This week, Torsten Zorn, MSL Tacticle Downlink Lead, provides an video update on the Curiosity rover’s activities. It’s been a week of firsts — flexing the rover’s robotic arm, zapping with its laser and giving the roving wheels their first workout. The video provides a great look at the rover’s landing site, named for author Ray Bradbury on the day that would have been his 92nd birthday.
Bradbury Landing in Stunning Color and 3-D
Bradbury Landing color panorama. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems. with image editing by James Canvin.
The image editing wizards at UnmannedSpaceflight are having a field day with all the sensational views being sent back by the Curiosity rover. Above is a beautiful color 360-degree panoramic view edited by James Canvin of the newly named “Bradbury Landing,” Curiosity’s landing place. The view of Aeolis Mons (Mount Sharp) is simply stunning, along with parts of (and shadows of) the rover itself. Click on the image to have access to larger views. James said he added the latest downloads from Curiosity in order to show the top of Aeolis Mons, and extended the sky to make the view complete.
See more views, below:
Aeolis Mons/Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/image editing by Stuart Atkinson
Here’s a view focusing on just Aeolis Mons by Stuart Atkinson at his wonderful Gale Gazette website, which highlights Curiosity’s latest explorations. He said he “boosted” the colors “just a bit, to bring out some detail.” Click on any of these images to see larger versions from Stu to see more detail — one could spend hours looking at the all the features! And presumably, the MSL science team is doing just that!
And there’s more detail from another image enhanced by Stu, a closeup of one part of the huge mountain in the center of Gale Crater, Curiosity’s ultimate destination for exploration:
The “Promised Land” at the base of Aeolis Mons. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/image editing by Stuart Atkinson
Just look at this intriguing area of mesas and buttes that Curiosity will one day, hopefully be able to explore!
A view of Curiosity and the first tracks left by this rover on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Now it’s time to grab your 3-D glasses to appreciate a the great view from Curiosity!
3-D view of Curiosity’s tracks. NASA/JPL-Caltech/image editing by Stuart Atkinson
3-D view of wheel tracks left by the Curiosity rover on Mars, as captured by the rover’s hazard avoidance cameras. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stuart Atkinson
Thanks to Stuart and James and all the UnmannedSpaceflight image editing wizards for providing us all a better appreciation of the location and views from Curiosity’s new science spot. We look forward to more images as they become available! You can see all the raw images straight from Curiosity here.
NASA Looking at Dozens of Advanced Technology Concepts
The Contour Crafting Simulation Plan for Lunar Settlement Infrastructure Build-Up, a NIAC-supported concept.
Rendering courtesy of Behnaz Farahi and Connor Wingfield
All the media focus surrounding the recent landing of NASA’S rover Curiosity has brought increased attention to space technology. Just in time to bask in the limelight, NASA has delivered a tech enthusiast’s dream in terms of astounding new concepts that have recently been funded. They range in scope from nanosatellite technology to the exploration under the ice of Europa.
NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts program announced on August 1st that it has funded 28 studies for the upcoming year. Eighteen of the studies are considered “Phase 1” projects, while ten are considered “Phase 2.”
Phase 1 projects are the new, innovative ideas that NASA received during its call for proposals. Some other conepts include an air purification system with no moving parts, and a system that could use in situ lunar regolith to autonomously build concrete structures on the Moon, as pictured above. Each of the winning proposals, from a pool of hundreds, will receive $100,000 to pursue the idea further. Each team will report back to NIAC at the end of the year with a report on their progress toward the goals of the project that were laid out in the proposal.
Phase 2 projects are pulled from the successful proposals from last year that reapplied for another grant. These projects have already made it through their Phase 1 development and will receive $500,000 for continuing research into the concept. These projects include such technologies as fusion-driven rockets and printable space-craft, and could move on to commercial or mission development if they successfully complete their Phase 2 goals. Other parts of NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist will help support those goals, as the NIAC only supports project up through the completion of Phase 2.
The NIAC ties nicely into NASA’s new focus on the commercial side of space flight. Many of the concepts funded by the program could serve as the basis for viable commercial businesses, such as asteroid mining and robotic construction. But most importantly, NASA is still funding the risky, game-changing projects that could drastically transform the way people live their every-day lives. Tech enthusiasts everywhere should be happy with that concept.
You can see here for a list of the proposals. We’ll try to feature some of these in future articles.
JPL’s Adam Steltzner Narrates Curiosity’s Landing Choreography
This video provides a step-by-step explanation of the choreography needed to land NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. It starts with a computer simulation from NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System program and uses actual images from Curiosity’s Mars Descent Imager. It ends with a high-resolution color image from Curiosity’s Mast Camera. Entry, Descent and Landing team leader Adam Steltzner provides the play-by-play commentary.
Hubble’s Hidden Treasures Unveiled
A quick check of Hubble’s gallery shows just 1,300 images; however more than raw 700,000 images reside in a vast archive with hundreds of potentially jaw-dropping astronomical scenes just waiting to be uncovered. That was the idea behind the European Space Agency’s international contest called Hubble’s Hidden Treasures. And now with the hard work of amateur astronomers and more than 3,000 submissions, some of Hubble’s incredible celestial treasures are revealed.
“The response was impressive, with almost 3000 submissions,” the ESA said in a press release. “More than a thousand of these images were fully processed: a difficult and time-consuming task. We’ve already started featuring the best of these in our Hubble Picture of the Week series.”
The top 10 images selected in the Hubble Hidden Treasures basic imaging category. Top row: NGC 6300 by Brian Campbell, V* PV Cephei by Alexey Romashin, IRAS 14568-6304 by Luca Limatola, NGC 1579 by Kathlyn Smith, B 1608+656 by Adam Kill Bottom row: NGC 4490 by Kathy van Pelt, NGC 6153 by Ralf Schoofs, NGC 6153 by Matej Novak, NGC 7814 by Gavrila Alexandru, NGC 7026 by Linda Morgan-O’Connor
Credit: NASA & ESA
Judges ranked images from two categories, an image processing category and basic image searching category. Judges sifted through 1189 entries in the image processing category; a painstaking process of finding promising data and creating an attractive image using professional imaging software. But even if contestants didn’t have the technical know-how to create large mosaics and combine color filters, they could find stunning images in the Hubble archive using using simple online tools. The ESA received more than 1600 entries in this category.
“Every week, we search the archive for hidden treasures, process the scientific data into attractive images and publish them as the Hubble Picture of the Week,” says the ESA on their Hidden Treasures website. “But the archive is so vast that nobody really knows the full extent of what Hubble has observed.”
Josh Lake of the United States won with this awesome image of NGC 1763, part of the N11 star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
First place in the processed category, which asked contestants to find promising data within the archive and process that scene into an attractive image, went to Josh Lake, from the United States. The image, which won the public vote, narrowly edged out other images. Lake produced a bold two-color image that is not in natural colors but contrasts light from glowing hydrogen and nitrogen. In natural colors, the two glowing gasses produce almost indistinguishable shades of red. Lake’s image separates them out into red and blue offering a dramatic view of the structure.
Messier 77 produced by Andre van der Hoeven, of the Netherlands came in a close second.
Andre van der Hoeven of the Netherlands came in a close second. The jury noted the impressive nature of Messier 77 in the image as well as the processing which combines several datasets from separate instruments to create the amazing image.
“This was my hardest job until now,” van der Hoeven says on the Flickr page. “Combining the different datasets to get equal colors was really hard. M77 was not fully covered by one dataset, so I had to combine channels of the WFPC2 with different wavelengths and tune the colors to get them to fit. But the result is in my opinion quite astonishing.”
We are as surprised as him that this image had not been released before.
Judy Schmidt of the United States entered this image of XZ Tauri, a new star lighting up a nearby cloud of gas and dust. She entered several images into the contest.
Third place went to an interesting image of XZ Tauri, a newborn star spraying gas into its surroundings as well as lighting up a nearby cloud of gas. The panel said it was a challenging dataset to process because Hubble captured only two colors in the region. “Nevertheless, the end result is an attractive image, and an unusual object that we would never have found without her help,” the panel said.
Revealing the challenge of many Hubble mosaics, the jury was impressed with the technical achievement Renaud Houdinet showed in putting together this ambitious view. He called this “The Great Mosaic Disaster in Chamaeleon. “Sometimes, things don’t turn out as they ought,” Houdinet admits on the Flickr description. Chamaeleon 1 is a large nebula near the south celestial pole and was not covered in one single Hubble image.
Robert Gendler took fifth place with an image of spiral galaxy Messier 96. You may know Gendler’s work as his version of Hubble’s image of NGC 3190 is the default image on the desktop of new Apple computers.
Top image caption: Top ten images selected in the Hubble Hidden Treasures image processing competition. Top row: NGC 1763 by Josh Lake, M 77 by Andre van der Hoeven, XZ Tauri by Judy Schmidt, Chamaeleon I by Renaud Houdinet, M 96 by Robert Gendler. Bottom row: SNR 0519-69 by Claude Cornen, PK 111-2.1 by Josh Barrington, NGC 1501 by kyokugaisha1, Abell 68 by Nick Rose, IC 10 by Nikolaus Sulzenauer. Credit: NASA & ESA
Links:
- Hubble’s Hidden Treasures
- Hidden Treasures image processing Flickr group
- Hidden Treasures basic imaging Flickr group
About the Author: John Williams is owner of TerraZoom, a Colorado-based web development shop specializing in web mapping and online image zooms. He also writes the award-winning blog, StarryCritters, an interactive site devoted to looking at images from NASA’s Great Observatories and other sources in a different way. A former contributing editor for Final Frontier, his work has appeared in the Planetary Society Blog, Air & Space Smithsonian, Astronomy, Earth, MX Developer’s Journal, The Kansas City Star and many other newspapers and magazines.
Multiple Dinosaur Tracks Confirmed at NASA Center
Fossilized nodosaur footprints discovered at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. (NASA/GSFC/Rebecca Roth)
At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, where some of the world’s most advanced research in space technology is being performed on a daily basis, paleontologists have discovered ancient evidence of dinosaurs on the Center’s wooded campus — at least two, possibly a mother and child, crossed that way between 112 and 110 million years ago and left their muddy footprints as proof.
The tracks of two nodosaurs — short, stocky and heavily-armored herbivorous dinosaurs — have been confirmed by dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford and USGS emeritus paleontologist Dr. Robert Weems. The second track is a smaller version of the first.
The first, larger footprint was announced by Stanford on August 17. When Dr. Weems was called in to verify, the smaller print was discovered within the first, evidence that they were made around the same time and leading researchers to suggest it may have been a mother-and-child pair.
Dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford describes the cretaceous-era nodosaur track he found on the Goddard Space Flight Center campus with Dr. Robert Weems, emeritus paleontologist for the USGS who verified his discovery. (NASA/GSFC/Rebecca Roth)
“It looks to be a manus (front foot) print of a much smaller dinosaur than the first one, but it looks to be the same type,” Weems said of the second track. “If the one that came through was a female, it may have had one or more young ones following along. If you’ve seen a dog or cat walking with its young, they kind of sniff around and may not go in the same direction, but they end up in the same place.”
It’s thought that the nodosaurs were moving quickly since the tracks don’t show strong imprints of the animals’ heels. Still, the ruddy Cretaceous-era mud preserved their brief passage well — even as millions of years went by.
“This was a large, armored dinosaur,” Stanford said. “Think of it as a four-footed tank. It was quite heavy, there’s a quite a ridge or push-up here. Subsequently the sand was bound together by iron-oxide or hematite, so it gave us a nice preservation, almost like concrete.”
The next steps will be to have the site analyzed to determine whether further excavation is called for, and possibly to extract and preserve the existing footprints.
“Space scientists may walk along here, and they’re walking exactly where this big, bungling heavy armored dinosaur walked, maybe 110 to 112 million years ago.”
– Ray Stanford
Read more on the GSFC site here.
Reminder: Help Uwingu Begin a New Way to Fund Space Exploration
A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Uwingu, a creative, out-of-the-box concept to help solve what appears to be a growing problem for researchers, scientists, educators and students: how to get funding for research and other ground-breaking space exploration and astronomy projects. Why are a group of individuals from the space and astronomy community taking matters into their own hands to do this?
Alan Stern one of the founders of Uwingu, and the Principal Investigator for the New Horizons mission to Pluto, explained it quite well in today’s episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy.
“Well, it seems almost every year we have budget problems,” he said. “This year the planetary budget got cut 20%. Just last week a report came out cutting the National Science Foundation astronomy facilities, recommending those cuts. And every year it’s the economy or it’s an overrun with NASA, or it’s the President’s budget, or it’s something that happens in Congress. And in space research, in space education, unlike, for example, medical research or if you’re a weather researcher or many other fields, there really aren’t very many places to turn when NASA’s budget is cut or the NSF budget’s cut. That’s about it in terms of the funding portfolio. We like to say, you know, if you only own one stock, you probably deserve what you get when it goes down. We’re out to try and diversify that portfolio a little bit.”
UPDATE: Uwingu now has their own website!
The Uwingu team — and by the way, Uwingu means ‘sky’ in Swahili — has put out a new video about their project, and in doing so, reveal a little more about how they plan to create a new funding method. For two years, they’ve been designing and building software products that will be sold, and the proceeds will create the Uwingu Fund for space research, exploration and education.
Pamela Gay described their ideas as “so elegant that I can’t believe they haven’t already been done.”
Uwingu needs to raise about $75,000 to get their concept off the ground, and after that should be self-supporting, as well as supporting an impressive amount of other researchers every year.
So if you haven’t yet checked out Uwingu, here’s a little reminder to do so. Just head to their Indiegogo page and see what you think.
Telescope Review: Optics Planet Celestron Powerseeker 80EQ Refractor Telescope
Did you ever have a T-shirt that you really enjoyed and wore until you wore it out? How about a favorite pair of slippers? You know, the ones with the duct tape soles? Then I think you’re going to feel the same way about this telescope. It’s darn near the perfect combination of power, portability and price. Just right for casual observing… Be it on a rooftop or from your suburban yard. What makes it even more attractive is its ability to track its subject matter!
What’s new on the Tammy-testing homefront? This time it’s an Optics Planet Celestron PowerSeeker 80EQ refractor telescope. With 80mm of aperture and a 900mm focal length, it is not a small tube. It is elegant in both lines and size and does not appear “spindly”. Unlike most small aperture refractors which favor the alt/az, it comes with a light weight equatorial mount with a delightful addition – a drive unit. This means this special edition PowerSeeker 80EQ is going to make your time with lunar and planetary studies much more pleasant, and make higher magnification much more user-friendly.
Assembly is quite easy and fairly intuitive if you are familiar with telescopes and equatorial mounts. One thing you will very much enjoy is how easy it is to handle – a manageable 19 lbs. (8.62 kg) total weight. This means it is light enough to be set up complete and ready to be set outside the door at a moment’s notice. (This is something that I very much enjoy and approve of in a telescope. While I find large aperture to be breathtaking and I demand it for serious study, I also want a telescope that’s on hand for a quick look at the Moon or a joyous half hour with a planet.) While a light weight mount is super, don’t forget you’re making a trade-off. It’s not going to support heavy camera equipment and it’s not going to take a lot of abuse, such as overtightening or stressing gears through imbalance. However, it is quite capable of adding on certain types of imaging equipment, such as a webcam or eyepiece camera, or piggybacking a smaller camera on the mounting rings.
Next up? The view. As always, Celestron comes through with quality optics. At 80mm you’re not going to be getting Hubble images, but bright objects are crisp and clean. The views of Saturn and Mars were quite satisfactory and thanks to the included drive unit, the Celestron Powerseeker 80EQ delivered a whisper of the Cassini division and the neat little apparition of Titan swinging around the outside. Even Mars was capable of showing some dark patches when the atmosphere held still! Unfortunately, there wasn’t any Moon at the time, but I was very pleased with the color correction on beautiful double stars such as Cor Caroli and Albireo. Even Collinder 399 – the “Coat Hanger” showed pleasing red hints! Again, I was very appreciative of the drive unit when trying to split Epsilon Lyrae. With smaller aperture, the f/11 focal ratio could handle it – but again, needed the moment of perfect steadiness to say it was a clean split. No offense, but both the included 3X barlow and 4mm eyepiece are simply too much magnification for this scope to handle. (But a nice 10mm Plossl sure fills the bill!)
As for the scope itself, you’ll find it feels very “healthy”. The focuser isn’t a Feathertouch, but it has a nice feel to it… positive and it doesn’t slop around with a heavier eyepiece in it. The included 5×24 finderscope might seem a little small to most observers, but I liked it for two reasons – it’s an optical finderscope (not one of them (&^^#%! red dots) and it’s appropriately sized to what the scope can achieve. It’s just enough to pick off fainter “star hop” marker stars and give a hint of brighter objects. The included 1.25″ diagonal is also quite satisfactory and the 20mm eyepiece is the perfect workhorse for the majority of observations. You would be impressed with the crisp quality of the views of the Double Cluster, the ethereal Wild Ducks and the slightly pincushion look of M2.
Next up? Try kicking in better eyepieces and you’ll surprise yourself. Without getting brand specific, a higher dollar Plossl and a high magnification ED. Surprise, surprise! Here again, Celestron telescopes show their optical quality as the view did improve. After having become so accustomed to fast telescopes, it was a real pleasure to work with a longer focal ratio and see just how far I could push it. The Celestron Powerseeker 80 is definately deserving of higher quality eyepieces and a diagonal. All in all, this is an inexpensive telescope that is well made and, with care, should last through years of observing. You some day may end up with a little duct tape here and there…
But it’s got soul.
My thanks go to Optics Planet for their generous donation of the Celestron Powerseeker 80EQ to our annual star party / fundraiser at Warren Rupp Observatory.
SpaceX’s Next Cargo Run to Space Station in October
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SpaceX is scheduled to launch the first of its 12 contracted cargo flights to the International Space Station in October, 2012. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced Thursday at Kennedy Space Center that SpaceX is now fully certified to ferry cargo to the space station. While the company’s Dragon capsule did bring cargo to the ISS during its initial flight in May, that was considered just a test flight. Now comes a series of ‘real’ cargo runs.
Bolden also announced some other commercial milestones under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services Program that “progress toward a launch of astronauts from U.S. soil in the next 5 years,” he said.
“We’re working to open a new frontier for commercial opportunities in space and create job opportunities right here in Florida and across the United States,” Bolden said. “And we’re working to in-source the work that is currently being done elsewhere and bring it right back here to the U.S. where it belongs.”
Bolden also announced NASA partner Sierra Nevada Corp. has conducted its first milestone under the agency’s recently announced Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative. The milestone, a program implementation plan review, marks an important first step in Sierra Nevada’s efforts to develop a crew transportation system with its Dream Chaser spacecraft.
CCiCap is an initiative of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) and an Obama administration priority. The objective of the CCP is to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective access to and from the space station and low Earth orbit. After the capability is matured, it is expected to be available to the government and other customers. NASA could contract to purchase commercial services to meet its station crew transportation needs later this decade.
What Are The Radiation Belts?
NASA’s twin Radiation Belt Storm Probe (RBSP) satellites, scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Friday, August 24* at 4:08 a.m. ET, will enter into an eccentric orbit around our planet, repeatedly passing through both of the Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth like enormous high-intensity particle filled inner tubes. The plasma contained within these belts can affect satellites, spacecraft and communication here on Earth, and are affected in turn by outbursts of solar energy from the Sun — especially during periods of solar maximum. But how do these invisible yet powerful radiation belts actually work, and how will two six-foot-wide satellites help us learn more about them? Watch the video.
(And then read more here.)
Video: NASA
*UPDATE: After several delays due to weather and technical issues, the RBSP mission successfully launched on Thursday, August 30.