them, no matter how intimately familiar these things would have seemed to the Soviets. Whether they are meant to build national prestige, sell a product, or cause humans to think deeply about their place in the universe, interstellar messages play to a human audience.

Given the long timescales involved in interstellar messaging, many conference participants noted the parallels with archeology. Archeologists have learned quite a lot about past human cultures by studying the artifacts and symbols they have left for us. Still, archeological methodologies have their limits. According to conference presenter and archeologist Paul Wason, these limits have much to teach us about interstellar messaging. Certain meanings are accessible to archeological analysis and others aren’t, because we lack the contextual knowledge needed to interpret them. Neolithic cave paintings speak to modern investigators about the skill and abilities of the painters. But, because we don’t have the needed contextual knowledge, they don’t tell us what the paintings meant to their creators.

To interpret symbols used in the past, we need to know the conventions that related the symbols to the things they symbolized. Linguistic symbols pose special problems. To understand them, we need to know two different sets of conventions. First, we need to know the conventions that relate the script to the words of the spoken language. Second, we need to know how the words of the spoken language relate to the things and situations it refers to. It is a sobering thought for would-be exolinguists that no one has ever succeeded in deciphering an ancient script without knowing the language it was written in.

What does all this tell us about our fledgling attempts to devise messages for aliens? The phonograph record carried on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft includes a moving message from then President Carter, encoded as English text. It reads in part: “We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.”

Human archeologists have never deciphered linear A, the writing system of the ancient Minoan civilization, due to its apparent lack of association with any known language. Unfortunately, since extraterrestrials likewise lack contextual knowledge of any human language, it is almost certain that they could never discern the meaning of President Carter’s text. The team that developed the Voyager message, which included astronomers and SETI pioneers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, were well aware of the problem. Carter was, most likely, made aware. Interstellar messages play to a human audience.

An inscription written around the inner surface of a cup in Linear A, a script used by the Minoan civilization that has never been deciphered. Credit: Sir Arthur Evans, Scripta Minoa: The Written Documents of Minoan Crete

Is it possible for us to do better? Some off-beat ideas were proposed. Both astronomer Seth Shostak and designer Marek Kultys thought we might consider sending the sequence of the human genome. This idea was quickly shot down by a comment from the audience. Why send them a key, they said, if the aliens don’t have a lock. The metaphor is apt. DNA can only do its job as a constituent part of a living cell. Reading and implementing the genetic code involves numerous highly specialized enzymes and other cellular parts. Even if alien biochemistry and cell structure are generally similar to their Earthly counterparts, there are many features of Earthly biochemistry that appear to be quirky products of the history of life on Earth. The probability that they would repeat themselves precisely on another world are, for all practical purposes, nil. Without the context of an Earthly cell, the sequence of the human genome would be meaningless gibberish.

In the twenty first century, our ability to transmit and process information has become astounding, but we still don’t know how information conveys meaning. Is there even a glimmering of a hope that we can reach beyond the limitations of our humanity to convey meaning to an alien mind? In the final installment of this report, we’ll consider some possibilities.

Previous articles in this series:
Part 1: Shouting into the Darkness
Part 2: Petabytes from the Stars

References and further reading:

Communicating across the Cosmos, How can we make ourselves understood by other civilizations in the galaxy?, SETI Institute

E. Howell (2014) How Do Aliens Think? We Need to Learn About Their Biology First, Analyst Argues. Universe Today.

J. Minor (2014) Will We Find Alien Life in 20 Years? You can bet on it. Universe Today.

C. Sagan, F. D. Drake, A. Druyan, T. Ferris, J. Lomberg, L. S. Sagan, (1978) Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record. Random House, New York.

November 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Where The Heck Did Philae Land? Rosetta Team Narrows The Cometary Search

A 3-D image of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko taken from the Philae lander as it descended. The picture is a combination of two images from the Rosetta Lander Imaging System (ROLIS) taken about an hour before landing at 10:34 a.m. EST (3:34 p.m. UTC) on Nov. 12, 2014. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/ROLIS/DLR

The first soft comet landing Nov. 12 showed us how space missions can quickly drift to the unexpected. Philae’s harpoons to secure it failed to fire, and the spacecraft drifted for an incredible two hours across Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko before coming to rest … somewhere. But where? And can the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft find it?

That’s been the obsession of the European Space Agency for the past couple of weeks. Controllers have pictures from Philae during its descent and brief science operations on the surface. They’ve managed to capture the little lander in incredible photographs from Rosetta. But the key to finding Philae will likely come from a different experiment altogether.

The experiment is called the Comet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radio wave Transmission (CONSERT) and is a piece of work between both lander and orbiter. Rosetta sent radio signals to Philae on the surface to get a better sense of what the insides of 67P are made of. But it turns out it can also be used to pinpoint the lander.

ESA recently released a landing zone of where, based on CONSERT data, it believes the lander came to rest. The next step will be to get the Rosetta spacecraft to examine the area in high-definition.

An estimation of Philae's landing site on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, based on data from the Comet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radio wave Transmission (CONSERT) experiment. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CONSERT — An estimation of Philae’s landing site on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, based on data from the Comet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radio wave Transmission (CONSERT) experiment. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CONSERT

“By making measurements of the distance between Rosetta and Philae during the periods of direct visibility between orbiter and lander, as well as measurements made through the core, the team have been able to narrow down the search to the strip presented in the image shown above,” ESA stated. “The determination of the landing zone is dependent on the underlying comet shape model used, which is why there are two candidate regions marked.”

Finding Philae is not only a goal to fulfill curiosity, but also to learn more about the comet itself. The team needs to know where the lander is sitting before they can fully analyze the CONSERT data, they said. So the search continues for the hibernating lander, which right now is in a shady spot and unable to transmit status updates since it can’t get enough sunlight to recharge. (This could change as 67P gets closer to the Sun, but nobody knows for sure.)

Rosetta, meanwhile, is in perfect health and continues to transmit incredible pictures of the comet, such as this one below released a couple of days ago. The montage you see includes the zone where Philae was supposed to have touched down, but it will take higher-resolution images from the Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) to get a better look.

Source: European Space Agency (here and here)

A montage of four images of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko taken by the Rosetta spacecraft on Nov. 20, 2014. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

November 25, 2014December 23, 2015 by Bob King

Astronomers Discover First Mulitiple-image Gravitationally-lensed Supernova

The four dots around the bright source, an elliptical galaxy, are multiple images of the new supernova taken with the Hubble Space Telescope between November 10-20, 2014. In the bottom image, the galaxy has been digitally removed to show only the supernova. The line segments are diffraction spikes from a nearby star. Credit: P.L. Kelly et. all

How about four supernovae for the price of one? Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Dr. Patrick Kelly of the University of California-Berkeley along with the GLASS (Grism Lens Amplified Survey from Space) and Hubble Frontier Fields teams, discovered a remote supernova lensed into four copies of itself by the powerful gravity of a foreground galaxy cluster. Dubbed SN Refsdal, the object was discovered in the rich galaxy cluster MACS J1149.6+2223 five billion light years from Earth in the constellation Leo. It’s the first multiply-lensed supernova every discovered and one of nature’s most exotic mirages.

The rich galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223 gained notoriety in 2012 when the most distant galaxy when the most distant galaxy found to date was discovered there through gravitational lensing. — The lensed supernova was discovered far behind the rich galaxy cluster MACS J1149.6+2223. The cluster is one of the most massive known and gained notoriety in 2012 when astronomers harnessed its powerful lensing ability to uncover the most distant galaxy known at the time. Credit: NASA/ESA/M. Postman STScI/CLASH team

Gravitational lensing grew out of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity wherein he predicted massive objects would bend and warp the fabric of spacetime. The more massive the object, the more severe the bending. We can picture this by imagining a child standing on a trampoline, her weight pressing a dimple into the fabric. Replace the child with a 200-pound adult and the surface of the trampoline sags even more.

Massive objects like the sun and even the planets warp the fabric of space. Here a planet orbits the sun but does not fall in because of its sideways orbital motion. — Massive objects like the Sun and even the planets warp the fabric of space. Here a planet orbits the Sun but doesn’t fall in because of its sideways orbital motion.

Similarly, the massive Sun creates a deep, but invisible dimple in the fabric of spacetime. The planets feel this ‘curvature of space’ and literally roll toward the Sun. Only their sideways motion or angular momentum keeps them from falling straight into the solar inferno.

Curved space created by massive objects also bends light rays. Einstein predicted that light from a star passing near the Sun or other massive object would follow this invisible curved spacescape and be deflected from an otherwise straight path. In effect, the object acts as a lens, bending and refocusing the light from the distant source into either a brighter image or multiple and distorted images. Also known as the deflection of starlight, nowadays we call it gravitational lensing.

This illustration shows how gravitational lensing works. The gravity of a large galaxy cluster is so strong, it bends, brightens and distorts the light of distant galaxies behind it. The scale has been greatly exaggerated; in reality, the distant galaxy is much further away and much smaller. Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Calcada

Simulation of distorted spacetime around a massive galaxy cluster over time

Turns out there are lots of these gravitational lenses out there in the form of massive clusters of galaxies. They contain regular matter as well as vast quantities of the still-mysterious dark matter that makes up 96% of the material stuff in the universe. Rich galaxy clusters act like telescopes – their enormous mass and powerful gravity magnify and intensify the light of galaxies billions of light years beyond, making visible what would otherwise never be seen.

Here we see a central slice of the MACS cluster. A massive elliptical galaxy is responsible for splitting SN Refsdal into four images. It also distorts and lenses the purple-toned spiral galaxy that's host to the supernova. Credit: — This cropped image shows the central slice of the MACS J1149 galaxy cluster. A massive elliptical galaxy lenses the light of SN Refsdal into four separate images. It also distorts the purplish spiral galaxy that’s host to the supernova. Credit: NASA/ESA/M. Postman STScI/CLASH team

Let’s return to SN Refsdal, named for Sjur Refsdal, a Norwegian astrophysicist who did early work in the field of gravitational lensing. A massive elliptical galaxy in the MACS J1149 cluster “lenses” the 9.4 billion light year distant supernova and its host spiral galaxy from background obscurity into the limelight. The elliptical’s powerful gravity’s having done a fine job of distorting spacetime to bring the supernova into view also distorts the shape of the host galaxy and splits the supernova into four separate, similarly bright images. To create such neat symmetry, SN Refsdal must be precisely aligned behind the galaxy’s center.

What looks like a galaxy with five nuclei really has just one (at center) surrounded by a mirage of four images of a distant quasar. The galaxy lies 400 million light years away; the quasar about 8 billion. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

The scenario here bears a striking resemblance to Einstein’s Cross, a gravitationally lensed quasar, where the light of a remote quasar has been broken into four images arranged about the foreground lensing galaxy. The quasar images flicker or change in brightness over time as they’re microlensed by the passage of individual stars within the galaxy. Each star acts as a smaller lens within the main lens.

Color-composite image of lensing elliptical galaxy and distorted background host spiral (top).The green circles show the locations of images S1–S4, while another quadruply imaged segment of the spiral arm is marked in red. The bottom panels show two additional lensed images of the spiral host galaxy visible in the galaxy cluster field. Credit: S.L. Kelly et. all — Color-composite image of the lensing elliptical galaxy and distorted background host spiral (top). The green circles, S1-4, show the locations of the supernova images, while another quadruply imaged segment of the spiral arm is marked in red. The bottom panels show two additional lensed images of the spiral host galaxy visible in the galaxy cluster field. Talk about a funhouse mirror! Credit: P.L. Kelly/GLASS/Hubble Frontier Fields

Detailed color images taken by the GLASS and Hubble Frontier Fields groups show the supernova’s host galaxy is also multiply-imaged by the galaxy cluster’s gravity. According to their recent paper, Kelly and team are still working to obtain spectra of the supernova to determine if it resulted from the uncontrolled burning and explosion of a white dwarf star (Type Ia) or the cataclysmic collapse and rebound of a supergiant star that ran out of fuel (Type II).

The time light takes to travel to the Earth from each of the lensed images is different because each follows a slightly different path around the center of the lensing galaxy. Some paths are shorter, some longer. By timing the brightness variations between the individual images the team hopes to provide constraints not only on the distribution of bright matter vs. dark matter in the lensing galaxy and in the cluster but use that information to determine the expansion rate of the universe.

You can squeeze a lot from a cosmic mirage!