Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Powered Up for Martian Voyage on Nov. 26 – Exclusive Message from Chief Engineer Rob Manning

Last View of Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory Rover before folding up for Martian Journey. The author visited with Curiosity inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center in the last day before she was folded up for the final time prior to encapsulation in the aeroshell for the long interplanetary journey to Mars. Credit: Ken Kremer. Meet Chief Engineer Rob Manning and other members of the Curiosity Mars Rover Engineering Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the video below titled - The Challenges of Getting to Mars. Read Rob Manning’s special greeting about Curiosity to readers of Universe Today - below

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“We are ready and so is Curiosity !”

    • Says Rob Manning, Curiosity Chief Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif – in an exclusive interview with Universe Today for all fans of Curiosity and the unprecedented voyage of Science and Discovery about to take flight to Mars on November 26. Manning was also the Chief Engineer for the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) of NASA’s phenomenally successful Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix Mars robotic explorers.

Read Rob Manning’s special greeting about Curiosity to readers of Universe Today below.

Meet Rob and other JPL Mars engineers in the cool Video describing the ‘Challanges of Getting to Mars’ – below


Curiosity is NASA’s next Mars rover and her MMRTG nuclear power source has been installed at the launch pad through special access panels in the Atlas booster payload fairing and protective aeroshell on Nov. 17.

The huge 1-ton robot is now due to blastoff for the Red Planet on Saturday, November 26 at 10: 02 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The launch window is open for one hour and 43 minutes.

Liftoff was postponed by one day to replace a battery in the on board flight termination system required in case the rocket were to veer off course.

Here is the very latest Curiosty update status from JPL’s Rob Manning as of Sunday evening – Nov. 20

“All seems well here at JPL in Pasadena,” Manning told me.

“We are having our last rehearsal at 1:30 a.m. on Monday, Nov 21.

“Weird ! As of a few hours ago the last human hands (in gloves) closed out the hatch door on the entry aeroshell and the two large doors in the rocket fairing have been closed. What is weird about it is that finally finally she is powered up and alone.”

“She has never been this alone before. Ironically all eyes are still upon her. Our team is monitoring her vitals 24-7,” Manning explained.


“The Challenges of Getting to Mars’ – Video caption: Meet Curiosity Chief Engineer Rob Manning and more members of the Curiosity Mars Rover Engineering Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explain the final assembly of Curiosity at the Kennedy Space Center and how Curiosity will land use the rocket assisted Sky Crane.

“By this time next week, Curiosity will be heading for the home she was meant for.”

“Soon she will feel the cold walls of deep space on her radiators. The x-band transmitter and receiver will have an broken view of the sky (with Earth but a shiny blue dot off to her left). The penetrating rays of the sun will push electrons out of the solar panels and keep her battery charged. (And perhaps a few solar flares will pass by, just to keep things interesting.)”

“Earth can be a rough place for a rover not designed for our planet. Worse are those of us who have poked and prodded, tested beyond spec and pushed in ways that can only be done on Earth.”

“Sometimes we over-do it and push near the breaking point. We are not perfect after all but we need to know that she will do what needs to be done for her very own survival. Well she seems to have survived us.”

“Of course Curiosity will never really be alone. We are right there with her every step of the way. She is us.”

Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)- all elements assembled into flight configuration in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The top portion is the cruise stage attached to the aeroshell (containing the compact car-sized rover) with the heat shield on the bottom. MMRTG power source was installed through hatch door at right.
Launch of MSL aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is scheduled for Nov. 26 from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credit: NASA/Glenn Benson

Atlas V rocket at Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. An Atlas V rocket similar to this one utilized in August 2011 for NASAS’s Juno Jupiter Orbiter will blast Curiosity to Mars on Nov. 26, 2011 from Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer

“I will be at JPL during launch,” said Manning.

The JPL team is also working day and night to insure that the do or die Mars Insertion burn fires as planned.

“Once the Deep Space Network acquires the signal, I want to be there to make sure that we did not fail her and that the transition from being the Atlas’s payload to interplanetary cruise is as painless as possible.”

“It will be a bit of a surprise if we did not have a bit of a surprise – but we are ready and so is Curiosity”

Curiosity and the Atlas V booster that will propel her to Mars will roll out to Launch Pad 41 at the Florida Space Coast on Friday morning, Nov. 24, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

NASA TV will carry the MSL launch live

After a 10 month interplanetary journey to Mars, Curiosity will plummet through the atmosphere and fire up the rocket powered descent stage and ‘Sky Crane’ to safely touchdown astride a layered mountain at the Gale Crater landing site in August 2012.

Curiosity has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars has had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life. The unique rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth.

Complete Coverage of Curiosity – NASA’s Next Mars Rover launching 26 Nov. 2011

Read continuing features about Curiosity by Ken Kremer starting here:

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
Packing a Mars Rover for the Trip to Florida; Time Lapse Video
Test Roving NASA’s Curiosity on Earth

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Deep Blue Astrophotography – Imaging Galactic Shells

NGC7600 is an elliptical galaxy and is around 50 Mpc in distance. This image shows an interleaved system of shells that are described in this Astronomical Journal Letters here. These types of structures around elliptical galaxies were first revealed by Malin & Carter in 1980. This deep image of NGC7600 shows faint features not previously seen. Credit: Ken Crawford

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As a professional astronomy journalist, I read a lot of science papers. It hasn’t been all that long ago that I remember studying about galaxy groups – with the topic of dark matter and dwarf galaxies in particular. Imagine my surprise when I learn that two of my friends, who are highly noted astrophotographers, have been hard at work doing some deep blue science. If you aren’t familiar with the achievements of Ken Crawford and R. Jay Gabany, you soon will be. Step inside here and let us tell you why “it matters”…

According to Ken’s reports, Cold Dark Matter (or CDM) is a theory that most of the material in the Universe cannot be seen (dark) and that it moves very slowly (cold). It is the leading theory that helps explain the formation of galaxies, galaxy groups and even the current known structure of the universe. One of the problems with the theory is that it predicts large amounts of small satellite galaxies called dwarf galaxies. These small galaxies are about 1000th the mass of our Milky Way but the problem is, these are not observed. If this theory is correct, then where are all of the huge amounts of dwarf galaxies that should be there?

Enter professional star stream hunter, Dr. David Martinez-Delgado. David is the principal investigator of the Stellar Tidal Stream Survey at the Max-Planck Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. He believes the reason we do not see large amounts of dwarf galaxies is because they are absorbed (eaten) by larger galaxies as part of the galaxy formation. If this is correct, then we should find remnants of these mergers in observations. These remnants would show up as trails of dwarf galaxy debris made up mostly of stars. These debris trails are called star streams.

“The main aim of our project is to check if the frequency of streams around Milky Way-like galaxies in the local universe is consistent with CDM models similar to that of the movie.” clarifies Dr. Martinez-Delgado. “However, the tidal destruction of galaxies is not enough to solve the missing satellite problem of the CDM cosmology. So far, the best given explanation is that some dark matter halos are not able to form stars inside, that is, our Galaxy would surround by a few hundreds of pure dark matter satellites.”

Enter the star stream hunters professional team. The international team of professional astronomers led by Dr. David Martinez-Delgado has identified enormous star streams on the periphery of nearby spiral galaxies. With deep images he showed the process of galactic cannibalism believed to be occurring between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. This is in our own back yard! Part of the work is using computer modeling to show how larger galaxies merge and absorb the smaller ones.

This image has been inverted and contrast enhanced to help display the faint shell features and debris fragments. The farthest fragment is 140 kpc in projection from the center of the galaxy. Credit: Ken Crawford
“Our observational approach is based on deep color-magnitude diagrams that provide accurate distances, surface brightness, and the properties of stellar population of the studied region of this tidal stream.” says Dr. Martinez-Delgado (et al). “These detections are also strong observational evidence that the tidal stream discovered by the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey is tidally stripped material from the Sagittarius dwarf and support the idea that the tidal stream completely enwraps the Milky Way in an almost polar orbit. We also confirm these detections by running numerical simulations of the Sagittarius dwarf plus the Milky Way. This model reproduces the present position and velocity of the Sagittarius main body and presents a long tidal stream formed by tidal interaction with the Milky Way potential.”

Enter the team of amateurs led by R. Jay Gabany. David recruited a small group of amateur astrophotographers to help search for and detect these stellar fossils and their cosmic dance around nearby galaxies, thus showing why there are so few dwarf galaxies to be found.

“Our observations have led to the discovery of six previously undetected, gigantic, stellar structures in the halos of several galaxies that are likely associated with debris from satellites that were tidally disrupted far in the distant past. In addition, we also confirmed several enormous stellar structures previously reported in the literature, but never before interpreted as being tidal streams.” says the team. “Our collection of galaxies presents an assortment of tidal phenomena exhibiting strikingly diverse morphological characteristics. In addition to identifying great circular features that resemble the Sagittarius stream surrounding the Milky Way, our observations have uncovered enormous structures that extend tens of kiloparsecs into the halos of their host’s central spiral. We have also found remote shells, giant clouds of debris within galactic halos, jet-like features emerging from galactic disks and large-scale, diffuse structures that are almost certainly related to the remnants of ancient, already thoroughly disrupted satellites. Together with these remains of possibly long defunct companions, our survey also captured surviving satellites caught in the act of tidal disruption. Some of these display long tails extending away from the progenitor satellite very similar to the predictions forecasted by cosmological simulations.”

The .5 meter Ritchey-Chretien Telescope of the Blackbird Observatory is situated at 7300 ft.(2225 meters) elevation under spectacularly clear and dark skies in the south central Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico, near Mayhill. Photo credit: R. Wodaski

Can you imagine how exciting it is to be part of deep blue science? It is one thing to be a good astrophotographer – even to be an exceptional astrophotographer – but to have your images and processing to be of such high quality as to be contributory to true astronomical research would be an incredible honor. Just ask Ken Crawford…

“Several years ago I was asked to become part of this team and have made several contributions to the survey. I am excited to announce that my latest contribution has resulted in a professional letter that has been recently accepted by the Astronomical Journal.” comments Ken. “There are a few things that make this very special. One, is that Carlos Frenk the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University (UK) and his team found that my image of galaxy NGC7600 was similar enough to help validate their computer model (simulation) of how larger galaxies form by absorbing satellite dwarf galaxies and why we do not see large number of dwarf galaxies today.”

Dr. Carlos Frenk has been featured on several television shows on the Science and Discovery channels, to name a few, to explain and show some of these amazing simulations. He is the director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University (UK), was one of the winners of the 2011 Cosmology Prize of The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation.

“The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical picture for the formation of structure in the Universe. This model, together with the theory of cosmic inflation, makes a clear prediction for the initial conditions for structure formation and predicts that structures grow hierarchically through gravitational instability.” says Frenk (et al). “Testing this model requires that the precise measurements delivered by galaxy surveys can be compared to robust and equally precise theoretical calculations.”

The Rancho Del Sol Observatory is located in the foothills of the northern California's Sierra Mountains approximately one hour north of Sacramento. It houses a .5 meter Ritchey-Chretien Telescope. Credit: Ken Crawford
And it requires very accurate depictions of studies. According to the team, this pilot survey was conducted with three privately owned observatories equipped with modest sized telescopes located in the USA and Australia. Each observing site features very dark, clear skies with seeing that is routinely at and often below 1.5 arcseconds. These telescopes are manufactured by RC Optical Systems and follow a classic Ritchey-Chretien design. The observatories are commanded with on-site computers that allow remote operation and control from any global location with highband web accesses. Each observatory uses proven, widely available remote desktop control software. Robotic orchestration of all observatory and instrument functions, including multiple target acquisition and data runs, is performed using available scripting software. Additional use of a wide field instrument was employed for those galaxies with an extended angular size. For this purpose, they selected the Astro Physics Starfire 160EDF6, a short focal length (f/7) 16 cm aperture refractor that provides a FOV of 73.7 × 110.6 arcmin. But, it’s more than just taking a photograph. The astrophotographer needs to completely understand what needs to be drawn out of the exposure. It’s more than just taking a “pretty picture”… it’s what matters.

The formation of shell galaxies in the cold dark matter universe from Kenneth Crawford on Vimeo.

“The galaxy I want to show you has some special features called ‘shells’. I had to image very deep to detect these structures and carefully process them so you can see the delicate structures within.” explains Crawford. “The galaxy name is NGC7600 and these shell structures have not been captured as well in this galaxy before. The movie above shows my image of NGC7600 blending into the simulation at about the point when the shells start to form. The movie below shows the complete simulation.”

“What is ground breaking is that the simulation uses the cold dark matter theory modeling the dark matter halos of the galaxies and as you can see, it is pretty convincing.” concludes Crawford. “So now you all know why we do not observe lots of dwarf galaxies in the Universe.”

But, we can observe some very incredible science done by some very incredible friends. It’s what matters…

For Further Reading: Tracing Out the Northern Tidal Stream of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, Stellar Tidal Streams in Spiral Galaxies of the Local Volume, Carlos Frenk, Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars, The formation of shell galaxies similar to NGC 7600 in the cold dark matter cosmogony, Star Stream Survey Images By Ken Crawford and be sure to check out the zoomable Full Size Image of NGC 7600 done by Ken Crawford. We thank you all so much for sharing your work with us!

Posted on by Steve Nerlich

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Mass Is Energy

The USS Enterprise in 1964 (pre Zephram Cochran era), which sailed around the world in 64 days without refuelling to demonstrate the capability of nuclear-powered surface ships. Credit: US Navy.

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Some say that the reason you can’t travel faster than light is that your mass will increase as your speed approaches light speed – so, regardless of how much energy your star drive can generate, you reach a point where no amount of energy can further accelerate your spacecraft because its mass is approaching infinite.

This line of thinking is at best an incomplete description of what’s really going on and is not a particularly effective way of explaining why you can’t move faster than light (even though you really can’t). However, the story does offer useful insight into why mass is equivalent to energy, in accordance with the relationship e=mc2.

Firstly, here’s why the story isn’t complete. Although someone back on Earth might see your spacecraft’s mass increase as you move near light speed – you the pilot aren’t going notice your mass change at all. Within your spacecraft, you would still be able to climb stairs, jump rope – and if you had a set of bathroom scales along for the ride you would still weigh just the same as you did back on Earth (assuming your ship is equipped with the latest in artificial gravity technology that mimics conditions back on Earth’s surface).

The change perceived by an Earth observer is just relativistic mass. If you hit the brakes and returned to a more conventional velocity, all the relativistic mass would go away and an Earth observer would just see you retaining with same proper (or rest) mass that the spacecraft and you had before you left Earth.

The Earth observer would be more correct to consider your situation in terms of momentum energy, which is a product of your mass and your speed. So as you pump more energy in to your star drive system, someone on Earth really sees your momentum increase – but interprets it as a mass increase, since your speed doesn’t seem to increase much at all once it is up around 99% of the speed of light. Then when you slow down again, although you might seem to be losing mass you are really offloading energy – perhaps by converting your kinetic energy of motion into heat (assuming your spacecraft is equipped with the latest in relativistic braking technology).

As the ratio of your velocity to light speed approaches 1, the ratio of your relativistic mass to your rest mass grows asymptotically - i.e. it approaches infinite.

From the perspective of the Earth-based observer, you can formulate that the relativistic mass gain observed when travelling near light speed is the sum of the spacecraft’s rest mass/energy plus the kinetic energy of its motion – all divided by c2. From that you can (stepping around some moderately complex math) derive that e=mc2. This is a useful finding, but it has little to do with why the spacecraft’s speed cannot exceed light speed.

The phenomenon of relativistic mass follows a similar, though inverse, asymptotic relationship to your speed. So as you approach light speed, your relativistic time approaches zero (clocks slow), your relativistic spatial dimensions approach zero (lengths contract) – but your relativistic mass grows towards infinite.

But as we’ve covered already, on the spacecraft you do not experience your spacecraft gaining mass (nor does it seem to shrink, nor its clocks slow down). So you must interpret your increase in momentum energy as a genuine speed increase – at least with respect to a new understanding you have developed about speed.

For you, the pilot, when you approach light speed and keep pumping more energy into your drive system, what you find is that you keep reaching your destination faster – not so much because you are moving faster, but because the time you estimated it would take you to cross the distance from point A to Point B becomes perceivably much less, indeed the distance between point A to Point B also becomes perceivably much less. So you never break light speed because the distance over time parameters of your speed keep changing in a way that ensures that you can’t.

In any case, consideration of relativistic mass is probably the best way to derive the relationship e=mc2 since the relativistic mass is a direct result of the kinetic energy of motion. The relationship does not easily fall out of consideration of (say) a nuclear explosion – since much of the energy of the blast derives from the release of the binding energy which holds a heavy atom together. A nuclear blast is more about energy transformation than about matter converting to energy, although at a system level it still represents genuine mass to energy conversion.

Similarly you might consider that your cup of coffee is more massive when it’s hot – and gets measurably less massive when it cools down. Matter, in terms of protons, neutrons, electrons …and coffee, is largely conserved throughout this process. But, for a while, the heat energy really does add to the mass of the system – although since it’s a mass of m=e/c2, it is a very tiny amount of mass.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

NASA’s Curiosity Set to Search for Signs of Martian Life

Curiosity at work firing a laser on Mars. This artist's concept depicts the rover Curiosity, of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, as it uses its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument to investigate the composition of a rock surface. ChemCam fires laser pulses at a target and views the resulting spark with a telescope and spectrometers to identify chemical elements. The laser is actually in an invisible infrared wavelength, but is shown here as visible red light for purposes of illustration. Credit: NASA

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Nov 19 Update: MSL launch delayed 24 h to Nov. 26 – details later

In just 7 days, Earth’s most advanced robotic roving emissary will liftoff from Florida on a fantastic journey to the Red Planet and the search for extraterrestrial life will take a quantum leap forward. Scientists are thrilled that the noble endeavor of the rover Curiosity is finally at hand after seven years of painstaking work.

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover is vastly more capable than any other roving vehicle ever sent to the surface of another celestial body. Mars is the most Earth-like planet in our Solar System and a prime target to investigate for the genesis of life beyond our home planet.

Curiosity is all buttoned up inside an aeroshell at a seaside launch pad atop an Atlas V rocket and final preparations are underway at the Florida Space Coast leading to a morning liftoff at 10:25 a.m. EST on Nov. 25, the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

“MSL is ready to go,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, at a media briefing. “It’s a momentous occasion. We’re just thrilled that we’re at this point.”

“Curiosity is ‘Seeking the Signs of Life’, but is not a life detection mission. It is equipped with state-of-the-art science instruments.”

This oblique view of Gale Crater shows the landing site and the mound of layered rocks that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will investigate. The landing site is in the smooth area in front of the mound. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/UA

“It’s not your father’s rover. It’s a 2000 pound machine that’s over 6 feet tall – truly a wonder of engineering,” McCuistion stated.

“Curiosity is the best of US imagination and US innovation. And we have partners from France, Canada, Germany, Russia and Spain.”

“Curiosity sits squarely in the middle of our two decade long strategic plan of Mars exploration and will bridge the gap scientifically and technically from the past decade to the next decade.”

“Mars Science Laboratory builds upon the improved understanding about Mars gained from current and recent missions,” said McCuistion. “This mission advances technologies and science that will move us toward missions to return samples from and eventually send humans to Mars.”

Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory Rover - inside the Cleanroom at KSC. Credit: Ken Kremer

The car sized rover is due to arrive at Mars in August 2012 and land inside Gale Crater near the base of a towering and layered Martian mountain, some 5 kilometers (3 miles) high. Gale Crater is 154 km (96 mi) in diameter.

The landing site was chosen because it offers multiple locations with different types of geologic environments that are potentially habitable and may have preserved evidence about the development of microbial life, if it ever formed.

Gale Crater is believed to contain clays and hydrated minerals that formed in liquid water eons ago and over billions of years in time. Water is an essential prerequisite for the genesis of life as we know it.

NASA's most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, the Mars Science Laboratory carrying the Curiosity rover, is set to launch atop an Atlas V rocket at 10:25 a.m. EST on Nov. 25 on a mission to examine one of the most intriguing areas on Mars at Gale crater. Credit: NASA

The one ton robot is a behemoth, measuring 3 meters (10 ft) in length and is nearly twice the size and five times as heavy as NASA’s prior set of twin rovers – Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity is equipped with a powerful array of 10 science instruments weighing 15 times as much as its predecessor’s science payloads. The rover can search for the ingredients of life including water and the organic molecules that we are all made of.

Curiosity will embark on a minimum two year expedition across the craters highly varied terrain, collecting and analyzing rock and soil samples in a way that’s never been done before beyond Earth.

Eventually our emissary will approach the foothills and climb the Martian mountain in search of hitherto untouched minerals and habitable environments that could potentially have supported life’s genesis.

With each science mission, NASA seeks to take a leap forward in capability and technology to vastly enhance the science return – not just to repeat past missions. MSL is no exception.

Watch a dramatic action packed animation of the landing and exploration here:

Curiosity was designed at the start to be vastly more capable than any prior surface robotic explorer, said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s Deputy Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif

“This is a Mars scientist’s dream machine.”

Therefore this mission uses new technologies to enable the landing of a heavier science payload and is inherently risky. The one ton weight is far too heavy to employ the air-bag cushioned touchdown system used for Spirit and Opportunity and will use a new landing method instead.

Curiosity will pioneer an unprecedented new precision landing technique as it dives through the Martian atmosphere named the “sky-crane”. In the final stages of touchdown, a rocket-powered descent stage will fire thusters to slow the descent and then lower the rover on a tether like a kind of sky-crane and then safely set Curiosity down onto the ground.

NASA has about three weeks to get Curiosity off the ground from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida before the planetary alignments change and the launch window to Mars closes for another 26 months.

“Preparations are on track for launching at our first opportunity,” said Pete Theisinger, MSL project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “If weather or other factors prevent launching then, we have more opportunities through Dec. 18.”

Mars Science Laboratory Briefing. Doug McCuistion, Mars program director, left, Ashwin Vasavada, MSL deputy project scientist, and Pete Theisinger, MSL project manager, share a laugh during a news briefing, Nov. 10, 2011, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Curiosity, NASA's most advanced mobile robotic laboratory, will examine one of the most intriguing areas on Mars. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission is set for launch from Florida's Space Coast on Nov. 25 and is scheduled to land on the Red Planet in August 2012 where it will examine the Gale Crater during a nearly two-year prime mission. Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers

Complete Coverage of Curiosity – NASA’s Next Mars Rover launching 25 Nov. 2011

Read continuing features about Curiosity by Ken Kremer starting here:

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 David Warmflash

Consolation Prize for Phobos-Grunt? Experts Consider Possibilities for Sending Spacecraft to Moon or Asteroid

The Phobos-Grunt mission profile. Credit: Roscosmos

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Editor’s note: Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update for Universe Today on the likelihood of saving the mission.

If communication with Russia’s troubled Phobos-Grunt is not established by November 21, the window for a trajectory to the Martian moon Phobos, will close, experts say. But this would not mean that the spacecraft could not travel to a different destination. In a statement published earlier today by the news and information agency Ria Novosti, Russian space expert Igor Lisov suggested that Phobos-Grunt could be sent to orbit the Moon – Earth’s Moon, that is – or may be even an asteroid, if communication is restored at any point before the 13-ton probe re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.

Evolution of Phobos-Grunt’s Orbit

Boosted into space by a Zenit 2 rocket last week, Phobos-Grunt entered into a low parking orbit, where she was supposed to wait only for 2.5 hours before the next booster stage, Fregat, would send her to a higher orbit and then on to Mars. Because the Fregat engine did not ignite, Grunt still orbits just above our heads. “Highly elliptical, with an initial altitude of 347 kilometers at apogee (the high point) and 207 kilometers at perigee (the low point), the orbit initially was predicted to decay by late November, causing the spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere and burn up. But while the apogee has been decreasing (down to 326 km today), the perigee actually has been increasing by about 0.5 kilometers per day (up to 210.2 km today), due to periodic maneuvering by way of the probe’s small thrusters. After it was realized that the first maneuvering episode had improved the orbit, the predicted reentry date was adjusted to mid January, and if the thrusting episodes continue we can expect the date of the probe’s demise to be moved back still more.

An artists concept of the Phobos-Grunt Mission. Credit: Roscosmos

Time for Trajectory to Phobos is Running Out

The improved orbit gives controllers at the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, several weeks –even more, if the perigee continues to get higher– to restore communication with Phobos-Grunt, allowing for the uploading of new commands. But, even if control is restored, a flight to Mars and Phobos will not be possible after Monday, November 21st, Lisov explained. Although the Fregat stage is loaded with fuel, to reach Mars, given Grunt’s orbit around Earth and the alignment between Earth and Mars after Monday, would require a higher change in velocity –what propulsion specialists call delta v – than the Fregat is capable of producing.

A Consolation Prize

While cautioning that the idea of sending Phobos-Grunt somewhere other than Phobos falls into the realm of wishful thinking, Lisov urged that efforts to reconnect with the spacecraft continue in full force as long as the craft is in space. Despite several failures of lunar missions, the former Soviet space program did succeed in returning samples from the lunar surface to Earth in the 1970s. Thus, re-purposing the current mission as “Luna-Grunt” or something of that nature is not likely to have the same appeal as Phobos-Grunt has among Russians. Nor could the Grunt landing craft, designed to scoop a surface sample into a capsule that would return to Earth, even set down on the lunar surface. But other components of the science payload might be useful. Though built to observe Mars,China’s Yinghuo-1 orbiter might be able to do something interesting from lunar orbit. Instruments that were to remain on the Phobosian surface might be useful as well.

Then, there is the issue of avoiding reentry. Experts at Roscosmos are confident that the many tons of nitrogen teroxide and hydrazine in Grunt’s fuel tanks will burn up high in the atmosphere if the probe reenters. But people around the planet are scared, and thus might prefer that the fuel be used, even for a one-way mission with undefined science objectives. More importantly, achieving in a partial victory by sending the spacecraft anywhere but back to Earth could give rise to an Apollo 13-like milieu that might reinvigorate the Russian planetary program.

Millions of Tiny Passengers

The Planetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) capsule, on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit:The Planetary Society

As I’ve discussed in a previous update, to be useful scientifically, the Planetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) rides inside the capsule that was designed to return the Phobosian sample to Earth. The point of the experiment is to test the effects of the space environment on several different types of organisms. Because the Moon orbits Earth far outside the Van Allen radiation belts, the radiation received per time by organisms on lunar flights is the same as that received during flights to Mars. If the capsule could be sent into lunar orbit, our millions of passengers would be like organisms traveling inside a meteoroid from Mars. Then perhaps some future mission could recover the capsule some day, and we could study the organisms, as we planned to do upon their return from Phobos.

A Possible Asteroid Mission

Lisov also speculated about sending the Grunt spacecraft to an asteroid instead of the Moon. Various asteroids travel fairly close to Earth, and it’s plausible that a Grunt probe revived after November 21 would have enough delta v to reach one of them. Unlike Earth’s Moon, whose gravity the Grunt lander was not designed to withstand, many asteroids are small. Theoretically, Grunt’s lander could set down on any celestial body with a gravitational force similar to that of Phobos. If any such asteroid candidate exists –and this is a big if– the ascent engine, designed to propel the Grunt return capsule back to Earth might be utilized to deliver a sample of the asteroid, along with the LIFE experiment.

Posted on by Amy Shira Teitel

Do-It-Yourself Guide to Measuring the Moon’s Distance

The Moon. Photo credit: NASA.

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When the distance from the Earth to the Moon comes up, the common figure thrown around is 402,336 km (or 250,000 miles). But have you every wondered how astronomers got that figure? And how exact it really is? There are a couple of ways you can measure the distance of the Moon that don’t require lasers or any instruments. All you need are your eyes, a clear sky, and someone else willing to stand outside all night with you. 

There are two ways to measure the distance from the Earth to the Moon on your own: using a Lunar eclipse and using parallax. Let’s look at eclipses first.

The phases of a Lunar eclipse. Photo credit: Keith Burns for NASA/JPL

The Ancient Greeks used Lunar eclipses – the phenomena of the Earth passing directly between the sun and the Moon – to determine the distance from the Earth to its satellite. It’s a simple matter of tracking and timing how long it takes the Earth’s shadow to cross over the Moon.

Start with the few knowns. We know, as did the Ancient Greeks, that the Moon travels around the Earth at a constant speed – about 29 days per revolution. The diameter of the Earth is also known to be about 12,875 km or 8,000 miles.By tracking the movement of the Earth’s shadow across the Moon, Greek astronomers found that the Earth’s shadow was roughly 2.5 times the apparent size of the Moon and lasted roughly three hours from the first to last signs of the shadow.

From these measurements, it was simple geometry that allowed Aristarchus (c. 270 BC) to determined that the Moon was round 60 Earth radii away (about 386,243 km or 240,000 miles). This is quite close to the currently accepted figure of 60.3 radii.

You can follow Aristarchus’ method in your own backyard if you have a clear view of a Lunar eclipse. Track the movement of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon by drawing the changes and time the eclipse. Use your measurements to determine the Moon’s distance.

Lunar parallax: the moon as observed from Italy and China at the same time during a lunar eclipse. Photo credit: measurethemoon.org/wordpress

For the second method, you’ll need a friend to help out. The Ancient Greeks also knew about parallax, an object’s apparent change in position when seen from two different viewpoints. You can experience parallax by holding a pen out at arm’s length and looking at it with one eye at a time. As you switch between your left and right eye, the pen will appear to move back and forth.

The same thing can be seen on a giant scale. Two observers in different parts of the world (at least 3,200 km or 2,000 miles apart) will see the Moon’s position as different from where calculations say it should be in the night sky.

To find the distance of the Moon from the Earth, you and a friend stand 3,200 km apart and each take a picture of the Moon at exactly the same time. Then, compare your images. The Moon will be in a different spot, but the background stars will be in the same place. What your images have given you is a triangle. You know the base (the distance between you and your friend), and you can find the angle at the top (the point of the Moon in this triangle). Simple geometry will give you a value for the distance of the Moon.

It might be a little more labour intensive than searching the internet, but determining the Moon’s distance yourself is sure to be more fun! If you really want to get involved, check out International Measure the Moon Night on Dec. 10, 2011. Join participants around the world who register their own events and share their images and observations!

A graph showing which parts of the world have the best chance of measuring the moon's distance using these two methods. Regions in red can see full eclipses while regions covered in red bars are best suited to measurements using parallax. Photo credit: measurethemoon.org/wordpress
Posted on by Jason Major

Neutrinos Still Breaking Speed Limits

Particle Collider
Today, CERN announced that the LHCb experiment had revealed the existence of two new baryon subatomic particles. Credit: CERN/LHC/GridPP

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New test results are in from OPERA and it seems those darn neutrinos, they just can’t keep their speed down… to within the speed of light, that is!

A report released in September by scientists working on the OPERA project (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tracking Apparatus) at Italy’s Gran Sasso research lab claimed that neutrinos emitted from CERN 500 miles away in Geneva arrived at their detectors 60 nanoseconds earlier than expected, thus traveling faster than light. This caused no small amount of contention in the scientific community and made news headlines worldwide – and rightfully so, as it basically slaps one of the main tenets of modern physics across the face.

Of course the scientists at OPERA were well aware of this, and didn’t make such a proclamation lightly; over two years of repeated research was undergone to make sure that the numbers were accurate… as well as could be determined, at least. And they were more than open to having their tests replicated and the results reviewed by their peers. In all regards their methods were scientific yet skepticism was widespread… even within OPERA’s own ranks.

One of the concerns that arose regarding the discovery was in regards to the length of the neutrino beam itself, emitted from CERN and received by special detector plates at Gran Sasso. Researchers couldn’t say for sure that any neutrinos detected were closer to the beginning of the beam versus the end, a disparity (on a neutrino-sized scale anyway) of 10.5 microseconds… that’s 10.5 millionths of a second! And so in October, OPERA requested that proton pulses be resent – this time lasting only 3 nanoseconds each.

The OPERA Neutrino Detector

The results were the same. The neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso 60 nanoseconds earlier than anticipated: faster than light.

The test was repeated – by different teams, no less – and so far 20 such events have been recorded. Each time, the same.

Faster. Than light.

What does this mean? Do we start tearing pages out of physics textbooks? Should we draw up plans for those neutrino-powered warp engines? Does Einstein’s theory of relativity become a quaint memento of what we used to believe?

Hardly. Or, at least, not anytime soon.

OPERA’s latest tests have managed to allay one uncertainty regarding the results, but plenty more remain. One in particular is the use of GPS to align the clocks at the beginning and end of the neutrino beam. Since the same clock alignment system was used in all the experiments, it stands that there may be some as-of-yet unknown factor concerning the GPS – especially since it hasn’t been extensively used in the field of high-energy particle physics.

In addition, some scientists would like to see more results using other parts of the neutrino detector array.

Of course, like any good science, replication of results is a key factor for peer acceptance. And thus Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois will attempt to perform the same experiment with its MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) facility, using a precision matching OPERA’s.

MINOS hopes to have its independent results as early as next year.

No tearing up any textbooks just yet…

 

Read more in the Nature.com news article by Eugenie Samuel Reich. The new result was released on the arXiv preprint server on November 17. (The original September 2011 OPERA team paper can be found here.)

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Carnival of Space #224

A brand new Carnival of Space! This one is hosted by Sarah Scoles and Brooke Napier from the Smaller Questions blog.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #224.

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send and email to the above address.

Posted on by Gemma Lavender

Astronomers Complete the Puzzle of Black Hole Description

The optical image on the left, from the Digitized Sky Survey, shows Cygnus X-1 outlined in a red box located near large active regions of star formation in the Milky Way that spans 700 light-years across. An artist’s illustration on the right depicts what astronomers believe is happening within the Cygnus X-1 system with the black hole pulling material from a massive, blue companion star. This material forms a disk (shown in red and orange) that rotates around the black hole before falling into it or being directed away in the form of powerful jets. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Optical: Digitized Sky Survey.

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Light may not be able to escape a black hole, but now enough information has escaped one black hole’s clutches that astronomers have, for the first time, been able to provide a complete description of it. A team of astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and San Diego State University have made the most accurate measurements ever of X-ray binary system Cygnus X-1, allowing them to unravel the longstanding mysteries of its black hole and to retrace its history since its birth around six million years ago.

Cygnus X-1, which consists of a black hole that is drawing material from its massive blue companion star, was found to be emitting powerful X-rays nearly half a century ago. Since its discovery in 1964, this galactic X-ray source has been intensely scrutinized with astronomers attempting to gain information about its mass and spin. But without an accurate measurement of its distance from the Earth, which has been estimated to be between 5,800 and 7,800 light-years, we could only imagine what secrets Cygnus X-1 was harboring.

Astronomer Mark Reid of CfA led his team to garner the most accurate measurement of the distance to Cygnus X-1 with the help of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a continent-wide radio-telescope system. The team locked down a direct trigonometric measurement of 6,070 light-years.

“Because no other information can escape a black hole, knowing its mass, spin and electrical charge gives a complete description of it,” says Reid who is a co-author of three papers on Cygnus X-1, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (available here, here, and here). “The charge of this black hole is nearly zero, so measuring its mass and spin make our description complete.”

Using their new precise distance measurement along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, the Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics and visible-light observations made over more than two decades, the team pieced together the “No Hair” theorem – the complete description that Reid speaks of – by revealing a hefty mass of nearly 15 solar masses and a turbo spin speed of 800 revolutions per second. “We now know that Cygnus X-1 is one of the most massive stellar black holes in the Milky Way,” says Jerry Orosz of San Diego State University, also an author of the paper with Reid and Lijun Gou of the CfA. “It’s spinning as fast as any black hole we’ve ever seen.”

As an added bonus, observations using the VLBA back in 2009 and 2010 had also measured Cygnus X-1’s movement through the galaxy leading scientists to the conclusion that it is much too slow to have been produced by the explosion of a supernova and without evidence of a large “kick” at birth, astronomers believe that it may have resulted from the dark collapse of a progenitor star with a mass greater than about 100 times the mass of the Sun that got lost in a vigorous stellar wind. “There are suggestions that this black hole could have formed without a supernova explosion and our results support those suggestions,” says Reid.

It seems that with these measurements, Professor Stephen Hawking has well and truly had to eat his own words after placing a bet with fellow astrophysicist Kip Thorne, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, that Cygnus X-1 did not contain a black hole.

“For forty years, Cygnus X-1 has been the iconic example of a black hole. However, despite Hawking’s concession, I have never been completely convinced that it really does contain a black hole – until now,” says Thorne. “The data and modeling in these three papers at last provide a completely definitive description of this binary system.”

Sources: CfA