Posted on by Fraser Cain

Atlas Launches Superbird-6

Image credit: Boeing
The Superbird-6 satellite is in orbit tonight thanks to a successful launch on an Atlas IIAS rocket provided by International Launch Services (ILS).

Liftoff of the Atlas vehicle, built by Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), was at 8:45 p.m. EDT (00:45 April 16 GMT). The rocket released the satellite into its target transfer orbit 30 minutes later.

This was the fourth launch conducted this year by ILS, a Lockheed Martin joint venture. It also was ILS? second launch for Space Communications Corp. of Tokyo. Both Superbird spacecraft are 601 model satellites from Boeing Satellite Systems (BSS) of Los Angeles.

?We appreciate that SCC again placed its confidence in ILS and Atlas,? said ILS President Mark Albrecht. ?And we?re delighted to have a role in inaugurating new telecommunications services in the Western Pacific region.?

Albrecht added: ?Tonight?s launch marks the 80th mission since the start of the commercial Atlas program. I want to acknowledge BSS and the team that builds the 601 model ? 26 of these satellites have flown on Atlas rockets of various configurations over the last 11 years. So this launch is a reunion of a winning trio of companies.?

The vehicle flown tonight was the 28th in the Atlas IIAS configuration. Two more flights of this model are scheduled in the next two months. This mission also was the second in two months carrying a satellite for Japan. On March 13, another Atlas rocket carried the MBSAT satellite for Mobile Broadcasting Corp. of Japan, in which SCC is an investor.

The Atlas launch vehicle line has proven its operational reliability over 71 consecutive successful flights since 1993. The current generation of vehicles has a wide performance range for payloads ranging from approximately 3 metric tons to 10 metric tons, with either a 4-meter or 5-meter diameter fairing.

ILS is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Russian rocket builder Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. ILS markets and manages the missions on the Atlas rocket in the United States at both Cape Canaveral and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; and on the Proton rocket at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. Together ILS Atlas and Proton vehicles have launched more than 30 satellite payloads for commercial services in the Asia-Pacific Rim.

ILS was formed in 1995, and is based in McLean, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The Atlas rockets and their Centaur upper stages are built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Denver, Colo.; Harlingen, Texas; and San Diego, Calif.

Original Source: ILS News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Scientists Analyze Meteor Fragments

Image credit: University of Chicago
The meteorites that punched through roofs in Park Forest, Ill., on the evening of March 26, 2003, came from a larger mass that weighed no less than 1,980 pounds before it hit the atmosphere, according to scientific analyses led by the University of Chicago?s Steven Simon, who himself also happens to live in Park Forest.

Simon, a Senior Research Associate in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, and seven co-authors will publish these and other findings in the April issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. Simon holds a unique distinction among scientists: his home sits in the middle of the strewnfield, the area from which the meteorites were recovered.

?I don?t know of any other time when a meteoriticist was in the middle of a strewnfield,? said Lawrence Grossman, Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago and one of Simon?s co-authors.

In fact, Simon actually saw the flash the meteorite created. He had the drapes closed when the rock entered the sky over Illinois, but ?the whole sky lit up,? he said.

Grossman, who lives in Flossmoor, not far from Park Forest, also experienced the meteorite?s arrival firsthand. He was awakened by the sound of the meteorite entering the atmosphere that night. ?I heard a detonation,? Grossman said. ?It was sharp enough to wake me up.?

The team calculated the projectile?s size range based on measurements of the galactic cosmic rays that it absorbed. Measurements of a radioactive form of cobalt provided the projectile?s minimum size. ?If the object is too small the cosmic rays will just pass through and not make 60cobalt,? Simon explained.

Simon and Grossman classify the meteorite as an L5 chondrite, a type of stony meteorite, one low in iron that was heated for a long period of time inside its parent body, probably an asteroid. ?It?s a fairly common type of meteorite,? Simon said.

The Park Forest meteorite also showed signs that it had been highly shocked, probably when it was part of a rock that was broken from a much larger asteroid following a collision. The evidence for shock includes shocked feldspar. Apollo astronauts recovered shocked specimens of the mineral from the moon, as well, Simon said. Impact shock was common in the early history of the solar system because of the large quantity of interplanetary debris then in existence.

Witnesses in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri reported seeing the fireball that the meteorite produced as it broke up in the atmosphere, Simon and his colleagues reported. Local residents collected hundreds of meteorite fragments totaling approximately 65 pounds from an area extending from Crete in the south to the southern end of Olympia Fields in the north. Located in Chicago?s south suburbs, ?this is the most densely populated region to be hit by a meteorite shower in modern times,? the authors write.

One meteorite narrowly missed striking a sleeping Park Forest resident after it burst through the ceiling of a bedroom. The meteorite sliced through some window blinds, cratered the windowsill, then bounced across the room and broke a mirror before coming to rest.

The meteorites were recovered from a track that trends southeast to northwest. Satellite data analyzed by Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario indicates that the meteorite traveled from southwest to northeast, however.

?The meteorite broke up in the atmosphere, and the fragments encountered strong westerly winds as they fell,? the authors write. ?The smallest pieces were deflected the furthest eastward from the trajectory, and the largest pieces, carrying more momentum, were deflected the least.?

Contributing to the paper in addition to Simon and Grossman were the University of Chicago?s Robert Clayton and the late Toshiko Mayeda; Jim Schwade of the Planetary Studies Foundation in Crystal Lake, Ill.; Paul Sipiera of Harper College in Palatine, Ill.; John Wacker of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.; and Meenakshi Wadhwa of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Their research was supported by grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Planetary Studies Foundation.

Original Source: University of Chicago News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Cassini Sees Shepherding Moons

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Cassini has sighted Prometheus and Pandora, the two F-ring-shepherding moons whose unpredictable orbits both fascinate scientists and wreak havoc on the F ring.

Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) is visible left of center in the image, inside the F ring. Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) appears above center, outside the ring. The dark shadow cast by the planet stretches more than halfway across the A ring, the outermost main ring. The mottled pattern appearing in the dark regions of the image is ‘noise’ in the signal recorded by the camera system, which has subsequently been magnified by the image processing.

The F ring is a narrow, ribbon-like structure, with a width seen in this geometry equivalent to a few kilometers. The two small, irregularly shaped moons exert a gravitational influence on particles that make up the F ring, confining it and possibly leading to the formation of clumps, strands and other structures observed there. Pandora prevents the F ring from spreading outward and Prometheus prevents it from spreading inward. However, their interaction with the ring is complex and not fully understood. The shepherds are also known to be responsible for many of the observed structures in Saturn’s A ring.

The moons, which were discovered in images returned by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1980, are in chaotic orbits–their orbits can change unpredictably when the moons get very close to each other. This strange behavior was first noticed in ground-based and Hubble Space Telescope observations in 1995, when the rings were seen nearly edge-on from Earth and the usual glare of the rings was reduced, making the satellites more readily visible than usual. The positions of both satellites at that time were different than expected based on Voyager data.

One of the goals for the Cassini-Huygens mission is to derive more precise orbits for Prometheus and Pandora. Seeing how their orbits change over the duration of the mission will help to determine their masses, which in turn will help constrain models of their interiors and provide a more complete understanding of their effect on the rings.

This narrow angle camera image was snapped through the broadband green spectral filter, centered at 568 nanometers, on March 10, 2004, when the spacecraft was 55.5 million kilometers (34.5 million miles) from the planet. Image scale is approximately 333 kilometers (207 miles) per pixel. Contrast has been greatly enhanced, and the image has been magnified to aid visibility of the moons as well as structure in the rings.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Original Source: CICLOPS News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

New Planet Hunter Gets to Work

Image credit: SuperWasp
A consortium of astronomers is tomorrow (April 16th) celebrating the commissioning of the SuperWASP facility at the astronomical observatory on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, designed to detect thousands of planets outside of our own solar system.

Only about a hundred extra-solar planets are currently known, and many questions about their formation and evolution remain unanswered due to the lack of observational data. This situation is expected to improve dramatically as SuperWASP produces scientific results.

The SuperWASP facility is now entering its operational phase. Construction of the instrument began in May 2003, and in autumn last year the first test data was obtained which showed the instrument’s performance to exceed initial expectations.

SuperWASP is the most ambitious project of its kind anywhere in the world. Its extremely wide field of view combined with its ability to measure brightness very precisely allows it to view large areas of the sky and accurately monitor the brightnesses of hundreds of thousands of stars.

If any of these have nearby Jupiter-sized planets then they may move across the face of their parent star, as viewed from the Earth. While no telescope could actually see the planet directly, its passage or transit, blocks out a small proportion of the parent star’s light i.e. we see the star get slightly fainter for a few hours. In our own solar system a similar phenomenon will occur on 8th June 2004 when Venus will transit the Sun’s disk.

One nights’ observing with SuperWASP will generate a vast amount of data, up to 60 GB – about the size of a typical modern computer hard disk (or 42000 floppy disks). This data is then processed using sophisticated software and stored in a public database within the Leicester Database and Archive Service of the University of Leicester.

The Principal Investigator for the Project, Dr Don Pollacco (Queens University Belfast), said “While the construction and initial commissioning phases of the facility have been only 9 months long, SuperWASP represents the culmination of many years work from astronomers within the WASP consortium. Data from SuperWASP will lead to exciting progress in many areas of astronomy, ranging from the discovery of planets around nearby stars to the early detection of other classes of variable objects such as supernovae in distant galaxies”.

Dr Ren? Rutten (Director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes) said “SuperWASP is a very nice example of how clever ideas to exploit the latest technology can open new windows to explore the universe around us, and shows that important scientific programmes can be done at very modest cost.”

The history of the project over the last ten years including the exciting discovery of the Sodium Tail of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997 can be found at http://www.superwasp.org/history.html and enclosed web links.

The SuperWASP facility is operated by the WASP consortium involving

astronomers from the following institutes: Queen’s University Belfast, University of Cambridge, Instituto de Astrof?sica de Canarias, Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (La Palma), University of Keele, University of Leicester, Open University and University of St Andrews.

The SuperWASP instrument has cost approximately ?400K, and was funded by major financial contributions from Queen’s University Belfast, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the Open University. SuperWASP is located in the Spanish Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Canary Islands which is operated by the Instituto de Astrof?sica de Canarias (IAC).

Pictures of the SuperWASP facility and some of its astronomical first-light images are available at http://www.superwasp.org/firstlight.html

Original Source: PPARC News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Magnesium Could Be a Source of Fuel on Mars

Image credit: UMich
One of the big problems with space travel is that one cannot over pack.

Suppose astronauts reach Mars. How do they explore the planet if they cannot weigh down the vessel with fuel for excursions?

A team of undergraduate aerospace engineering students at the University of Michigan is doing research to help astronauts make fuel once they get to Mars, and the results could bring scientists one step closer to manned or extended rover trips to the planet.

Their research proposal won the five-student team a highly competitive trip to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to participate in the Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program.

In Houston, the students conducted zero-gravity experiments using iodine as a catalyst to burn magnesium. Magnesium is a metal found on Mars that can be harvested for fuel?fossil fuels don’t burn on Mars because of the planet’s carbon dioxide (CO2) atmosphere, but metals do burn in a CO2 atmosphere.

The idea for the students’ experiments evolved from previous research done by Margaret Wooldridge, an associate professor in mechanical engineering and the team’s adviser. Wooldridge’s research showed that while magnesium is a promising fuel source, burning magnesium alone?without a catalyst such as iodine?has several challenges. Preliminary results from the student experiments showed that using iodine as a catalyst helped make the magnesium burn better, said Arianne Liepa, aerospace engineering undergrad and team member.

The experiments also showed that using the iodine, magnesium, CO2 system worked even better in a microgravity environment. “That bodes well for a power source on Mars where the gravity is approximately one-third that of Earth,” Wooldridge said.

The students?Greg Hukill, Arianne Liepa, Travis Palmer, Carlos Perez and Christy Schroeder?who conducted the experiments over a nine-day period in March, flew on a specially modified Boeing KC 135A turbojet transport. The plane flies parabolic arcs to produce weightless periods of 20 to 25 seconds at the apex of the arc.

Original Source: University of Michigan News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Fourth Public Hearing on Space Exploration

Are you wondering what ever happened to Bush’s announcement of returning humans to the Moon? Well, a commission has been working its way across the country, hearing testimony from various experts (including Ray Bradbury). The fourth public hearing of the President’s commission on implementation of US space exploration policy will be held on April 15/16 at the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in San Francisco. As with the previous hearings, you can attend it in person (if you live in San Francisco); otherwise, you’ll want to turn to the Internet to watch a video stream live.

Visit the commission’s website at http://www.moontomars.org to find out more information. I’ll be watching.

Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Christian Huygen’s 375th Birthday

On 14 April 1629, 375 years ago today, the Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens was born. ESA?s probe on board the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to the Saturnian system is named after him, the lens-maker who discovered Titan in 1655.

Christian Huygens came from a wealthy and well-connected Dutch family, who were traditionally in diplomatic service to the House of Orange. As a young boy he already showed promise in mathematics and drawing.

Descartes used to correspond with Huygens’s grandfather and, impressed with the boy’s early efforts at geometry, he was a great influence on Huygens. In 1645 he went to the University of Leiden to study mathematics and law and two years later he attended the College of Breda.

Shortly after Galileo first used a telescope for astronomical purposes, many other scientists decided to use this new instrument to perform their own studies. Many realised immediately that the improvement of the quality of the telescope could mean the chance to make history in astronomy.

Huygens applied himself to the manufacture of telescopes, together with his brother Constantijn, and soon after developed a theory of the telescope. Huygens discovered the law of refraction to derive the focal distances of lenses. He also realised how to optimise his telescopes by using a new way of grinding and polishing the lenses.

In 1655, he pointed one of his new telescopes, of far better quality than that used by Galileo, towards Saturn with the intention of studying its rings. But he was very surprised to see that, besides the rings, the planet had also a large moon. This is now known as Titan. In 1659 he discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn.

Another Dutchman, Hans Lippershey, an eyeglass maker, had first offered the invention of the telescope to the Dutch government for military use. The government did not proceed with the idea. From Lippershey, Galileo picked up the idea of building a telescope for astronomical research. Huygens, by his own efforts and too late for Lippershey, demonstrated how important the telescope was.

With his interest in the measurement of time, he then discovered the pendulum could be a regulator of clocks. Huygens became one of the founding members of the French Academy of Sciences in 1666. He stayed in Paris from 1666-81 with only occasional visits to Holland and in 1673 he famously published his work Horologium Oscillatorium.

In 1689 Huygens went to London and met Sir Isaac Newton. He had always considered himself as an outstanding genius, so much so that he refused to collaborate with Newton in finding a better and more elegant mathematical solution for a pendulum clock.

The two great scientists also had other reasons for arguing. Newton was a firm upholder of the corpuscular theory of light. On the contrary Huygens formulated a wave theory of light. Newton?s reputation at the time caused scientists to favour the Englishman’s theory. It took more than a century to give the right emphasis to the theory of the Dutch scientist.

In the field of mathematics, Huygens could not challenge Newton, because he had not developed calculus. However, he encouraged the German mathematician Gottfried Leibnitz to publish on this subject. Newton had already developed calculus independently but not yet published. This led to a dispute between Newton and Leibnitz over this important mathematical discovery.

Technicians join Huygens to Cassini
He died in 1695. Although scientific results obtained by Huygens were second only to those obtained by Newton, the Dutch scientist was not really recognised in his time, nor had he influenced the development of science as he could have done, because he preferred solitary contemplation to team efforts.

The NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan is now giving back the honour to the Dutch scientist. Over 300 years after Huygens?s discovery of Titan, the largest moon is shortly to be visited by a probe from Earth. In a few years, we will know much more about Titan?s atmosphere, its surface and possibly mystery of the origin of life.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Hubble Looks at Sedna

Image credit: Hubble
Astronomers poring over 35 NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of the solar system’s farthest known object, unofficially named Sedna, are surprised that the object does not appear to have a companion moon of any substantial size.

This unexpected result might offer new clues to the origin and evolution of objects on the far edge of the solar system.

When Sedna’s existence was announced on March 15, its discoverer, Mike Brown of Caltech, was so convinced it had a satellite that an artist’s concept of Sedna released to the media included a hypothetical moon.

Brown’s prediction was based on the fact that Sedna appears to have a very slow rotation that could best be explained by the gravitational tug of a companion object. Almost all other solitary bodies in the solar system complete a spin in a matter of hours.

“I’m completely baffled at the absence of a moon,” says Brown. “This is outside the realm of expectation and makes Sedna even more interesting. But I simply don’t know what it means.”

Immediately following the announcement of the discovery of Sedna, astronomers turned the Hubble Space Telescope toward the new planetoid to search for the expected companion moon. The space-based platform provides the resolving power needed to make such precision measurements in visible light. “Sedna’s image isn’t stable enough in ground-based telescopes,” says Brown.

Surprisingly, the Hubble images taken March 16 with the new Advanced Camera for Surveys only show the single object Sedna, along with a faint, very distant background star in the same field of view.

“Despite HST’s crisp view (equivalent to trying to see a soccer ball 900 miles away), it still cannot resolve the disk of mysterious Sedna,” says Brown. This would place an upper limit in the object’s size of being approximately three-quarters the diameter of Pluto, or about 1,000 miles across.

But Brown predicted that a satellite would pop up as a companion “dot” in Hubble’s precise view. The object is not there, though there is a very small chance it might have been behind Sedna or transiting in front of it, so that it could not be seen separately from Sedna itself in the Hubble images.

Brown based this prediction on his earlier observations of apparent periodic changes in light reflecting from Sedna’s mottled surface. The resulting light curve gives a long rotation period exceeding 20 days (but not greater than 50 days). If true, Sedna would be the slowest rotating object in the solar system after Mercury and Venus, whose slow rotation rates are due to the tidal influence of the Sun.

One easy way out of this dilemma is the possibility that the rotation period is not as slow as the astronomers thought. But even with a careful reanalysis the team remains convinced that the period is correct. Brown admits, “I’m completely lost for an explanation as to why the object rotates so slowly.”

Small bodies like asteroids and comets typically complete one rotation in a matter of hours. Pluto’s rotation has been slowed to a relatively leisurely six-day period because Pluto is tidally locked to the revolution period of its satellite Charon. Hubble easily resolves Pluto and Charon as two separate bodies. NASA’s forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope will provide a platform for further high-resolution studies of the infrared light from such distant, cold bodies in our solar system.

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Original Source: Hubble News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Best Image Ever Taken of Titan’s Surface

Image credit: ESO
Titan, the largest Saturnian moon and the second largest moon of the solar system (only Jupiter’s Ganymede is slightly larger), is the only satellite known with a substantial atmosphere. It is composed mainly of nitrogen (like that of the Earth) and also contains significant amounts of methane. Opaque orange hazes and clouds of complex organic molecules effectively shield the solid surface from view, cf. e.g. the Voyager images.

Recent spectroscopic and radar observations suggest that there are huge surface reservoirs of liquid hydrocarbonates and a methane-based meteorological cycle similar to Earth’s hydrological cycle. This makes Titan the only known object with rainfall and potential surface oceans other than the Earth and thus a tantalizing research object for the study of pre-biotic chemistry and the origin of life on Earth.

The Huygens probe launched from the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission will enter Titan’s atmosphere in early 2005 to make measurements of the physical and chemical conditions, hopefully surviving the descent to document the surface as well.

Coordinated ground-based observations will provide essential support for the scientific return of the Cassini-Huygens encounter. However, only 8-10 m class telescopes with adaptive optics imaging systems or space-borne instruments can achieve sufficient image sharpness to attain a useful level of detail.

The new map of a large part of Titan’s surface, shown in PR Photo 11a/04, represents an important contribution in this direction.

A question of atmospheric windows
The first intriguing views of Titan’s surface were obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the 1990’s. From the ground, images were obtained in 2001-2 with the Keck II and Gemini North telescopes and more recently with the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), cf. ESO PR Photos 08a-c/04. All of these observations were made through a single narrow-band filter at a time.

The wavelengths used for such observations are critical for the amount of surface detail captured on the images. Optimally, one would look for a spectral band in which the atmosphere is completely transparent; a number of such “windows” are known to exist. But although the above observations were made in wavebands roughly matching atmospheric windows and do show surface features, they also include the light from different atmospheric layers. In a sense, they therefore correspond to viewing Titan’s surface through a somewhat opaque screen or, more poetically, the sight by an ancient sailor, catching for the first time a glimpse of an unknown continent through the coastal haze.

One narrow “window” is available in the near-infrared spectral region near wavelength 1.575 ?m. In February 2004, an international research team [1] working at the ESO VLT at the Paranal Observatory (Chile) obtained images of Titan’s surface through this spectral window with unprecedented spatial resolution and with the lowest contamination of atmospheric condensates to date.

They accomplished this during six nights (February 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8, 2004) at the time of the commissioning phase of a novel high-contrast imaging mode for the NACO adaptive optics instrument on the 8.2-m VLT YEPUN telescope, using the Simultaneous Differential Imager (SDI) [2]. This novel optical device provides four simultaneous high-resolution images (PR Photo 11b/04) at three wavelengths around a near-infrared atmospheric methane absorption feature.

The main application of the SDI is high-contrast imaging for the search for substellar companions with methane in their atmosphere, e.g. brown dwarfs and giant exoplanets, near other stars. However, as the present photos demonstrate, it is also superbly suited for Titan imaging.

Simultaneous Views of Titan’s Surface and Atmosphere
Titan is tidally-locked to Saturn, and hence always presents the same face towards the planet. To image all sides of Titan (from the Earth) therefore requires observations during almost one entire orbital period, 16 days. Still, the present week-long observing campaign enabled the team to map approximately three-quarters of the surface of Titan.

A new map of the surface of Titan (in cylindrical projection and covering most, but not all of the area imaged during these observations) was created. For this, the simultaneous “atmospheric” images (at waveband 1.625 ?m) were “subtracted” from the “surface” images (1.575 and 1.600 ?m) in order to remove any residual atmospheric features present in the latter. The ability to subtract simultaneous images is unique to the SDI camera [2].

This truly unique map shows the fraction of sunlight reflected from the surface – bright areas reflect more light than the darker ones. The amount of reflection (in astronomical terms: the “albedo”) depends on the composition and structure of the surface layer and it is not possible with this single-wavelength (“monochromatic”) map alone to elucidate the true nature of those features.

Nevertheless, recent radar observations with the Arecibo antenna have provided evidence for liquid surfaces on Titan, and the low-reflection areas could indicate the locations of those suspected reservoirs of liquid hydrocarbonates. They also provide a possible source for the replenishment of methane that is continuously lost in the atmosphere because of decomposition by the sunlight.

Presumably, the bright, highly reflective regions are ice-covered highlands.

Provisional names of the new features
A comparison with an earlier NACO image obtained through another filter is useful. It demonstrates the importance of employing a filter that precisely fits the atmospheric window and hence the gain of clarity with the present observations. It also provides independent confirmation of the reality of the gross features, since the observations are separated by 15 months in time.

Over the range of longitudes which have been mapped during the present observations (PR Photo 11a/04), it is obvious that the southern hemisphere of Titan is dominated by a single bright region centered at approximately 15? longitude. (Note that this is not the so-called “bright feature” seen in the HST images at longitude 80? – 130?, an area that was not covered during the present observations).

The equatorial area displays the above mentioned, well-defined dark (low-reflection) structures. In order to facilitate their identification, the team decided to give these dark features provisional names – official names will be assigned at a later moment by the Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union (IAU WGPSN). From left to right, the SDI team [1] has referred to these features informally as: the “lying H”, the “dog” chasing a “ball”, and the “dragon’s head”.

Original Source: ESO News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

What’s Next for the Rovers?

Image credit: NASA/JPL
As both rovers approach their third month resident on Mars, the mission planners have returned to Earth time. Both rover teams look to make rapid progress toward distant hills, with a possible second September extension continuing with any remaining mission science.

JPL Mars Program Office Head, Dr. Firouz Naderi, indicated that with this week’s first mission extension, even more may be planned. Currently slated for September 13 as the next mission milestone, such an ambitious science schedule would give the rovers 250 Sols on the planet’s surface. “This is all bonus science,” said Naderi. “After the solar conjunction (alignment between Mars, Earth and the Sun) around September 13th, we would probably propose to NASA for a second extension.” During a solar conjunction, explained Naderi, the Sun blocks line-of-sight views between the Earth tracking and martian surface operations for seven to ten days. “The Sun gets in the way,” said Naderi, explaining that during the lead-up to September 13th, both rovers will be given a deserved weeklong respite, followed by what many hope will be further healthy science operations to follow.

For the rest of 2004, the engineering and science team will look to stretch more life out of their six-wheeled laboratories. The primary constraints on further operations will be thermal, power, and dust accumulation from seasonal change and road weathering. Mission manager, Matt Wallace, explained previously that both rovers were healthy: “We try to keep our finger on the pulse of vehicle health, looking for signals or markers of subtle changes and trends. Except for environmental changes (power, thermal, optical opacity and dust accumulation), there is no wear and tear on subsystems.”

At Gusev crater, the extended Spirit mission will look to traverse towards Columbia Hills. At Meridiani Planum, the extended Opportunity mission will rack up long drives across the flat plains towards Endurance Crater. At full speed, the rovers can clock from 50 to 100 meters per Sol.

Naderi noted that the switch of mission personnel back to Earth time has been a welcome transition. For future missions, he said, the consensus for long-term operations will likely move away from following Mars’ sunrise and sunset times. One problem other than the late and early on-site shifts at JPL has been the inability to sleep at consistent times because the approximately 39 minute longer martian day continues always to push and rotate schedules. Dr. Ray Arvidson, deputy Principal Investigator and Washington University, St. Louis professor of geology, compared the hectic three months on Mars time to jetlag when a transatlantic traveler returns from Europe. “It takes three to four days to get back to Earth time,” said Arvidson.

One other benefit, according to Arvidson, is that since mission science is planned for Spirit and Opportunity on opposite sides of Mars, now that both teams work on the same clock, they will be able to simplify coordination and strategic science targets. There are people on the other rover tream, said Arvidson, “who I haven’t seen for three months except in the parking lot.”

Spirit’s mission manager for surface operations, Jennifer Trosper, noted that on her first day back on Earth time (last Monday), she was pleased not to come into work at 1 A.M. But as she was getting ready for bed that night proved to be exactly when she was called back to JPL–to troubleshoot why the Spirit rover had not responded to a ‘beep’ signal sent from Earth around midnight.

Trosper said that new flight software will be a major priority for the coming days. She explained that while there were risks associated with any commands that change the rovers’ state, the software has been thoroughly pre-tested. The first upload of flight software was not loaded until only one month before launch. The critical descent and landing software was not loaded on the spacecraft until nearly three months after launch, while the probe was well on its way to Mars.

In detail, Trosper noted, their plan will feature first the transfer of software command files for six hours a day over 4 days of direct communication from Earth to the high-gain antenna on both rovers. “When we get all the files on-board, then we build the flight software (locally on the rovers). When that is complete, the rovers go to sleep for 15 minutes, waking up with a new system.” The Spirit rover was the first to encounter file overloads after 18 days of file storage, and at one point could not send any data to Earth except that its system clock had shifted to the year 2053. Later changes in software succeeded in rejoining the rovers with JPL’s command center.

Arvidson highlighted a few near-term science objectives as further investigation on Spirit continues to calibrate the dusty martian skies. By pointing the rover’s panoramic camera towards the sky, while overhead satellites look down, scientist hope to remove the masking influence of dust. Spirit completed these coordinated observations with the thermal emission spectrometer instrument on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. The observations involved miniature thermal emission spectrometer pre-flight, simultaneous, and post-flight sky and ground measurements. Spirit also collected a panoramic camera opacity observation.

Opportunity continues to surprise scientists as it found another outcrop similar to what was first seen in its landing hole at Eagle Crater. But this time, the outcrop is on the edge of a trough in the middle of the plains. “This outcrop looks texturally like Eagle Crater,” and current plans are to spend several days probing what appears to be bedrock. Bedrock is of interest if it has preserved a layered timeline of rock deposit. Since this deposit also has ripples, scientists hope to discover whether its chemistry “speaks to water,” said Arvidson. “The trough is probably a fracture, we don’t know how young?”

While there is a “strong desire to get another 100 meter drive, to get to Endurance Crater,” said Arvidson, “the hope is to spend a few Sols here.”

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release