Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Timelapse of Hurricane Sandy, Satellite Views October 23-31, 2012

Here’s a complete animation of Hurricane Sandy from October 23-31, as seen by GOES-13, a geosynchronous satellite that is in orbit nearly 36,000 km (23,000 miles) above Earth. This huge storm was costly in terms of death and destruction. The death toll currently stands at 160 (88 in the U.S., 54 in Haiti, 11 in Cuba), with damage estimates ranging from $10 – $55 billion.

Below is a timelapse animation which shows the full hemisphere view from GOES-13, showing the development of Hurricane Sandy as it begins over Central America and begins its path up through the Caribbean and the east coast of the U.S.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite acquired this image of the storm around 3:13 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (7:13 Universal Time) on October 31. Credit: NASA/NOAA

This image from the Suomi NPP satellite shows remnants of Hurricane Sandy as it moved inland in the early morning hours of October 31, 2012. As the center of the system passed Pennsylvania, its maximum sustained winds were 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour. This image is from the “day-night band” on VIIRS, which detects light wavelengths from green to near-infrared. The Moon lit the tops of the clouds.

Sandy’s clouds stretched from Hudson Bay to Chicago and Washington. Clusters of lights gave away the locations of some cities throughout the region; but along the East Coast, clouds mostly obscured the lights, many of which were blacked out due to the storm. On October 31, the Wall Street Journal reported that several million customers in multiple states were without electricity.

You can see more satellite images of Sandy’s traverse at the NASA Earth Observatory website.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Could Plasma Jet Thrusters Kickstart Interplanetary Travel?

A great offshoot from commercial space companies getting a foothold in real missions to orbit is that the old entrepreneurial space spirit seems to have been revived. People are attempting to develop and build what could be breakout space technologies, sometimes in their garages or basements. A new Kickstarter project is especially exciting, as it is looking to build a prototype electric pulsed plasma jet thruster, and the engineers behind the project say this could be used for reliable, high performance, low cost interplanetary space transportation.

UPDATE: HyperV has reached its Kickstarter goal and will be funded.

A group plasma physics researchers started a company about 8 years ago called HyperV, and they have come up with a new design for basic pulsed plasma jet technology. It runs on superheated ionized particles, and the engineers envision it could be used for orbital maneuvering, asteroid/comet rendezvous, orbital debris cleanup and interplanetary transportation.

They say that using this kind of electric propulsion would significantly reduce the mass and weight of spacecraft, resulting in more affordable missions. Although there are other types of electric propulsion systems that have been used for space travel – with mixed results — the HyperV team believes their new design offers solutions to problems in previous designs, and will ultimately provide cheaper and more robust space travel.

The team describes their project:

We believe our thruster technology has the potential to be just as efficient as existing electric thrusters (such as ion and Hall effect thrusters) and with similar specific impulse. But our advantages will be derived from a thruster that is less complex (and much more robust), which can use a variety of propellants including gases, inert plastics, and propellants derived from asteroids, Mars, the Moon, etc., It will also be far cheaper to build, and can be more readily scaled to larger sizes and very high power levels than current electric propulsion systems. Our plasma thruster technology should be scalable from a few kilowatts all the way up to megawatts of average power. The electricity which is needed to power electric thrusters would most likely come from new high performance solar panels, but could also utilize other compact energy sources. From a practical viewpoint for satellite design, our thruster will have much higher thrust per unit area than ion or Hall thrusters, thus taking up less room on the rear of the spacecraft.

They predict their prototype could produce a specific impulse (Isp) of 2000 sec, which is an equivalent to an exhaust velocity of 20,000 m/s.

They are looking to raise $69,000 by November 3, 2012 to get their project started. At the time of this writing, the team has just over $54,000.

Here’s a video from HyperV:

“We invite you, the citizens of Earth, to join with us as we design, construct, test, and execute this demonstration,” the team wrote on their Kickstarter page. “The culmination of this project will be an all-up, laboratory demonstration of our prototype thruster.”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Fermi Measures Light from All the Stars That Have Ever Existed

This plot shows the locations of 150 blazars (green dots) used in the a new by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

All the light that has been produced by every star that has ever existed is still out there, but “seeing” it and measuring it precisely is extremely difficult. Now, astronomers using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope were able to look at distant blazars to help measure the background light from all the stars that are shining now and ever were. This enabled the most accurate measurement of starlight throughout the universe, which in turn helps establish limits on the total number of stars that have ever shone.

“The optical and ultraviolet light from stars continues to travel throughout the universe even after the stars cease to shine, and this creates a fossil radiation field we can explore using gamma rays from distant sources,” said lead scientist Marco Ajello from the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University in California and the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley.

Their results also provide a stellar density in the cosmos of about 1.4 stars per 100 billion cubic light-years, which means the average distance between stars in the universe is about 4,150 light-years.

The total sum of starlight in the cosmos is called the extragalactic background light (EBL), and Ajello and his team investigated the EBL by studying gamma rays from 150 blazars, which are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe. They are galaxies powered by extremely energetic black holes: they have energies greater than 3 billion electron volts (GeV), or more than a billion times the energy of visible light.

The astronomers used four years of Fermi data on gamma rays with energies above 10 billion electron volts (GeV), and the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument is the first to detect more than 500 sources in this energy range.

To gamma rays, the EBL functions as a kind of cosmic fog, but Fermi measured the amount of gamma-ray absorption in blazar spectra produced by ultraviolet and visible starlight at three different epochs in the history of the universe.

Fermi measured the amount of gamma-ray absorption in blazar spectra produced by ultraviolet and visible starlight at three different epochs in the history of the universe. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

“With more than a thousand detected so far, blazars are the most common sources detected by Fermi, but gamma rays at these energies are few and far between, which is why it took four years of data to make this analysis,” said team member Justin Finke, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

Gamma rays produced in blazar jets travel across billions of light-years to Earth. During their journey, the gamma rays pass through an increasing fog of visible and ultraviolet light emitted by stars that formed throughout the history of the universe.

Occasionally, a gamma ray collides with starlight and transforms into a pair of particles — an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron. Once this occurs, the gamma ray light is lost. In effect, the process dampens the gamma ray signal in much the same way as fog dims a distant lighthouse.

From studies of nearby blazars, scientists have determined how many gamma rays should be emitted at different energies. More distant blazars show fewer gamma rays at higher energies — especially above 25 GeV — thanks to absorption by the cosmic fog.

The researchers then determined the average gamma-ray attenuation across three distance ranges: The closest group was from when the universe was 11.2 years old, a middle group of when the Universe was 8.6 billion years old, and the farthest group from when the Universe was 4.1 billion years old.

This animation tracks several gamma rays through space and time, from their emission in the jet of a distant blazar to their arrival in Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT). During their journey, the number of randomly moving ultraviolet and optical photons (blue) increases as more and more stars are born in the universe. Eventually, one of the gamma rays encounters a photon of starlight and the gamma ray transforms into an electron and a positron. The remaining gamma-ray photons arrive at Fermi, interact with tungsten plates in the LAT, and produce the electrons and positrons whose paths through the detector allows astronomers to backtrack the gamma rays to their source.

From this measurement, the scientists were able to estimate the fog’s thickness.

“These results give you both an upper and lower limit on the amount of light in the Universe and the amount of stars that have formed,” said Finke during a press briefing today. “Previous estimates have only been an upper limit.”

And the upper and lower limits are very close to each other, said Volker Bromm, an astronomer at the University of Texas, Austin, who commented on the findings. “The Fermi result opens up the exciting possibility of constraining the earliest period of cosmic star formation, thus setting the stage for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope,” he said. “In simple terms, Fermi is providing us with a shadow image of the first stars, whereas Webb will directly detect them.”

Measuring the extragalactic background light was one of the primary mission goals for Fermi, and Ajello said the findings are crucial for helping to answer a number of big questions in cosmology.

A paper describing the findings was published Thursday on Science Express.

Source: NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity Rover Takes an Incredible Self-Portrait

Wow, what a view of the Curiosity rover! This is a self-portrait mosaic made from brand new images taken by the MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager), the high-resolution camera located on the turret at the end of MSL’s robotic arm. The arm was moved for each of the 55 images in this mosaic, so the arm doesn’t show up in the mosaic. This montage was put together by Stuart Atkinson, and he notes that these images are just the low-res thumbnail images that have just been sent to Earth. “Imagine what the hi-res version will look like!!” Stu said.

We can’t wait. Here’s looking at you, Curiosity!

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems/Stuart Atkinson

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Vesta Looks Forever Young

This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a close up of part of the rim around the crater Canuleia on the giant asteroid Vesta. Canuleia, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, is the large crater at the bottom-left of this image. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/PSI/Brown

This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a close up of part of the rim around the crater Canuleia on the giant asteroid Vesta. Canuleia, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, is the large crater at the bottom-left of this image. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/PSI/Brown

From a ULCA press release:

Like a Hollywood starlet constantly retouching her makeup, the giant asteroid Vesta is constantly stirring its outermost layer to present a young face. Data from NASA’s Dawn mission show that a form of weathering that occurs on the moon and other airless bodies we’ve visited in the inner solar system does not alter Vesta’s outermost layer in the same way. Carbon-rich asteroids have also been splattering dark material on Vesta’s surface over a long span of the body’s history. The results are described in two papers released today in the journal Nature.

“Dawn’s data allow us to decipher how Vesta records fundamental processes that have also affected Earth and other solar system bodies,” said Carol Raymond, Dawn deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “No object in our solar system is an island. Throughout solar system history, materials have exchanged and interacted.”

Over time, soils on Earth’s moon and asteroids such as Itokawa have undergone extensive weathering in the space environment. Scientists see this in the accumulation of tiny metallic particles containing iron, which dulls the fluffy outer layer. Dawn’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) and framing camera detected no accumulation of such tiny particles on Vesta, and this particular protoplanet, or almost-planet, remains bright and pristine.

Nevertheless, the bright rays of the youngest features on Vesta are seen to degrade rapidly and disappear into background soil. Scientists know frequent, small impacts continually mix the fluffy outer layer of broken debris. Vesta also has unusually steep topography relative to other large bodies in the inner solar system, which leads to landslides that further mix surface material.

“Getting up close and familiar with Vesta has reset our thinking about the character of the uppermost soils of airless bodies,” said Carle Pieters, one of the lead authors and a Dawn team member based at Brown University, Providence, R.I. “Vesta ‘dirt’ is very clean, well mixed and highly mobile.”

This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft features the distinctive crater Canuleia on the giant asteroid Vesta. Canuleia, about 6 miles (10 kilometers) in diameter, is distinguished by the rays of bright material that streak out from it. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/PSI/Brown

Early pictures of Vesta showed a variety of dramatic light and dark splotches on Vesta’s surface. These light and dark materials were unexpected and now show the brightness range of Vesta is among the largest observed on rocky bodies in our solar system.

Dawn scientists suspected early on that bright material is native to Vesta. One of their first hypotheses for the dark material suggested it might come from the shock of high-speed impacts melting and darkening the underlying rocks or from recent volcanic activity. An analysis of data from VIR and the framing camera has revealed, however, that the distribution of dark material is widespread and occurs both in small spots and in diffuse deposits, without correlation to any particular underlying geology. The likely source of the dark material is now shown to be the carbon-rich material in meteoroids, which are also believed to have deposited hydrated minerals from other asteroids on Vesta.

To get the amount of darkening we now see on Vesta, scientists on the Dawn team estimate about 300 dark asteroids with diameters between 0.6 to 6 miles (1 and 10 kilometers) likely hit Vesta during the last 3.5 billion years. This would have been enough to wrap Vesta in a blanket of mixed material about 3 to 7 feet (1 to 2 meters) thick.

“This perpetual contamination of Vesta with material native to elsewhere in the solar system is a dramatic example of an apparently common process that changes many solar system objects,” said Tom McCord, the other lead author and a Dawn team member based at the Bear Fight Institute, Winthrop, Wash. “Earth likely got the ingredients for life – organics and water – this way.”

Launched in 2007, Dawn spent more than a year investigating Vesta. It departed in September 2012 and is currently on its way to the dwarf planet Ceres.

Posted on by Aqua4U

Notes from an Amateur Telescope Maker’s Journal, Part 2

First of all, I’d like to say thank you for all the feedback on the first entry from the Amateur Telescope Maker’s Journal and say “Hello! Kia ora! Namaste! Greetings and Salutations!” to all the amateur, professional and armchair astronomers who wrote from the USA, Guatemala, New Zealand, Finland, India and elsewhere. What a kick it’s been to hear from everyone, and I like to think that astronomy and watching the stars is a shared language between people from around the world.

If I have succeeded in whetting your appetite for such things and you are still interested in, or even thinking about trying to build your own telescope, you might want to read on.

Two tips to remember: “Any job worth doing is worth doing right!” No excuses! and “The longest journey begins with the first step!” Here we go!

My first step was collecting as many fasteners as I could gather. I like to repair and build things and have found that fasteners always come in handy for this or that project. Eventually the fasteners I collected became crucial in the building of my telescope! If you do decide to, or are thinking about building your own telescope, you might do some serious fastener scavenging first, or if you can afford it, go out and buy a complete set of precision stainless steel nuts and bolts. I can’t over emphasize how important this step is. Believe me, you will need them.

My favorite scavenger hunt was the result of looking in a trash bin (dumpster diving anyone?) next to a computer test equipment manufacturing company where I worked the 1980’s. During inventory the ‘powers that be’, found it actually cheaper to throw away – if you can believe it — the used and/or unsorted fasteners left over from one project or another. This was cheaper than re-sorting and re-stocking I was asked by one of the techs, if I’d be interested in collecting some of them. Of course I was! Some of those ‘slightly used’ fasteners still live in mayonnaise, peanut butter and pickle jars in my garage!

A word about scavenging, in fact, a caution: Remember to be extremely careful when handling old electronic components. For example: TV or stereo capacitors when not fully discharged present a serious shock hazard! Also, collecting components from any leaky or cracked open transformers or other components should be suspect and left alone. Got contamination? Burnt components or signs of burning are also a not good prospect. Leave it alone! Old machinery and tools found at swap meets, garage sales and recycle centers are the best resource.

Many of us amateur astronomers are on a very limited budget. We have to do the best we can to find, adapt or modify that which allows us to follow our astronomy bliss. I am not above scavenging and getting my hands dirty to do the deed!

The main mirror in a Newtonian telescope is obviously the most important single component? That is to say, aside from the eyepieces, the secondary and main mirror mount! I’ve always wanted a larger scope and was hugely excited when I heard about a 12 ½-inch mirror for sale through a friend. Buying that mirror made the rest of my project possible and the other pieces fall into place. Here, I’d like to applaud the synchronicity and blind luck!

Originally I opted to build the easiest and quickest to build mount for this telescope. That would be a ‘Dobson’ style or alt-azimuth style turntable mount. A 14 inch diameter ‘sono’ tube (a concrete pier mold) came with the mirror I bought. I experimented with this tube for a while as part of the OTA (Optical Train Assembly) but found it too heavy and clumsy to handle easily. So instead, I decided to build some sort of N/S E/W polar aligned mount. A yoke mount? A German Equatorial? or a fork mount? I had to think on that for awhile.

After buying the mirror, I found myself at a ‘point of no return’. Now was the time to consider the final design and move forward! At first, I was tempted to build a simple Dobson style mount. (John Dobson is a hero of mine!) The heavy duty ‘sono tube’ concrete pier form was originally intended as the main body of the scope. Man-O-Man, was that thing ever heavy! And kind of ugly too. The more I thought about it the more I realized it would be too heavy and probably too hard to transport. That’s when I decided to try something a little bit lighter… and maybe a little different.

I received several requests for more construction details which follow, after this progress report…

I painted the counter balance arm and counter weights with acrylic paint(s). For transporting the telescope the OTA is removed and the lead weights and steel counter balance bar removed. Handling uncoated lead or galvanized steel pipe regularly is known to be a source of heavy metal contamination. Use precautionary measures including gloves and or masks when handling or working these materials!

The most recent addition to my home-built telescope is the bright orange tennis ball at the end of the counter balance bar. I traced the end of the pipe onto the tennis ball with a pencil, then cut out the circle with an exacto knife. (CAREFULLY!) After trimming, it fit snugly in place. Next up: I will find a small battery powered red LED and mount it on the end of the tennis ball. The batteries will ‘live’ inside the removable ball. I made the plywood box to hold counter balance weights, tools, supplies and battery(s). It is also a handy ‘step up’ to the eyepiece, for shorter viewers. The top of the box I covered with a new car floor mat I found lying on the side of the road… Is that road kill?

Now, how about some more construction details:

The plant saucer I used to cover the main mirror housing has a dual function.

The circularly embossed rings in the top help align the focuser and secondary!

Now, let’s talk about some inexpensive eyepieces. Have you ever made your own? Why not?

I collected optical components from old cameras, dark room projectors, binoculars and video cameras I found along the way. Some of the optics had quite reasonable focal lengths and diameters, which made them easier to modify and turn into useful eyepieces! Inexpensive and readily available materials can be used with quite satisfactory results… that is if you aren’t a perfectionist.

Above, I show how I used old 35 mm film canisters to make eyepieces. Use an Exacto knife to cut out the bottom of plastic film containers. These containers come in several colors. I prefer the black one’s but transparent work well too! The canisters have a 1 1/4 inch outside diameter and will fit into the 1 1/4 inch eyepiece holder later.

In these views I am shown attaching a modified film canister to a ‘recycled’ 24mm video camera lens.

I wrapped the end of the film canister with black tape to make up for the difference in diameters. The modified canister then fit snugly into the end of the lens body. This handmade eyepiece has a VERY wide field yet performs fairly well! There is no color shift in the crisp, wide angle view… Yes! I like!

I did the same thing with one of the eyepieces from the Chinese binoculars I had. The 20 mm eyepiece has great eye relief! In this case, the modified film canister is super glued into place. Note: BE VERY CAREFUL when applying super glue near any optical surface! The fumes released during curing can severely damage any lens! Not that this has ever happened to me…. no……

Construction details: Continued

The leveling screws use drilled out faucet handles. I found that needed to rub some graphite onto the threads to stop them from squeaking loudly. The lag bolts pass thru clear holes in the 2 X 4’s. There are threaded inserts installed on the bottoms of the four hole locations. The faucet handles are locked in place with cap screws and nuts. The wheel axle is a solid steel rod, 3/8 inches diameter and has holes drilled thru either end for cotter pins, washers and keepers. The gap between the wheel and the modified aluminum router table is maintained with a cut piece of clear, thick walled nylon tubing.

The main mirror adjustment or collimating screws are accessed through these holes in the base of the main mirror mount.

Eventually, I will mount a cooling fan here.

Here’s how I made the secondary spider legs…


I used 2 inch long 1/4-20 bolts and cut off the heads. Then I cut a slot 1/2 way down the bolt shafts with a hand held hacksaw. I cut thin stainless steel packing straps to fit – rounded the ends – then drilled a thru hole for #00 lock nuts and screws to fasten the assembly. On the far side, there’s a SS washer and thumbscrew.

The secondary mirror housing mount was made from a 1 inch long section of 1 inch square stainless steel tubing. The stainless steel packing straps were then inserted and bent 45 degrees to fit.

How’s that for details? Of course, some ideas are not mine. I copied good ideas from elsewhere, created my own and am passing them forward to you. Does that work for you? I hope you’ve found some of this stuff useful or at least interesting? Please write and let me know? I’d appreciate it and promise to reply. I’m just a ‘lonely’ astronomer and would love to hear from you!

By the way… got any old telescope parts laying around? I’m always looking for more!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Zoom Zoom! Progress Ship Goes from Launch to Docking in 6 Hours

The Progress 49 cargo craft ship went from zero to 28,000 km/h in about 8 minutes — as it usually does — but it then caught up and docked to the International Space Station in super-fast time, in less than six hours. This is the second Progress to take advantage of the abbreviated four-orbit rendezvous with the ISS which uses additional firings of the Progress engines early in its orbital flight to expedite the time required for a Russian vehicle to reach the station. Other flights take about 2 days to reach the ISS.

Launch of the Progress 49 cargo ship from Kazakhstan. Screenshot via NASA TV.

The launch took place at 7:41 UTC (3:41 a.m. EDT) from Kazakhstan and the docking occurred at 13:33 UTC (9:33 a.m. EDT) on Wednesday. The resupply ship is filled with 2,050 pounds of propellant, 62 pounds of oxygen, 42 pounds of air, 926 pounds of water and 2,738 pounds of spare parts, crew supplies and equipment. It will stay docked to the space station until April 2013.

Following the launch, ISS commander Suni Williams radioed to Mission Control, “Happy Halloween, and hopefully our little trick-or-treat vehicle is on its way. We just got to see it out the window and that’s pretty special.”

The space station crew is currently busy getting ready for a spacewalk on Thursday to try and determine the problem with a coolant leak in one of the solar arrays. (They may need to call in Georgi LaForge for reinforcements!)

Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will conduct the spacewalk and they hope to deploy a spare radiator and reconfigure coolant lines to close off a radiator that may have been hit by a meteoroid or piece of space debris. It is a very small leak, so it may take several weeks for flight controllers to find out if they have located the area of the leak. If this doesn’t solve the problem, the next plan of attack is to replace a pump.

The spacewalk is scheduled to begin around 12:15 UTC (8:15 a.m. EDT) on Thursday, November 1.

The fast-track flight to the ISS is being considered for the manned Soyuz vehicles in the future to improve crew comfort and extend the life of the Soyuz return vehicle. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has been quoted as saying it is every cosmonaut’s dream to only have a 6-hour flight in the cramped Soyuz!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Beautiful Star Cluster Looks Surprisingly Youthful

This view of the globular cluster NGC 6362 was captured by the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Past observations of globular star clusters have revealed that they are some of the oldest objects in the Universe, with most of the stars originating around the same time — some are more than 10 billion years old. And this new image of NGC 6362, a ball of stars found in the constellation of Ara, definitely shows its age, with many yellowish stars in the cluster that have already run through much of their lives and become red giant stars. But astronomers are seeing some curious stellar activities in this cluster that appears to indicate younger, bluer stars are part of the mix, too.

So how can this be, since all the stars in a cluster formed at the same time from the same cloud of gas?

NGC 6362 is home to many blue stragglers — old stars that succeed in passing for a younger age. Blue stragglers are bluer and more luminous — and hence more massive — than they should be after ten billion years of stellar evolution. Blue stars are hot and consume their fuel quickly, so if these stars had formed about ten billion years ago, then they should have fizzled out long ago. How did they survive?

Right now astronomers have two main theories about blue stragglers and how they maintain their youthful appearance: stars colliding and merging, and a transfer of material between two companion stars. The basic idea behind both of these options is that the stars were not born as big as we see them today, but that they received an injection of extra material at some point during their lifetimes and this then gave them a new lease of life.

This new image shows the entire cluster against a rich background of the carpet of stars in the Milky Way. It can be easily seen by amateur astronomers with a small telescope.

This video zooms into the cluster, starting with views from the La Silla Observatory and ending with a detailed view of the center from the Hubble Space Telescope:

Source: ESO

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity Rover Makes First X-Ray Analysis of Martian Soil

This graphic shows results of the first analysis of Martian soil by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) experiment on NASA’s Curiosity rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames

Soil scooped up by the Curiosity rover has been analyzed by instruments on board similar to what would be used by geologists on Earth in a laboratory, and the results show the mineralogy of Martian soil is fairly Earth-like, with evidence of past interaction with water. The minerals were identified in the first sample of Martian soil put inside the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin), which were zapped with X-Rays to provide accurate identification of minerals.

“This Martian soil that we’ve analyzed on Mars just this past week appears mineralogically similar to some weathered basaltic materials that we see on Earth,” said David Bish, a CheMin co-investigator with Indiana University, during a press briefing on Tuesday, saying the soil appears similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii.

The results weren’t too surprising, the team said

Other Earth-like references have been made about Mars recently: In an op-ed article in the New York Times, MSL project scientist John Grotzinger said some of the rocks Curiosity has studied early in the mission are reminiscent of rocks Grotzinger “skipped” across a stream near his childhood home near Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. And a team of researchers from Spain said the rocks where Curiosity is roving are similar to those found in Cuatro Ciénegas, a Mexican valley that may be an Earthly analog what Gale Crater was like millions of years ago.

Curiosity’s mission is to determine if Gale Crater ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, and so identifying minerals in rocks and soil is crucial to assess the history of this region. Each mineral records the conditions under which it formed.

CheMin uses X-ray diffraction, the standard practice for geologists on Earth using much larger laboratory instruments, and this is the first time this method has been used on another planet. It provides more accurate identifications of minerals than any method previously used on Mars. X-ray diffraction reads minerals’ internal structure by recording how their crystals distinctively interact with X-rays.

“Our team is elated with these first results from our instrument,” said Blake. “They heighten our anticipation for future CheMin analyses in the months and miles ahead for Curiosity.”

A MastCam image of Rocknest. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Curiosity scooped dust and sand in the small dunes named Rocknest. The sample was processed through a sieve to exclude particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 micrometers), roughly the width of a human hair. The sample has at least two components: dust distributed globally in dust storms and fine sand originating more locally.

“Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy,” said Bish. “We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass. ”

Bish said, “So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment. The ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water.”

These results are consistent with the previous determination by the MSL science team that ankle-to-hip-deep water once vigorously flowed in an ancient streambed in Gale Crater.

Source: JPL