Sunset-lit clouds swirl over Perth on May 31, 2014 (Reid Wiseman/NASA)
On May 28 the crew of Expedition 40/41 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, their Soyuz TMA-13M arriving at the International Space Station about eight and a half hours later. And it didn’t take much time for the newly-arrived NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman to start taking photos from his new vantage point in orbit and sharing them on Twitter for the rest of us to enjoy! Here are some of Reid’s latest images from the edge of space, looking down on the beautiful blue world we call home.
One of Reid Wiseman’s first few tweets from space!A “beautiful pass over the Falkland Islands” (aka Islas Malvinas) on May 30 with docked Soyuz in the foregroundReid confirmed that the Earth is indeed round with a 12mm lens on June 1Looking down on glacial flows near the Strait of MagellanPink clouds at sunset may look beautiful from Earth but “not as pretty here” according to Reid WisemanMay 31 was a “nice day to hit the beach” in Santos, Brazil“Our planet is almost all ocean and so pretty,” Tweeted Reid on June 1A “Soyuz group selfie” in the cupola with Expedition 40/41 crew members Alexander Gerst, Oleg Artemyev, and Reid Wiseman, shared on June 2“Chile just left me speechless,” Reid tweeted on June 4“Clouds turn 2D into 3D” tweeted Reid on Thursday, June 5Just a week into his stay aboard the ISS microgravity is already second nature!
A series of All-Sky (fish eye) images showing the plasma trail left by a fireball, which extends 92 degrees across the northern half of the sky. These images are 5 second snapshots captured at 37.8 MHz with the LWA1 radio telescope. The bright steady sources (Cygnus A, Cassiopeia A, the galactic plane, etc) have been removed using image subtraction. Image Credit: Gregory Taylor (University of New Mexico)
At any given moment, it seems, the sky is sizzling with celestial phenomena waiting to be stumbled upon. New research using the Long Wavelength Array (LWA), a collection of radio dishes in New Mexico, found quite the surprise. Fireballs — those brilliant meteors that leave behind glowing streaks in the night sky — unexpectedly emit a low radio frequency, hinting at new unexplored physics within these meteor streaks.
The LWA keeps its eyes to the sky day and night, probing a poorly explored region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s one of only a handful of blind searches carried out below 100 MHz.
Over the course of 11,000 hours, graduate student Kenneth Obenberger from the University of New Mexico and colleagues found 49 radio bursts, 10 of which came from fireballs.
Most of the bursts appear as large point sources, limited to four degrees, roughly eight times the size of the full Moon. Some, however, extend several degrees across the sky. On January 21, 2014, a source left a trail covering 92 degrees in less than 10 seconds (see above). The end point continued to glow for another 90 seconds.
The only known astrophysical object with this ability is a fireball. So Obenberger and colleagues set out to see if NASA’s All Sky Fireball Network had detected anything at the same location and time as the bursts.
While the network shares only a portion of the sky with the LWA, the fireballs seen in this direction matched fireballs caught by NASA. Additionally, most bursts did occur directly after the peak of a bright meteor shower.
The top panel is a histogram showing the number of events per day as compared to several major meteor showers (red lines).
The fireballs detected here are extremely energetic, traveling with an average velocity of 68 km/s, near the upper end of the meteorite velocity spectrum (from 11 km/s to 72 km/s).
They can be seen in the radio due to radio forward scattering. When fast-moving meteoroids strike Earth’s atmosphere they heat and ionize the air in their path. The luminous ionized trails reflect radio waves. During a meteor shower these waves can not only be picked up by vast arrays, such as the one in New Mexico, but by your TV and AM/FM radio transmitter.
Whereas most fireballs have been detected well over 100 MHz, “we’ve discovered that they also produce a low frequency pulse,” says Obenberger’s PhD advisor, Gregory Taylor.
This pulse is telling us something about the physical conditions in the plasma created by the meteor. “It could be cyclotron radiation (emitted from moving charges in a magnetic field), or perhaps some sort of plasma wave leakage from the trail, or maybe something completely different,” says Obenberger. “It’s too early to tell at the moment.”
Meteors come in a range of energies and sizes. So investigating this unexpected signature further will yield new insights into the interaction between meteors and our atmosphere.
“This is just the beginning,” says Taylor. “Now we have to put this new technique to use — find out more about the spectrum of the pulse and the meteors that produce it. It’s an entirely new way of looking at meteors and how they interact with our atmosphere.”
If you’re curious what’s currently emitting radio waves in the New Mexico sky check out the LWA’s live radio cam.
The paper was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters today and is available for download here.
Near Earth asteroid 2014 KH39, discovered on May 24, 2014, is the faint 'star' in the crosshairs in this photo made on May 31. The telescope tracked the asteroid, so the stars are trailed. The streak is a satellite. Credit: Gianluca Masi
Got any plans Tuesday? Good. Keep them but know this. That day around 3 p.m. CDT (20:00 UT) asteroid 2014 KH39 will silently zip by Earth at a distance of just 272,460 miles (438,480 km) or 1.14 LDs (lunar distance). Close as flybys go but not quite a record breaker. The hefty space rock will buzz across the constellation Cepheus at nearly 25,000 mph (11 km/sec) near the Little Dipper at the time.
Observers in central Europe and Africa will have dark skies for the event, however at magnitude +17 the asteroid will be too faint to spot in amateur telescopes. No worries. The Virtual Telescope Project, run by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, will be up and running with real-time images and live commentary during the flyby. The webcast begins at 2:45 p.m. CDT June 3.
2014 KH39 was discovered on May 24 by Richard Kowalski of the Catalina Sky Survey. (Kowalski is the same astronomer who discovered asteroid 2008 TC3, the small asteroid that impacted in Sudan in 2008). Further observations by the CSS and additional telescopes like Pan-STARRS 1 in Hawaii nailed down its orbit as an Earth-approacher with an approximate size of 72 feet (22 meters). That’s a tad larger than the 65-foot Chelyabinsk asteroid that exploded into thousands of small stony meteorites over Russia in Feb. 2013.
Diagram showing the orbit of 2014 KH39. Yellow shows the portion of its orbit above the plane of Earth’s orbit (grey disk); blue is below the plane. When farthest, the asteroid travels beyond Mars into the asteroid belt. It passes closest to Earth around 3 p.m. CDT June 3. Credit: IAU Minor Planet Center
Since this asteroid will safely miss Earth we have nothing to fear from the flyby. I only report it here to point out how common near-Earth asteroids are and how remarkable it is that we can spot them at all. While we’re a long ways from finding and tracking all potentially hazardous asteroids, dedicated sky surveys turn up dozens of close-approaches every year. On the heels of 2014 KH39, the Earth-approaching asteroid 2014 HQ124 will pass 3.3 LDs away 5 days later on June 8. With a diameter estimated at more than 2,100 feet (650-m) it’s expected to become as bright as magnitude +13.7. Southern hemisphere observers might track it with 8-inch and larger telescopes as its speeds across Horologium and Eridanus the morning before closest approach.
The chart shows the cumulative known total of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) vs. time. The blue area shows all NEAs while the red shows those roughly 1 km and larger. Thanks to many ground-based surveys underway as well as space probes like the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), discovery totals have ramped up in recent years. There are probably millions of NEOs smaller than 140 meters waiting to be discovered. Credit: NASA
Perusing the current list of upcoming asteroid approaches, these two will be our closest visitors at least through early August. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are comets and asteroids whose original orbits have been re-worked by the gravity of the planets – primarily Jupiter – into new orbits that allow them to approach relatively close to Earth. The ones we’re most concerned about are a subset called Potentially Hazardous Asteroids or PHAs, defined as objects that approach within 4.65 million miles (7.48 million km) of Earth and span 500 feet (150-m) across or larger. The key word here is ‘potential’. PHAs won’t necessarily hit the Earth – they only have the potential to do so over the vastness of time. On the bright side, PHAs make excellent targets for sampling missions.
Most near-Earth asteroids fall into three classes named after the first asteroid discovered in that class. Apollo and Aten asteroids cross Earth’s orbit; Amors orbit just beyond Earth but cross Mars’ orbit. Credit: Wikipedia
As of May 30, 2014, 11,107 near-Earth objects have been discovered with 860 having a diameter of 1 km or larger. 1,481 of them have been further classified as potentially hazardous. NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program estimates that over 90% of NEOs larger than 1 km (the most potentially lethal to the planet) have been discovered and they’re now working to find 90% of those larger than 459 feet (140 meters) across. Little by little we’re getting to better know the neighborhood.
The probability that either 2014 KH39 and 2014 HQ124 will hit Earth on this round is zero. Nor do we know of any asteroid in the near future on a collision course with the planet. Enjoy the day.
Lockheed Martin and NASA engineers are installing the largest heat shield ever built onto the Orion EFT-1 spacecraft’s crew module at the Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff is slated for late Fall 2014. Credit: Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin and NASA engineers are installing the largest heat shield ever built onto the Orion EFT-1 spacecraft’s crew module at the Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff is slated for late Fall 2014. Credit: Lockheed Martin
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In a key milestone, technicians at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have attached the world’s largest heat shield to a pathfinding version of NASA’s Orion crew capsule edging ever closer to its inaugural unmanned test flight later this Fall on a crucial mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1).
One of the primary goals of NASA’s eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle – and future human astronauts – from excruciating temperatures reaching 4000 degrees Fahrenheit (2200 C) during scorching re-entry heating.
A trio of parachutes will then unfurl to slow Orion down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle now under development to replace the now retired space shuttle. The state-of-the-art spacecraft will carry America’s astronauts on voyages venturing farther into deep space than ever before – past the Moon to Asteroids, Mars and Beyond!
“The Orion heat shield is the largest of its kind ever built. Its wider than the Apollo and Mars Science Lab heat shields,” Todd Sullivan told Universe Today. Sullivan is the heat shield senior manager at Lockheed Martin, Orion’s prime contractor.
The heat shield measures 16.5 feet (5 m) in diameter.
Lockheed Martin and NASA technicians mated the heat shield to the bottom of the capsule during assembly work inside the Operations and Checkout High Bay facility at KSC.
“Holes were drilled into the heat shield from the inside to the outside at the structural attached points at the underside of the crew module,” said Jules Schneider, Orion Project manager for Lockheed Martin at KSC, during a recent exclusive interview by Universe Today inside the Orion clean room at KSC.
“Then its opened up from the outside and bolted in place underneath. Closeout plugs made of Avcoat are then installed to close it up and seal the gaps,” Schneider explained.
The heat shield is constructed from a single seamless piece of Avcoat ablator, that was applied by engineers at Textron Defense System near Boston, Mass.
“They applied the Avcoat ablater material to the outside. That’s what protects the spacecraft from the heat of reentry,” Sullivan explained.
The ablative material will wear away as it heats up during the capsules atmospheric re-entry thereby preventing the 4000 degree F heat from being transferred to the rest of the capsule and saving it and the human crew from utter destruction.
Coming together! Orion’s heat shield and crew module in position for mating operations at NASA KSC. Credit: NASA
Orion EFT-1 is slated to launch in December 2014 atop the mammoth, triple barreled United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful booster in America’s fleet.
The Delta IV Heavy is the only rocket with sufficient thrust to launch the Orion EFT-1 capsule and its attached upper stage to its intended orbit of 3600 miles altitude above Earth – about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.
At the conclusion of the two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight, the detached Orion capsule plunges back and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 20,000 MPH (32,000 kilometers per hour).
“That’s about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions,” Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion Manager of Production Operations at KSC, told me during an interview at KSC.
“The big reason to get to those high speeds during EFT-1 is to be able to test out the thermal protection system, and the heat shield is the biggest part of that.”
“Numerous sensors and instrumentation have been specially installed on the EFT-1 heat shield and the back shell tiles to collect measurements of things like temperatures, pressures and stresses during the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry,” Wilson explained.
Orion heat shield attached to the bottom of the capsule by engineers during assembly work inside the Operations and Checkout High Bay facility at KSC. Credit: NASA
The heat shield arrived at KSC in December 2013 loaded inside NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft while I was onsite. Read my story – here.
The data gathered during the unmanned EFT-1 flight will aid in confirming. or refuting, design decisions and computer models as the program moves forward to the first flight atop NASA’s mammoth SLS booster in late 2017 on the EM-1 mission and more human crewed missions thereafter.
Orion EFT-1 heat shield is off loaded from NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft after transport from Manchester, N.H., and arrival at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 5, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Recently, the EFT-1 launch was postponed three months from its long planned slot in mid-September to December 2014 when NASA was ordered to make way for the accelerated launch of recently declassified US Air Force Space Surveillance satellites that were given a higher priority.
The covert Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, or GSSAP, satellites were only unveiled in Feb. 2014 during a speech by General William Shelton, commander of the US Air Force Space Command.
Despite the EFT-1 launch postponement, Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana said technicians are pressing forward and continue to work around the clock at KSC in order to still be ready in time to launch by the original launch window that opens in mid- September 2014.
“The contractor teams are working to get the Orion spacecraft done on time for the December 2017 launch,” said Cabana.
“They are working seven days a week in the Operations and Checkout High Bay facility to get the vehicle ready to roll out for the EFT-1 mission and be mounted on top of the Delta IV Heavy.”
“I can assure you the Orion will be ready to go on time, as soon as we get our opportunity to launch that vehicle on its first flight test and that is pretty darn amazing.”
“Our plan is to have the Orion spacecraft ready because we want to get EFT-1 out so we can start getting the hardware in for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) and start processing for that vehicle that will launch on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in 2017,” Cabana told me
Concurrently, new American-made private crewed spaceships are under development by SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada – with funding from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) – to restore US capability to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and back to Earth by late 2017.
Read my exclusive new interview with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explaining the importance of getting Commercial Crew online – here.
Two of the three United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV heavy boosters for NASA’s upcoming Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1) mission were unveiled during a media event inside the Horizontal Integration Facility at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana spoke to the media along with NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot and Tony Taliancich, ULA director of East Coast Launch Operations. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Orion, Boeing, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Curiosity, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Ken Kremer Delta 4 Heavy rocket and super secret US spy satellite roar off Pad 37 on June 29, 2012 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Orion EFT-1 capsule will blastoff atop a similar Delta 4 Heavy Booster in December 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com[/caption]
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden discusses future of NASA human spaceflight at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden discusses future of NASA human spaceflight during exploration forum at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
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NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, MD – Why is NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to develop private human transport ships to low Earth orbit important?
That’s the question I posed to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden when we met for an exclusive interview at NASA Goddard.
The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) is the critical enabler “for establishing a viable orbital infrastructure” in the 2020s, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Universe Today in an exclusive one-on-one interview at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Bolden, a Space Shuttle commander who flew four time to space, says NASA wants one of the new American-made private crewed spaceships under development by SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada – with NASA funding – to be ready to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and back to Earth by late 2017. Flights for other commercial orbital space ventures would follow later and into the next decade.
Since the shutdown of NASA’s space shuttle program following the final flight by STS-135 in 2011 (commanded by Chris Ferguson), America has been 100% dependent on the Russians to fly our astronauts to the space station and back.
“Commercial crew is critical. We need to have our own capability to get our crews to space,” Bolden told me, during a visit to the NASA Goddard cleanroom with the agency’s groundbreaking Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) science probes.
Chris Ferguson, last Space Shuttle Atlantis commander, tests the Boeing CST-100 capsule which may fly US astronauts to the International Space Station in 2017. Ferguson is now Boeing’s director of Crew and Mission Operations for the Commercial Crew Program vying for NASA funding. Credit: NASA/Boeing
Administrator Bolden foresees a huge shift in how the US will conduct space operations in low earth orbit (LEO) just a decade from now. The future LEO architecture will be dominated not by NASA and the ISS but rather by commercial entrepreneurs and endeavors in the 2020s.
“There are going to be other commercial stations or other laboratories,” Bolden excitedly told me.
And the cash strapped Commercial Crew effort to build new astronaut transporters is the absolutely essential enabler to get that exploration task done, he says.
“Commercial Crew is critical to establishing the low Earth orbit infrastructure that is required for exploration.”
“We have got to have a way to get our crews to space.”
“You know people try to separate stuff that NASA does into nice little neat packages. But it’s not that way anymore.”
Bolden and NASA are already looking beyond the ISS in planning how to use the new commercial crew spaceships being developed by SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada in a public- partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
“Everything we do [at NASA] is integrated. We have to have commercial crew [for] a viable low Earth orbit infrastructure – a place where we can do testing – for example with what’s going on at the ISS today.”
“And in the out years you are going to be doing the same type of work.”
“But it’s not going to be on the ISS.”
“After 2024 or maybe 2028, if we extend it again, you are going to see the people on commercial vehicles. There are going to be other stations or other laboratories.”
“But there won’t be NASA operated laboratories. They will be commercially viable and operating laboratories.”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveils SpaceX Dragon V2 next generation astronaut spacecraft on May 29, 2014. Credit: Robert Fisher/America Space
Private NewSpace ventures represent a revolutionary departure from current space exploration thinking. But none of these revolutionary commercial operations will happen if we don’t have reliable and cost effective human access to orbit from American soil with American rockets on American spaceships.
“We need to have our own capability to get our crews to space – first of all. That’s why commercial crew is really, really, really important,” Bolden emphasized.
The ongoing crises in Ukraine makes development of a new US crew transporter to end our total reliance on Russian spaceships even more urgent.
“Right now we use the Russian Soyuz. It is a very reliable way to get our crews to space. Our partnership with Roscosmos is as strong as it’s ever been.”
“So we just keep watching what’s going on in other places in the world, but we continue to work with Roscosmos the way we always have,” Bolden stated.
The latest example is this week’s successful launch of the new three man Russian-US- German Expedition 40 crew to the ISS on a Soyuz.
Of course, the speed at which the US develops the private human spaceships is totally dependent on the funding level for the Commercial Crew program.
Unfortunately, progress in getting the space taxis actually built and flying has been significantly slowed because the Obama Administration CCP funding requests for the past few years of roughly about $800 million have been cut in half by a reluctant US Congress. Thus forcing NASA to delay the first manned orbital test flights by at least 18 months from 2015 to 2017.
And every forced postponement to CCP costs US taxpayers another $70 million payment per crew seat to the Russians. As a result of the congressional CCP cuts more than 1 Billion US Dollars have been shipped to Russia instead of on building our own US crew transports – leaving American aerospace workers unemployed and American manufacturing facilities shuttered.
I asked Bolden to assess NASA’s new funding request for the coming fiscal year 2015 currently working its way through Congress.
“It’s looking better. It’s never good. But now it’s looking much better,” Bolden replied.
“If you look at the House markup that’s a very positive indication that the budget for commercial crew is going to be pretty good.”
The pace of progress in getting our crews back to orbit basically can be summed up in a nutshell.
“No Bucks, No Buck Rogers,” Chris Ferguson, who now leads Boeing’s crew effort, told me in a separate exclusive interview for Universe Today.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Ken Kremer (Universe Today) inspect NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mated quartet of stacked spacecraft at the cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on May 12, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
The BoeingCST-100, Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser and SpaceX Dragon ‘space taxis’ are all vying for funding in the next round of contracts to be awarded by NASA around late summer 2014 known as Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap).
All three company’s have been making excellent progress in meeting their NASA mandated milestones in the current contract period known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability initiative (CCiCAP) under the auspices of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Altogether they have received more than $1 Billion in NASA funding under the current CCiCAP initiative. Boeing and SpaceX were awarded contracts worth $460 million and $440 million, respectively. Sierra Nevada was given what amounts to half an award worth $212.5 million.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk just publicly unveiled his manned Dragon V2 spaceship on May 29.
Boeing’s Chris Ferguson told me that assembly of the CST-100 test article starts soon at the Kennedy Space Center.
NASA officials have told me that one or more of the three competitors will be chosen later this year in the next phase under CCtCAP to build the next generation spaceship to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS by 2017.
In order to certify the fitness and safety of the new crew transporters, the CCtCAP contracts will specify that “each awardee conduct at least one crewed flight test to verify their spacecraft can dock to the space station and all its systems perform as expected.”
Dream Chaser commercial crew vehicle built by Sierra Nevada Corp docks at ISS
Concurrently, NASA is developing the manned Orion crew vehicle for deep space exploration. The state-of-the-art capsule will carry astronauts back to the Moon and beyond on journeys to Asteroids and one day to Mars.
“We need to have our own capability to get our crews to space. Commercial Crew is critical to establishing the low Earth orbit infrastructure that is required for exploration,” that’s the bottom line message from my interview with NASA Administrator Bolden.
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Orion, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Scale models of NASA’s Commercial Crew program vehicles and launchers; Boeing CST-100, Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser, SpaceX Dragon. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Screenshot of a video showing all the Saturn V launches happening at the same time. Credit: SpaceOperaFR/YouTube (screenshot)
Editor’s note:We posted this yesterday only to find that the original video we used had been pulled. Now, we’ve reposted the article with a new and improved version of the video, thanks to Spacecraft Films.
To the moon! The goal people most remember from the Apollo program was setting foot on the surface of our closest neighbor. To get there required a heck of a lot of firepower, bundled in the Saturn V rocket. The video above gives you the unique treat of watching each rocket launch at the same time.
Some notes on the rockets you see:
Apollos 4 and 6 were uncrewed test flights.
Apollo 9 was an Earth-orbit flight to (principally) test the lunar module.
Apollo 8 and 10 were both flights around the moon (with no lunar landing).
Apollo 13 was originally scheduled to land on the moon but famously experienced a dangerous explosionthat forced the astronauts to come back to Earth early — but safely.
Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 safely made it to the moon’s surface and back.
Skylab’s launch was also uncrewed; the Saturn V was used in this case to send a space station into Earth’s orbit that was used by three crews in the 1970s.
You don’t see Apollo 7 pictured here because it did not use the Saturn V rocket; it instead used the Saturn IB. It was an Earth-orbiting flight and the first successful manned one of the Apollo program. (Apollo 1 was the first scheduled crew, but the three men died in a launch pad fire.)
Radar images of Comet 209P/LINEAR taken from May 23 through May 27, 2014. The Earth is at the bottom of these images: the “side view” is a result of the radar imaging method. Several features are visible on the comet, perhaps ridges or cliffs. This is only the fifth comet nucleus imaged by Arecibo in the last 16 years, and the most detailed. Resolution in the vertical direction is 7.5 meters (25 feet) per pixel. Image credit: Arecibo Observatory/NASA/Ellen Howell.
When Comet 209P/LINEAR — the comet that brought us the Camelopardalids meteor shower last weekend – was first discovered in February of 2004, astronomers initially thought it was an asteroid. However, subsequent images of the objects showed it had a tail, and so it was reclassified as a comet. Now, new images taken by the Arecibo Observatory planetary radar system reveal Comet 209P/LINEAR has complex surface features that will require more analysis to fully interpret. This mini world seems to be filled with ridges and cliffs along with its icy surface.
“This is the highest resolution radar image we have obtained of a comet nucleus,” said Dr. Ellen Howell from the Universities Space Research Association, who led the observations of the comet at Arecibo, located in Puerto Rico.
The Arecibo Observatory is taking advantage of the approaching close pass of Earth by Comet 209P/LINEAR, taking these new radar images which confirm this comet to be about 2.4 by 3 km kilometers (1.5 x 1.8 miles) in size and elongated in shape. Earlier optical observations suggested this size range, but now these radar observations are the first direct measurement of the nucleus dimensions.
Radar images of Comet 209P/LINEAR taken from May 23 through May 27, 2014. The Earth is at the bottom of these images: the “side view” is a result of the radar imaging method. Several features are visible on the comet, perhaps ridges or cliffs. This is only the fifth comet nucleus imaged by Arecibo in the last 16 years, and the most detailed. Resolution in the vertical direction is 7.5 meters (25 feet) per pixel. Image credit: Arecibo Observatory/NASA/Ellen Howell
Comets very rarely come this close to Earth, but don’t worry: Comet 209P/LINEAR is not coming close enough to cause any problems or concerns.
“Comet 209P/LINEAR has no chance of hitting Earth,” said data analyst Alessondra Springmann from Arecibo. “It comes no closer than 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million miles) to Earth, safely passing our planet.”
But this relatively close pass makes this an extraordinary opportunity to get images of the surface. As Dr. Howell noted, these observations of are some of the most detailed. Just six comet nuclei have been imaged by spacecraft, and a wide variety of surface features and structures have been observed on these icy objects.
“We are being cautious,” Howell told Universe Today. “Radar images are not regular “spatial” images, and one can easily be misled by treating them as a regular picture. But proper analysis will take weeks or months, not minutes. What these radar images show is certainly not ordinary, but we don’t really have anything to compare to. The image looks different than asteroids we have imaged, but I don’t know what is due to surface feature differences and what might be scattering differences by the surface material.”
Comets have a central nucleus made of ice, dust, and rocks, and a coma of dust and gas. Two tails, one made of ions and one of dust, form in the direction pointing away from the sun.
Other comets seen by Arecibo radar include 103P/Hartley 2 and 8P/Tuttle, and 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3.
Radar images of Comet 209P/LINEAR taken from May 23 through May 27, 2014. The Earth is at the bottom of these images: the “side view” is a result of the radar imaging method. Several features are visible on the comet, perhaps ridges or cliffs. This is only the fifth comet nucleus imaged by Arecibo in the last 16 years, and the most detailed. Resolution in the vertical direction is 7.5 meters (25 feet) per pixel. Image credit: Arecibo Observatory/NASA/Ellen Howell
Unlike long period comets Hale-Bopp and the late Comet ISON that swing around the Sun once every few thousand years or few million years, Comet 209P/LINEAR visits our neighborhood frequently, coming ‘round every 5.09 years. However, it will not be close enough to Earth again for radar imaging any time in the next 100 years.
With a rotation period of approximately 11 hours as determined by Carl Hergenrother at the University of Arizona using the 1.8 meter VATT telescope, this comet is one of the many Jupiter family comets, which orbit the Sun twice for every time Jupiter orbits once.
It was discovered by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) automated sky survey.
The Arecibo Observatory, located in Puerto Rico, is home to the world’s largest and most sensitive single-dish radio telescope at 305 meters (1000feet) across. This facility dedicates hundreds of hours a year of its telescope time to improving our knowledge of near-Earth asteroids and comets.
Dr. Howell specializes in studying comets and asteroids using radar, as well as passive radio and infrared spectroscopy techniques to determine the surface and coma properties of small solar system bodies. She was assisted in these observations of Comet 209P/LINEAR by Michael Nolan, Patrick Taylor, Alessondra Springmann, Linda Ford, and Luisa Zambrano.
Arecibo Observatory, and the complementary Goldstone Solar System Radar in California run by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, are both observing comet 209P/LINEAR during its pass by Earth in May. These radar facilities are unique among telescopes on Earth for their ability to resolve features on comets and asteroids, while most optical telescopes on the ground would see these cosmic neighbors simply as unresolved points of light.
The Arecibo Observatory is operated by SRI International under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation, and in alliance with the Sistema Universitario Ana G. Méndez-Universidad Metropolitana and the Universities Space Research Association. The Arecibo Planetary Radar program is supported by NASA’s Near Earth Object Observation program.
Artist's impression of complex life on other worlds. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, NASA, Richard Wheeler @Zephyris
What a multitude of worlds! A new study suggests that the Milky Way could host 100 million planets with complex life, leaving no lack of choice for astronomers to look for organisms beyond Earth. The challenge is, however, that these worlds might be too far away from us to do much yet.
“On the one hand, it seems highly unlikely that we are alone,” stated Louis Irwin, lead author of the study and professor emeritus at the University of Texas at El Paso. “On the other hand, we are likely so far away from life at our level of complexity, that a meeting with such alien forms is extremely improbable for the foreseeable future.”
The figure came from studying a list of more than 1,000 exoplanets for metrics such as their density, temperature, chemistry, age and distance from the parent star. From this, Irwin’s team formulated a “biological complexity index” that ranges between 0 and 1.0. The index is rated on “the number and degree of characteristics assumed to be important for supporting multiple forms of multicellular life,” the research team stated.
Assuming that Europa (a moon of Jupiter believed to have an ocean below its ice) is a good candiate for life, the team estimated that 1% to 2% of exoplanets would have a BCI that is even higher than that. So to translate that into some estimates: 10 billion stars in the Milky Way, averaging one planet a star, which brings us to 100 million planets minimum.
Artists impression of Gliese 581g. Credit: Lynette Cook/NSF
So what does this metric mean? There’s of course no guarantee that complex life exists in any of these places — just that the conditions could be conducive to life. Also, the researchers added, don’t assume that any life in this category would be intelligent life, but more life that is more complex than a microbe. And the known planets with higher BCIs tend to be pretty far away from us. (One of the closest is the Gliese 581 system, which is 20 light-years away.)
“Planets with the highest BCI values tend to be larger, warmer, and older than Earth,” added Irwin, “so any search for complex or intelligent life that is restricted just to Earth-like planets, or to life as we know it on Earth, will probably be too restrictive.”
Neptune photographed by Voyager 2. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Faster than you can say “trans-Neptunian object” three times, the reaches beyond Neptune’s orbit start to fill out in this animation. And it’s astounding. Dots representing icy bodies large and small fill the area.
What’s more sobering is realizing how little we knew about this region 20 years ago. Pluto was the first object in that region discovered in 1930, and it wasn’t until 1992 QB1 was discovered that our understanding of this neighborhood increased, wrote creator Alex Parker, a planetary astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Made this for a talk I gave today. I think it came out pretty nice,” Parker wrote yesterday (May 29) on Twitter.
Parker added on the video page: “This animation illustrates the approximate relative sizes and the true orbital motion of all known trans-Neptunian objects with average orbital distances (semi-major axes) greater than Neptune’s. The objects are revealed on the date of their discovery. Data extracted from the Minor Planet Center database.”
On Twitter, he also provided a link to another visualization of asteroid discoveries between 1980 and 2011 by Scott Manley:
Delta 4 Heavy rocket and super secret US spy satellite roar off Pad 37 on June 29, 2012 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA’s Orion EFT-1 capsule will blastoff atop a similar Delta 4 Heavy Booster in December 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com[/caption]
