During Wednesday’s post-flight press conference, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed the rumor of a secret payload on board the Dragon spacecraft, but said he wouldn’t reveal what it actually was until Thursday. He did say, however that if you liked Monty Python, you would like this payload.
True to his word, SpaceX just issued a press release on what was inside this container, above, that was bolted to the floor of the Dragon spacecraft.
See below.
Top Secret payload revealed. Photo Credit: Chris Thompson, SpaceX
A skit about cheese doesn’t sound funny, but it is. 42 different kinds of cheese are mentioned in the skit; the kind on board Dragon was Le Brouere cheese.
Many fellow journalists speculating on Twitter agreed that the secret payload was likely a can of Spam — which would reference both Monty Python’s hit “Spamalot” as well as pilot Chuck Yeager’s admonition that early astronauts were just like “Spam in a can.”
A huge impact may have formed the Moon, but other large impacts could have determined the makeup of Earth and other planetary bodies. Image Credit: Joe Tucciarone
[/caption]
One of the fundamental problems in planetary science is trying to determine how planetary bodies in the inner solar system formed and evolved. A new computer model suggests that huge objects – some as big as large Kuiper Belt Objects like Pluto and Eris — likely pummeled the Earth, Moon and Mars during the late stages of planetary formation, bringing heavy metals to the planetary surfaces. This model – created by various researchers from across the NASA Lunar Science Institute — surprisingly addresses many different puzzles across the Solar System, such as how Earth could retain metal-loving, elements like gold and platinum found in its mantle, how the interior of the Moon could actually be wet, and the strange distribution in the sizes of asteroids.
“Most of the evidence of what happened during the late stages of planetary formation has been erased over time,” said Bill Bottke from the Southwest Research Institute, who led the research team. “The trail we’ve been tracking on these worlds is pretty cold and to be able to dig more information out of what we have and be able answer some long standing problems is pretty exciting.”
Bottke told Universe Today that the story this new model tells “is not as complicated as it looks at first glance,” he said. “It includes a lot of concepts together, and some of the concepts have actually been around for awhile.”
Bottke and his team have published their results in the journal Science.
The researchers started with the widely accepted theory of how our Moon was created by a giant impact between the early Earth and another Mars-sized planetary body. “This was the most traumatic event the Earth probably ever went through, and that was the time when presumably the Earth and Moon both formed their cores,” Bottke said.
The heavy iron fell to the center of the two bodies, and so-called highly siderophile, or metal-loving, elements such as rhenium, osmium platinum, palladium, and gold should have followed the iron and other metals to the core in the aftermath of the Moon-forming event, leaving the rocky crusts and mantles of these bodies void of these elements.
“These elements love to follow the metal,” Bottke said, “so if the metal is draining to the core, these elements would want to drain with them. So if this is right, what we would expect that rocks derived from our mantle should have almost no highly siderophile elements, maybe 10 to the minus 5th level or so. But surprisingly, that is not what we see. They are only less abundant by a factor of less than 200, compared to what we would expect, a factor of 100,000 or so.”
Bottke said this problem has been argued about since the 1970’s, with various suggestions on how to answer the problem.
“The most viable answer is that after the Moon forming impact took place, there were also other things that hit the Earth during the late stages of planet formation, objects that were smaller, and these smaller objects replenished these elements and gave us the abundance we see today. This is what we refer to as late accretion,” he said.
On the Moon, the same thing was happening. But there was a problem with this scenario. The ratio of these elements on the Earth compared with rocks on the Moon is about 1000 to 1.
“The gravitational cross section of the Earth is about 20 times that of the Moon,” Bottke said, “So for every object that hit the Moon, about twenty should have hit the Earth. And if late accretion delivered these elements, you should have about a 20 to 1 ratio. But that is not what we see—we see a 1000 to 1 ratio.”
Bottke – a planetary dynamacist — discussed this with colleague David Nesvorny, also from SWRI, as well as geophysical-geochemical modelers, such as Richard Walker from the University of Maryland, James Day from the University of Maryland, and Linda Elkins-Tanton from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They came up with a computer model that seemed to provide an answer.
“By playing roulette with these objects, I found that very often the Earth was getting hit by huge impactors that the Moon would never see,” Bottke said. “This result suggests that the things hitting the Earth and Moon at the end of the planet formation period was dominated by very large objects.”
The model predicted that the largest of the late impactors on Earth, at 2,400 – 3,200 km (1,500-2,000 miles) in diameter, while those for the Moon, at approximately 240 – 320 km.
Bottke called that a “cute” result – but they needed more supporting evidence. So, they took a look at the last surviving population of the things that built the planets, the inner asteroid belt. “You find large asteroids like Ceres, Vesta and Pallas” Bottke said, so there are the large ones at 500 to 900 km, but then your next largest asteroids are only about 250 km. This matched up with the sizes that our model came up with,” in which no asteroids with “in-between” sizes are observed in this region.
Maps of Mars' global topography. Credit: NASA
Next, they looked at Mars, which has some very large impact basins which are probably left over from the days of when the planet formed, including the Borealis Basin, which is so large it likely accounts for the differences in the northern and southern hemispheres on the Red Planet.
“We looked and projected the size of the impactors that would have created those impact basins and we saw the distribution of sizes was very much like what was predicted for the Earth and Moon, and also what is found in the inner asteroid belt.
So all those things together — the theoretical basis, the observational evidence from elements on the Earth and Moon, and impacts on Mars collectively says something about the distribution of sizes of objects towards the end of planetary formation.
And what are the implications?
“We could make predictions for what was hitting the Earth, Moon and Mars at that time, and they line up with what we see on the surfaces,” Bottke said. “On Mars we can play a game of what is the biggest projectiles that should have hit Mars, and it matches up well with the size that big basin that formed on Mars, and also produced the abundances of elements we see there.”
“For the Moon, the biggest impactors would be 250-300 km, which is about the size of the south pole Aiken basin,” Bottke continued. “For the Earth, these big impactors explain why some of these impacts managed to hit the Earth and not all the elements went to the core of the Earth.”
Bottke said that adding to the complications, some of the biggest impacts actually may have plowed through the Earth and actually came out the other side — in a very fragmented state — and rained back down on Earth. “If this is true, this provides a way to spread fragments all the way across the Earth,” he said, “but how the debris gets redistributed around the planetary body is a really interesting question. That part needs a lot more work and is simply at the edge right now of what we can do numerically.”
When it comes to water on the Moon’s interior – which was once thought to be dry, but recent sample measurements, however, suggest that the water content in the lunar mantle is between 200 and several thousand parts per billion — Bottke’s model could also address this issue.
“If true,” the team writes in their paper, “it is possible that the same projectile that delivered most of the Moon’s HSEs may have also have provided it with water….Late accretion provides an alternative explanation in case lunar mantle water cannot migrate from the post–giant impact Earth to a growing Moon through a hot and largely vaporized protolunar disk.”
As to why smaller projectiles hit the Moon as compared to Earth, Bottke said it is just a numbers game. “We start with a population which has a certain number of big things, middle sized things and small things,” he said. “And we randomly choose projectiles from that population and for every one big guy that hits the Moon, 20 hit the Earth. And we play that game, and if the number of projectiles is limited, if the Moon only gets hit once or twice from this population, that means the Earth gets hit 20-30 times, that is enough to give us – on most occasions – what we see.”
Bottke said this research gave him a chance to work with geochemists, “who have all sorts of interesting things to say which help constrain the processes that brought about planet formation. The problem is that sometimes they have great information but they don’t have a dynamical process that can work. So by working together I think we were able to come up with some interesting results.”
“The most exciting thing for me is that we should be able to use these abundances that we have on the Earth, Moon and Mars to really tell the story about planet formation,” Bottke said.
Astronomers have been busy trying to determine the spin period and composition of Venus’ moon. December 8, 2010, results were announced by JPL/Caltech scientists, led by Michael Hicks.
“Wait a minute; back up”, I hear you ask. “Venus has a Moon?”
Of course it does. Well, kind of…
Let me explain.
It has the rather unfortunate name of 2002 VE68. That is because it was discovered on November 11, 2002 by LONEOS, the Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search. 2002 VE68 is an earth orbit-crossing asteroid that has been designated a Potential Hazardous Asteroid by the Minor Planet Center. For obvious reasons, this makes it a very interesting subject of study for JPL scientists.
2002 VE68 used to be a run of the mill, potential impact threat, Near Earth Object. But approximately 7000 years ago it had a close encounter with Earth that kicked it into a new orbit. It now occupies a place in orbit around the Sun where at its closest it wanders inside the orbit of Mercury and at its furthest it reaches just outside the orbit of the Earth. It is now in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Venus.
An orbital resonance is when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other due to their orbital periods being related by a ratio of two small numbers. For example, Pluto and Neptune are in an orbital resonance of 2:3, which simply means for every two times Pluto goes around the Sun, Neptune makes three trips around.
In the case of Venus and 2002 VE68, they both take the same time to orbit the Sun once. They are in a 1:1 orbital resonance. So by definition, 2002 VE68 is considered a quasi-satellite of Venus. If you watch the Orbital Viewer applet at the JPL small body page you can watch this celestial dance as the two bodies orbit the Sun and each other as 2002 VE68 dodges Earth and Mercury in the process.
Often these resonances result in an unstable interaction, in which the bodies exchange momentum and shift orbits until the resonance no longer exists. In this case, scientists believe 2002 VE68 will only remain a Venusian quasi-satellite for another 500 years or so.
So getting back to the story, Hicks and his team used the recent close apparition of 2002 VE68 to do photometric measurements over the course of three nights in November using the JPL Table Mountain 0.6m telescope near Wrightwood, California. From the color data they obtained they determined that 2002 VE68 is an X type asteroid. This is a group of asteroids with very similar spectra that could potentially have a variety of compositions. They are further broken down into Tholen classification types as either E, M or P types. Unfortunately Hicks’ team was not able to resolve the sub-classification with their equipment.
They were able to determine the approximate size of the asteroid to be 200 meters in diameter, based on its absolute magnitude, and they determined a spin rate of 13.5 hours. The amplitude of the fluctuation on the light curve of 2002 VE68 could imply hat it is actually a contact binary, two clumps of asteroidal material orbiting a center of mass in contact with each other.
For more information on some of the strange and curious beasts in the asteroidal zoo, visit the NASA Near Earth Object Program website.
Elon Musk conceded that the space business world is an extraordinarily difficult place to make money. But that isn’t his main priority anyway.
“The reason I’m doing SpaceX,” Musk said during the Falcon 9/Dragon post-flight press conference, “is that I just happen to have a very strong passion for space and I want us to become true spacefaring civilization and even a multi-planetary civilization. That is my goal for SpaceX.”
“Other companies have profit goals and such, but for SpaceX it is really about furthering the cause of space,” Musk continued. “We must bring in more money that we spend, but maximizing profitability is not really what it is about.”
Musk said he has been upfront with investors in SpaceX that a high profit margin is not his priority, “and so they can’t be mad when that doesn’t happen.”
He added that he wants to make science fiction –“what you read about the future,” — to become reality.
The discussion of profit started when Musk revealed that the Falcon 9 second stage was restarted and flew to 11,000 km (6,800 miles) to release some secondary satellite payloads, including a U.S. Army nanosatellite. SpaceX was paid minimally for only some of those payloads, Musk said.
Wednesday’s test flight was the first of three financed by NASA under a $278 million Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement, the main cog of a program designed to encourage commercial space companies to develop rockets and spacecraft to deliver cargo – and later perhaps crew — to the International Space Station after the space shuttle is retired next year.
The interior configuration of the Dragon capsule. Credit: SpaceX
After the Dragon’s initial success, Musk said he hopes NASA will consider allowing Dragon to go directly to the International Space Station on the next flight, estimated to take place in mid-2011. Since Dragon is capable of carrying 5987 kg (13,200 pounds) of cargo in pressurized and unpressurized cargo bays, it can bring more than twice as much cargo as Russian Progress resupply ships.
Musk also thinks Dragon can compete with Lockheed’s Orion capsule, the only part of the Constellation Program that NASA has maintained.
“What I’m hopeful for is that NASA may consider the Dragon as good as Orion,” Musk said. “It is good to have multiple companies doing something, so Lockheed has Orion and we have Dragon and we would certainly like to have Dragon considered for anything that Orion could do. Perhaps we could do more because our heat shield is significantly more advanced.”
While Musk said SpaceX could not have gotten where it is today without NASA’s support and path-making, Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office, said with the success of this flight, the benefits might be going both ways.
“As much as SpaceX is learning from NASA, there are certainly things we can learn from SpaceX,” he said.
Enjoy a few glimpses at history from the Dec. 8 launch of Falcon 9 and Dragon.
Falcon 9 launch with Dragon. Credit: SpaceXSpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket at 10:43 a.m. EDT. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.
Here is video from a camera on Dragon while in orbit.
Dragon descends via parachute. Credit: SpaceXDragon recovery. Credit: SpaceX
And for good measure, here’s the launch video again:
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden’s statement on the success of the launch:
[/caption]
As Earth’s Moon gently passes across the night sky, Earth bound planners try to make it a more immediate part of our future. NASAs two recent lunar orbiters will bring us wonderful new information but there are still lots of benefit that we can derive from the earlier Apollo missions. Jim Bell’s book “Moon 3-D, The Lunar Surface Comes to Life” is one that can provide just that and still appeal to a large audience. And, everyone may just come away with a big, happy, knowing smile on their face.
As the title boldly states, this book has three dimensional images within its covers! The technology is simple. Red is for the left eye and blue-green is for the right. Thus, the reader can simply hold the specially designed cover up to their face, look toward the full page pictures and a sense of three dimensions leaps out. Though the ‘special design’ may sound exotic, it is simply three well placed holes; the top left for the left eye, the top right for the right eye and a very handy lower centre hole for the nose. This works amazingly well, even while wearing glasses.
So, with the simple yet effective technology, what about the pictures? Well nearly all are of the lunar surface. There are craters, ridges, and rilles to show off the wonderful vista. And, sometimes the scenery includes astronauts, landers and equipment. Aside from being in chronological order, there’s no real sense of meaning or understanding. Each is superb, at least for the Moon buff, but it’s apparent that the pictures were originally meant for scientific study. Hence, while the author has chosen ones with great appeal, the reader will likely get an impression that they’ve reviewing the results of a small scale geological survey.
Of course with the special cover being fixed to the book, only half the pages have 3-D images. Opposite pages have a normal picture that relates to the 3-D image. A couple of paragraphs of explanatory text complete the presentation. The only exception is for the first forty or so pages that contain brief essays recalling the Apollo missions and one on current endeavours.
Now you can blame campy cinematic movies but 3-D usually equates to feelings of silly and fun times. Sticking your face into the cover of a book while looking at the pictures in the book is kind of silly but it is also fun. Not surprisingly, this is the first book that I’ve had youths ask to borrow from me. They were attracted by the silly, fun, odd presentation. They laughed about the way the depth appeared from nowhere. They were intrigued and they stayed with it, at least for awhile. So, if you want to include a bit of silly, fun in your home library or beguile youngsters into space sciences, this is the book for you.
Having probes from Europe, Japan and the United States recently or currently visiting the Moon builds our anticipation. Sometimes it helps to put the whole surface into perspective and Jim Bell enables this through his book “Moon 3-D The Lunar Surface Comes to Life“. Though looking through a book’s cover may seem somewhat silly, it certainly puts the Moon into wonderful view.
Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here’s #128! Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. As usual, we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: Answer now published below!
This is Saturn’s F-ring, as seen by Voyager 1 on November 12, 1980. Of course we have better, higher resolution images of the F-ring from Cassini, but this was our first close-up glimpse of this strange, two-strand braided rings. Voyager 1 took the image at a distance of about 750,000 km.
SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphot.com) for Universe Today.
[/caption]
Hailed as a both a great day for commercial spaceflight as well as for NASA, SpaceX made history on Wednesday with a 100% successful test flight of its Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. “This is a new way of doing business,” said Alan Lindenmoyer manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office, “and I would say today this is an indication that this public/private partnership is working and has proven to be successful. Thanks to SpaceX for the early Christmas present – this is a great way to start the holidays.”
At the press conference following the flight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at first appeared to be speechless: “Really, this has been better than I expected,” he said. “It all went right. I am sort of in semi shock—I wish I could be more articulate in moments like this, bit it’s hard to be articulate with a blown mind!”
But Musk soon found his words – and lots of them (with many great quotes, so keep reading…)
SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today.
Lindenmoyer said SpaceX’s accomplishments are quite an achievement, since over the last 20 years, for new launch vehicles only about 50% of them are success are successful on their first or second flights, and only 1 out of 3 new vehicles have two successful flights in a row, which SpaceX has achieved.
Musk said the success really shouldn’t be a surprise since the Dragon spacecraft has so many redundancies: 18 thruster engines instead of 9, 3 parachutes when they really could land with one, extra thermal protection, and a very advanced heat shield. But in the end, SpaceX didn’t need to use any of the backup systems.
Preliminary data said the Dragon reentered the atmosphere spot on at a 12% angle of attack, with 2% dispersion. “This is a testament to the incredible work of the people at SpaceX,” he said. “Everyone did their jobs so well.”
Musk also emphasize that his company couldn’t have gotten to where they are without NASA, in not only monetary support ($278 million for the COTS program), but in leading the way in spaceflight.
“The core concepts of Falcon 9 and Dragon were demonstrated decades ago by NASA, and its an old saying, but we are only here because we stand on the shoulders of giants. So thank you,” he said.
Musk noted a few key things about the flight: The restart of Falcon 9’s second stage went perfectly; the second stage as restarted after the release of Dragon, and rose to an altitude of more than 11,000 km (6,800 miles), Musk said. Secondary satellite payloads of nanosatellites were released during the flight. And, Musk added, that altitude was with the trimmed, repaired nozzle. Reaching an altitude that high was not part of SpaceX’s primary objectives, but nice to have, Musk said.
Dragon went to an altitude of 300 km.
Musk also stressed that the difference between this Dragon capsule and one that could carry people isn’t that different.
“People sometimes think the different between cargo and crew required enormous amount of magical pixie dust,” he said “This is not the case. If there would have been people sitting in Dragon today, they would have had a nice ride, feeling about 4-5 G’s, which is about what an amusement park ride is like,” with an 8 meter per second descent speed which is quite comfortable from a landing perspective.
Image of Dragon capsule recovery efforts. Credit: SpaceX
The only differences, Musk said, would be the addition of a launch escape system. And, he revealed, what SpaceX really hopes to do with future spacecraft is not a splashdown in the ocean but a propulsive landing on the ground.
“The architecture you saw today was similar to what was employed in Apollo era, but we are aiming for propulsive landing with gear, kind of like the Eagle landing on the moon, and being able to take off again” he said. “Full reusability of Dragon and Falcon 9 is important as well, and something we want to figure out over time.”
Musk also said this mission didn’t have many significant differences in one that would send the Dragon the ISS. “In our discussions with NASA they said if this flight went well they would strongly consider letting us go to the space station on next mission,” he said. “I hope that is what NASA will allow us to do, we need to still examine the data from this mission first, but I’m highly optimistic. There are additional elements to be added to Dragon such as solar panels and redundancy on flight computers and electronics, but feel highly confident we could make it to the ISS on our next flight by middle of next year.”
Today’s flight tested the fundamentals of a heat shield and precision landing. Musk said the performance of heat shield was spectacular, and projected that is could not only handle Earth reentry, but also lunar and Mars reentry.
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell noted some other technical details, of how Dragon was able to maintain attitude and thermal control, as well as maintain communications with ground stations and TEDRIS satellites, which requires specific directional pointing.
The entire launch and two orbit flight took 3 hours 19 min 52 seconds, and initial data said they landed within 10 km of their target, and a communiqué from the Air force said Dragon came within 800 meters.
Asked about the flame flare that came about 2 seconds after launch, Musk said the first look by engineers said it was a check valve on the second stage umbilical that came off and caught fire as the spacecraft engines passed by — not an explosion but a just little fire.
Musk said the point in the flight where he felt the most jubilation and great relief was when the parachutes deployed. “Drogue and main chute deploy were riskiest parts, so when that happened, it was done deal. Just mind-blowingly awesome.”
Asked if the success today would silence any of SpaceX’s critics, Musk said, “I think if there really are people who are going still find a way to cast aversions on what we’ve done today, I pity them. It just wouldn’t make any sense.”
He said politicians who initially wanted to cut commercial crew funds from NASA’s budget soon learned that such a move would not decrease but increase the deficit and also meant increased time with no American access to space. “I think some politicians were initially mislead, but then they realized the value of commercial crew, which is why it the cuts didn’t make it into the final report.”
Asked about the differences in Dragon and NASA’s Orion spacecraft, Musk said that Space X would probably be the most rapid path to an American crew transport system. “If we would have had people on this flight we would have taken them to orbit and returned them safely,” he said. “Going to a crew system is just adding some additional safety systems for highly off nominal activities. Even for cargo missions we will be carrying plants and animals so I think we are in a very strong position to be one of the winners of the commercial crew contract.”
Musk added that competition is good, however, and NASA shouldn’t be too dependent on one company,” so hopefully there will be two or maybe three commercial crew providers and hopefully we are one of them.”
Musk agreed with Lindenmoyer on how this appears to vindicate the public/private model of space flight and shows that the commercial model works just as well in space flight as in air flight, or other arenas.
“The air mail program was a huge boost when the Post Office went commercial,” he said “and that resulted in explosion of innovation and improvement in technology. It really was the dawn of aviation in American where it went from joy rides that rich people could do, to today where aviation is accessible to almost everyone. I think historically COTS program will be seen in that light.”
On board Dragon was a few small satellites, and look for Musk to reveal tomorrow the nature of a humorous item that was on board. “I’m not going to reveal it today, as I don’t want some of the editors to use it in the first headlines,” he said. “It is kind of funny and if you like Monty Python you’ll like this one.”
Spam in a can?
Universe Today extends their congratulations to SpaceX. The future appears to be now.
Several volcanoes in Russia, as seen by astronauts on the ISS. Credit: NASA
[/caption]
What a view! This photograph taken by one of the astronauts on the International Space Station shows several snow-covered volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. It also illustrates one of the unique attributes of the ISS —the ability to view landscapes at an angle, rather than the straight-down view typical of many satellite-based sensors. This oblique view, together with shadows cast by the volcanoes and mountains, provides a unique view — as well as a different perspective about the topography of the region.
Illustration of WASP-12b in orbit about its host star (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)
[/caption]
Since its discovery in 2008, WASP-12b has been an unusual planet. This 1.4 Jovian mass, gas giant lies so close to its parent star that gas is being stripped from its atmosphere. But being stripped away isn’t the only odd property of this planet’s atmosphere. A new study has shown that it’s full of carbon.
The discovery was published in today’s issue of Nature was led by Nikku Madhusudhan, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University in combination with the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) team that originally discovered the planet. Unlike other recent studies of planetary atmospheres, this study did not employ transit spectroscopy. Instead, the team examined the reflective properties of the planet at four wavelengths, observations of which three came from another study using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii.
To determine the composition of the atmosphere, the flux of the planet at each of these wavelengths was then compared to models of planetary atmospheres with differing compositions. The models included compounds such as methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water vapor and ammonia as well as the temperature distribution of the planet.
For a typical hot Jupiter, models have most closely fit a ratio of about 0.5 for carbon to oxygen which suggests that oxygen is more prevalent in the atmospheres, often in the form of water vapor, as well as very little methane. For WASP-12b, Madhusudhan’s team found an abundance of more than 100 times that of standard hot Jupiters for methane (CH4). When examining the carbon to oxygen ratio, they discovered a ratio greater than one implying that the planet is unusually carbon rich.
While WASP-12b is certainly not a friendly place for life, the discovery of a planet with so much carbon may hold implications for life elsewhere in the universe. Astronomers expect that the abundance was due to the formation of the planet from rocky materials high in carbon as opposed to icy bodies like comets. This suggests that there may be an entire range of carbon abundances available for planets. With the versatility of carbon for forming organic compounds, this enhanced abundance may lead to other, rocky planets covered in tar like substances rife with organics.
The team speculates that such worlds may exist in the same solar system. Previous studies have shown that WASP-12b’s orbit is not circular and some have suggested that this may indicate the presence of another body which tugs on 12b’s orbit.
