Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity’s “Bootprint” on Mars

Looking very similar to the iconic first footprint on the Moon from the Apollo 11 landing, this new raw image from the Curiosity rover on Mars shows one of the first “scuff” marks from the rover’s wheels on a small sandy ridge. This image was taken today by Curiosity’s right Navcam on Sol 57 (2012-10-03 19:08:27 UTC). Rover driver Matt Heverly described a scuff as spinning one wheel to move the soil below it out of the way.

Besides being on different worlds, the two prints likely have a very different future. NASA says the first footprints on the Moon will be there for a million years, since there is no wind to blow them away. Research on the tracks left by Spirit and Opportunity revealed the time scale for track erasure by wind is typically only one Martian year or two Earth years.

Here’s one of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint, to compare:

The GRIN website (Great Images in NASA) says this is an image of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA

Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger compared earlier images of some of the first tracks left on Mars by Curiosity to images of the footprints left by Aldrin and Armstrong on the Moon. “I think instead of a human, it’s a robot pretty much doing the same thing,” he said.

Lead Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

How Much Would it Cost to Launch Your House into Space?

House in Space, from a NASA Remix Challenge. Credit: Cookieater2009 on Flickr.

Some people like an adventure, but don’t want to leave their home behind — like old Carl in the movie “Up.” So, if you wanted to go to space and take your domicile with you, what would it take? Certainly more than thousands of balloons; it would likely take millions of dollars. The folks at the housing blog Movoto Real Estate wanted to know just how much, saying they were inspired by the upcoming commercial launch by SpaceX to the International Space Station. Using launch costs for the Falcon Heavy, they computed an approximate weight-to-square-foot ratio of 200 pounds per square foot for a single story house and put in other variables. They built a “Home Blastoff Calculator” — an interactive infographic that allows anyone to figure out how much it cost to launch their house into space — noting that they computed weight, not volume. While certainly not feasible, it’s an interesting and fun concept, and the infographic also provides comparisons of launching other things into space, like dogs or chimps, or what it takes to put people on the Moon.

Compute your costs below:


Real Estate’s Final Frontier By Movoto Real Estate

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Hangout with Elon Musk

SpaceX’s Elon Musk with the Falcon rocket. Credit: SpaceX

You can now tell everyone that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is a close personal friend and that you are going to hang out with him on Friday. A Google+ Hangout, that is. Musk and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will be part of a G+ Hangout, and will answer questions submitted by viewers. They will also discuss the upcoming launch of SpaceX’s first contracted cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station. The Hangout will take place on Friday, October 5, 2012 from 17:00-17:30 UTC (1-1:30 p.m. EDT). SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon cargo spacecraft are scheduled to lift off at 00:35 UTC on Monday, October 8 (8:35 p.m. EDT, Sunday, Oct. 7) from at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Bolden and Musk will talk about the flight, which will be the first of 12 contracted for NASA by SpaceX to resupply the space station. Followers on Twitter may ask a question in advance of or during the event using the hashtag #askNASA. On NASA Facebook and Google+, a comment thread will open for questions on the morning of the event. To join the hangout, visit the NASA’s Google+ page.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Spitzer Provides Most Precise Measurement Yet of the Universe’s Expansion

Calibrated Period-luminosity Relationship for Cepheid variables.
Calibrated Period-luminosity Relationship for Cepheid variables. Courtesy Spitzer Space Telescope/IPAC.

This graph illustrates the Cepheid period-luminosity relationship, which scientists use to calculate the size, age and expansion rate of the Universe. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Carnegie

How fast is our Universe expanding? Over the decades, there have been different estimates used and heated debates over those approximations, but now data from the Spitzer Space Telescope have provided the most precise measurement yet of the Hubble constant, or the rate at which our universe is stretching apart. The result? The Universe is getting bigger a little bit faster than previously thought.

The newly refined value for the Hubble constant is 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

The most previous estimation came from a study from the Hubble Space Telescope, at 74.2 plus or minus 3.6 kilometers per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years.

To make the new measurements, Spitzer scientists looked at pulsating stars called cephied variable stars, taking advantage of being able to observe them in long-wavelength infrared light. In addition, the findings were combined with previously published data from NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) on dark energy. The new determination brings the uncertainty down to 3 percent, a giant leap in accuracy for cosmological measurements, scientists say.

WMAP obtained an independent measurement of dark energy, which is thought to be winning a battle against gravity, pulling the fabric of the universe apart. Research based on this acceleration garnered researchers the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.

The Hubble constant is named after the astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who astonished the world in the 1920s by confirming our universe has been expanding since it exploded into being 13.7 billion years ago. In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered the expansion is accelerating, or speeding up over time. Determining the expansion rate is critical for understanding the age and size of the universe.

“This is a huge puzzle,” said the lead author of the new study, Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena. “It’s exciting that we were able to use Spitzer to tackle fundamental problems in cosmology: the precise rate at which the universe is expanding at the current time, as well as measuring the amount of dark energy in the universe from another angle.” Freedman led the groundbreaking Hubble Space Telescope study that earlier had measured the Hubble constant.

Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said the better views of cepheids enabled Spitzer to improve on past measurements of the Hubble constant.

“These pulsating stars are vital rungs in what astronomers call the cosmic distance ladder: a set of objects with known distances that, when combined with the speeds at which the objects are moving away from us, reveal the expansion rate of the universe,” said Wahlgren.

Cepheids are crucial to the calculations because their distances from Earth can be measured readily. In 1908, Henrietta Leavitt discovered these stars pulse at a rate directly related to their intrinsic brightness.

To visualize why this is important, imagine someone walking away from you while carrying a candle. The farther the candle traveled, the more it would dim. Its apparent brightness would reveal the distance. The same principle applies to cepheids, standard candles in our cosmos. By measuring how bright they appear on the sky, and comparing this to their known brightness as if they were close up, astronomers can calculate their distance from Earth.

Spitzer observed 10 cepheids in our own Milky Way galaxy and 80 in a nearby neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Without the cosmic dust blocking their view, the Spitzer research team was able to obtain more precise measurements of the stars’ apparent brightness, and thus their distances. These data opened the way for a new and improved estimate of our universe’s expansion rate.

“Just over a decade ago, using the words ‘precision’ and ‘cosmology’ in the same sentence was not possible, and the size and age of the universe was not known to better than a factor of two,” said Freedman. “Now we are talking about accuracies of a few percent. It is quite extraordinary.”

“Spitzer is yet again doing science beyond what it was designed to do,” said project scientist Michael Werner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Werner has worked on the mission since its early concept phase more than 30 years ago. “First, Spitzer surprised us with its pioneering ability to study exoplanet atmospheres,” said Werner, “and now, in the mission’s later years, it has become a valuable cosmology tool.”

The study appears in the Astrophysical Journal.

Paper on arXiv: A Mid-Infrared Calibration of the Hubble Constant

Source: JPL

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

36-Dish Australian Telescope Array Opens for Business

Three of 36 antennas of the ASKAP array. Credit: Alexander Cherney

The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is now standing tall in the outback of Western Australia, and will officially be turned on and open for business on Friday, October 5, 2012 . This large array is made up of 36 identical antennas, each 12 meters in diameter, spread out over 4,000 square meters but working together as a single instrument. ASKAP is designed to survey the whole sky very quickly, and astronomers expect to do studies of the sky that could never have been done before.

Below is a beautiful timelapse of the the ASKAP array. The photographer who put the video together, Alexander Cherney says the footage seen here may be quite unique because after the telescope testing phase is completed, any electronic equipment including cameras may not be used near the telescope.


ASKAP provides a wide field-of-view with a large spectral bandwidth and fast survey speed with its phased-array feed or “radio camera,” rather than ‘single pixel feeds’ to detect and amplify radio waves. This new technology allows telescopes to scan the sky more quickly than with traditional methods covers 30 square degrees – a thousand times the size of the full Moon in the sky.

“This will make ASKAP a very powerful survey radio telescope, a 100 times more powerful than any previous survey telescope,” said Brian Boyle, director of the SKA for Australia’s national science agency, speaking to Universe Today in interview earlier this year.

It will provide excellent coverage in a southern hemisphere location, and the radio quiet site at the Murchison Radio Observatory will make it an unprecedented synoptic telescope, according to the ASKAP website, and scientists expect to make advances in understanding galaxy formation and the evolution of the Universe.

While ASKAP will provide advances on its own, later, the dishes will be combined with 60 additional dishes to form part of the world’s largest radio telescope, The Square Kilometer Array. Construction of the SKA is due to begin in 2016.

You can see what the ASKAP looks like anytime by going to their webcam, plus there will be a webcast of the opening ceremonies on Friday at 12 noon – 1pm Western Australian Standard Time, which is 04:00 GMT Friday October 5, 2012 in GMT (midnight US EDT).

Posted on by Jason Major

What Happens When Supermassive Black Holes Merge?

Frame from a simulation of the merger of two black holes and the resulting emission of gravitational radiation (NASA/C. Henze)

The short answer? You get one super-SUPERmassive black hole. The longer answer?

Well, watch the video below for an idea.

This animation, created with supercomputers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, show for the first time what happens to the magnetized gas clouds that surround supermassive black holes when two of them collide.

The simulation shows the magnetic fields intensifying as they contort and twist turbulently, at one point forming a towering vortex that extends high above the center of the accretion disk.

This funnel-like structure may be partly responsible for the jets that are sometimes seen erupting from actively feeding supermassive black holes.

The simulation was created to study what sort of “flash” might be made by the merging of such incredibly massive objects, so that astronomers hunting for evidence of gravitational waves — a phenomenon first proposed by Einstein in 1916 — will be able to better identify their potential source.

Read: Effects of Einstein’s Elusive Gravity Waves Observed

Gravitational waves are often described as “ripples” in the fabric of space-time, infinitesimal perturbations created by supermassive, rapidly rotating objects like orbiting black holes. Detecting them directly has proven to be a challenge but researchers expect that the technology will be available within several years’ time, and knowing how to spot colliding black holes will be the first step in identifying any gravitational waves that result from the impact.

In fact, it’s the gravitational waves that rob energy from the black holes’ orbits, causing them to spiral into each other in the first place.

“The black holes orbit each other and lose orbital energy by emitting strong gravitational waves, and this causes their orbits to shrink. The black holes spiral toward each other and eventually merge,” said astrophysicist John Baker, a research team member from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We need gravitational waves to confirm that a black hole merger has occurred, but if we can understand the electromagnetic signatures from mergers well enough, perhaps we can search for candidate events even before we have a space-based gravitational wave observatory.”

The video below shows the expanding gravitational wave structure that would be expected to result from such a merger:

If ground-based telescopes can pinpoint the radio and x-ray flash created by the mergers, future space telescopes — like ESA’s eLISA/NGO — can then be used to try and detect the waves.

Read more on the NASA Goddard new release here.

First animation credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/P. Cowperthwaite, Univ. of Maryland. Second animation: NASA/C. Henze.

 

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Antares Commercial Rocket Reaches New Atlantic Coast Launch Pad

Image Caption: Antares Rocket At Wallops Flight Facility Launch Pad. Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket at the launch pad at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. In a few months, Antares is scheduled to launch a cargo delivery demonstration mission to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Credit: NASA

At long last, Orbital Sciences Corporation has rolled their new commercially developed Antares medium class rocket to the nation’s newest spaceport – the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island,Va – and commenced on pad operations as of Monday, Oct 1.

The long awaited rollout marks a key milestone on the path to the maiden test flight of the Antares, planned to blast off before year’s end if all goes well.

This is a highly noteworthy event because Antares is the launcher for Orbital’s unmanned commercial Cygnus cargo spacecraft that NASA’s hopes will reestablish resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) lost with the shuttle’s shutdown.

“MARS has completed construction and testing operations on its launch complex at Wallops Island, the first all-new large-scale liquid-fuel launch site to be built in the U.S. in decades,” said David W. Thompson, Orbital’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

“Accordingly, our pad operations are commencing immediately in preparation for an important series of ground and flight tests of our Antares medium-class launch vehicle over the next few months. In fact, earlier today (Oct. 1), an Antares first stage test article was transported to the pad from its final assembly building about a mile away, marking the beginning of full pad operations.”

Antares 1st stage rocket erected at Launch Pad 0-A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: NASA

In about 4 to 6 weeks, Orbital plans to conduct a 30 second long hot fire test of the first stage, generating a total thrust of 680,000 lbs. If successful, a full up test flight of the 131 foot tall Antares with a Cygnus mass simulator bolted on top is planned for roughly a month later.

An ISS docking demonstration mission to the ISS would then occur early in 2013 which would be nearly identical in scope to the SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon demonstration flight successfully launched and accomplished in May 2012.

The first commercial resupply mission to the ISS by SpaceX (CRS-1) is now set to lift off on Oct. 7 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The 700,000 lb thrust Antares first stage is powered by a pair of Soviet era NK-33 engines built during the 1960 and 1970’s as part of Russia’s ill-fated N-1 manned moon program. The engines have since been upgraded and requalified by Aerojet Corp. and integrated into the Ukrainian built first stage rocket as AJ-26 engines.

Image Caption: Antares first stage arrives on the pad at NASA_Wallops on Oct. 1. First stage approaching adapter ring on the right. Credit: NASA

NASA awarded contracts to Orbital Sciences Corp and SpaceX in 2008 to develop unmanned commercial resupply systems with the goal of recreating an American capability to deliver cargo to the ISS which completely evaporated following the forced retirement of NASA’s Space Shuttle orbiters in 2011 with no follow on program ready to go.

“Today’s (Oct. 1) rollout of Orbital’s Antares test vehicle and the upcoming SpaceX mission are significant milestones in our effort to return space station resupply activities to the United States and insource the jobs associated with this important work,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Communications David Weaver. “NASA’s commercial space program is helping to ensure American companies launch our astronauts and their supplies from U.S. soil.”

The public will be invited to watch the Antares blastoff and there are a lot of locations for spectators to gather nearby for an up close and personal experience.

“Antares is the biggest rocket ever launched from Wallops,” NASA Wallops spokesman Keith Koehler told me. “The launches will definitely be publicized.”

Ken Kremer

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Year-Long Missions Could Be Added to Space Station Manifest

The International Space Station. Credit: NASA

UPDATE (10/5/12): It’s now official. NASA announced today that the international partners have announced an agreement to send two crew members to the International Space Station on a one-year mission designed to collect valuable scientific data needed to send humans to new destinations in the solar system.

The crew members, one American astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut, will launch and land in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and are scheduled to begin their voyage in spring 2015. (end of update)

Special crews on board the International Space Station will stay in space for year-long missions instead of the usual six-month expeditions, according to a report by the Russian news agency Ria Novosti.

“The principal decision has been made and we just have to coordinate the formalities,” Alexei Krasnov, the head of Roscosmos human space missions was quoted, saying that the international partners agreed to add the longer-duration missions at the International Astronautical Congress in Italy this week.

This confirms rumors from earlier this year, and pushes ahead the aspirations of Roscosmos to add longer missions to the ISS manifest.

The first yearlong mission will be “experimental” and could happen as early as 2015.

“Two members of the international crew, a Russian cosmonaut and a NASA astronaut will be picked to carry out this yearlong mission,” Krasnov said, adding that planning for the missions has already been underway.

“If the mission proves to be effective, we will discuss sending year-long missions to ISS on a permanent basis,” he said.

For years, the Russian Space Agency indicated that they wanted to do some extra-long-duration mission tests on the ISS, much like the Mars 500 mission that was done by ESA and Russia in 2010–2011 which took place on Earth and only simulated a 500-day mission to Mars.

Since NASA’s long-term plans now include human missions to Mars or asteroids, in April of this year, Universe Today asked NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, John Grunsfeld about the possibility of adding longer ISS missions in order to test out – in space — the physiological and psychological demands of a human Mars mission. At that time, Grunsfeld indicated longer missions wouldn’t be necessary to do such tests.

“A 500-day mission would have a six-month cruise to Mars and a six-month cruise back,” he said. “When we send a crew up to the ISS on the Soyuz, they spend six months in weightlessness and so we are already mimicking that experiment today.”

However, a year-long mission on the ISS certainly would provide a better rubric to test the longer-term effects of spaceflight and time away from Earth.

This, of course, won’t be the first year-long missions in space. Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent over 437 consecutive days in space on the Mir Space Station, from January 1994 to March 1995.

For the Mars 500 mission, six volunteers from Russia, Europe and China spent 520 days inside a capsule set up at a research institute in Moscow.

Sources: Ria Novosti, MSNBC

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Why is the Sky Dark at Night?

The Minute Physics folks have created another great video, this time explaining why the sky is dark at night. Although at first glance it seems like an easy question to answer, throw in Olbers’ Paradox (the light from an infinite amount of stars should make the night sky completely bright) and it really is quite a complicated matter. In fact, it takes the Minute Physics teams nearly four minutes to explain it all!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astrophoto: Spectacular 22-Degree Sun Halo Over Kuala Lumpur

A 22 degree Sun halo was seen in Kuala Lumpur on October 2, 2012. Credit: Shahrin Ahmad

Denizens of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia were treated to a stunning mid-day meteorological phenomenon today (October 2, 2012,) a Sun Halo. A ‘rainbow’ of sorts forms around the Sun (or the Moon, too) when the light is refracted by ice crystals from high cirrostratus clouds.

News reports said the spectacle began around 12.30pm local time, “a sight which drew gasps of wonder from office workers on their way to lunch.”

Shahrin Ahmad captured the beautiful view and sent it to Universe Today.

“This is among the cleanest view of the Halo I’ve seen so far, and created quite a buzz everywhere,” he said.

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.