Posted on by Ken Kremer

Flawlessly On Course Curiosity Cruising to Mars – No Burn Needed Now

Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory Spacecraft During Cruise. Artist's concept of Curipsity during its cruise phase between launch on Nov. 26, 2011 and final approach to Mars in August 2012. The spacecraft includes a disc-shaped solar powered cruise stage (on the left) attached to the aeroshell (right). Curiosity and the descent stage are tucked inside the aeroshell. Along the way to Mars, the cruise stage will perform several trajectory correction maneuvers to adjust the spacecraft's path toward its final, precise landing site on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Curiosity’s interplanetary injection was spot on ! – following her Nov. 26 blastoff aboard the 2 million pound thrust Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

For a birds-eye view of where it all started, watch the cool close-up launch video, below taken from within the Atlas pad security fence.

Indeed the launch precision was so good that mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadsena, Calif., have announced they postponed the first of six planned course correction burns for the agency’s newest Mars rover by at least a month. The firing had been planned for some two weeks after liftoff.

Curiosity is merrily sailing on a 254 day and 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) interplanetary flight from the Earth to Mars that will culminate on August 6, 2012 with a dramatic first-of-its-kind precision rocket powered touchdown inside Gale Crater.

“This was among the most accurate interplanetary injections ever,” said Louis D’Amario of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is the mission design and navigation manager for the Mars Science Laboratory.

Video Caption: View from inside the Pad 41 Security Fence at Cape Canaveral. Shot by a Canon 7D still camera during the launch of the Atlas V rocket carrying the MSL Curiosity rover to Mars. Thanks to a sound trigger my camera started firing at three frames per second from just after main engine ignition up until the exhaust plume finally envelops the camera and deadens all sound around it. The frames have been slowed down quite a bit for dramatic effect. Enjoy seeing what it is like for us media personnel who set out our remote cameras for launches at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: Chase Clark/shuttlephotos.com

As of midday Friday, Dec. 2, the spacecraft had already traveled 10.8 million miles (17.3 million kilometers) and is moving at 7,500 mph (12,000 kilometers per hour) relative to Earth and at 73,800 mph (118,700 kilometers per hour) relative to the sun.

An interesting fact is that engineers deliberately planned the spacecraft’s initial trajectory to miss Mars by about 35,000 miles (56,400 kilometers) so that the Centaur upper stage does not hit Mars by accident. Both Centaur and Curiosity are currently following the same trajectory through the vast void of space and the actual trajectory puts them on course to miss Mars by about 38,000 miles (61,200 kilometers).

The Centaur has not been thoroughly cleaned of earthly microbes in the same way as Curiosity – and therefore cannot be permitted to impact the Martian surface and potentially contaminate the very studies Curiosity seeks to carry out in searching for the “Signs of Life”.

For the 8.5 month voyage to Mars, Curiosity and the rocket powered descent stage are tucked inside an aeroshell and are attached to the huge solar powered cruise stage.

Deceleration of Mars Science Laboratory in Martian Atmosphere
Artist's Concept depicts the interaction of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft with the upper atmosphere of Mars during the entry, descent and landing (EDL) of the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface. EDL begins when the spacecraft reaches the top of Martian atmosphere, about 81 miles (131 kilometers) above the surface of the Gale crater landing area, and ends with the rover safe and sound on the surface of Mars some 7 minutes later. During EDL, the spacecraft decelerates from a velocity of about 13,200 miles per hour (5,900 meters per second) at the top of the atmosphere, to stationary on the surface. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The cruise stage is rotating at 2.05 rounds per minutes and is continuously generating electric power – currently about 800 watts – from the gleaming solar arrays. It also houses eight miniature hydrazine fueled thrusters. The propellant is stored inside titanium tanks.

Atlas V rocket and Curiosity Mars rover poised at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida prior to Nov. 26, 2011 liftoff. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

The historic voyage of the largest and most sophisticated Martian rover ever built by humans seeks to determine if Mars ever offered conditions favorable for the genesis of microbial life.

Curiosity is packed to the gills with 10 state of the art science instruments that are seeking to detect the signs of life in the form of organic molecules – the carbon based building blocks of life as we know it.

The car sized robot is equipped with a drill and scoop at the end of its 7 ft long robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into two distinct analytical laboratory instruments inside the rover.

Complete Coverage of Curiosity – NASA’s Next Mars Rover launched 26 Nov. 2011
Read continuing features about Curiosity by Ken Kremer starting here:
NASA Planetary Science Trio Honored as ‘Best of What’s New’ in 2011- Curiosity/Dawn/MESSENGER
Curiosity Mars Rover Launch Gallery – Photos and Videos
Curiosity Majestically Blasts off on ‘Mars Trek’ to ascertain ‘Are We Alone?
Mars Trek – Curiosity Poised to Search for Signs of Life
Curiosity Rover ‘Locked and Loaded’ for Quantum Leap in Pursuit of Martian Microbial Life
Science Rich Gale Crater and NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover in Glorious 3-D – Touchdown in a Habitable Zone
Curiosity Powered Up for Martian Voyage on Nov. 26 – Exclusive Message from Chief Engineer Rob Manning
NASA’s Curiosity Set to Search for Signs of Martian Life
Curiosity Rover Bolted to Atlas Rocket – In Search of Martian Microbial Habitats
Closing the Clamshell on a Martian Curiosity
Curiosity Buttoned Up for Martian Voyage in Search of Life’s Ingredients
Assembling Curiosity’s Rocket to Mars
Encapsulating Curiosity for Martian Flight Test
Dramatic New NASA Animation Depicts Next Mars Rover in Action

Posted on by Steve Nerlich

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Could Dark Matter Not Matter?

The rotation curve of the Andromeda Galaxy - actual (white line) and rotational velocities of outer stars that would be expected based on the estimated mass of visible matter in the galaxy. From this we conclude up to 90% of the mass must be in the form of dark matter.

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You probably want to put on your skeptical goggles and set them to maximum for this one. An Italian mathematician has come up with some complex formulae that can, with remarkable similarity, mimic the rotation curves of spiral galaxies without the need for dark matter.

Currently, these galactic rotation curves represent key evidence for the existence of dark matter – since the outer stars of spinning galaxies often move around a galactic disk so fast that they should fly off into intergalactic space – unless there is an additional ‘invisible’ mass present in the galaxy to gravitationally hold them in their orbits.

The issue can be appreciated by considering the Keplerian motion of the planets in our Solar System. Mercury orbits the Sun at an orbital velocity of 48 kilometers a second – while Neptune orbits the Sun at an orbital velocity of 5 kilometers a second. In the Solar System, a planet’s proximity to the substantial mass of the Sun is a function of its orbital velocity. So, hypothetically, if the Sun’s mass was reduced somehow, Neptune’s existing orbital velocity would move it outwards from its current orbit – potentially flinging it off into interstellar space if the change was significant enough.

The physics of the Milky Way Galaxy is different from the Solar System, since its mass is distributed more evenly across the galactic disk, rather than 99% of its mass being concentrated centrally – the way it is in the Solar System.

Nonetheless, as this past Universe Today article explains, if we assume a similar relationship between the cumulative mass of the Milky Way and the orbital velocity of its outer stars, we must acknowledge that the visible objects within the Milky Way only have 10-20% of the mass that is required to contain the orbital velocity of stars in its outer disk. So we conclude that the rest of that galactic mass must be dark (invisible) matter.

This is the contemporary consensus view of how galaxies work – and a key component of the current standard model of the cosmology of the universe. But Carati has come along with a seemingly implausible idea that the rotational curves of spiral galaxies could be explained by the gravitational influence of faraway matter, without needing to appeal to dark matter at all.

Left image: the rotation curve of spiral galaxy NGC 3198 showing the actual velocities of its outer stars (plotted points), then the velocities that would be expected given the mass of visible matter in its disk - overlaid by the assumed contribution of the mass of a dark matter halo. Right image: Carati's theoretical curve calculated from the effect of faraway matter and its remarkable fit to observed values from NGC 3198.

Conceptually the idea makes little sense. Positioning gravitationally significant mass outside of the orbit of stars might draw them out into wider orbits, but it’s difficult to see why this would add to their orbital velocity. Drawing an object into a wider orbit should result in it taking longer to orbit the galaxy since it will have more circumference to cover. What we generally see in spiral galaxies is that the outer stars orbit the galaxy within much the same time period as more inward stars.

But although the proposed mechanism seems a little implausible, what is remarkable about Carati’s claim is that the math apparently deliver galactic rotation curves that closely fit the observed values of at least four known galaxies. Indeed, the math delivers an extraordinarily close fit.

With skeptical goggles firmly in place, the following conclusions might be drawn from this finding:
• There are so many galaxies out there that it’s not hard to find four galaxies that fit the math;
• The math has been retro-fitted to match already observed data;
• The math just doesn’t work; or
• While the author’s interpretation of the data may be up for discussion, the math really does work.

The math draws on principles established in the Einstein field equations, which is problematic as the field equations are based on the cosmological principle, which assumes that the effect of faraway matter is negligible – or at least that it evens out at a large scale.

Perplexingly, Carati’s paper also notes two further examples where the math can also fit galaxies with declining rotational velocities in their outer stars. This is achieved by switching the sign of one of the formulae components (which can be + or -). Thus, on the one hand the effect of faraway matter is to induce a positive pressure that contains the rapid rotation of stars, preventing them from flying off – and on the other hand, it can induce a negative pressure to encourage an atypical decay in a galaxy’s rotation curve.

As the saying goes, if something seems too good to be true – it probably isn’t true. All comments welcome.

Further reading:
Carati Gravitational effects of the faraway matter on the rotation curves of spiral galaxies.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Any Graphics Folks Able to Fix the UT Header?

Hi readers, I scraped together that terrible header image with my terrible photoshop skills and hate it more and more every day. The logo is pixelated, the font is cruddy, the background nebula thingy is blurry.

Does anyone want to take a crack at making something better?

I’ve got a nice high-res version of the logo available here. Thanks to Sam Cashion for cleaning it up.

The header needs to be 1060 pixels wide, and approximately 100 pixels tall. Just email me at [email protected] and I’ll post different versions to see how they fit on the blog.

Thanks!

Update: Thanks to everyone sending in new designs, I’m going to start trying them on for size. 🙂

Posted on by Jon Voisey

NSV 11749 – Born Again and Grown Old

Not a black dwarf ... yet (white dwarf Sirius B)

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In 1996, a Japanese amateur astronomer discovered a new star in the constellation Sagittarius. Dubbed V4334 Sgr, astronomers initially expected it to be a typical novae, but closer examination revealed it to be a previously predicted but unseen event known as a “Very Late Thermal Pulse” (VLTP), the last hurrah of a white dwarf as hydrogen from the exterior of the star is carried to lower depths where one last gasp of fusion occurs. Astronomers then identified a second star, V605 Aql, that had been caught undergoing a VLTP in 1919. Recently, astronomers from the National University of La Plata, in Argentina, have claimed to have uncovered a third star undergoing this rare event.

It has been estimated that roughly one star every year ends its main sequence life and heads down the path of making a planetary nebula. Many of them won’t become convective white dwarfs that could turn into stars that should undergo a VLTP, but conservative estimates suggest that roughly 10% should. At such a rate, there should be roughly one star every decade that undergoes this phase. Since the stars have already shed their outer layers, the rejuvenated fusion is not diminished by them, and these stars shine exceptionally brightly making them detectable through most of the galaxy. Yet prior to this new identification, only two have been discovered which suggests that many objects historically identified as novae may truly have been stars similar to V4334 Sgr and V605 Aql.

In 2005, David Williams, a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, gathered images from the Harvard College Astronomical Plate collection. This massive collection of over 500,000 photographic plates, was the result of an early and long running survey that photographed great portions of the sky repeatedly from 1885 until 1993. This collection allowed him to reconstruct the changes in brightness the star NSV 11749 underwent during its outburst.

The star first became visible on the photographic plates in 1899. It peaked in brightness in 1903 and remained at that brightness for several years, until 1907 when it began to fade away again. The amount of time it took to brighten as well as the total change in brightness were similar to the previously identified VLTP stars. Over the 15 years since it first became detectable, it disappeared from images several times, another feature seen in V4334 Sgr and V605 Aql. The sudden disappearance has been explained by ejections of carbon from the star which cools and forms small dust grains which are effective at blocking light in the visible portion of the spectrum until they disperse.

However, two key differences stands out: The overall time before the NSV 11749 faded was roughly twice as long as for V605 Aql and V4335 Aql. The authors suggest that this may be due to a different mass of the white dwarf behind the outbursts. If the two previously identified VLTP stars were close in mass, they would likely have similar properties, while NSV 11749 could potentially have a different mass. The second discrepancy was the presence of a young planetary nebula. In both of the previously identified cases, the stars were the center of nebulae, but infrared images of the star did not reveal any nebula or remaining dust from the previous outburst. Authors again attribute this to a different evolutionary timescale due to the star’s potentially different mass.

While this tentative new classification is hardly conclusive, it is a reminder that astronomers have only just begun to understand this phase of stellar evolution and there is a great need for further examples to help refine models. The evolution of V4334 Sgr moved roughly 100 times faster than simulations had predicted, prompting revisions to the models. Certainly, similar changes will be necessary as more VLTP stars are discovered. This era of a star’s life is important to astronomers because the light obscuring carbon ejection is expected to be a major source of this important element.

Posted on by Jason Major

NASA’s Pluto Probe Marks a New Milestone

Artist's impression of New Horizons' encounter with Pluto and Charon. Credit: NASA/Thierry Lombry

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It may not have noticed anything different as it continued its high-speed trek through interplanetary space, but today New Horizons passed a new milestone: it is now (and will be for quite some time) the closest spacecraft ever to Pluto!

This breaks the previous record held by Voyager 1, which came within 983 million miles (1.58 billion km) of the dwarf planet on January 29, 1986.

New Horizons has been traveling through the solar system since its launch on January 19, 2006 and is now speeding toward Pluto at around 34,500 mph (55,500 km/hr). It has thus far traveled for 2,143 days and is just over halfway to the distant icy world.

“Although we’re still a long way — 1.5 billion kilometers from Pluto — we’re now in new territory as the closest any spacecraft has ever gotten to Pluto, and getting closer every day by over a million kilometers.”

– Alan Stern, New Horizons Principal Investigator

A gravity boost obtained by a close pass of Jupiter in 2007 gave the spacecraft the extra speed needed to make it to Pluto by 2015. (Without that, it wouldn’t have been reaching Pluto until 2036!)

Achievements like this are wonderful indicators that New Horizons is alive and well and that its historic goal is getting increasingly closer every day.

Diagram of the Pluto-Charon encounter in July 2015 (NASA/APL)

“We’ve come a long way across the solar system,” said Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). “When we launched it seemed like our 10-year journey would take forever, but those years have been passing us quickly. We’re almost six years in flight, and it’s just about three years until our encounter begins.”

See answers to some FAQs about Pluto

New Horizons will pass by Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015, becoming the first spacecraft ever to visit the distant system. It will image Pluto’s surface in unprecedented detail, resolving features as small as 200 feet (60 meters) across.

New Horizons will not land or enter orbit around Pluto but instead quickly pass by and continue on into the Kuiper Belt, where even more distant frozen worlds await. The New Horizons team is currently investigating further exploration targets should its mission be extended.

 Read more on the New Horizons mission site.

The New Horizons mission timeline (click to enlarge). Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

 

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Mars Express Reveals Possible Martian Glaciers

Phlegra Montes is a range of gently curving mountains and ridges on Mars. They extend from the northeastern portion of the Elysium volcanic province to the northern lowlands. The High-Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express collected the data for these images on 1 June 2011 during orbit 9465. This perspective view has been calculated from the Digital Terrain Model derived from the stereo channels. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

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When it comes to exploring Mars, one of the greatest needs future astronauts will face is water. Why? Simple enough. Transporting water would take a huge amount of fuel. Now the Mars Express has imaged an area on the red planet which may yield large quantities of sub-surface ice. Its name is Phlegra Montes…

Extending from the northeastern portion of the Elysium volcanic province to the northern lowlands, spanning latitudes from roughly 30°N to 50°N, the Phlegra Montes are a gently rolling series of hills that have been probed by radar. It is surmised these low mountain ranges are not volcanic in origin, but created through tectonic forces and may conceal a copious supply of frozen water.

Thanks to high resolution stereo imaging from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, we’re able to detect a feature called ‘lobate debris aprons’. They appear to surround almost every mountain in the Phelegra’s and it’s a normal feature for mountains found around these latitudes. Earlier studies of the debris aprons show the material has slid down the mountain slopes with time – a feature shared with Earth’s glaciers. Because of this similarity, scientists surmise this region may be a type of Martian glacier. It’s a guess that’s also been confirmed by radar on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Phlegra Montes is a range of gently curving mountains and ridges on Mars. Flow patterns attributable to water are widely visible across the image. Linear flow patterns can be seen inside the valley (Box 1). Nearly every mountain is surrounded by an apron of rocky debris (Box 2). Over time, this debris appears to have moved down the mountainside and looks similar to the debris found covering glaciers here on Earth. Lobe-shaped structures seen inside impact craters in the region (Box 3) are known as concentric crater fill and are perhaps another indication of subsurface water ice. The High-Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express collected the data for these images on 1 June 2011 during orbit 9465. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

According to the radar data, the lobate debris aprons could indeed signal the presence of ice – perhaps only 20 meters below the surface. To further confirm their findings, nearby impact craters also show signs of recent glaciation. It would appear that ridges formed inside these ancient holes from snowfall, and then slid down the slopes. With time, it compacted to form a glacier structure… and even more glacier flow patterns are visible in the valleys.

How did this come to be? A one time, Mars’ polar axis was quite different than it is today. As it changed, it created different climatic conditions and mid-latitude glaciers may have developed at different times over the last several hundred million years. While you might be tired of hearing about water on Mars, the findings are very exciting for the future of exploration. It means the door is open…

And one day we just might go through it!

Original Story Source: ESA News.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astrophotographers Capture Phobos-Grunt; ESA Ends Tracking the Russian Probe

Phobos-Grunt image taken from ground, on Nov. 29, 2011 by amateur astronomer Ralf Vandebergh from The Netherlands.

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While amateur astrophotographers have been tracking the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft in its orbit around Earth, ESA has decided to curtail operations to try to make further contact with the ailing craft. “Efforts in the past week to send commands to and receive data from the Russian Mars mission via ESA ground stations have not succeeded; no response has been seen from the satellite,” ESA reported in a press release. They made this decisionafter consultation with mission managers in Russia, but teams will remain available to assist if there is any change in the situation.

ESA teams from a tracking station at Perth, Australia had established contact with the Russian spacecraft on November 22 which was the first signal received on Earth since the mission to Mars’ moon was launched on November 8, 2011. Since then, however, weren’t able to maintain contact.

Above, Ralf Vandebergh from the The Netherlands has imaged the spacecraft in orbit and this graphic compares the images to the components on pictures of the spacecraft.

Below, and a video from another astrophotographer in The Netherlands tracks the spacecraft during a night pass, and another image from Vandebergh shows color differences between the solar panels and the main body,

Marco Langbroek captured this footage from near Leiden, The Netherlands on Nov. 28, 2011. See more at his website.

Noticable color differences between the main body and solar panels of Phobos-Grunt. Credit: Ralf Vandebergh
Posted on by Ray Sanders

Astronomers Discover Ancient ‘Ultra-Red’ Galaxies

This artist's conception portrays four extremely red galaxies that lie almost 13 billion light-years from Earth. Discovered using the Spitzer Space Telescope, these galaxies appear to be physically associated and may be interacting. One galaxy shows signs of an active galactic nucleus, shown here as twin jets streaming out from a central black hole. Image Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

[/caption]A team of astronomers, led by Jiasheng Huang (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) using the Spitzer Space Telescope, have discovered four ‘Ultra-Red’ galaxies that formed when our Universe was about a billion years old. Huang and his team used several computer models in an attempt to understand why these galaxies appear so red, stating, “We’ve had to go to extremes to get the models to match our observations.”

The results of Huang’s research were recently published in The Astrophysical Journal

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope helped make the discovery possible, as it is more sensitive to infrared light than other space telescopes such as the Hubble. The newly discovered galaxies are sixty times brighter in the infrared than they are at the longest/reddest wavelengths HST can detect.

What processes are at work to create these extremely red objects, and why are they of interest to astronomers?

There are several reasons a galaxy could be reddened. For starters, extremely distant galaxies can have their light “redshifted” due to the expansion of the universe. If a galaxy contains large amounts of dust, it will also appear redder than a galaxy with less dust. Lastly, older galaxies will tend to be redder, due to a higher concentration of old, red stars and less younger bluer stars.

According to the paper, Huang and his team created three models to determine why these galaxies appear so red. Of their models, the one which suggests an old stellar population is currently the best fit to the observations. Supporting this conclusion, co-author Giovanni Fazio stated, “Hubble has shown us some of the first protogalaxies that formed, but nothing that looks like this. In a sense, these galaxies might be a ‘missing link’ in galactic evolution”.

Studying these extremely distant galaxies helps provide astronomers with a better understanding of the early universe, specifically how early galaxies formed and what conditions were present when some of the first stars were created. The next step in understanding these “ERO” galaxies is to obtain an accurate redshift for the galaxies, by using more powerful telescopes such as the Large Millimeter Telescope or Atacama Large Millimeter Array.

Huang and his team have plans to search for more galaxies similar to the four recently discovered by his team. Huang’s co-author Giovanni Fazio adds, “There’s evidence for others in other regions of the sky. We’ll analyze more Spitzer and Hubble observations to track them down.”

If you’d like to learn more, you can access the full paper (via arXiv.org) at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.4129v1

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics press release , arxiv.org

Posted on by Jason Major

Enceladus Gives Cassini Some Radar Love

New radar images from Encealdus' south pole show high amounts of surface texturing. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

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Cassini’s done it again! Soaring over Saturn’s moon Enceladus back on November 6, the spacecraft obtained the highest-resolution images yet of the moon’s south polar terrain, revealing surface details with visible, infrared and radar imaging that have never been seen before.

Of particular interest are new image swaths acquired by the spacecraft’s synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) instrument, which has never before been used on Enceladus. The radar, which is highly sensitive to surface textures, reveals some extremely bright regions that have surprised scientists.

Detail of the radar-imaged area (enlarged). NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

“It’s puzzling why this is some of the brightest stuff Cassini has seen,” said Steve Wall, deputy team lead of Cassini’s radar team based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. “One possibility is that the area is studded with rounded ice rocks. But we can’t yet explain how that would happen.”

The SAR images did not focus on the moon’s now-famous “tiger stripe” fractures (called sulci) which are the sources of its icy jets. Instead, Cassini scanned areas a few hundred miles around the stripes. These regions have not been extensively imaged before and this new data shows surface patterns and elevations that had been previously unknown.

Some of the steep grooves in the imaged areas were shown to be as deep as 2,100 feet (650 m), and 1.2 miles (2 km) wide.

Cassini passed by the 318-mile (511-km) -wide moon at 04:49 UTC on November 6, 2011. Cassini’s radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the U.S. and several European countries. Previously used to image the surface of Titan, which is hidden from view by a thick atmosphere, this is the first time the instrument was used on Enceladus.

Here’s a video from the imaging team below:

See the news release on the NASA mission page here, or on the Cassini mission page maintained by JPL.

Posted on by David Gonzales

Bringing You There: Atlas V with Curiosity Rover Thunders to Mars

This past Saturday, an Atlas V carrying NASA’s MSL Curiosity Mars rover thundered off the launch pad on the way to Mars. Ever wondered what the rocket launch is like from the roof of the massive VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center? Videographer David Gonzales shot the launch for Universe Today using 3 different high definition cameras and recorded audio using a high definition audio device.

During ignition you can see white steam stream out the flame trench followed by the darker exhaust as the Solid Rocket Boosters come to life. The Atlas V lifts off on a pillar of bright orange fire leaving behind a white trail of smoke and an artificial cloud of condensed water droplets. Man-made thunder fills the air as Curiosity takes the first step on the journey to Mars.