Comet ISON appears much fainter in this SOHO image from 2:42 p.m. UTC (9:42 a.m. EST) on Nov. 30. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO
A brief morning update (EST) from Karl Battams, who studies sungrazing comets at the Naval Research Laboratory, confirms social media reports that Comet C/2012 S1 ISON appears to be getting fainter in images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). (To compare, you can see older images below the jump.)
“Comet #ISON really is fading fast and I no longer see any sign of a “central condensation” (i.e. no obvious indication of a nucleus…),” Battams wrote on Twitter. “I *do* think that something emerged from the Sun, but probably a v.small nucleus or “rubble pile”, and I fear that may have now dissolved.”
Astronomers wrote off Comet ISON on Thursday (Nov. 28) shortly after it rounded the sun, but it brightened considerably afterwards and researchers said it’s possible a small nucleus did survive the close encounter. Battams previously noted ISON’s behavior is much different than the other 2,000 or so sungrazers he’s observed.
The comet was discovered Sept. 21, 2012 by Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski while conducting the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) survey and has been the subject of intense speculation about its brightness prospects since.
Bright, brighter, brightest: these views of Comet ISON after its closest approach to the sun Nov. 28 show that a small part of the nucleus may have survived the encounter. Images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/GSFC
Bright, brighter, brightest: these views of Comet ISON after its closest approach to the sun Nov. 28 show that a small part of the nucleus may have survived the comet's close encounter with the sun. Images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/GSFC
Talk about the Comeback Kid. After Comet C/2012 S1 ISON rounded the sun yesterday afternoon, professional astronomers around the world looked at the faded debris and concluded it was an “ex-comet.” NASA wrapped up an hours-long Google+ Hangout with that news. The European Space Agency declared it was dead on Twitter.
But the remnants — or whatever ISON is now — kept brightening and brightening and brightening in images from the NASA/European Space Agency Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The pictures are still puzzling astronomers right now, almost a day after ISON’s closest encounter with the sun.
You can follow our liveblogged confusion yesterday, capped by a gobsmacking announcement from the Naval Research Laboratory’s Karl Battams, “We believe some small part of ISON’s nucleus has SURVIVED perihelion,” he said on Twitter. Since then, Battams wrote a detailed blog post, referring to images from the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) aboard SOHO:
“Matthew [Knight] and I are ripping our hair out right now as we know that so many people in the public, the media and in science teams want to know what’s happened. We’d love to know that too! Right now, here’s our working hypothesis: As comet ISON plunged towards to the Sun, it began to fall apart, losing not giant fragments but at least a lot of reasonably sized chunks. There’s evidence of very large dust in the form of that long thin tail we saw in the LASCO C2 images.
After its closest approach to to the sun on Nov. 28 (left), Comet ISON appeared a dim shadow of its former self (at right). “The comet may still be intact,” NASA wrote on Nov. 29. Images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/Jhelioviewer
Then, as ISON plunged through the corona, it continued to fall apart and vaporize, and lost its coma and tail completely just like Lovejoy did in 2011. (We have our theories as to why it didn’t show up in the SDO images but that’s not our story to tell – the SDO team will do that.) Then, what emerged from the Sun was a small but perhaps somewhat coherent nucleus, that has resumed emitting dust and gas for at least the time being. In essence, the tail is growing back, as Lovejoy’s did.
So while our theory certainly has holes, right now it does appear that a least some small fraction of ISON has remained in one piece and is actively releasing material. We have no idea how big this nucleus is, if there is indeed one. If there is a nucleus, it is still too soon to tell how long it will survive. If it does survive for more than a few days, it is too soon to tell if the comet will be visible in the night sky. If it is visible in the night sky, it is too soon to say how bright it will be…
This morning (EST), Battams succinctly summarized the latest images he saw: “Based on a few more hours of data, comet #ISON appears to be… well, behaving like a comet!”, he wrote on Twitter.
NASA issued a status update this morning saying it’s unclear if this leftover is debris or an actual nucleus, but added that “late-night analysis from scientists with NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that there is at least a small nucleus intact.” NASA, as well as Battams, pointed out that comet has behaved unpredictably throughout the 15 months scientists and amateurs have been observing it.
Mike Hankey of Monkton, Maryland took this photo of Comet ISON in outburst Nov. 14. The tail showed multiple streamers. Click to enlarge. Credit: Mike Hankey
Throughout the year that researchers have watched Comet ISON – and especially during its final approach to the sun – the comet brightened and dimmed in unexpected ways. Such brightness changes usually occur in response to material boiling off the comet, and different material will do so at different temperatures thus providing clues as to what the comet is made of. Analyzing this pattern will help scientists understand the composition of ISON, which contains material assembled during the very formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago.
Slate Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait jokingly threw out phrases like “What the what?” on Twitter yesterday, but added in a late-night update: “If you haven’t figured this out yet: We are *loving* this. The Universe surprises us yet again! How awesome!” He continued with his astonishment in a blog post:
For those keeping score at home, it got bright, then it faded, then it got all smeared out, then it came around the Sun smeared out, and then it seemed to get its act together again. At this point, I refuse to make any further conclusions about this comet; it seems eager to confuse. I’ve been hearing from comet specialists who are just as baffled… which is fantastic! If we knew what was going on, there’d be nothing more to learn.
Science confusion: Comet ISON made its closest approach to the sun Nov. 28. Although it showed up again in images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, scientists could not spot it using the ESA PROBA-2 spacecraft (view pictured). ISON’s composition or proximity to the sun may have caused this. Credit: PROBA-2 Science Centre
In a series of Twitter posts this morning, the European Space Agency’s science feed offered this take from Gerhard Schwehm, ESA’s head of planetary science:
From my initial look at ISON in today’s SOHO images, it seems nucleus has mostly disintegrated. Will only know if part of ISON nucleus has survived by continuing observations and performing more analysis. Bright fan-shape implies lots of material was released and travelling along ISON orbit, not confined in a traditional tail. Would be interesting to learn more about composition of debris to help us piece together what’s happened, but we need more time.
Artist's conception of the Chinese moon rover, called Yutu. Credit: CNSA
If all goes well, expect another moon robot very soon. The Yutu (“Jade Rabbit”) rover will lift off from China as a part of the Chang’e-3 mission — target launch date Sunday (Nov. 29) — to explore the moon’s Sea of Rainbows after its scheduled landing two weeks later, Dec. 14.
There are other spacecraft orbiting the moon — including the newly launched LADEE from NASA, which is checking out the moon’s tenuous atmosphere — but if this mission succeeds, it would be the first soft landing since Russia’s Luna-24 in 1976. That’s a 37-year drought.
Recent English information on the mission is scarce, but it’s been widely reported that the mission will include a lander in a six-wheeled rover. This Chinese news agency notes that planners expect to put up an astronomical telescope, test remote control between the moon and the Earth, and explore areas around the landing location. You can also read (dated) background information on the mission on the Chinese National Space Administration’s website.
A 50-foot (15-meter) tracking dish at the European Space Agency’s tracking station at Kourou, French Guiana. In the background is the successful Herschel and Planck launch of May 14, 2009. Credit: ESA/A. Chance
The European Space Agency (ESA), meanwhile, released a press update describing how people from its organization will help track the mission during its journey to the moon. The Europeans will be helping the Chinese track the mission all the way to the time it is expected to reach the surface. After the mission lands, ESA will use two antennas to perform a measurement intended to figure out — “with extreme accuracy”, the agency says — where the lander is located.
And for those who remember, a fun bit of history from 1969 recalled by the Planetary Society: during Apollo 11, the first manned mission to land on the moon, this ground-to-moon exchange actually happened:
Capcom: Roger. Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, there’s one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.
Buzz Aldrin, slated to be second man on the moon: Okay. We’ll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.
Expedition 36/37's Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut, moments after landing Nov. 10, 2013. Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi
The big news around astronaut circles these days is the assignment of Takuya Onishi — from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency — to Expedition 48/49 around June 2016. Onishi is from the class of 2009, and we’re guessing he’d be sure to poll his classmates on how their mission training is going.
Well, another of the 2009 astronaut class — Luca Parmitano — just returned from six months in space. It was an eventful mission, with Parmitano facing down a scary water leak during a spacewalk, using the Canadarm to berth and let go of a cargo spacecraft, and then delighting the Internet with enthusiastic fist pumps just minutes after he landed.
Parmitano speaks about the science on station (up to 150 experiments at one time!) as well as what he was experiencing during the leak:
“We were starting our third task, and I felt some water on the back of my head,” he said in an undated video from orbit included in the new video. “And I realized it was cold water. It was not a normal feeling. So I called ground, and that point we called to terminate the EVA.”
But he made it back safely, and looks more than ready to take on another mission in this picture. The cause of the leak is still under investigation, and NASA is holding off on more spacewalks with American suits until they figure out what happened.
Image from SOHO indicates a chunk of Comet ISON has survived its close pass of the Sun. Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO.
Update, 8:35 p.m. EST: Uncertainty about Comet ISON’s fate likely will persist for some time. Karl Battams just tweeted that after 2,000 sungrazing comet observations, he has never seen brightening in the same way that ISON (or its remains) appear to be doing right now. We’ll keep watching. Real-time images are available on this website.
Update, 6:30 p.m. EST: An excellent blog post from Phil Plait (who writes the Bad Astronomy blog on Slate) summarizes his take of the comet’s fate; debris (most likely, he says) continues to show up in images. An except: “It held together a long time, got very bright last night, faded this morning, then apparently fell apart. This isn’t surprising; we see comets disintegrate often enough as they round the Sun. ISON’s nucleus was only a couple of kilometers across at best, so it would have suffered under the Sun’s heat more than a bigger comet would have. Still, there’s more observing to do, and of course much data over which to pore.”
Update, 4:40 p.m. EST:On Twitter, the European Space Agency (quoting SOHO scientist Bernhard Fleck) said the comet is gone. Separately, the Naval Research Laboratory’s Karl Battams posted that he thinks recent observations show debris from ISON, but not a nucleus. Astronomers are still monitoring, however.
Update, 3:56 p.m. EST: Something has emerged from perihelion, but the experts are divided as to whether it’s leftovers of ISON’s tail, or the comet itself. Stay tuned.
The fate of Comet C/2012 S1 ISON is uncertain. It made its closest approach to the sun today (Nov. 28) around 1:44 p.m. EST (6:44 p.m. UTC). As of Thursday night, what’s happening to the comet is still unclear, as observers try to keep up hopes for a good comet show in the next few weeks.
It will take a few more hours until NASA and other agencies can say for sure what the comet’s fate is. That said, there still is valuable science that can be performed if ISON has broken up — more details below the jump.
ISON coincided with American Thanksgiving, causing a lot of astronomers and journalists to work holiday hours while pundits made jokes about the comet being “roasted” along with the turkey. Meanwhile, amateur astronomer Stuart Atkinson — author of the Waiting for ISON blog — was among those eagerly awaiting the comet’s closest approach.
But as the comet made its closest approach, astronomers grew more and more skeptical than it had survived. Phil Plait (who writes the Bad Astronomy blog on Slate) pointed out that the comet’s nucleus appeared much dimmer than its tail in images from SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), NASA’s sun-gazing spacecraft. This implied that the nucleus was disintegrating.
Plait and Karl Battams — a Naval Research Laboratory astrophysicist who operates the Sungrazing Comets Project — both participated in a NASA Google+ Hangout on ISON. As of about 2 p.m. EST (7 p.m. UTC), both said that they believe ISON is an “ex-comet”, although it will be a few more hours before scientists can say for sure.
The challenge is that the two spacecraft used to watch ISON swing around the sun — the Solar Dynamics Observatory and SOHO — are not necessarily designed to look for comets. Battams and Plait initially said that it sometimes take additional image processing to view information in it. more As time elapsed though, both expressed extreme skepticism that the comet survived.
Even if the comet is dead, Plait pointed out that scientists can still learn a lot from the remaining debris. ISON is believed to be a pristine example of bodies in the Oort Cloud, a vast body of small objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. Examining the dust in its debris trail could tell scientists more about the origins of the solar system.
“The fact that it’s broken up is really cool. There’s a lot we can learn from it and a lot we can get from it,” he said.
Battams added that ISON has been a very unpredictable comet, flaring up when people expected it would fade, and vice versa. “ISON is just weird. It has behaved unpredictably at times. When it’s done something strange, we spent some time scratching our heads, figuring out what is going on and we think we know what it’s doing … it then goes and does something different.”
Amid the waiting came the inevitable social media jokes (including science fiction and fantasy references.)
For others, the comet served as an inspiration for daring to be courageous.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with SES-8 communications satellite awaits launch from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, FL, file photo. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
UPDATE: The launch was scrubbed one second before liftoff at 5:39 p.m. EST Thursday. Computers sensed the Falcon 9’s rocket thrust was building up too slowly. No new launch date was immediately set.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – All Systems are “GO” for today’s Thanksgiving Day blastoff of the upgraded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that could quite literally ‘rock the space industry to its core’ – If all goes well.
Following Monday’s (Nov. 25) scrub during to a series of technical glitches, the rocket, launch pad systems and weather are all cooperating and ready to support the maiden blastoff of the next generation Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 40 at 5:39 p.m. EST.
SpaceX is offering a live webcast of today’s ‘Spacegiving Day’ launch – as they’ve dubbed it.
The live broadcast of the Falcon 9 liftoff from pad 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL begins at 5 p.m. EST and can be viewed here: www.spacex.com/webcast.
The show will feature commentary about the Falcon 9 rocket and launch sequences and the SES-8 commercial satellite from SpaceX corporate headquarters in Hawthorne, CA.
The Falcon 9/SES-8 launch window extends for 65 minutes.
Next Generation SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with SES-8 communications satellite awaits launch from Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Today’s (Nov. 28) inaugural launch of the privately developed Falcon 9 rocket with the commercial SES-8 HDTV and telecommunications satellite is especially noteworthy because it also features SpaceX’s first ever launch of any satellite to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).
The 3,138 kg (6,918 lbs) SES-8 satellite is a hybrid Ku- and Ka-band spacecraft that will provide TV and communications coverage for the South Asia and Asia Pacific regions.
The Falcon 9 liftoff was postponed to Thanksgiving Day because the FAA did not grant SpaceX a launch permit on Tuesday and Wednesday out of concern it would have significantly impacted allowable flight paths for commercial airliners on two of the busiest travel days of the year, said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at a media briefing.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk briefs reporters including Universe Today on Sunday (Nov. 24) in Cocoa Beach, FL prior to planned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blastoff with SES-8 communications satellite set for Nov. 28, 2013 from Cape Canaveral, FL. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The weather forecast currently shows a 90% chance of favorable conditions at liftoff time according to Air Force meteorologists. The only concern is for winds.
The last time a rocket launched on Thanksgiving Day from Cape Canaveral was back in 1959. It involved an Atlas Able rocket with the Pioneer P-3 lunar probe and failed.
Stay tuned here for continuing SpaceX & MAVEN news and Ken’s SpaceX launch reports from on site at Cape Canaveral & the Kennedy Space Center press site.
Learn more about SpaceX, MAVEN, MOM, Mars rovers, Orion and more at Ken’s upcoming presentations
Nov 28: “SpaceX launch, MAVEN Mars Launch and Curiosity Explores Mars, Orion and NASA’s Future”, Kennedy Space Center Quality Inn, Titusville, FL, 8 PM
Dec 11: “Curiosity, MAVEN and the Search for Life on Mars”, “LADEE & Antares ISS Launches from Virginia”, Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, Franklin Institute, Phila, PA, 8 PM
The RESOLVE rover during a 2012 demonstration at the Kennedy Space Center near Orlando, Fla. Credit: NASA/Dmitri Gerondidakis
In 2018, NASA plans to go prospecting at the moon’s south pole with a rover — possibly, a version of the Canadian one in the picture above. The idea is to look for water and similar substances on the lunar surface, with an eye to learn more about living off the land, so to speak.
Launching anything into space is expensive, so if it’s possible to harvest raw materials off a moon or planetary surface, this could make things a bit cheaper. Specifically, NASA is interested in oxygen, water, silicon and light metals such as aluminum and titanium in the moon’s soil or regolith. (This process is called in situ resource utilization capability.)
“The mission, currently planned to launch in early 2018, will demonstrate extraction of oxygen from lunar regolith to validate in situ resource utilization capability,” said NASA spokesperson Trent Perrotto in an e-mail to Universe Today.
“An essential element of this mission is the ability to travel significant distances on the surface to better understand water distribution in the lunar regolith.”
Building a lunar base might be easier if astronauts could harvest local materials for the construction, and life support in general. Credit: NASA/Pat Rawlings
So that’s the background. Where does the rover stand in this? It would carry a payload called RESOLVE (the acronym stands for Regolith & Environment Science, and Oxygen & Lunar Volatile Extraction.) And the rover has already been through some field tests to see how well it performs in environments (fairly) similar to the moon.
In 2009, for example, the Canadian Space Agency did a summer field study with NASA, Perrotto said. “The Canadian rover carried the RESOLVE payload during field tests. The tests helped NASA better understand the requirements of a volatiles-sensing payload, and helped CSA understand tele-operation and rough terrain exploration,” he wrote.
At the time, NASA was working to get the payload ready for flight status in 2011, but the mission design has changed since then. The current design (called Resource Prospector Mission) would have RESOLVE, a Canadian Space Agency rover and drill, and a lander. NASA is now looking for somebody to work on the lander.
The RESOLVE payload and Canadian rover during field testing at the Kennedy Space Center near Orlando, Fla. in 2012. Credit: NASA/Dmitri Gerondidakis
“A request for information was released in July to identify industry interest in a partnership to develop the lander; and an announcement of opportunity is anticipated to be released in early December,” Perrotto wrote.
This mission design is not a guarantee yet. For one thing, NASA is looking at rover alternatives and possibly getting a drill from a United States source instead. It also would depend on funding and agency priorities in the next few years. That said, however, the mission concept is proceeding right now.
In September, Perrotto added, the CSA and NASA did “initial RESOLVE thermal and vacuum testing in September, including a test in [a] regolith-filled vacuum chamber at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) at lunar temperatures and pressures.” RPM passed a mission concept review on Sept. 17 and is in the midst of a preliminary design review that would conclude in fall 2014.
NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems office has started to look at alternative options to understand “technical constraints by the mission and to assess affordability,” Perrotto added. Meanwhile, the payload team is assessing and looking to reduce risks, while the CSA and NASA are working to “refine technologies for ISRU.”
According to a new proposal, GPS satellites may be the key to finding dark matter. Credit: NASA
Imagine if your spacecraft was punctured and it could do the repair itself, without the need of you going outside on a dangerous spacewalk. Well, a Canadian team has a prototype idea that could lead to self-healing structures in space. The concept is all set, and they’re asking for financial help to launch it on crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter.
Here’s how the Concordia University material would work:
– It’s constructed out of carbon fiber (to reinforce it) and an epoxy resin (for its matrix).
– After the structure is damaged, it would “transport … a healing agent” to that area using microcapsules that are inside various spots on the resin.
– The structure then chemically repairs itself (more technical details here.)
“This self-healing material is of high interest within the aerospace community such as the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency. If viable, it would be capable of increasing the lifetime of space structures,” the team stated on the fundraising page.
“Prolonging the life of a spacecraft will decrease the required maintenance over its lifetime, which is impossible in many cases. For example, the ammonia leak that happened on the International Space Station (ISS) in May was probably caused by a micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) impact. If a self-healing shield is implemented in the ISS, the advantage would be to reduce the amount of manual repairs needed on the exterior of the craft and generally improve its lifespan in orbit. This would allow for an overall cost reduction for the spacecraft.”
The engineering team (which calls itself Space Concordia) won the first Canadian Satellite Design Challenge and plans to launch the satellite from that challenge, ConSat-1, as part of a European Space Agency program. (The team did not disclose a launch date on Kickstarter, but said the project is “currently in the final stages of completion.”) This self-healing satellite would be called ConSat-2.
Come on, admit it, you’ve had this question. “Since astronomers know that the Universe is expanding, what’s it expanding into? What’s outside of the Universe?” Ask any astronomer and you’ll get an unsatisfying answer. We give you the same unsatisfying answer, but really explain it, so your unsatisfaction doesn’t haunt you any more.
The short answer is that this is a nonsense question, the Universe isn’t expanding into anything, it’s just expanding.
The definition of the Universe is that it contains everything. If something was outside the Universe, it would also be part of the Universe too. Outside of that? Still Universe. Out side of THAT? Also more Universe. It’s Universe all the way down. But I know you’re going to find that answer unsatisfying, so now I’m going to break your brain.
Either the Universe is infinite, going on forever, or its finite, with a limited volume. In either case, the Universe has no edge. When we imagine the Universe expanding after the Big Bang, we imagine an explosion, with a spray of matter coming from a single point. But this analogy isn’t accurate.
A better analogy is the surface of an expanding balloon. Not the 3 dimensional balloon, just its 2 dimensional surface. If you were an ant crawling around the surface of a huge balloon, and the balloon was your whole universe, you would see the balloon as essentially flat under your feet.
Imagine the balloon is inflating. In every direction you look, other ants are moving away from you. The further they are, the faster away they’re moving. Even though it feels like a flat surface, walk in any direction long enough and you’d return to your starting point.
You might imagine a growing circle and wonder what it’s expanding into. But that’s a nonsense question. There’s no direction you could crawl that would get you outside the surface. Your 2-dimensional ant brain can’t comprehend an expanding 3-dimensional object. There may be a center to the balloon, but there’s no center to the surface. Just a shape that extends in all directions and wraps in upon itself. And yet, your journey to make one lap around the balloon takes longer and longer as the balloon gets more inflated.
To better understand how this relates to our Universe, we need to scale things up by one dimension, from a 2-d surface embedded in a 3-d world, to a 3-d volume embedded within a 4-d universe. Astronomers think that if you travel in any direction far enough, you’ll return to your starting position. If you could stare far enough into space, you would be looking at the back of your own head.
The Universe 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang. Image credit: Paul Bode and Yue Shen
And so, as the Universe expands, it would take you longer and longer to lap the Universe and return to your starting position. But there’s no direction you could travel in that would take you outside or “off” of the Universe. Even if you could move faster than the speed of light, you’d just return to your starting position more quickly. We see other galaxies moving away from us in all directions just as our ant would see other ants moving away on the surface of the balloon.
A great analogy comes from my Astronomy Cast co-host, Dr. Pamela Gay. Instead of an explosion, imagine the expanding Universe is like a loaf of raisin bread rising in the oven. From the perspective of any raisin, all the other raisins are moving away in all directions. But unlike a loaf of raisin bread, you could travel in any one direction within the bread and eventually return to your starting raisin.
Remember that our entire comprehension is based on 3-dimensions. If we were 4-dimensional creatures, this would make much more sense. For a much deeper explanation, I highly recommend you watch my good friend, Zogg the Alien explain how the Universe has no edge. After watching his videos, you should totally understand the possible topologies of our Universe.
I hope this helps you understand why there’s no answer to “what is the Universe expanding into?” With no edge, it’s not expanding into anything, it’s just expanding.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity took this self-portrait, composed of more than 50 images using its robotic arm-mounted MAHLI camera, on Feb. 3, 2013. The image shows Curiosity at the John Klein drill site. A drill hole is visible at bottom left. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS / Marco Di Lorenzo / Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA’s car sized CuriosityMars rover has resumed full science operations and driving following a six day long halt to research activities due to concerns about an electrical power system glitch, which have now been resolved.
On Nov. 17, engineers noticed a fluctuation in voltage on Curiosity that caused the robots handlers to stop science activities and driving towards mysterious Mount Sharp while they searched for the root cause of the electrical issue.
NASA says that the voltage change did not impact the rovers safety or health and the team was acting out of an abundance of caution while investigating the situation from millions of miles away back on Earth.
“The vehicle’s electrical system has a “floating bus” design feature to tolerate a range of voltage differences between the vehicle’s chassis — its mechanical frame — and the 32-volt power lines that deliver electricity throughout the rover. This protects the rover from electrical shorts,” NASA said in a statement.
Curiosity’s voltage level had been about 11 volts since landing day and had declined to about 4 volts on Nov. 17. The electrical issue did not trigger the rover to enter a safe-mode status.
Curiosity scans the Martian landscape to the distant rim of Gale Crater landing site on Sol 463, November 2013. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS / Marco Di Lorenzo / Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
Engineers amassed a list of possible causes for the voltage change while suspending science operations and roving across the Martian crater floor where Curiosity landed nearly a year and a half ago in August 2012.
“We made a list of potential causes, and then determined which we could cross off the list, one by one,” said rover electrical engineer Rob Zimmerman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
NASA says that the likely cause is an internal short stemming from the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) – the rovers nuclear power source.
RTG’s have been commonly used on many NASA missions that also experienced occasional shorts and that had no long term impact or loss of capability on their flights.
“This type of intermittent short has been seen in similar RTGs, including the one on the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn for years. The rover electronics are designed to operate at variable power supply voltages, so this is not a major problem,” says Curiosity team member Ken Herkenhoff of the USGS in a mission update.
The voltage level had returned its normal level of 11 volts on its own by Nov. 23, when the team had decided to resume science operations.
So it is possible that the same type of intermittent voltage change could recur in the future.
Meanwhile the rover has resumed her epic trek to Mount Sharp and is expected to arrive at the base of the mountain sometime in mid-2014.
Curiosity Spies Mount Sharp – her primary destination. Curiosity will ascend mysterious Mount Sharp and investigate the sedimentary layers searching for clues to the history and habitability o the Red Planet of billions of years. This mosaic was assembled from Mastcam camera images taken on Sol 352 (Aug 2, 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer
This past weekend, the robot delivered additional portions of powdered rock to the CheMin and SAM labs inside the rover. The sample was collected 6 months ago after drilling into a rock nicknamed “Cumberland” and will supplement prior measurements.
Curiosity has already accomplished her primary science goal of discovering a habitable zone at her landing site.
Scientists expect to broaden the region of Martian habitability once the 1 ton robot begins the ascent of Mount Sharp to investigate the sedimentary layers in the lower reaches of the towering 3 mile (5 km) high mountain, that record Mars geologic and climatic history over a time span of billions of years.
Curiosity looks to the base of Mount Sharp and the Murray buttes – her ultimate climbing destination – in this mosaic assembled from navcam camera images from Sol 465, November 2013. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS / Marco Di Lorenzo / Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com
And as both of NASA’s rovers Curiosity and Opportunity ascend Martian mountains, they’ll be joined next September 2014 by a pair of new Martian orbiters from the US and India – MAVEN and MOM – that will significantly expand Earth’s invasion force at the Red Planet.
Stay tuned here for continuing Mars rover, MOM and MAVEN news and Ken’s MAVEN and SpaceXFalcon 9 launch reports from on site at the Kennedy Space Center press center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
