Space and astronomy news
Earlier today, Euronews reported an icy “mega meteorite” fall in a farmer’s field in the Hrira region of Morocco. The farmer found the chunk of supposed space ice and put it in his freezer for later investigation by scientists, who apparently confirmed that it is in fact from space.
But… really?
Continue reading “Is This Icy “Mega” Meteorite Really From Outer Space?”
MSL team member Colette Lohr, the Tactical Uplink Lead, provides the latest video update on the Curiosity rover. The rover is at a location fittingly dubbed “Grandma’s House” during the holidays, and there should be many more adventures during 2013.
Curiosity Scans ‘Yellowknife Bay’ on Sol 130. NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrated her 1st Christmas on the Red Planet at ‘Yellowknife Bay’ and is searching for her 1st rock target to drill into for a sample to analyze. She snapped this panoramic view on Dec. 17 which was stitched together from navigation camera (Navcam) images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
If you celebrate Christmas here on Earth, you may have a tree, stockings, and music. The crew on the International Space Station had those as well. Now in space as a member of the Expedition 34/35 crew, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield continues to share his experiences via social media, as he did during all of his training. Before his flight, Hadfield said he would be recording music on the ISS, and above is his first recording from the ISS, a song he wrote titled “Jewel in the Night.” Listen closely, and you can hear the slight buzz of the station’s fans in the background.
Below are pictures from the ISS crew’s holiday celebration:
“Music on High – playing Christmas carols while floating over the eastern Mediterranean. Miraculous,” Tweeted Chris Hadfield.
“Our tree is up – on the ceiling! The beauty of a weightless Christmas,” said Hadfield
“Our stockings are hung by the Node 3 hatch with care, in hope that St Nicklaus has a big red spacesuit,” said Hadfield via Twitter.
See more images and keep track of Hadfield’s mission via his Twitter and Facebook pages.
Image Caption: Curiosity Scans ‘Yellowknife Bay’ on Sol 130. NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrated her 1st Christmas on the Red Planet at ‘Yellowknife Bay’ and is searching for her 1st rock target to drill into for a sample to analyze. She snapped this panoramic view on Dec. 17 which was stitched together from navigation camera (Navcam) images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Today (Dec. 25) Curiosity celebrates her 1st Christmas on Mars at a spot called ‘Yellowknife Bay’. It’s Sol 138 and nearly 5 months since the pulse pounding landing on Aug. 6, 2012 inside Gale Crater. The robot is in excellent health.
Meanwhile her older sister Opportunity will soon celebrate an unfathomable 9 Earth years on Mars in a few short weeks on Jan. 24, 2013 – on the other side of the planet.
NASA’s Curiosity rover reached the shallow depression named ‘Yellowknife Bay’ on Sol 130 (Dec. 17, 2012) after descending about 2 feet (0.5 m) down a gentle slope inside a geologic feature dubbed ‘Glenelg’. See our panoramic mosaics from Yellowknife Bay – above and below for a context view.
The science team is searching for an interesting rock for the inaugural use of the high powered hammering drill.
According to a new report in SpaceRef, the drilling has been delayed due to concerns that frictional heating may potentially cause liquification of the rock to a gooey “Martian Honey” that could potentially clog and seriously damage the sample handling sieves and mechanisms. So the team is carefully re-evaluating the type of rock target and the drilling operation procedures before committing to the initial usage of the percussive drill located on the turret at the terminus of the robotic arm.
The team chose to drive to ‘Yellowknife Bay’ because it features a different type of geologic terrain compared to what Curiosity has driven on previously. The ‘Glenelg’ area lies at the junction of three different types of geologic terrain and is Curiosity’s first extended science destination.
Curiosity arrived at the lip of Yellowknife Bay on Sol 124 and entered the basin on Sol 125 (Dec. 12) and snapped a scouting panoramic view peering into the inviting locale. The rover is also using the APXS X-ray mineral spectrometer, ChemCam laser and MAHLI hand lens imager to gather initial science characterization data.
Curiosity peaks around Yellowknife Bay on Sol 125, Dec 12, 2012. The rover continued driving inside the basin in search of 1st rock drill target. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
So far the rover has traversed a total driving distance of some 0.43 mile (700 meters).
Most of the science and engineering team is getting a much needed break to spend time with their families after uploading 11 Sols worth of activities ahead of time to keep the robot humming during the Christmas holiday season. A skeleton crew at JPL is keeping watch to deal with any contingencies.
One of the top priorities is acquiring a high resolution 360 degree Mastcam color panorama. This will be invaluable for selection of the very 1st rock target to drill into and acquire a sample from the interior – a feat never before attempted on Mars.
“We decided to drive to a place with a good view of the outcrops surrounding Yellowknife Bay to allow good imaging of these outcrops before the holiday break,” says rover science team member Ken Herkenhoff. “As the images are returned during the break, we can use them to help decide where to perform the first drilling operation.”
The team expects to choose a drill target sometime in January 2013 after a careful selection process.
The 7 foot (2 m) long robotic arm will deliver that initial, pulverized rock sample to inlet ports on the rover deck for analysis by the high powered duo of miniaturized chemistry labs named Chemin & SAM.
Image Caption: Curiosity deploys robotic arm on Sol 129 and examines rock with APXS and MAHLI science instruments to characterize rock and soil composition. This composite mosaic was stitched from Navcam images from Sol 129 (Dec. 16) and earlier sols- and shows the location of the Chemin sample inlet port on the rover deck. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Curiosity will spend at least another month or more investigating Glenelg before setting off on the nearly year long trek to her main destination – the sedimentary layers of the lower reaches of the 3 mile (5 km) high mountain named Mount Sharp.
Image caption: Scanning Mount Sharp from Yellowknife Bay on Sol 136. This photo mosaic assembled from Mastcam 100 camera images was snapped by Curiosity on Sol 136 (Dec. 23) – from her current location. It shows a portion of the layered mound called Mount Sharp, her main destination. Acquiring a 360 high resolution color panorama from Yellowknife Bay is a high priority task for the rover during the Christmas holiday season. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer
As the Martian crow flies, the breathtaking environs of Mount Sharp are some 6 miles (10 km) away.
The mission goal is to search for habitats and determine if Mars ever could have supported microbial life in the past or present during the 2 year primary mission phase.
Image Caption: Curiosity Traverse Map, Sol 130. This map traces where Curiosity drove between landing at a site named “Bradbury Landing,” and the position reached during Sol 130 (Dec. 17, 2012) at a spot named “Yellowknife Bay” which is inside an area called “Glenelg”. The inset shows the most recent legs of the traverse in greater detail. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Color-composite of Dione made from raw Cassini images acquired on Dec. 23, 2012. (NASA/JPL/SSI. Composite by J. Major.)
Although made mostly of ice and rock, Saturn’s moon Dione (pronounced dee-oh-nee) does have some color to it, as seen in this color-composite made from raw images acquired by Cassini on December 23.
700 miles (1120 km) wide, Dione is covered pole-to-pole in craters and crisscrossed by long, bright regions of “wispy line” terrain — the reflective faces of sheer ice cliffs and scarps that are too steep for darker material drifting in from Saturn’s E ring to remain upon.
The composite was assembled from raw images captured in red, green and blue visible light wavelengths by Cassini from a distance of 154,869 miles (249,238 km).
The view above looks at a region on Dione’s mid-northern hemisphere. The bright-walled crater in the center surrounded by warmer-hued terrain is named Creusa, and the long rift system next to it is Tibur Chasmata, which runs north-to-south. Dione’s north pole is to the upper left.
Dione’s heavily cratered areas are most common on its trailing hemisphere. Logically, a moon’s leading hemisphere should be the more heavily cratered, so it has been hypothesized that a relatively recent impact spun Dione around 180 degrees. The moon’s small size mean that even a modest-scale impact could have done the job.
Relative sizes of Earth, Moon and Dione (J. Major)
Dione orbits Saturn at a distance of 209,651 miles (377,400 km), closer than our Moon is to us.
See more images and news from the Cassini mission here. And for more on Dione, see some of my previous posts on Lights in the Dark.
SpaceX recently released video of the latest test of their Grasshopper Vertical Take Off and Landing Vehicle, where it rose 40 meters (131 feet), hovered and landed safely on the pad using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control.
The test flight took place on December 17, 2012 at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. The goal of Grasshopper is to eventually create a reusable first stage for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which would be able to land safely instead of falling back into the ocean and not being usable again.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk Tweeted that they strapped a 6-ft (2 meter) cowboy dummy to the side of the rocket “to provide a little perspective on the size of Grasshopper.”
See the pictures below:
SpaceX said the total test duration was 29 seconds. Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage, Merlin 1D engine, four steel landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.
Cowboy dummy riding on the SpaceX Grasshopper. Via Elon Musk
“Cowboy riding the rocket no problemo,” Tweeted Elon Musk
Artist’s rendering of the SpaceX Grasshopper’s vertical landing. Credit: SpaceX
Crab Nebula in a widefield, narrowband image. Credit: Nick Howes
This gorgeous shot of the Crab Nebula, or M1, by astronomer Nick Howes shows the famous nebula in a different light than the usual full spectrum views we’ve seen from the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope. Narrowband filters are designed to capture specific wavelengths of light, and since the Crab Nebula is emitting its own light rather than reflecting light from another source, it is a perfect candidate for imaging in narrow, or a limited part of the spectrum.
This nebula is the wreckage of an exploded star that emitted light which reached Earth in the year 1054. It is located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. At the heart of an expanding gas cloud lies what is left of the original star’s core, a superdense neutron star that spins 30 times a second. With each rotation, the star swings intense beams of radiation toward Earth, creating the pulsed emission characteristic of spinning neutron stars (also known as pulsars).
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Raw wide-angle Cassini image of Saturn’s rings (NASA/JPL/SSI)
Recently I posted an image of two of Saturn’s shepherd moons, Pandora and Prometheus, captured by Cassini in a face-off across the spindly F ring. Now here’s a much wider-angle view of the gas giant’s rings, seen by Cassini two days later on December 20, and the same two moons can still be seen staring each other down… two tiny points of light visible across the wavering line of the F ring at lower center.
This is just one raw image in a series of 56 that Cassini captured on the 20th, and I’ve combined them together to make a GIF animation — click below to watch:
Animation of Saturn’s rings made from raw images acquired by Cassini on Dec. 20, 2012 (NASA/JPL/SSI. Animation by J. Major)
In the animation you can see Pandora and Prometheus promenade around Saturn (detail at right) as well as a “spoke” of light material moving within the inner dark edge of the A ring. Also many clumps are visible in the thin F ring — caused by embedded moonlets and the gravitational influence of the shepherd moons.
Saturn’s enormous shadow engulfs the entire ring system at the top of the scene.
Cassini was moving relative to Saturn while these images were captured so some background stars make brief appearances, as well as a couple of pixel flares and a cosmic ray hit. These are common in Cassini images.
See more news and images from the Cassini mission here.
Image caption: Orion EFT-1 crew cabin construction ongoing inside the Structural Assembly Jig at the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). This is the inaugural space-bound Orion vehicle due to blastoff from Florida in September 2014 atop a Delta 4 Heavy rocket. Credit: Ken Kremer
NASA is thrusting forward and making steady progress toward launch of the first space-bound Orion crew capsule -designed to carry astronauts to deep space. The agency aims for a Florida blastoff of the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test-1 mission (EFT-1) in September 2014 – some 20 months from now – NASA officials told Universe Today.
I recently toured the Orion spacecraft up close during an exclusive follow-up visit to check the work in progress inside the cavernous manufacturing assembly facility in the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Vehicle assemblage is run under the auspices of prime contractor Lockheed Martin Space Systems Corporation.
A lot of hardware built by contractors and subcontractors from all across the U.S. is now arriving at KSC and being integrated with the EFT-1 crew module (CM), said Jules Schneider, Orion Project manager for Lockheed Martin at KSC, during an interview with Universe Today beside the spacecraft at KSC.
“Everyone is very excited to be working on the Orion. We have a lot of work to do. It’s a marathon not a sprint to build and test the vehicle,” Schneider explained to me.
My last inspection of the Orion was at the official KSC unveiling ceremony on 2 July 2012 (see story here). The welded, bare bones olive green colored Orion shell had just arrived at KSC from NASA’s Michoud facility in New Orleans. Since then, Lockheed and United Space Alliance (USA) technicians have made significant progress outfitting the craft.
Workers were busily installing avionics, wiring, instrumentation and electrical components as the crew module was clamped in place inside the Structural Assembly Jig during my follow-up tour. The Jig has multiple degrees of freedom to move the capsule and ease assembly work.
“Since July and to the end of 2012 our primary focus is finishing the structural assembly of the crew module,” said Schneider.
“Simultaneously the service module structural assembly is also ongoing. That includes all the mechanical assembly inside and out on the primary structure and all the secondary structure including the bracketry. We are putting in the windows and gussets, installing the forward bay structure leading to the crew tunnel, and the aft end CM to SM mechanism components. We are also installing secondary structures like mounting brackets for subsystem components like avionics boxes and thruster pods as parts roll in here.”
Image caption: Window and bracket installation on the Orion EFT-1 crew module at KSC. Credit: Ken Kremer
“A major part of what we are doing right now is we are installing a lot of harnessing and test instrumentation including alot of strain gauges, accelerometers, thermocouples and other gauges to give us data, since that’s what this flight is all about – this is a test article for a test flight.
“There is a huge amount of electrical harnesses that have to be hooked up and installed and soldered to the different instruments. There is a lot of unique wiring for ground testing, flight testing and the harnesses that will be installed later along with the plumbing. We are still in a very early stage of assembly and it involves alot of very fine work,” Schneider elaborated. Ground test instrumentation and strain gauges are installed internally and externally to measure stress on the capsule.
Construction of the Orion service module is also moving along well inside the SM Assembly Jig at an adjacent work station. The SM engines will be mass simulators, not functional for the test flight.
Image caption: Orion EFT-1 crew cabin and full scale mural showing Orion Crew Module atop Servivce Module inside the O & C Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer
The European Space Agency (ESA) has been assigned the task of building the fully functional SM to be launched in 2017 on NASA’s new SLS rocket on a test flight to the moon and back.
Although Orion’s construction is proceeding apace, there was a significant issue during recent proof pressure testing at the O & C when the vehicle sustained three cracks in the aft bulkhead of the lower half of the Orion pressure vessel.
“The cracks did not penetrate the pressure vessel skin, and the structure was holding pressure after the anomaly occurred,” Brandi Dean, a NASA Public Affairs Officer told me. “The failure occurred at 21.6 psi. Full proof is 23.7 psi.”
“A team composed of Lockheed Martin and NASA engineers have removed the components that sustained the cracks and are developing options for repair work. Portions of the cracked surface were removed and evaluated, letting the team eliminate problems such as material contamination, manufacturing issues and preexisting defects from the fault tree. The cracks are in three adjacent, radial ribs of this integrally machined, aluminum bulkhead,” Dean stated.
Image caption: NASA graphic of 3 cracks discovered during recent proof pressure testing. Credit: NASA
The repairs will be subjected to rigorous testing to confirm their efficacy as part of the previously scheduled EFT-1 test regimen.
A great deal of work is planned over the next few months including a parachute drop test just completed this week and more parachute tests in February 2013. The heat shield skin and its skeleton are being manufactured at a Lockheed facility in Denver, Colorado and shipped to KSC. They are due to be attached in January 2013 using a specialized tool.
“In March 2013, we’ll power up the crew module at Kennedy for the first time,” said Dean.
Orion will soar to space atop a mammoth Delta IV Heavy booster rocket from Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Construction and assembly of the triple barreled Delta IV Heavy is the pacing item upon which the launch date hinges, NASA officials informed me.
Following the forced retirement of NASA’s space shuttles, the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy is now the most powerful booster in the US arsenal and heretofore has been used to launch classified military satellites. Other than a specialized payload fairing built for Orion, the rocket will be virtually identical to the one that boosted a super secret U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) spy satellite to orbit on June 29, 2012 (see my launch story here).
Orion will fly in an unmanned configuration during the EFT-1 test flight and orbit the Earth two times – reaching an altitude of 3,600 miles which is 15 times farther than the International Space Station’s orbital position. The primary objective is to test the performance of Orion’s heat shield at the high speeds and searing temperatures generated during a return from deep space like those last experienced in the 1970’s by the Apollo moon landing astronauts.
The EFT-1 flight is not the end of the road for this Orion capsule.
“Following the EFT-1 flight, the Orion capsule will be refurbished and reflown for the high altitude abort test, according to the current plan which could change depending on many factors including the budget,” explained Schneider.
“NASA will keep trying to do ‘cool’ stuff”, Bill Gerstenmaier, the NASA Associate Administrator for Human Space Flight, told me.
Stay tuned – Everything regarding human and robotic spaceflight depends on NASA’s precarious budget outlook !
Image caption: Orion EFT-1 crew cabin assemblage inside the Structural Assembly Jig at the Operations and Checkout Building (O & C) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC); Jules Schneider, Orion Project Manager for Lockheed Martin and Ken Kremer. Credit: Ken Kremer
Templo de la Serpiente Emplumada / Temple of Quetzalcoatl. Credit: César Cantú. Click on the image for access to a larger version.
Our friend César Cantú sent us this image today, and it seemed perfect to share on the day where nothing apocalyptic happened. Hopefully, the day turned out for all our readers as only a chance to have a party and share a few jokes, to realize the specialness of those around you, or just to finish up your holiday preparations.
As someone once said, “Live long and prosper,” and as 2012 comes soon to a close, that is our wish to all of you.
(That, and please don’t believe any of those crazy doomsday prophesies anymore.)