You’ve probably seen “A Glorious Dawn” –– the autotune wonder that allowed Carl Sagan to sing to us. The Symphony of Science music video series has been steadily adding new sciency music videos, and the new “The Case for Mars” is the sixth installment. It features Robert Zubrin, Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and Penelope Boston. John Boswell, the head musician and producer behind the Symphony of Science says this new video is intended to pique curiosity about the planet Mars and to promote human exploration of it.
Color image of impact on Jupiter on June 3, 2010. Credit: Anthony Wesley
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In an incredible coincidence where a paper was released today about the 2009 impact event on Jupiter, the same amateur astronomer who captured that event also captured a new impact Jupiter that occurred at about 20:30 UT today (June 3, 2010). Anthony Wesley from Australia captured the flash of an impact, which was also captured and confirmed by Christopher Go of the Philippines. Watch Go’s video here. Go said he shot it with a blue filter. Word is that Anthony is processing his video, and we’ll post it when available.
Update: We’ve added Anthony Wesley’s color image of the impact, above (you can see the original image below) and also added Anthony’s video of the event, below.
Mars500 crew just seconds before ingressing their module for a 520 day stay in June 2010. Credit: ESA
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Six men from Europe, Russia and China embarked on a 520-day mock mission to Mars, heading out to a crew module in a warehouse in Moscow and locking the hatches behind them today. The mission runs from June 2010 to November 2011, and like a real Mars mission, the crew will live and work like astronauts, eating special food and exercising the same way as crews aboard the International Space Station. Additionally their communications with their mission control and anyone else from the rest of the world will have a delay of up to 40 minutes.
A joint project between the Russian space agency and ESA, officials said the mood was serious, intense but very determined in the Mars500 facility at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow as the crew talked to the press and then walked into the modules.
Diego Urbina and Romain Charles from Europe, Sukhrob Kamolov, Alexey Sitev, Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Mikhail Sinelnikov from Russia and Wang Yue from China will have a mission that is as ‘real’ as possible. Their mission is to ‘fly to Mars’ in 250 days, divide in two groups, ‘land on and explore Mars’ for a month and ‘return to Earth’ in 230 days, in their special facility imitating an interplanetary spacecraft, lander and Martian terrain. The Mars 500 facility. Credit: ESA
“It will be trying for all of us. We cannot see our family, we cannot see our friends, but I think it is all a glorious time in our lives,” said Chinese participant Wang Yue, 27, ahead of the experiment.
In addition to evaluating many new technologies, Mars500 will test of human endurance and psychological issues of being confined in a small space and being away from family and friends and a normal Earth-life.
The crew will be keeping online diaries and provide video updates to ESA’s Mars500 site.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands vertical on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral, FL. Credit: SpaceX
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The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sits poised on Cape Canaveral to begin a new era in space flight, as the company received their final clearance from the U.S. Air Force make their first launch attempt on Friday, June 4, 2010. The launch window is from 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. EDT (1500 and 1900 GMT) (a webcast will be available at this link). The commercial space company will send its two-stage 180-foot (55 meter)-high rocket to space, carrying a mock-up of their Dragon capsule, and if successful, will pave the way for cargo flights – and maybe even crewed flights — to the International Space Station for NASA.
Space Exploration Technologies’ CEO Elon Musk told reporters Thursday that the maiden flight probably has a 70 percent to 80 percent chance of succeeding.
“However, I should point out that is less than the probability of success in Russian roulette,” Musk said. “Remember that scene from ‘The Deer Hunter?’ That’s tomorrow. But not quite as likely.”
But, Musk added, “Everyone at this point feels pretty confident. There’s very little we can do to improve the rocket as far as reliability is concerned. We’ve done everything we could possibly think of.”
“There is a lot of anticipation by all the people here at SpaceX,” said Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut who flew in the space shuttle, and is now SpaceX’s vice president for astronaut safety and mission assurance. “It’s a really big launch for the company. We’re trying not to let that excitement and anticipation bias our judgment.”
The importance of this flight test is not lost on anyone at SpaceX or the space community, as NASA’s new plan rolled out by President Obama depends largely on the success of commercial space companies. The space shuttles are being retired and many wonder about NASA’s dependence on yet-untested commercial companies to ferry supplies and astronauts to space. SpaceX DragonLab™ - a free-flying, fully-recoverable, reusable spacecraft capable of hosting pressurized and unpressurized payloads. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX has not provided many details about the flight path, but the rocket is hoped to climb to a 250 km (155 mile) -high circular orbit tilted at 34.5 degrees to the equator.
Musk said 100 percent success would mean reaching the planned orbit. “But I think given this is a test flight, whatever percentage of getting to orbit we achieve would still be considered a good day. I think even if we prove out just that the first stage functions correctly, that’s a good day for a test. That’s a great day if both stages work correctly.”
“If the vehicle lifts off the pad, no matter what the outcome is, we’re going to learn something that’s going to make the second flight more likely and the third flight and the fourth flight,” said Bowersox.
If all goes well, SpaceX plans to fly up to three Falcon 9/Dragon test missions for NASA, before starting cargo deliveries – maybe by next year — to the ISS, part of a $1.6 billion contract. The other company that NASA is depending on Orbital Sciences Corp, which plans to debut its Taurus 2 rocket in 2011. NASA has a $1.9 billion station resupply contract with that company.
SpaceX has launched smaller versions of the Falcon rocket, and it took four tries for the first success.
Forecasters say there is a 60 percent chance of good weather, improving to 70 percent favorable on Saturday.
One of our favorite astronauts, Chris Hadfield from Canada, was recently part of the NEEMO-14 crew — NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations — who spent two weeks in an underwater habitat simulating a long-duration space mission. The crew put together this great video showing what it would be like to walk and jump on the Moon, Mars and an asteroid. The “Aquanauts” and support divers are weighted down to simulate the different gravity. There’s also a jet pack demonstration, which the crew decided is needed for any future mission to an asteroid!
Titan's thick haze. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
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Models of the Sun’s evolution indicate it was as much as 30 percent less luminous during Earth’s early history than it is now. But, somehow the surface of the planet was warm enough for primordial life to emerge. A new study and a look at Saturn’s moon Titan has provided clues for how the Sun could have kept the early Earth warm enough. Scientists say a thick organic haze that enshrouded early Earth several billion years ago may have been similar to the haze that covers Titan and would have protected emerging life on the planet from the damaging effects of ultraviolet radiation, while warming the planet, as well.
Eric Wolf from the University of Colorado-Boulder and his team believe the organic haze was made up primarily of methane and nitrogen chemical byproducts created by reactions with light. If the particles clumped together in larger, complex structures, an arrangement known as a fractal size distribution, then the smallest particles would interact with the shortwave radiation, while the larger structures made out of the smaller particles would affect longer wavelengths. Not only would the haze have shielded early Earth from UV light, it would have allowed gases like ammonia to build up, causing greenhouse warming and perhaps helped to prevent the planet from freezing over.
Other researchers including Carl Sagan have proposed possible solutions to this “Early Faint Sun” paradox, which generally involved atmospheres with powerful greenhouse gases that could have helped insulate the Earth. But while those gases would have blocked the radiation, it wouldn’t have warmed Earth enough for life to form.
“Since climate models show early Earth could not have been warmed by atmospheric carbon dioxide alone because of its low levels, other greenhouse gases must have been involved,” said Wolf. “We think the most logical explanation is methane, which may have been pumped into the atmosphere by early life that was metabolizing it.”
Lab simulations helped researchers conclude that the Earth haze likely was made up of irregular “chains” of aggregate particles with greater geometrical sizes, similar to the shape of aerosols believed to populate Titan’s thick atmosphere. The arrival of the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn in 2004 has allowed scientists to study Titan, the only moon in the solar system with both a dense atmosphere and liquid on its surface.
During the Archean period there was no ozone layer in Earth’s atmosphere to protect life on the planet, said Wolf. “The UV shielding methane haze over early Earth we are suggesting not only would have protected Earth’s surface, it would have protected the atmospheric gases below it — including the powerful greenhouse gas, ammonia — that would have played a significant role in keeping the early Earth warm.”
The researchers estimated there were roughly 100 million tons of haze produced annually in the atmosphere of early Earth during this period. “If this was the case, an early Earth atmosphere literally would have been dripping organic material into the oceans, providing manna from heaven for the earliest life to sustain itself,” said team member Brian Toon, also from CU-Boulder.
“Methane is the key to make this climate model run, so one of our goals now is to pin down where and how it originated,” said Toon. If Earth’s earliest organisms didn’t produce the methane, it may have been generated by the release of gasses during volcanic eruptions either before or after life first arose — a hypothesis that will requires further study.
This new study will likely re-ignite interest in a controversial experiment by scientists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey in the 1950s in which methane, ammonia, nitrogen and water were combined in a test tube. After Miller and Urey ran an electrical current through the mixture to simulate the effects of lightning or powerful UV radiation, the result was the creation of a small pool of amino acids — the building blocks of life.
“We still have a lot of research to do in order to refine our new view of early Earth,” said Wolf. “But we think this paper solves a number of problems associated with the haze that existed over early Earth and likely played a role in triggering or at least supporting the earliest life on the planet.”
Seen close up, the Comanche outcrop shows both a granular texture and multiple layers. Scientists think it is volcanic debris draped over preexisting terrain. After it was deposited, the rock was soaked in hydrothermal water rich in carbonate minerals. False-color Pancam image. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University
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Even though the Mars Rover Spirit is asleep, a new look at old data from one of her instruments confirms the presence of large amounts of carbonate-rich rocks, which means that regions of the planet may have once harbored water. The Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer, or Mini-TES, instrument on the rover looked at an outcrop of rocks called “Comanche” back in 2005, but the instrument was partially “blinded” by dust. Only when scientists developed a special calibration to remove the spectral effects of the dust on the instrument was the spectral data revealed to show evidence for carbonate-rich outcrops in a range of low hills inside Gusev crater on Mars.
Spirit has gone into hibernation because of low power levels during the extremely cold winter months on Mars. She is stuck in some loose sand in the Home Plate region, and the rover teams were unable to get her solar panels in a good position to soak up the sun’s energy.
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See more images of Comanche, below, courtesy of Stu Atkinson.
Carbonates are clues to neutral pH conditions, and the mineral forms readily in the presence of water and a carbon dioxide atmosphere. If conditions were right for carbonate-bearing rocks to form, water would have been present, and could have created an environment favorable to life. Yet until now, geologic clues for the presence of carbonates on the surface of Mars have been scarce.
“Mini-TES got dusted months before Spirit reached Comanche, and we didn’t have a good way to correct for the dust effects at the time,” said Steve Ruff, research scientist at Arizona State University’s Mars Space Flight Facility. Ruff is one of a team of scientists on the paper, whose lead author is Richard V. Morris of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We knew there was something weird about the outcrop’s spectrum as seen by Mini-TES, but couldn’t say what caused it.”
Ruff said that even though Spirit’s Mössbauer spectrometer indicated that carbonate was possible, the team needed more evidence to be convinced. When the calibration method to remove the spectral effects of the dust made that data available, and combined with chemical data from a third spectrometer, “the Mini-TES spectra put the discovery over the edge,” Ruff said.
Scientists have been searching for Martian carbonate rocks for decades because such minerals are crucial to understanding the early climate history of Mars and the related question of whether the planet might once have held life. Part of the Pancam “Seminole Panorama” taken near the Seminole outcrop on the southeast slope of Husband Hill. Home Plate and the Comanche outcrops are visible in this image. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Cornell. http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu Image captions
Small amounts of carbonate minerals have been detected on Mars before, but Ruff said this new data is different. “We’re seeing a couple of large outcrops of rock poking through the soil of the Columbia Hills,” he said. “The rocks are about 25 percent carbonate by weight, by far the highest abundance we’ve seen on Mars.”
The mineral is rich in magnesium and iron and possibly formed a long time ago by precipitation from the hot, residual waters from leftover magma that flowed through buried carbonate deposits.
NASA’s other Mars rover, Opportunity, has discovered ample evidence for alteration of rocks by water in Meridiani Planum, on the other side of Mars from Spirit’s Gusev Crater. But the water at Meridiani was strongly acidic. While life can evolve to survive in acidic conditions — such as in some of Yellowstone National Park’s geysers and hot springs — few scientists think it can start under those conditions.
Moreover, acidic water quickly destroys carbonate minerals, as for example vinegar dissolves hard water deposits. Thus finding outcrops of carbonate rock shows that the hydrothermal water at Comanche was liquid, chemically neutral, and abundant.
While there’s no evidence for life, Ruff says, the conditions would have been more favorable for it.
Ruff added that more old data from Spirit could hold new clues to Mars’ past. “The Comanche data have been available to scientists and the public for about four years now. The new finding shows that this data set still harbors potentially major discoveries.”
More images of Comanche, rendered by Stu Atkinson:
Panorama of the Comanche outcrop. Credit: NASA/JPL, rendered by Stuart Atkinson.Another color view of Comanche. Credit: NASA/JPL, colorization by Stuart Atkinson.D view of Comanche. Credit: NASA/JPL, 3-D by Stuart Atkinson
It’s time once again for another Where In The Universe Challenge. Test your visual knowledge of the cosmos by naming where in the Universe this image was taken and give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft/telescope responsible for this picture. Post your guesses in the comments section, and check back on later at this same post to find the answer. To make this challenge fun for everyone, please don’t include links or extensive explanations with your answer. Good luck!
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.
This is what is called the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, or IC 1396 in the constellation of Cepheus. Located at a distance of 2,450 light-years, there is an elongated dark globule within the emission nebula, which is a condensation of dense gas that is barely surviving the strong ionizing radiation from a nearby massive star. The globule is being compressed by the surrounding ionized gas.
These NASA Hubble Space Telescope snapshots reveal an impact scar on Jupiter fading from view over several months between July 2009 and November 2009. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), H. B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), and the Jupiter Impact Team
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When amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley from Australia saw a dark spot the size of the Pacific Ocean appear on Jupiter through his telescope on July 19, 2009, this started a flurry of astronomic activity, with other telescopes quickly slewing to take a look. It didn’t take long for other astronomers to confirm Jupiter had been hit by an object, either an asteroid or a comet. Of course, the world’s most famous telescope, Hubble, zeroed in on this unexpected activity on Jupiter, and luckily, the telescope had been recently updated with a new Wide Field Camera 3 and newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys. Astronomers have now released a series of images from Hubble which may show for the first time the immediate aftermath of an asteroid striking another planet.
Astronomers have witnessed this kind of cosmic event before, but from a comet. Similar scars had been left behind during the course of a week in July 1994, when more than 20 pieces of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The 2009 impact occurred during the same week, 15 years later.
But comparing Hubble images of both collisions, astronomers say the culprit was likely an asteroid about 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide.
“This solitary event caught us by surprise, and we can only see the aftermath of the impact, but fortunately we do have the 1994 Hubble observations that captured the full range of impact phenomena, including the nature of the objects from pre-impact observations” says astronomer Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., leader of the Jupiter impact study.
The analysis revealed key differences between the two collisions (in 1994 and 2009), providing clues to the 2009 event. Astronomers saw a distinct halo around the 1994 impact sites in Hubble ultraviolet (UV) images, evidence of fine dust arising from a comet-fragment strike. The UV images also showed a strong contrast between impact-generated debris and Jupiter’s clouds.
Hubble ultraviolet images of the 2009 impact showed no halo and also revealed that the site’s contrast faded rapidly. Both clues suggest a lack of lightweight particles, providing circumstantial evidence for an impact by a solid asteroid rather than a dusty comet.
The elongated shape of the recent asteroid impact site also differs from the 1994 strike, indicating that the 2009 object descended from a shallower angle than the SL9 fragments. The 2009 body also came from a different direction than the SL9 pieces.
Team member Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, and colleagues performed an analysis of possible orbits that the 2009 impacting body could have taken to collide with Jupiter. Their work indicates the object probably came from the Hilda family of bodies, a secondary asteroid belt consisting of more than 1,100 asteroids orbiting near Jupiter.
The 2009 strike was equal to a few thousand standard nuclear bombs exploding, comparable to the blasts from the medium-sized fragments of SL9. The largest of those fragments created explosions that were many times more powerful than the world’s entire nuclear arsenal blowing up at once.
The recent impact underscores the important work performed by amateur astronomers. “This event beautifully illustrates how amateur and professional astronomers can work together,” said Hammel.
The Jupiter bombardments reveal that the solar system is a rambunctious place, where unpredictable events may occur more frequently than first thought. Jupiter impacts were expected to occur every few hundred to few thousand years. Although there are surveys to catalogue asteroids, many small bodies may still go unnoticed and show up anytime to wreak havoc.
The study by Hammel’s team appeared in the June 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
What would it be like to approach Mars in a spacecraft? In one of the coolest movies ever, we now know! Using the the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board Mars Express, science teams put together 600 individual still images to create a movie of descending towards and then moving away from Mars. It shows the spacecraft’s slow descent from high above the planet, speeding up as closest approach is passed and then slowing down again as the distance increases. Continue reading “Mars Webcam Provides Astronaut-like View of Red Planet”
