M20, the Triffid Nebula in narrowband, Taken remotely from Siding Springs Observatory in Australia. 38 hours of exposure, taken during May 2014. Credit and copyright: Ian Sharp.
What a gorgeous deep sky astrophoto! M20, also known as the Trifid Nebula is located in Sagittarius, and its name means ‘divided into three lobes.’ The ‘lobes’ are clearly visible in this very pretty palette of colors by astrophotographer Ian Sharp.
“I’ve been agonising about this one because it was a real struggle to find a palette that worked because the Hα data was so strong,” Ian told Universe Today via email. He said the regular Hubble palette caused a very green result, so instead he used this mix of channels:
R: (Hα x 0.50) + (SII x 0.50)
G: (OIII x 0.85) + (Hα x 0.15)
B: OIII
The details of the equipment used to take this are below:
Optical Tube Assembly RCOS 12.5” F/9 (2857mm focal length) Carbon-Fibre Tube w/TCC2, PIR and FFC
Equatorial Mount Bisque Paramount ME
Imaging Camera Apogee F16M-D9 (KAF-16803) with 7 slot filter wheel
Imaging Camera Filters Astrodon Series II L,R,G,B, Ha (5nm), OIII (3nm) and SII (3nm)
Guide Camera MMOAG with SBIG ST-402ME
The system delivers a 44×44 arcmin FoV operating at .65 arcsec/pixel
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Meet Dragon V2 - SpaceX CEO Elon pulls the curtain off manned Dragon V2 on May 29, 2014 for worldwide unveiling of SpaceX's new astronaut transporter for NASA. Credit: SpaceX
Meet Dragon V2 – SpaceX CEO Elon pulls the curtain off manned Dragon V2 on May 29, 2014 for worldwide unveiling of SpaceX’s new astronaut transporter for NASA. Credit: SpaceX Story updated[/caption]
SpaceX CEO and billionaire founder Elon Musk gushed with excitement as he counted down the seconds and literally pulled the curtain away to unveil his company’s new manned Dragon V2 astronaut transporter for all the world to see during a live streaming webcast shortly after 10 p.m. EST (7 p.m. PST, 0200 GMT) this evening, Thursday, May 29, from SpaceX HQ.
The first photos from the event are collected herein. And I’ll be adding more and updating this story as they flow in.
Musk’s Dragon V2 unveiling was brimming with excitement like a blockbuster Hollywood Science Fiction movie premiere – with lights, cameras and action.
But this was the real deal and hopefully gets America moving again back to thrilling, real space adventures in orbit and beyond – reaching for the stars.
“The Dragon V2 is a 21st century spacecraft,” Musk announced to a wildly cheering crowd. “As it should be.”
“We wanted to take a big step in spacecraft technology. It is a big leap forward in technology and takes things to the next level.”
“An important characteristic of that is its ability to land anywhere on land, propulsively. It can land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter.”
“I think that’s what a spaceship should be able to do.”
“It will be capable of carrying seven astronauts. And it will be fully reusable.”
Dragon V2, SpaceX’s next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to space is unveiled by CEO Elon Musk on May 29, 2014. Credit: SpaceX
The sleek gleaming spaceship looks decidedly different from the current cargo Dragon V1.
Read my “Dragon V2” preview articles leading up to the May 29 event – here and here.
Elon Musk seated inside Dragon V2 explaining consoles at unveiling on May 29, 2014. Credit: SpaceX
This new manrated Dragon is aimed at restoring US human launch access to space from American soil by carrying crews of up to seven US astronauts to low Earth orbit and eventually perhaps Mars – starting as soon as 2017.
Musk unveiled the gumdrop-shaped Dragon V2, or Version 2, to an overflow crowd of employees and media at SpaceX headquarters and design and manufacturing facility in Hawthorne, CA.
SpaceX Dragon V2 next generation astronaut spacecraft unveiled May 29, 2014. Credit: NASA
But Musk and SpaceX are not alone in striving to get Americans back to space.
Two other US aerospace firms – Boeing and Sierra Nevada – are competing with SpaceX to build the next generation spaceship to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS by 2017 using seed money from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in a public/private partnership.
Altogether they have received more than $1 Billion in NASA funding.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveils SpaceX Dragon V2 next generation astronaut spacecraft on May 29, 2014. Credit: Robert Fisher/America Space
The BoeingCST-100 and Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser ‘space taxis’ are also vying for funding in the next round of contracts to be awarded by NASA around late summer 2014.
The ‘Dragon V2’ is an upgraded, man-rated version of the unmanned Dragon cargo spaceship that just completed its third operational resupply mission to the ISS with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 18.
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.
SpaceX Dragon cargo freighter berthed to the International Space Station during recently concluded SpaceX-3 mission in May 2014. An upgraded, manrated version will carry US astronauts to space in the next two to three years. Credit: NASA
SpaceX is hosting a worldwide live premiere event tonight, May 29, unmasking the veil from the company’s commercial “Dragon V2” manned spaceship, the next step in US human spaceflight at 7 p.m. PST (10 p.m. EST, 0200 GMT).
And none other than billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO and founder, will be the master of ceremonies for the live show direct from SpaceX’s state-of-the-art design and manufacturing facility and Headquarters in Hawthorne, CA!
You can watch LIVE here – via the embedded player above.
Alternatively you can watch courtesy of a streaming webcast courtesy of SpaceX at: www.spacex.com/webcast
Read my “Dragon V2” or “Dragon Version 2” preview story – here.
Musk’s (and NASA’s) goal is to restore America’s capability to launch US astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station (ISS) by 2017 and to put an end total US dependency on Russia’s Soyuz for astronaut rides to orbit and back.
“SpaceX’s new Dragon V2 spacecraft is a next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts into space,” says SpaceX.
“Cover drops on May 29. Actual flight design hardware of crew Dragon, not a mockup,” Musk tweeted recently to build anticipation.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Dragon cargo capsule bound for the ISS launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, FL. File photo. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Dragon is among a trio of US private sector manned spaceships being developed with seed money from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in a public/private partnership to develop a next-generation crew transportation vehicle to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS by 2017 – a capability totally lost following the space shuttle’s forced retirement in 2011.
The BoeingCST-100 and Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser ‘space taxis’ are also vying for funding in the next round of contracts to be awarded by NASA around late summer 2014.
The gumdrop-shaped ‘Dragon V2’ is an upgraded, man rated version of the unmanned Dragon spaceship that will carry a mix of cargo and up to a seven crewmembers to the International Space Station (ISS).
The cargo Dragon just successfully completed its third operational resupply mission to the ISS with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on May 18.
Dragon V2 – SpaceX’s next generation spacecraft designed to carry astronauts to space. Credit: SpaceX
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.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk briefs reporters including ken Kremer/Universe Today in Cocoa Beach, FL prior to SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blastoff with SES-8 communications satellite on Dec 3, 2013 from Cape Canaveral, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Expedition 36/37 astronaut Karen Nyberg uses a fundoscope to take still and video images of her eye while in orbit. Credit: NASA
Why do some astronauts come back from the International Space Station needing glasses? Eye problems are one of the largest problems that have cropped up in the last three to four years of space station science, affecting 20% of astronauts. And the astronaut office is taking this problem very seriously, pointed out Scott Smith, who leads the Nutritional Biochemistry Lab at the Johnson Space Center.
It’s one example of how extended stays in flight can alter your health. Despite NASA’s best efforts, bones and muscles weaken and months of rehabilitation are needed after astronauts spend a half-year on the space station. But in recent years, there have been strides in understanding what microgravity does to the human body — and how to fix it.
Take the vision problem, for example. Doctors believed that increased fluid shift in the head increases pressure on the optic nerve, a spot in the back of the eye that affects vision. There are a few things that could affect that:
Expedition 32 astronaut Aki Hoshide with a fistfull of blood samples on the International Space Station in 2012. Credit: NASA
Exercise. Astronauts are told to allot 2.5 hours for exercise on the International Space Station daily, which translates to about 1.5 hours of activity after setup and transitions are accounted for. Weight lifting compresses muscles and could force more blood into their heads. NASA installed an advanced Resistive Exercise Device on the space station that is more powerful than its predecessor, but perhaps this is also causing the vision problem, Smith said. “It’s ironic that the exercise device we’re excited about for working the muscles and bone, may hurt eyes.”
CO2 levels. This gas (which naturally occurs when humans exhale) is “relatively high” on the space station because it takes more power and more supplies to keep the atmosphere cleaner, Smith said. “Increased carbon dioxide exposure will increase blood flow to your head,” he said. If this is found to be the cause, he added, NASA is prepared to make changes to reduce CO2 levels on station.
Folate (Vitamin B) problems. Out of the reams of blood and urine data collected since before NASA started looking at this problem, they had been looking at a biochemical (nutrient) pathway in the body that moves carbon units from one compound to another. This is important for synthesizing DNA and making amino acids, and involves several vitamins and nutrients. After scientists started noticing changes in folate (a form of Vitamin B), they probed further and found an interesting thing regarding homocysteine, a type of amino acid at the heart of this one carbon pathway. It turns out those astronauts with vision issues after flight had higher (but not abnormal) levels of homocysteine in their blood before flight, as published here.
“It’s speculating, but we think that genetic differences in this pathway may somehow alter your response to things that affect blood flow into the head,” Smith said.
After finding these essentially “circumstantial” evidence of a genetic predisposition to vision issues, they proposed an experiment to look at genes associated with one carbon metabolism. “To give you an idea of the importance of this problem, we went to every crew member that’s flown to space station, or will fly to space station. We asked if they would give us a blood sample and look at their genes for one carbon meytabolism,” he said. “We approached 72 astronauts to do that, and 70 of them gave us blood, which is unheard of.”
While NASA tries to nail down what is going on with astronaut vision, the agency has made substantial progress in preserving bone density during flights — for the first time in 50 years of spaceflight, Smith added.
We mentioned the advanced Resistive Exercise Device, an orbital weight-lifting device which was installed and first used during Expedition 18 in 2008 and has been in use on the space station ever since. It’s a large improvement over the previous interim Resistive Exercise Device (iRED), which didn’t provide enough resistance, allowing some astronauts to “max out” on the device and could not further increase weightlifting loads after some weeks or months of use.
“We flew the iRED on station and the bone loss on station looked just like it did on Mir, that is, with no resistive exercise device available,” Smith said. But that changed drastically with ARED, which has twice as much loading capability. Crews ate better, maintained body weight and had better levels of Vitamin D compared to those that went before. Most strikingly, they maintained their bone density at preflight levels, as this paper shows.
While we think of bone as being cement-like and unchanging (at least until you break one!), it’s actually an organ that is always breaking down and reforming. When the breakdown accelerates, such as when you are not putting weight on it in orbit, you lose bone density and are at higher risk for fractures.
Why is unknown, except to say that the bone seems to rely on some sort of “signalling” that indicates loads or weights are being put on it. Conversely, if you are to put more weight on your bones — maybe carrying a backpack with weights on it — your skeleton would gradually get bigger to accommodate the extra weight.
While it’s exciting that the ARED is maintaining bone density, the question is whether the body can sustain two processes happening at a faster rate than before flight: the breakdown and buildup of bone. More study will be needed, Smith said, to pinpoint whether this affects the strength of the bone, which is ultimately more important than just mineral density. Nutrition and exercise may also be optimized, to further allow for better bone preservation.
That’s one of the things scientists are excited to study with the upcoming one-year mission to the International Space Station, when Scott Kelly (NASA) and Mikhail Kornienko (Roscosmos) will be one of a small number of people to do one consecutive calendar year in space. The bone “remodelling” doesn’t level off after six months, but perhaps it will closer to a year.
Smith pointed out the quality of health data has also improved since the long-duration Mir missions of the early to mid 1990s. Specific markers of bone breakdown and formation were just being discovered and implemented during that time, whereas today they’re commonly used in medicine. Between that, and the fact that NASA’s Mir data are from shorter-duration missions, Smith said he’s really looking forward to seeing what the year in space will tell scientists.
An illustration of a Titanic lake by Ron Miller. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Titan — that smoggy, orangy moon circling Saturn — is of great interest to exobiologists because its chemistry could be good for life. It has a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and likely has lakes filled with liquid hydrocarbons, and scientists believe there is enough light filtering down into the atmosphere to drive chemical reactions.
It turns out the moon could also be a good analog to help us understand the atmospheres of exoplanets far beyond our solar system. From looking at sunsets on the moon, scientists led by NASA believe that a thick atmosphere could influence how we perceive a planet from afar.
First, a bit of information about how scientists learn about planet atmospheres in the first place. When a distant planet passes in front of its parent star, the light from the star passes through the atmosphere and gets distorted.
The spectra that telescopes pick up can then tell scientists information about what the atmosphere is made of, what temperature it is, and how it is structured. (This science, it should be noted, is in its very early stages and works best on very large exoplanets that are relatively close to Earth, since the planets are so small and far away.)
“Previously, it was unclear exactly how hazes were affecting observations of transiting exoplanets,” stated Tyler Robinson, a postdoctoral research fellow at NASA’s Ames Research Center who led the research. “So we turned to Titan, a hazy world in our own solar system that has been extensively studied by Cassini.”
Titan’s surface is almost completely hidden from view by its thick orange “smog” (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI. Composite by J. Major)
To do this, Robinson’s team used data from the Cassini spacecraft during four solar occultations, or times when Titan passed in front of our own sun from the perspective of the spacecraft. They found out that the moon’s hazy atmosphere makes it difficult to figure out what is in its spectra.
“The observations might be able to glean information only from a planet’s upper atmosphere,” NASA stated. “On Titan, that corresponds to about 90 to 190 miles (150 to 300 kilometers) above the moon’s surface, high above the bulk of its dense and complex atmosphere.”
The haze is even more powerful in the shorter (bluer) wavelengths of light, which contradicts previous studies assuming that all wavelengths of light would have the same distortions. Models of exoplanet atmospheres usually have simplified spectra because hazes are complex to model, requiring a lot of computer power.
Researchers hope to take these observations of Titan and then use them to better inform how exoplanet models are created.
The research was published May 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
PHA asteroid 2014 KM4 on approach to Jupiter in late 2021. Credit: the Solar System Dynamics JPL Small-Body Database Browser.
A recent space rock discovery has sent a minor buzz through the community that tracks such objects. And as usual, it has also begun to attract the dubious attention of those less than honorable sites — we won’t dignify them with links — that like to trumpet gloom and doom, and we thought we’d set the record straight, or at very least, head the Woo off at the pass as quickly as possible.
The asteroid in question is 2014 KM4. Discovered earlier this month, this 192 metre space rock safely passed by the Earth-Moon system at 0.17 A.U.s distant on April 21st. No real biggie, as asteroids pass lots closer all the time. For example, we just had a 6-metre asteroid named 2014 KC45 pass about 48,000 miles (about 80,000 kilometres) from the Earth yesterday morning. That’s about twice the distance of the orbit of geosynchronous satellites and 20% the distance to the Moon.
Sure, it’s a dangerous universe out there… you only have to stand in the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona outside of Flagstaff or watch the videos of a meteor exploding over Chelyabinsk last year the day after Valentine’s Day to know that. But what makes 2014 KM4 interesting is its orbit and its potential to approach Jupiter in about seven years.
Or not. One dilemma with orbital mechanics is that the precision of a known orbital path relies on the number of observations made and that position gets more and more uncertain as we project an object’s position ahead in space and time. 2014 KM4 is on a 5.08 year orbit inclined 5.2 degrees to the ecliptic plane that brings it juuusst inside the Earth’s orbit — hence the Apollo designation — and out to an aphelion point very near Jupiter at 5.2 A.U.s from the Sun. But that’s only based on 14 observations made over a span of 5 days. The current nominal trajectory sees 2014 KM4 pass about 0.1 A.U. or 15.5 million kilometres from Jupiter on January 16th 2022. That’s inside the orbit of Jupiter’s outermost moons, but comfortably outside of the orbit of the Galilean moons. The current chance of 2014 KM4 actually impacting Jupiter sits at around 1% and the general trend for these kinds of measurements is for the probability to go down as better observations are made. This is just what happened last year when comet 2013 A1 Siding Spring was discovered to pass very close to Mars later this year on October 19th.
We caught up with JPL astronomer Amy Mainzer, Principal Investigator on the NEOWISE project currently hunting for Near Earth Asteroids for her thoughts on the subject.
“The uncertainty in this object’s orbit is huge since it only has a 5 day observational arc,” Mainzer told Universe Today. “A quick check of the JPL NEO orbit page shows that the uncertainty in its semi-major axis is a whopping 0.47 astronomical units! That’s a huge uncertainty.”
“At this point, any possibility of impact with Jupiter is highly uncertain and probably not likely to happen. But it does point out why it’s so important to extend observational arcs out so that we can extend the arc far enough out so that future observers can nab an object when it makes its next appearance.”
Jupiter takes a beating from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope team.
IF (that less than 1% “IF”) 2014 KM4 were to hit Jupiter, it would represent the most distant projection ahead in time of such an event. About two decades ago, humanity had a front row seat to the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter in July 1994. At an estimated 192 metres in size, 2014 KM4 is about the size of the “D” fragment that hit Jupiter on July 17th 1994. 2014 KM4 has an absolute magnitude (for asteroids, this is how bright they’d appear at 1 A.U. distant) of +21.3 and is currently well placed for follow up observations in the constellation Virgo.
And astronomer Nick Howes mentioned to Universe Today that the Faulkes Telescope North may soon be used to make further observations of 2014 KM4. In the meantime, you can enjoy the animation of their observations of another Near-Earth Asteroid, 2014 KP4.
An animation of the motion of PHA asteroid 2014 KP4. Credit: Remanzacco Observatory.
And yes, the 2022 pass of 2014 KM4 near Jupiter will modify the orbit of the asteroid… but not in our direction. Jupiter is a great “goal tender” in this regard, protecting the inner solar system from incoming hazards.
2014 KM4 is well worth keeping an eye on, but will most likely vanish from interest until it returns to our neck of the solar system in 2065. And no, a killer asteroid won’t hit the Earth in 2045, as a CNN iReport (since removed) stated earlier this week… on “March 35th” no less. Pro-tip for all you conspiracy types out there that think “Big NASA” is secretly hiding the next “big one” from the public: when concocting the apocalypse, please refer to a calendar for a fictional date that at least actually exists!
Anti-crepuscular rays on the east horizon in Minnesota on June 9, 2012. Credit: Nancy Atkinson.
Astrophotograher César Cantú from Mexico is visiting Utah and captured an incredible timelapse of the view at sunset along with the formation of anti-crepuscular rays — a spectacular optical phenomena where light rays scattered by dust and haze appear on the horizon opposite to the setting Sun.
The word crepuscular means “relating to twilight,” and these rays occur when objects such as hills or clouds partially shadow the Sun’s rays, usually when the Sun is low on the horizon. These rays are visible only when the atmosphere contains enough haze or dust particles and in just the right conditions, sunlight is scattered toward the observer.
Then occasionally, light rays scattered by dust and haze sometimes appear on “antisolar” point, (the horizon opposite to the setting Sun). These rays, called anti-crepuscular rays, originate at the Sun, cross over the sky to the opposite horizon, and appear to converge toward the antisolar point.
For both crepuscular and anti-crepsucular, the light rays are actually parallel, but appear to converge to the horizon due to “perspective,” the same visual effect that makes parallel railroad tracks appear to converge in the distance.
Above is an image I took a few years ago when I captured both crepuscular and anti-crepuscular rays at the same time. You can read about that here.
Here’s a a great night sky shot of Monument Valley from César:
Monument Valley in Utah under the starry night sky on May 27, 2014. Credit and copyright: César Cantú.
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Expedition 38/39 astronaut Koichi Wakata (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) uses the advanced Resistive Exercise Device (aRED) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station in February 2014. Credit: NASA
Here’s the thing about going to the International Space Station: No one can predict what you’ll need to do during your six-month stay there. Maybe something breaks and you need to go “outside” to fix it, in a spacesuit. Maybe you’re going to spend a day or three in a cramped corner, fixing something behind a panel.
Your body needs to be able to handle these challenges. And a big key behind that is regular exercise.
To get ready, you need to change things up frequently on Earth. Weights. Kettleballs. Pull-ups. Squats. Deadlifts. Interval training on cycles and treadmills. And more.
“Preflight, we throw everything but the kitchen sink at [astronauts],” said Mark Guilliams, a NASA astronaut health specialist who gets them ready before orbit. “We try to work as many different movements, using multiple joints and as many different planes of motion as possible “.
Some astronauts hit the gym every single day, such as the enthusiastic Mike Hopkins who did a whole YouTube series on exercising in orbit during Expeditions 37/38 earlier this year. Others prefer a few times a week. The astronauts also receive training on how to use the exercise devices they’ll have in orbit. Because time is precious up there, even when it comes to preserving your stamina.
Now imagine yourself in a weightless environment for half a year. Many of the exercises you do on the ground are impossible, unless you make certain modifications — such as strapping yourself down. Nevertheless, to make sure astronauts’ physiological systems remain at healthy levels, the space station has a range of gym equipment and the astronauts are allotted 2.5 hours for exercise daily.
That sounds like a lot, until you start factoring in other things. Setting up and taking down equipment takes time, such as when the astronauts harness themselves to the treadmill to avoid floating away. The resistance exercise machine has to be changed around for different exercises. This means that their “active” time is roughly 60 minutes for weightlifting and 40 minutes for aerobic, six days a week.
Compare that to what is recommended by the American Heart Association– 30 minutes, five days a week for light aerobic activity and two days of weightlifting — and you can see the time astronauts spend on exercise is not unreasonable. Also remember that the rest of the day, they have no gravity. Treadmill stats show the astronauts take only roughly 5,000 to 6,000 steps each day they use they use the treadmill, compared to some people’s goals of reaching 10,000 steps a day on Earth.
“When you compare the actual time the crew spends on exercise to that recommended by the AHA, it’s not a significant portion of their day that we’re asking them to participate in order for them to try and maintain their physiological health,” said Andrea Hanson, an exercise hardware specialist for the space station.
Expedition 26’s Cady Coleman (NASA) calibrates a device intended to measure oxygen production while sitting on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System (CEVIS) in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
So what’s the equipment the astronauts get to use? The pictures in this article show you a range of things. There’s the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System (CEVIS) — a fancy name for the exercise bike. It has remained pretty much the same since it was brought to the space station back in 2001, for Expedition 2. Its major goal is to keep an astronaut’s aerobic capacity up for demanding spacewalks, which can take place for up to eight hours at a time.
The weight device has changed over time, however. The initial Interim Resistive Exercise Device used rubber to provide the resistive force and ended up being not enough for some astronauts, who found themselves reaching the designed capability limits long before their missions ended. (Here’s a picture of it.) Astronauts stopped using it after Expedition 28 in favor of the advanced Resistive Exercise Device, which instead uses piston-driven vacuum cylinders.
“The new device actually enables us to go up to 600 pounds of loading,” Guillams said. The IRED device could only give 300 pounds of resistance. So now, even the strongest astronaut can get a challenge out of ARED, he said.
Expedition 32 astronaut Sun Williams uses the COLBERT (Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill) in the Tranquility node of the International Space Station in August 2012. The treadmill was named after comedian Stephen Colbert. Credit: NASA
The treadmill aboard the station is also a newer one. The second-generation device allows for faster speeds, and to even save programs for each individual crew member so that they can have customized workouts when they arrive on station. (The first one, “Treadmill With Vibration Isolation And Stabilization System“, was put on to an unmanned Progress spacecraft in 2013 to burn up in the atmosphere.)
By the way, the new treadmill (T2) is called the COLBERT, or Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. It’s named after comedian Stephen Colbert, who in 2009 had his viewers vote to attach his name to a space station module when NASA held an open contest. When “Colbert” won, NASA elected to name the treadmill after him, and called the module Tranquility instead.
Whatever the treadmill’s name, the goal is to maintain astronaut bone and cardiovascular health while in orbit. A future story will deal with some of the scientific results obtained from more than a decade of ISS science in orbit.
A false-color view of Arsia Mons on Mars, including braided fluvial channels (seen in inset) from glacial deposits made 210 million years ago. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University/Brown University
Extremophiles teach us that life is found in unlikely places, which is why after looking at microbes happily living in hot springs or surviving after 18 months in space, scientists are trying to expand our definition of what a habitable environment is. So perhaps this ancient Martian volcano would be an example.
Meet Arsia Mons. It’s the third-tallest volcano on the Red Planet and one of the largest volcanoes we know of in the solar system.
New research shows that a combination of eruptions and a glacier on its northwest side could have formed something called “englacial lakes”, which is water that is created inside glaciers. (The researchers compare this to “liquid bubbles in a half-frozen ice cube.”) These in sum would have been massive, on the order of hundreds of cubic miles.
“This is interesting because it’s a way to get a lot of liquid water very recently on Mars,” stated Kat Scanlon, a graduate student at Brown who led the research, adding that she is also interested to see if signs of a habitable environment turn up in even older regions, of 2.5 billion years old or more.
“There’s been a lot of work on Earth — though not as much as we would like — on the types of microbes that live in these englacial lakes,” Scanlon added. “They’ve been studied mainly as an analog to [Saturn’s moon] Europa, where you’ve got an entire planet that’s an ice covered lake.”
While the glacial ice idea is not new — it’s been talked about since the 1970s — Scanlon’s team pushed the research forward by bringing in new information from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Artist Illustration of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
“Scanlon found pillow lava formations, similar to those that form on Earth when lava erupts at the bottom of an ocean,” Brown University stated.
“She also found the kinds of ridges and mounds that form on Earth when a lava flow is constrained by glacial ice. The pressure of the ice sheet constrains the lava flow, and glacial meltwater chills the erupting lava into fragments of volcanic glass, forming mounds and ridges with steep sides and flat tops. The analysis also turned up evidence of a river formed in a jökulhlaup, a massive flood that occurs when water trapped in a glacier breaks free.”
Scanlon estimated that two of the “deposits” would have had lakes of 9.6 cubic miles (40 cubic kilometers) each, while a third would have had 4.8 cubic miles (20 cubic kilometers). They could have stayed liquid for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years.
That’s a short period in the history of life, but Scanlon’s team says it could have been enough for microbes to colonize the locations, if microbes were on Mars in the first place.
You can read more about the research in the journal Icarus.
SETI's Allen Telescope Array monitor the stars for signs of intelligent life (SETI.org)
During a hearing last week before the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee SETI scientists Seth Shostak and Dan Werthimer asserted that solid evidence for extraterrestrial life in our galaxy — or, at the very least, solid evidence for a definitive lack of it — will come within the next two decades. It’s a bold claim for scientists to make on public record, but one that Shostak has made many times before (and he’s not particularly off-schedule either.) And with SETI’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) continually scanning the sky for any signals that appear intentional, exoplanets being discovered en masse, and new technology on deck that can further investigate a select few of their (hopefully) Earth-like atmospheres, the chances that alien life — if it’s out there — will be found are getting better and better each year.
Would you put your bet on E.T. being out there? Actually, you can.
Thanks to the internet and the apparently incorrigible human need to compete you can actually place a wager on when alien life will be discovered, via an Irish online betting site.
Illustration of Kepler-186f, a recently-discovered, possibly Earthlike exoplanet that could be a host to life. (NASA Ames, SETI Institute, JPL-Caltech, T. Pyle)
Typically focused on the results of international sporting matches, PaddyPower.com has also included the announcement of extraterrestrial life in its novelty bet section, hinging on “the sitting President of the USA making a statement confirming without doubt the existence of alternative life beings from another planet.” The odds of such an announcement being made in the years 2015-2018 are currently listed at 100 to one. After that they drop significantly… probably because by then the JWST will be in operation and we will “have the technology.” Stranieri.com also has offered a chance for Italian players of chance to bet on the sitting president discussing life from other planets, with betting open until 2025 for long-term gamblers!
Of course, whether you personally would place a wager on such things is purely personal preference, and neither I nor Universe Today condones or supports gambling, for aliens or otherwise. (And the legalities of doing so and any and all results thereof are the sole responsibility of the reader.) But it is interesting that we now live in a time when wagering on the discovery of alien life sits just a click away from the results of the Kentucky Derby, French Open, or World Cup.
Now if you really want to support the science that will make such a discovery possible — maybe even within our own Solar System — you can “stand up for space” and write your representatives to tell them you want NASA’s planetary science budget to be funded, and rather than gamble your money you can make a donation to support SETI’s ongoing mission here (or even help out yourself via SETI@home.)
And even if all else fails, you could end up with a free coffee courtesy of Dr. Shostak…
