Universe Today

July 15, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Senate’s New NASA Plan: Heavy Lift, Extra Shuttle Mission, Less Commericial and Tech Development

The U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation today unanimously approved legislation that would add a shuttle mission and jump start work on a heavy-lift rocket next year. The NASA Reauthorization Act effectively cancels the Constellation program, but directs NASA to begin work immediately on a new heavy-lift vehicle to be ready by 2016, along with a crew vehicle. The new legislation takes money away, however, from two main focuses on Obama’s proposed budget: commercial space development and funding for innovation and breakthrough technologies.

Commercial space ventures would only get $1.6 billion for development in the next three years, as opposed to Obama’s plan for $3.3 billion on commercial rocket companies between 2011 and 2013.

Obama had proposed $6 billion over five years for technology development whereas the new Senate bill funds advanced technologies at about $950 million over three years.

Both of these components are a big disappointment for those looking towards the future and not necessarily honing in on the short-term of the next few years.

The plan, mainly spearheaded by Florida Senator Bill Nelson is said to be a compromise between Obama’s plan and those in Congress who opposed it.

“The goal was to preserve U.S. leadership in space exploration and keep as much of the rocket-industry talent as possible employed,” said Nelson, following Thursday’s unanimous approval of the authorization bill.

Nelson said extending the space shuttle into 2011 keeps much of the KSC workforce in place and advances heavy-lift rocket development, with an eye toward manned flights nearly a decade earlier than 2025, as had been proposed by the White House. It also provides the money for operating the International Space Station through 2020.

Some, including business and space advocates on the Space Coast, were critical of the draft bill because it scaled back President Obama’s proposed funding for that program and for technology development, both of which could create jobs.

The heavy lift development would be started now instead of 2015, as proposed by Obama.

But is creating a heavy-lift vehicle by 2016 doable, or is it basically asking NASA to do too much with too little – to which Constellation fell victim?

Although Nelson said the bill would support an overall growth in science, aeronautics, and space technology and define a long-term goal for human space flight to expand a permanent human presence beyond low-Earth orbit, no particular destination was cited.

The ISS would remain funded until 2020.

Here are they key differences between Obama’s budget plan and the Senate’s Reauthorization Act:

Space Shuttle
Obama: end in February, 2011
Senate: end in late summer, 2011

Commercial Space:
Obama: $3.3 billion for 2011-2013
Senate: $1.6 billion during the same time period

Constellation Program
Obama: Cancel, but continue with a “lite” version of the Orion space capsule
Senate: Cancel but accelerate development of a heavy-lift rocket that can also carry astronauts to low-earth orbit and continue development of an Orion-like space capsule

Technology Development
Obama: Fund Flagship Technologies program at $6 billion over five years
Senate: Fund advanced technologies at about $950 million over three years

For education the new bill would support new education initiatives, such as teacher training programs, to reinforce NASA’s role in developing a workforce with strong science, technology, engineering, and mathematics skills.

The bill would require NASA to look at alternative management models for NASA’s workforce, centers, and capabilities, while enforcing short-term prohibitions on major center displacements and reductions-in-force until a job study is completed.

Weigh in on your opinions below. What’s next? The White House will probably respond with another compromise, and those who work at NASA will remain in limbo while another compromise is worked on.

Further reading:
Nelson Press Release of NASA 2010 Reauthorization Act
Orlando Sentinel: Better Course on Space
Houston Chronicle: (Sci Guy) White House May be Inclined to Support Senate Bill
Letter from former astronauts supporting Commercial Crew Transport
Letter from former astronauts against Obama plan (MSNBC)

July 15, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Wind Gust Gives Opportunity Rover a Power Boost

The Opportunity rover's solar panels got a cleaning sometime between Sol 2274 and 2299. Credit: NASA/JPL, collage and annotation by Stu Atkinson.

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Either some little Martians came by and gave the Opportunity rover a quick once-over cleaning, or a recent gust of wind blew layers of dust off her solar panels. The image above (supplied by our favorite photo- whiz Stu Atkinson), shows Oppy’s solar panels on sol 2274 and 2299 (approximately June 18 and July 12 here on Earth) with a marked difference in the amount of dust on the panels. Yesterday, the Twitter account for the rovers, @marsrovers Tweeted: “Love those Martian dust busters! A recent wind gust cleaned Oppy’s solar panels giving her a little power boost for the road.” And on the road she is, heading earnestly for Endeavour Crater, with several recent drives of around 70 meters (230 feet) per sol. But she now has some new autonomous software the rover team is trying out, and with her new greater power capacity, she should be able to keep on truckin’. Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell reported on Twitter this week that Opportunity is 40% of the way from Victoria Crater to Endeavour.

And what’s the latest news about Spirit – still silent?

According to Maxwell (again on Twitter), the power models for sunlight hitting Gusev Crater say the very earliest we could possibly hear from Spirit could be sometime late this week. But he added that more likely would be hearing from Spirit by around mid-November.

But catching Spirit awake is complicated, with timing being everything. “Even if Spirit’s waking up (soon), we’ll have a hard time catching her during one of her wakeups,” Maxwell said. “This will take some luck as well as skill,” having the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or Mars Odyssey overhead and listening at the very moment Spirit is talking. Maxwell added that the team is working on how to locate Spirit if she’s had a Mission Clock fault and doesn’t know how to send communications to Earth.

It is very likely that Spirit has experienced a low-power fault and has turned off all sub-systems, including communication and gone into a deep sleep. While sleeping, the rover will use the available solar array energy to recharge her batteries. When the batteries recover to a sufficient state of charge, and if the Mission Clock hasn’t gone completely bonkers, Spirit will wake up and begin to communicate.

Spirit’s odometry remains at 7,730.50 meters (4.80 miles).

But meanwhile, Oppy’s total odometry is 21,550.77 meters (21.55 kilometers, or 13.99 miles), and she’ll be putting on more as she heads towards Endeavour Crater. Maxwell later said he has an idea to speed up the rover’s drives as much as 30%, so that will be interesting to find out more about his idea. “A 30% speedup would shave 2-3 months off our trip to Endeavour — maybe even more than that. Worth a try! Phyllosilicates, here we come!,” he tweeted, referring to the water-based minerals that scientists are hoping to find within the crater. That would mean water helped form the rocks in Mars’ early history.

Features on Endeavour Crater named for Australian locations. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

Speaking of Endeavour, recently, NASA and JPL released an image showing the newly-given names of different points on Oppy’s next destination, and there’s a push by some people in Australia for one additional feature to be named “Nobby’s Head.”

The rover team is using the theme of names of places visited by British Royal Navy Capt. James Cook in his 1769-1771 Pacific voyage in command of H.M.S. Endeavour. My friend Col Maybury from radio station 2NUR in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia is helping to promulgate this request to NASA, with the support of the Minister of Tourism and Newcastle’s Lord Mayor. “Hopefully we will get a favourable reply soon,” Col wrote me.

Cook first came to this location in May of 1770. At midnight by moonlight he saw an island jutting up from the sea and wrote in his journal: “A small round rock or Island, laying close under the land, bore South 82 degrees West, distance 3 or 4 Leagues.”

Now called Nobby Head, it is the entrance of Newcastle Harbour, formed by the Hunter River, a great coal port of New South Wales. The feature on Mars is the same shape as Nobby Head on Earth. Wish Col and the people of Newcastle good luck in their “endeavour” to name this feature! (Anyone from the rover team naming committee reading this?!)

The proposed Nobby's Head at Endeavour Crater on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL, annotation by Col Maybury.

And don’t forget, Friday July 16 is Mars Day! The National Air and Space Museum has some ideas on how to celebrate.

July 15, 2010December 24, 2015 by Ryan Anderson

Hubble Confirms Comet-like Tail on Vaporizing Planet

Next time you hear someone complaining that it’s too hot outside, you can make them feel better by pointing out that at least their planet isn’t so hot it is vaporizing into space. Unless of course you happen to be speaking to someone from the gaseous extrasolar planet HD 209458b.

New observations from the Hubble Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) confirm suspicions from 2003 that the planet HD 209458b is behaving like a Jupiter-sized comet, losing its atmosphere in a huge plume due to the powerful solar wind of its too-close star.

HD 209458b is a “hot Jupiter”: a gas giant that orbits extremely close to its star. It whips around its star in 3.5 days, making even speedy little Mercury with its 88 day orbit around the sun look like a slacker.

Astronomers have managed to learn a lot about HD 209458b because it is a transiting planet. That means that its orbit is aligned just right, so from our point of view it blocks some of the light from its star. When that happens, it gives hints at the planet’s size, and gives a much better constraint on the mass. HD 209458b is a little more than two thirds the mass of Jupiter, but heat from its star has puffed it up to two and a half times Jupiter’s diameter.

In the case of HD 209458b, during transits some of the star’s light passes through the planet’s escaping, 2,000-degree-Fahrenheit atmosphere, allowing scientists to tell what it is made of and how fast it is being lost to space.

“We found gas escaping at high velocities, with a large amount of this gas flowing toward us at 22,000 miles per hour,” said astronomer Jeffrey Linsky of the University of Colorado in Boulder, leader of the COS study. “This large gas flow is likely gas swept up by the stellar wind to form the comet-like tail trailing the planet.”

The escaping planetary gases absorbed starlight at wavelengths characteristic of heavier elements like carbon and silicon, suggesting that the star’s intense heat is driving circulation deep in HD 209458b’s atmosphere, dredging up material that would otherwise remain far beneath lighter elements like hydrogen.

Even though its atmosphere is constantly streaming away into space, HD 209458b won’t be disappearing anytime soon. At the measured rate of loss, the planet would last about a trillion years, far longer than the lifetime of its host star.

So, be thankful that even on hot summer days, your planet is in no danger of being vaporized by its star. And if you do happen to be speaking to someone from HD 209458b, you can reassure them that their planet will still be there when they return home. Well, most of it, anyway.

Oh, and remind them to stock up on sunscreen.

July 14, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe #112

Here’s this week’s Where In The Universe Challenge. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the instrument responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. 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 posted below!

This is cluster Abell 901b, taken in 2008 by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble has mapped the invisible dark matter as well as the detailed structure of individual galaxies embedded in it. The magenta clumps throughout the image reveal the distribution of dark matter in the cluster. You can see a larger image of the entire Abell supercluster, as well as more information, at the HubbleSite.

July 14, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Swift Briefly Blinded by Mega X-ray Blast

The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen in X-rays temporarily blinded Swift's X-ray Telescope on 21 June 2010. This image merges the X-rays (red to yellow) with the same view from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which showed nothing extraordinary. (The image is 5 arcminutes across.) Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler — The brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen in X-rays temporarily blinded Swift's X-ray Telescope on 21 June 2010. This image merges the X-rays (red to yellow) with the same view from Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which showed nothing extraordinary. Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

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A record-breaking gamma ray burst from beyond the Milky Way temporarily blinded the X-ray eye on NASA’s Swift space observatory on June 21, 2010. The X-rays traveled through space for 5-billion years before slamming into and overwhelming the space-based telescope. “This gamma-ray burst is by far the brightest light source ever seen in X-ray wavelengths at cosmological distances,” said David Burrows, senior scientist and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and the lead scientist for Swift’s X-ray Telescope (XRT).

A gamma-ray burst is a violent eruption of energy from the explosion of a massive star morphing into a new black hole. This mega burst, named GRB 100621A, is the brightest X-ray source that Swift has detected since the observatory began X-ray observation in early 2005.

Although Swift satellite was designed specifically to study gamma-ray bursts, the instrument was not designed to handle an X-ray blast this bright. “The intensity of these X-rays was unexpected and unprecedented” said Neil Gehrels, Swift’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Just when we were beginning to think that we had seen everything that gamma-ray bursts could throw at us, this burst came along to challenge our assumptions about how powerful their X-ray emissions can be.”.

For more information on this burst, see this press release from Penn State’s Eberly College of Science.

July 14, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Big or Small, All Stars Form the Same Way

IRAS 13481-6124 (upper left is about twenty times the mass of our sun and five times its radius. It is surrounded by its pre-natal cocoon. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/Univ. of Michigan

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How do massive stars form? This has been one of the more hotly debated questions in astronomy. Do big stars form by accretion like low-mass stars or do they form through the merging of low mass protostars? Since massive stars tend to be quite far away and usually are surrounded by a shroud of dust, they are difficult to observe, said Stefan Kraus from the University of Michigan. But Kraus and his team have obtained the first image of a dusty disc closely encircling a massive baby star, providing direct evidence that, big or small, all stars form the same way.

“Our observations show a disc surrounding an embryonic young, massive star, which is now fully formed,” said Kraus. “It’s the first time something like this has been observed, and the disk very much resembles what we see around young stars that are much smaller, except everything is scaled up and more massive.”

Not only that, but Kraus and his team found hints at a potential planet-forming region around the nascent star.

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer Kraus and his team focused on IRAS 13481-6124, a star located about 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, and about 20 times more massive than our sun. “We were able to get a very sharp view into the innermost regions around this star by combining the light of separate telescopes,” Kraus said, “basically mimicking the resolving power of a telescope with an incredible 85-meter (280-foot) mirror.”

Kraus added that the resulting resolution is about 2.4 milliarcseconds, which is equivalent to picking out the head of a screw on the International Space Station from Earth, or more than ten times the resolution possible with current visible-light telescopes in space.

They also made complementary observations with the 3.58-meter New Technology Telescope at La Silla. The team chose this region by looking at archived images from the Spitzer Space Telescope as well as from observations done with the APEX 12-meter submillimeter telescope, where they discovered the presence of a jet.

“Such jets are commonly observed around young low-mass stars and generally indicate the presence of a disc,” says Kraus.

Astronomers have obtained the first clear look at a dusty disk closely encircling a massive baby star, providing direct evidence that massive stars do form in the same way as their smaller brethren -- and closing an enduring debate. This artist's concept shows what such a massive disk might look like. Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada

From their observations, the team believes the system is about 60,000 years old, and that the star has reached its final mass. Because of the intense light of the star — 30,000 times more luminous than our Sun — the disc will soon start to evaporate. The disc extends to about 130 times the Earth–Sun distance — or 130 astronomical units (AU) — and has a mass similar to that of the star, roughly twenty times the Sun. In addition, the inner parts of the disc are shown to be devoid of dust, which could mean that planets are forming around the star.

“In the future, we might be able to see gaps in this and other dust disks created by orbiting planets, although it is unlikely that such bodies could survive for long,” Kraus said. “A planet around such a massive star would be destroyed by the strong stellar winds and intense radiation as soon as the protective disk material is gone, which leaves little chance for the development of solar systems like our own.”

Kraus looks forward to observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), currently under construction in Chile, which may be able to resolve the disks to an even sharper resolution.

Previously, Spitzer detected dusty disks of planetary debris around more mature massive stars, which supports the idea that planets may form even in these extreme environments. (Read about that research here.) .

Sources: ESO, JPL

July 14, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

External Tank for Final Scheduled Shuttle Mission Arrives at KSC (Gallery)

Arrival of ET-138 at KSC. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

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Universe Today photographer Alan Walters was on hand at Kennedy Space Center today to see the arrival of ET-138, the external tank for the final scheduled space shuttle mission, STS-134. Enjoy this gallery of images, (because it is something that might only happen one more time…). There was also a surprise drive-by of some segments of used shuttle solid rocket boosters.

Closeup of ET-138 at KSC. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

Used SRB sections drive past while ET-138 is being unloaded at KSC. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

Kennedy's External Tank/Solid Rocket Booster Vehicle Manager Alicia Mendoza is interviewed at KSC on July 14, 2010. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

Closeup of the nose of ET-138. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

ET-138 arrives at the Vehicle Assembly Building at KSC. Credit: Alan Walters (awaltersphoto.com) for Universe Today

July 14, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Pluto Goes into the Dark

The Planet Pluto crossing in front of Barnard 92. Credit: John Chumack

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Last week, Pluto passed in front of what looks like a dark patch in the sky, and astrophotographer John Chumack was ready to capture the event. The dark patch is actually Barnard 92, a dark nebula. Since Pluto is usually very hard to see among the background of stars, it stands out against this dark nebula which blocks out the background stars. Still, Pluto – distant and dim as it is – is just a faint point of light, so John took special measures. “Although Pluto was easily visible in a short 5 minute exposure, I took an hour exposure to show the Dark nebula and the ‘rich & pretty’ surrounding star field,” he said.

The image was taken from John’s observatory in Yellow Springs, Ohio, using his homemade 16” Newtonian telescope and a QHY8CCD single shot color camera, captured from 01:00am until 02:00 am E.S.T. on July 6, 2010. Pluto and B92 sits within the large Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24.

Great shot, John! For more wonderful astronomical images, check out John’s website, Galactic Images.

July 13, 2010January 20, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

Robonaut Getting Ready for ISS Mission

NASA’s Robonaut 2 will be the first human-like robot to go to space, and teams from Johnson Space Center have been putting “R2” through a battery of tests to make sure this futuristic robot is ready for its first mission. R2 will become a permanent resident of the International Space Station, and will launch on space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS-133 mission, currently planned for November 1, 2010.

The 136 kg (300-pound) R2 consists of a head and a torso with two arms and two hands. R2 Once aboard the station, engineers will monitor how the robot operates in weightlessness. R2 is undergoing extensive testing in preparation for its flight, including vibration, vacuum and radiation testing. Watch the video for more information on how R2 operates.
Continue reading “Robonaut Getting Ready for ISS Mission”

July 13, 2010December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Your Chance to Weigh in on NASA’s Future Destinations

Where do you think NASA’s next destination should be in space? Asteroid? The Moon? Mars? The Planetary Society is hosting an interactive Ustream chat where you can put in your 2 cents.

“Tell us where you want to go in space!” said Bill Nye (the Science Guy) who will soon become the Planetary Society’s new executive director. Nye and Louis Friedman, the Society’s current executive director, will host the live chat – titled “The New NASA Plan – Destinations” — on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 2:00 pm U.S. Pacific Time (5:00 pm EDT, 21:00 GMT).
“We want a lively debate!” said Friedman, who urges anyone to join the discussion.

The Planetary Society has been actively encouraging discussion of the new plan proposed for NASA, a plan that would entail a major shift in NASA’s human spaceflight program. The Society leadership feels that it is vital that public interest be represented in discussing issues that will change the course of the US space program for decades to come.

The new NASA plan for human spaceflight focuses on technologies and milestones that will advance human space flight out of Earth orbit and into the solar system. Mars may be the ultimate goal, but the path for humans to set foot on the Red Planet is flexible, to be determined step-by-step.

The Planetary Society plans to continue to hold webcasts on topics such as the deep space rocket, use of commercial launch vehicles, and robotic precursor missions.

Those wishing to participate in the Ustream chat room or to ask questions will need to set up a free account with Ustream prior to the start of the event. The New NASA Plan — Destinations will also be archived on Ustream for later viewing.