A hole from a meteorite in the Space Station's solar array
Canadian astronaut and Expedition 35 commander Chris Hadfield just shared this photo on Twitter, showing a portion of one of the solar array wings on the ISS… with a small but very visible hole made by a passing meteoroid in one of the cells.
In typical poetic fashion, Commander Hadfield referred to the offending object as “a small stone from the universe.”
“Glad it missed the hull,” he added.
Hole in an ISS solar cell made by a meteoroid
While likened to a bullet hole, whatever struck the solar panel was actually traveling much faster when it hit. Most bullets travel at a velocity of around 1,000-2,000 mph (although usually described in feet per second) but meteoroids are traveling through space at speeds of well over 25,000 mph — many times faster than any bullet!
Luckily the ISS has a multi-layered hull consisting of layers of different materials (depending on where the sections were built), providing protection from micrometeorite impacts. If an object were to hit an inhabited section of the Station, it would be slowed down enough by the different layers to either not make it to the main hull or else merely create an audible “ping.”
Unnerving, yes, but at least harmless. Still, it’s a reminder that the Solar System is still very much a shooting gallery and our spacefaring safety relies on the use of technology to protect ourselves.
Image: NASA / Chris Hadfield
Fact: The 110 kilowatts of power for the ISS is supplied by an acre of solar panels!
ESA’s Herschel space observatory set against a background image of the Vela C star-forming region. Copyright ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortia, T. Hill, F. Motte, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU – CNRS/INSU – Uni. Paris Diderot, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium.
Sadly – though as expected – the most powerful far-infrared orbital telescope put in orbit has ended mission. The Herschel space observatory has now run out of liquid helium coolant, ending more than three years of pioneering observations of the cool Universe.
The spacecraft needs to be at temperatures as low as 0.3 Kelvin, or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit to make its observations, and mission scientists and engineers knew since Herschel’s launch on May 14, 2009 that the 2,300 liters of liquid helium would slowly evaporate away.
The Herschel team sent out a notice that the helium was finally exhausted today, noted at the beginning of the spacecraft’s daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia. The data showed a clear rise in temperatures measured in all of Herschel’s instruments.
“Herschel has exceeded all expectations, providing us with an incredible treasure trove of data that that will keep astronomers busy for many years to come,” said Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA’s Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.
The Herschel telescope will be parked indefinitely in a heliocentric orbit, as a way of “disposing” of the spacecraft. It should be stable for 100s of years, but perhaps scientists will figure out another use for it in the future. One original idea for disposing of the spacecraft was to have it impact the Moon, a la the LCROSS mission that slammed into the Moon in 2009, and it would kick up volatiles at one of the lunar poles for observation by another spacecraft, such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. But that idea has been nixed in favor of parking Herschel in a heliocentric orbit.
What has Herschel done in its three years of observations? It has made over 35,000 scientific observations, amassing more than 25,000 hours’ worth of science data from about 600 different observing programs. A further 2,000 hours of calibration observations also contribute to the rich dataset, which is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre, near Madrid in Spain.
But there will be more news the future from Herschel’s observations, as scientists comb through the data. The Herschel team said today that the telescope’s data is expected to provide even more discoveries than have been made during the lifetime of the Herschel mission.
“Herschel’s ground-breaking scientific haul is in no little part down to the excellent work done by European industry, institutions and academia in developing, building and operating the observatory and its instruments,” saids Thomas Passvogel, ESA’s Herschel Program Manager.
“Herschel has offered us a new view of the hitherto hidden Universe, pointing us to a previously unseen process of star birth and galaxy formation, and allowing us to trace water through the Universe from molecular clouds to newborn stars and their planet-forming discs and belts of comets,” said Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel Project Scientist.
The night sky and the infamous sliding stones of Racetrack Playa Lakebed in Death Valley. Credit and copyright: Gavin Heffernan/Sunchaser Pictures.
Have you ever dreamed of camping out under the dark skies of Death Valley? Dream no more: you can enjoy this virtual experience thanks to Gavin Heffernan and his Sunchaser Pictures crew. This magnificent new timelapse video includes some insane star trails, the beautiful Milky Way, and an incredible pink desert aurora!
“As you can see, Death Valley is a crazy place to shoot at,” Gavin said via email to Universe Today, “as the horizon is so strangely uneven/malleable. I don’t know if the valley was cut by water or underground magma, but it’s almost impossible to find a straight horizon.” See some great images from their video, below:
Gavin said he and his team tried out some new timelapse techniques, like moonpainting the foreground landscapes (0:53 — 1:20), and also some experiments merging regular timelapse footage with star trails — “a technique we’ve been calling Starscaping (1:07:1:33)” he said. “If it has an actual name, let us know! 🙂 Star Trails shot at 25 sec exposures. No special effects used, just the natural rotation of the earth’s axis. Photography Merging: STARSTAX. Used two Canon EOS 5Dmkii, with a 24mm/1.4 lens & 28mm/1.8.”
A pink aurora seen in Death Valley. Credit and copyright: Gavin Heffernan/Sunchaser Pictures.
Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Fjord with Kap Atholl in the background photographed during a NASA IceBridge flight. (NASA/Michael Studinger)
It’s quite a long way from Mars, but I can’t help but be reminded of the Red Planet’s ice-covered north pole when looking at this photo taken by Michael Studinger earlier this month, during a recent IceBridge survey flight over Greenland.
Called Saunders Island (also Appat Island) the 82-square-mile frozen slab of rock rises from the sea off the coast of northwestern Greenland, one of many islands within the Wolstenholme (Uummannaq) Fjord on the shore of Baffin Bay. Operation IceBridge, a six-year aerial survey of the changing ice coverage at our planet’s poles, is run by NASA to provide valuable ground-level information to supplement satellite data.
To me, the shape of the island’s steep rock faces and rugged inlets slice into its interior bear a striking resemblance to Mars’ ice cap.
Mars’ north polar ice cap
While Mars’ ice cap is shaped by very different processes — and obviously much bigger — you might see the connection too!
But rather than dark Martian dunes, sea ice can be seen surrounding the islands in varying thicknesses in the IceBridge photo above. Sea ice coverage in the fjord ranges from thicker, white ice in the background to thinner “grease” ice and leads with dark, open ocean water in the foreground.
The IceBridge P-3B airborne laboratory in a hangar at Wallops Flight Facility (NASA/George Hale)
As the amount of darker, ice-free water surfaces increase over the course of the year due to rising global temperatures, the more heat from solar radiation is collected in the ocean — thus speeding up the process of seasonal sea ice loss and overall Arctic warming.
Read more about the IceBridge mission here, and see a collection of more photos from this season’s flights here.
NASA’s Operation IceBridge images Earth’s polar ice in unprecedented detail to better understand processes that connect the polar regions with the global climate system. IceBridge utilizes a highly specialized fleet of research aircraft and the most sophisticated suite of innovative science instruments ever assembled to characterize annual changes in thickness of sea ice, glaciers, and ice sheets. In addition, IceBridge collects critical data used to predict the response of earth’s polar ice to climate change and resulting sea-level rise.
Fly along with NASA's Voyager spacecraft as the twin probes head towards interstellar space. In this artist's concept, a regularly updated gauge using data from the two spacecraft will indicate the levels of particles that originate from far outside our solar system and those that originate from inside our solar bubble. Those are two of the three signs scientists expect to see in interstellar space. The other sign is a change in the direction of the magnetic field. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Far away, deep in the dark, near the edge of interstellar space, Voyager 1 and 2 are hurtling near the tenuous edge of the magnetic bubble surrounding the Sun known as the heliosphere and NASA wants you to ride along.
The Voyager website sports a new feature showing cosmic ray data. NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, a popular Web-based interactive tool, contains a new Voyager module, that not only lets you ride along for the Voyagers’ journeys but also shows important scientific data flowing from the spacecraft.
[Warning:Play with this tool at your own risk. Interacting with this online feature can seriously impact your time; in an educational way, of course!]
As Voyager 1 explores the outer limits of the heliosphere, where the breath from our Sun is just a whisper, scientists are looking for three key signs that the spacecraft has left our solar system and entered interstellar space, or the space between stars. Voyager 1 began heading for the outer Solar System after zipping through the Saturn system in 1980.
The new module contains three gauges, updated every six hours from real data from Voyager 1 and 2, that indicate the level of fast-moving particles, slower-moving particles and the direction of the magnetic field. Fast-moving charged particles, mainly protons, come from distant stars and originate from outside the heliosphere. Slower-moving particles, also mainly protons, come from within the heliosphere. Scientists are looking for the levels of outside particles to jump dramatically while inside particles dip. If these levels hold steady, it means the Voyager spacecraft no longer feel the wind from our Sun and the gulf between stars awaits.
Over the past couple of years, data from Voyager 1, the most distant man-made object, show a steady increase of high-powered cosmic radiation indicating the edge is near, scientists say. Voyager 1 appears to have reached the last region before interstellar space. Scientists dubbed the region the “magnetic highway.” Particles from outside are streaming in while particles from inside are streaming out. Voyager 2’s instruments detect slight drops in inside particles but scientists don’t think the probe has entered the area yet.
Scientists also expect a change in the direction of the magnetic field. While particle data is updated every six hours, analyses of the magnetic field data usually takes a few months to prepare.
A snapshot riding along with Voyager 1’s looking back at the Sun and inner solar system. The positions of Voyager 2 and Pioneers 10 and 11 show within the viewport as well.
Although launched first, Voyager 2 lags behind its twin Voyager 1 by more than 20 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Voyager 2 blasted off August 20, 1977 aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The nuclear-powered craft visited Jupiter and Saturn with an additional mission, called the Grand Tour, to study Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 launched two weeks later on September 5, 1977. With a faster flight path, Voyager 1 arrived at Jupiter four months before its sister craft. Voyager 1 went on to study Saturn before using the ringed planet’s gravity field to slingshot it up and out of the plane of the solar system toward the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.
NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System allows viewers to hitch a ride with any of NASA’s spacecraft as they explore the solar system. Time can be slowed for a near approach of a moon or asteroid or sped up to coast between the planets. Watch close at just the right moment and you can witness one of the spacecrafts roll maneuvers. All spacecraft movements are based on actual spacecraft navigation data.
On May 6 a beautiful thin moon will be near Comet Lemmon at dawn. This map shows the sky about 1 1/4 hours before sunrise. Stellarium
If you honed your observing chops on Comet PANSTARRS this spring, consider dropping in on Comet Lemmon, now returning to the dawn sky. Southern hemisphere observers saw this comet at its brightest in March when it briefly became dimly visible with the naked eye. It’s now faded to around magnitude 6, the same as the faintest stars you can see under a rural sky.
Because it’s been “vacationing” in the southern constellations, northerners have had to wait until now to see it.
Comet Lemmon with gas (left) and dust tails on April 24. Click to see a short movie showing rapid changes in the comet’s tail in 25 minutes. Credit: Gerald Rhemann
Like PANSTARRS, C/2012 F6 Lemmon is visible in modest-sized binoculars (7x35s, 10x50s) as a small, fuzzy ball of light with perhaps a faint tail. Watch for it to slowly track along the eastern side of the Great Square of Pegasus for the remainder of April and May. It competes with twilight low in the eastern sky this week but gradually becomes better placed for viewing as May unfolds. The best time to look is about an hour and a half before sunrise now and 2 hours before sunrise by mid-May.
The waning moon interferes some until around May 5. On the 6th, watch for the thin lunar crescent moon to pass 8 degrees below the comet. Around that time, we’ll finally get a good view of Lemmon in a dark, moonles sky just before the start of dawn.
On May 6 a beautiful thin moon will be near Comet Lemmon at dawn. This map shows the sky about 1 1/4 hours before sunrise. Stellarium
Comet Lemmon will fade from naked eye limit to a dim binocular smudge of 7.5 magnitude by mid-May. If you have a telescope, look for a pair of tails – a short, diffuse one of dust particles and the straight, streak-like gas tail fluorescing in the sun’s ultraviolet light. The tails point approximately to the south-southwest. Catch this comet while you can!
Saturn is one of the most striking objects to see through a telescope, and it is now at its brightest in the night sky as it reaches opposition from the Sun. This is when Earth stands mostly perfectly in line between Saturn and the Sun. It is when Saturn is brightest (at magnitude +0.3), closely approximating famous “first magnitude” stars like Betelgeuse. Also, it is when Saturn is out all night long. Continue reading “Saturn Reaches Opposition on April 28”
Space debris has been identified as a growing risk for satellites and other space infrastructure. Credit: NASA
Action is needed soon to remove the largest pieces of space debris from orbit before the amount of junk destroys massive amounts of critical space infrastructure, according to a panel at the Sixth European Conference on Space Debris.
“Whatever we are going to do, whatever we have to do, is an expensive solution,” said Heiner Klinkrad, head of the European Space Agency space debris office, in a panel this week that was broadcast on ESA’s website.
“We have to compare the costs to solving the problem in an early stage as opposed to losing the infrastructure in orbit in the not-too-distant future.”
The panel estimated that there is $1.3 billion (1 billion Euros) worth of space satellite infrastructure that must be protected. The 200 most crucial satellites identified by the space community have an insured value of $169.5 million (130 million Euros), Klinkrad added.
Critical infrastructure, though not specified exactly by the panel, can include communication satellites and military eyes in the sky. Also at risk is that largest of human outposts in space — the International Space Station.
A view of the International Space Station as seen by the last departing space shuttle crew, STS-135. Credit: NASA
The conference concluded that without further action — even without launching any new rockets — it’s quite possible there could be a runaway effect of collisions producing debris within a few decades. Even a tiny object could act like a hand grenade in orbit if it smashes into a satellite, Klinkrad said.
To mitigate the situation, representatives suggested removing 5 to 10 large pieces of debris every year. They added they are uncertain about how soon a large problem would occur, but noted that the number of small objects is definitively increasing annually according to measurements done by the Walter Baade 6.5-meter Magellan Telescope.
“[It’s] something we haven’t know until now. We have been suspecting it is the case … this is a new result which is very important.”
While highlighting the risk, the European representatives of the panel added they are not standing idly by. Already, there are regulatory changes that could slow the problem for future launches — although there still will be cleanup to do from five past decades of space exploration.
Artist’s conception of DEOS (German orbital servicing mission). Credit: Astrium
A few of the points brought up:
– German officials are working on an in-orbit satellite servicing solution called DEOS. “The DEOS project will for the first time demonstrate technologies for the controlled in-orbit disposal of a defective satellite,” Astrium, the prime contractor for the definition phase, wrote in a press release in 2012. “In addition, DEOS will practice how to complete maintenance tasks – refuelling in particular – that extend the service life of satellites.”
– France’s Parliament passed the Space Operations Act in December 2010. “Its chief objective is to ensure that the technical risks associated with space activities are properly mitigated, without compromising private contractors’ competitiveness,” French space agency CNES wrote on its website. “The government provides a financial guarantee to compensate damages to people, property or the environment.”
– A United Nations subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is working on space sustainability guidelines that will include space debris and space operations practices. More details should be released in June, although Claudio Portelli (a representative from Italy’s space agency) warned he did not expect any debris removal proposals to emerge from this work.
The site of Stonehenge — that mysterious collection of British rocks that could have served as a calendar using the stars — was also a graveyard for the elite, according to new research.
A British group led by the University College London looked at 63 bodies surrounding the historical site. They determined these people were part of a group of elite families that brought their relatives to Stonehenge for burial over more than 200 years, starting from 2,900 BC.
The bodies were buried long before the rocks visible today were erected, though.
“The first Stonehenge began its life as a huge graveyard,” stated UCL’s Parker Pearson, who led the study. “The original monument was a large circular enclosure built 500 years before the Stonehenge we know today, with the remains of many of the cremated bodies originally marked by the bluestones of Stonehenge. We have also discovered that the second Stonehenge was built 200 years earlier than thought, around 2500 BC.”
The findings were broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 in March.
A separate study, that will be broadcast on BBC 4 Monday (April 29), shows that humans were in the area of Stonehenge about 3,000 years before it was constructed — making human occupancy about 5,000 years than previously thought.
According to media reports, a team from the United Kingdom’s Open University spotted evidence of human activity about a mile from Stonehenge, in nearby Amesbury.
Archaeologists found an extinct species of cow, called a wild auroch, on the site as well, supposing that it was some sort of migration route that attracted human hunters.
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