Posted on by Fraser Cain

Planetary Nebula in Glowing Detail

Image credit: UA

Astronomers with the University of Arizona tested a new infrared camera on the 6.5-metre MMTO telescope, and produced an extremely detailed image of planetary nebula IC 2149. The object, located 3,600 light-years away, consists of a cloud of dust and gas shed from a dying star. The image is so clear because of the telescope’s adaptive optics system, which removes distortion caused by the Earth’s atmosphere – the telescope’s secondary mirror changes shape thousands of times a second to compensate for fluctuations in the light.

Astronomers testing a new near-infrared camera on southern Arizona’s 6.5-meter (21-foot) MMTO telescope have produced a sharp, detailed image of an aged planetary nebula basking in the light of its several-thousand-times brighter dying central star.

It is the most detailed wide-angle picture yet taken using the large telescope’s unique adaptive optics system, a technique that removes atmospheric blurring.

Astronomers from the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics made this picture of Planetary Nebula IC 2149 from exposures taken at the UA/Smithsonian MMT Observatory on 8,550-foot Mount Hopkins, Ariz. The planetary nebula, a cloud of gas and dust shed from a dying star, is 3,600 light-years away and 1.5 trillion miles (2.5 trillion kilometers) across.

The observers used UA astronomer Donald W. McCarthy’s near-infrared camera ARIES to search for specific gases in the star’s debris. They took images in three infrared colors of light, then combined them into a single false-color image.

While astronomers took the images, the large telescope’s secondary mirror changed its shape thousands of times each second to compensate in real-time for atmospheric turbulence that distorts starlight. The MMTO’s ultra-thin, 2-foot-diameter secondary mirror focuses light as steadily as if Earth had no atmosphere. For more about the MMTO’s superb adaptive optics, click here.

The resulting images demonstrate two benefits of the MMTO’s adaptive optics system, McCarthy and UA astronomy graduate student Patrick A. Young said.

First, the images are about three times sharper than images obtained with UA’s NICMOS cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope, and they are as sharp as Hubble images at shorter visible wavelengths.

Second, the sharper images show faint structure close to bright objects like stars in much greater detail. The image of IC2149 shows a contorted mixture of gas and dust several thousand times dimmer than the star itself. The halo around the star is the size of solar systems.

The team selected Planetary Nebula IC 2149 for the engineering tests of ARIES from 10 candidate targets during their telescope time last October, Young said.

“What you are seeing here is a star, a little less massive than the sun, that has used up all the fuel at its nuclear-burning core,” Young said. “Unable to produce energy, the core starts to contract, and turns into a ball of carbon and oxygen the size of the Earth. This gravitational contraction releases a lot of energy, and that causes the star to shed its outer atmosphere. The material we are actually seeing in the picture is the gas and dust being lit up by the light from the central star.”

Their observations suggest that all of the molecular hydrogen in the nebula has been destroyed by radiation from the central star, leaving only ionized hydrogen. Added to other evidence, this indicates that the nebula is several thousands of years old, Young said. Most planetary nebulae disperse and vanish in less than 10,000 years. The gas and dust ejected by the dying star contain heavy elements from which future planets may form.

Original Source: University of Arizona News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

First Image from Mars Express

Image credit: ESA

Even though it hasn’t reached its final operating orbit, the European Space Agency’s Mars Express has delivered some amazing images of the surface of Mars. This featured image shows a portion of the Martian Grand Canyon, called Valles Marineris, from two perspectives. It’s the first image to show the surface of Mars with such high resolution, in colour, and in 3D. Although it has so far failed to make contact with Beagle 2, the spacecraft will have several more opportunities when the lander goes into a special communications mode where it attempts to communicate constantly throughout the Martian day.

ESA’s Mars Express, successfully inserted into orbit around Mars on 25 December 2003, is about to reach its final operating orbit above the poles of the Red Planet. The scientific investigation has just started and the first results already look very promising, as this first close-up image shows.

Although the seven scientific instruments on board Mars Express are still undergoing a thorough calibration phase, they have already started collecting amazing results. The first high-resolution images and spectra of Mars have already been acquired.

This first spectacular stereoscopic colour picture was taken on 14 January 2004 by ESA?s Mars Express satellite from 275 km above the surface of Mars by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). This image is available on the ESA Portal at: http://mars.esa.int

The picture shows a portion of a 1700 km long and 65 km wide swath which was taken in south-north direction across the Grand Canyon of Mars (Valles Marineris). It is the first image of this size that shows the surface of Mars in high resolution (12 metres per pixel), in colour, and in 3D. The total area of the image on the Martian surface (top left corner) corresponds to 120 000 km?. The lower part of the picture shows the same region in perspective view as if seen from a low-flying aircraft. This perspective view was generated on a computer from the original image data. One looks at a landscape which has been predominantly shaped by the erosional action of water. Millions of cubic kilometres of rock have been removed, and the surface features seen now such as mountain ranges, valleys, and mesas, have been formed.

The HRSC is just one of the instruments to have collected exciting data. To learn more about the very promising beginning to ESA’s scientific exploration of Mars, media representatives are invited to attend a press conference on Friday, 23 January 2004, at 11:00 CET at ESA?s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, and in video-conference with the other ESA centres.

There, under the auspices of ESA Council Chair, Germany’s Minister for Education and Research, Mrs Edelgard Bulmahn, ESA’s Director of the Scientific Programme, Prof. David Southwood and the Principal Investigators of all instruments on board Mars Express will present the first data and preliminary results.

Also a spectacular, three-dimensional video sequence, featuring famous landmarks on the surface of Mars ‘as seen through European eyes’ will be unveiled for the first time on Friday 23 January .

Original Source: ESA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Spirit Examines the Martian Soil

Image credit: NASA/JPL

NASA’s Spirit rover reached out and examined the Martian soil with its microscope instrument at the end of its robotic arm; this is the first microscopic image ever taken of another planet. The microscope can reveal objects as small as the width of a human hair, and will help scientists look at the fine details of rock to learn if they were formed by standing water. The rover will examine the same area with two other instruments: the M?ssbauer Spectrometer to find iron-bearing minerals, and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer which identifies the elements in rocks and soils.

NASA’s Spirit rover reached out with its versatile robotic arm early today and examined a patch of fine-grained martian soil with a microscope at the end of the arm.

“We made our first use of the arm and took the first microscopic image of the surface of another planet,” said Dr. Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The rover’s microscopic imager, one of four tools on a turret at the end of the arm, serves as the functional equivalent of a field geologist’s hand lens for examining structural details of rocks and soils.

“I’m elated and relieved at how well things are going. We got some great images in our first day of using the microscopic imager on Mars,” said Dr. Ken Herkenhoff of the U.S. Geological Survey Astrogeology Team, Flagstaff, Ariz. Herkenhoff is the lead scientist for the microscopic imagers on Spirit and on Spirit’s twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity.

The microscope can show features as small as the width of a human hair. While analysis of today’s images from the instrument has barely begun, Herkenhoff said his first impression is that some of the tiny particles appear to be stuck together.

Before driving to a selected rock early next week, Spirit will rotate the turret of tools to use two spectrometer instruments this weekend on the same patch of soil examined by the microsope, said Jessica Collisson, mission flight director. The M?ssbauer Spectrometer identifies types of iron-bearing minerals. The Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer identifies the elements in rocks and soils.

The rover’s arm is about the same size as a human arm, with comparable shoulder, elbow and wrist joints. It is “one of the most dextrous and capable robotic devices ever flown in space,” said JPL’s Dr. Eric Baumgartner, lead engineer for the robotic arm, which also goes by the name “instrument deployment device.”

“Best of all,” Baumgartner said, “this robotic arm sits on a rover, and a rover is meant to rove. Spirit will take this arm and the tremendous science package along with it, and reach out to investigate the surface.”

The wheels Spirit travels on provide other ways to examine Mars’ soil. Details visible in images of the wheel tracks from the rover’s first drive onto the soil give information about the soil’s physical properties.

“Rover tracks are great,” said Dr. Rob Sullivan of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., a member of the science team for Spirit and Opportunity. “For one thing, they mean we’re on the surface of Mars! We look at them for engineering reasons and for science reasons.” The first tracks show that the wheels did not sink too deep for driving and that the soil has very small particles that provide a finely detailed imprint of the wheels, he said.

Opportunity, equipped identically to Spirit, will arrive at Mars Jan. 25 (Universal Time and EST; 9:05 p.m. Jan. 24, PST). The amount of dust in the atmosphere over Opportunity’s planned landing site has been declining in recent days, said JPL’s Dr. Joy Crisp, project scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

Today, Spirit completes its 13th martian day, or “sol”, at its landing site in Gusev Crater. Each sol lasts 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than an Earth day. The rover project’s goal is for Spirit and Opportunity to explore the areas around their landing sites for clues in the rocks and the soil about whether the past environments there were ever watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Pictures and additional information about the project are available from JPL at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., at http://athena.cornell.edu.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Hubble Servicing Mission Canceled

NASA has canceled all space shuttle flights to service the Hubble Space Telescope, which has provided revolutionary astronomy data and photographs. The decision was influenced by President Bush’s new space initiative, which called for the space shuttle to be retired by 2010. Without a servicing mission, Hubble will continue to degrade over time, lasting at least until 2007 or 2008. When it finally does stop functioning, NASA will launch a robot thruster to de-orbit the school bus-sized observatory safely.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Space Advocates Feel the Bush Plan Needs Work

Image credit: NASA

Although they appreciated President Bush’s new space initiative, many space advocacy groups were a little disappointed that this return to the Moon will probably be fashioned in the same mold as previous NASA projects, such as the space shuttle and the International Space Station. The groups, such as the Space Frontier Foundation, believe that NASA should be restructured to involve the private sector at all levels, to “let NASA do the exploring, but leave the operations to those who do such things best ? American industry”.

The Space Frontier Foundation today applauded President George W. Bush’s unveiling of a plan to get NASA out of Earth orbit and on a path to the Moon and Mars, but the group said that unless there are major changes at the agency and in U.S. space policy ? including the private sector in a leadership role for example ? the plan will fail.

?It was an excellent speech, very inspiring, and if we can do the things the president listed, then we will be on a path to the stars,? said Rick Tumlinson of the Foundation, who was invited by the White House to attend the speech. ?Unfortunately the NASA of today can’t do what the president has asked of it within a reasonable budget, in a reasonable time and in a way that leads to permanent human expansion beyond the Earth.?

The Foundation believes that NASA must be radically re-structured and it must learn new ways of doing business if it is to succeed in accomplishing the President’s vision. The group is calling on the government to include the private sector in all levels of the program’s planning and development as a way to dramatically lower costs, and assure permanence once the Moon base is established. Examples include: buying payload services from new U.S. space transportation firms; the establishment of prizes to be awarded for certain activities and technological milestones; and for private companies to build and operate the long term habitats that will be needed after the initial base camps are established by government astronauts.

?If America is going to reach for the Moon and Mars, we should do it in an American way, by creating a true partnership between the public and private sectors,? said Tumlinson. ?Let NASA do the exploring, but leave the operations to those who do such things best ? American industry. Federal Express, Hilton, Southwest Airlines and their competitors have driven costs down while improving services on Earth, so let’s let them or their space equivalents do the same in space. It isn’t all rocket science.?

The Foundation is glad to see that NASA will be ?leaving Earth orbit? as the President declared, and is hopeful that this means the government will support the development of space businesses such as commercial space flight, space hotels and industrial research in the Near Frontier around the Earth by clearing away regulatory barriers and creating tax incentives and space enterprise zones to encourage investment. The organization believes that if this initiative is to really be the first step to the human settlement of space, it has to eventually pay for itself. Thus, the government should build towards that goal from the beginning.

?I was glad to hear the President say that ?human beings are headed into the cosmos,? but so far that has meant mainly government employees traveling on government vehicles to government buildings. If this is to succeed, we need to begin blazing a trail that can be eventually be taken by anyone who wants to go,? said Tumlinson. ?The government should handle exploration and science ?out there? and the private sector should handle business and entertainment in space. Together we really can open the ?Space Frontier? of which the President spoke.?

To help build this new alliance for the frontier, the Foundation will be holding its 5th Return to the Moon Conference in Las Vegas in July. The conference will be held July 16-18 and will include attendees from government and the private sector. Registration for the conference is at: https://www.space-frontier.org/Events/RTM5/.

Original Source: Space Frontier Foundation News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Getting Closer to Saturn

Image credit: ESA

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is on track to reach Saturn in summer 2004. Before it reaches Saturn, however, the spacecraft will release a tiny probe called Huygens that will parachute into Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, to give scientists an idea of what’s underneath those thick clouds. Astronomers think that the environment on Titan is very similar to primordial conditions here on planet Earth billions of years ago. Huygens will take more than a thousand pictures and countless samples as it travels down to the surface in January 2005.

This time next year, ESA?s Huygens spaceprobe will be descending through the atmosphere of Saturn?s largest moon, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a body in the outer Solar System.

Earlier this month, the giant ringed planet Saturn was closer to Earth than it will be for the next thirty years. All the planets orbit the Sun as if on a giant racetrack, travelling in the same direction but in different lanes.

Those in the outer lanes have further to travel than those on the inside lanes. So, Earth regularly ?laps? the further planets. On New Year?s Eve 2003, Earth overtook Saturn, drawing closer than at any time in the next three decades.

Through a small telescope, Saturn is normally visible as a creamy yellow ?star?. You may be able to see the ring system that the planet is famous for, and its largest moon Titan will show up as a tiny dot of light.

That tiny dot is the destination for ESA?s Huygens probe and may hold vital clues about how life began on Earth. Titan is the only moon with a thick atmosphere in the Solar System.

Astronomers think this atmosphere might closely match the one Earth possessed millions of years ago, before life began. Certainly Titan?s atmosphere is rich in carbon, the chemical necessary for life on Earth. What is more, this is all stored in ?deep freeze?, ten times further from the Sun than the Earth.

The big mystery is Titan?s surface, which is hidden by a cloud layer. This is why ESA built Huygens, to probe through this layer which is impenetrable by Earth-based observations.

In January 2005, Huygens will parachute below the clouds to see what is really going on. Its battery of instruments will return over 1000 images as it floats down and samples the chemistry of this exotic place.

The Titan probe was named Huygens in honour of the Dutch astronomer who discovered Titan in 1655. Launched in October 1997, Huygens is currently in space, hitching a ride on NASA?s Cassini spacecraft.

So look forward to seeing more of Saturn and a tiny European spacecraft called Huygens, that in one year?s time will make an historic landing in the quest to uncover the origins of life.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Evidence that Brown Dwarfs are Failed Stars

Image credit: UofM

Researchers from the University of Michigan have gathered evidence that brown dwarf stars have a very similar life to the early stages our own Sun went through when it first formed. The astronomers searched for dusty disks around young brown dwarfs by observing their infrared emissions. They found that most brown dwarfs did have disks at a million years old, which is very similar to young stars at the same age. Other observations showed that they accrete material from the disk in the same way stars do as well.

In cosmic circles, brown dwarfs are something of a flop. Too big to be considered true planets, yet not massive enough to be stars, these free-floating celestial bodies are, in fact, sometimes referred to as failed stars. But do they really form as stars do?from collapsing clouds of gas?or are their origins completely different? A series of publications by University of Michigan astronomer Ray Jayawardhana and collaborators, including a paper in the January 16 issue of Science, offers evidence that brown dwarfs and Sun-like stars are born in much the same way. “They at least have very similar infancies, which may mean that they also have very similar origins,” said Jayawardhana, an assistant professor of astronomy.

Stars form in cold clouds of gas and dust in interstellar space. Dense clumps within these clouds contract under their own gravity, spinning up in the process and gathering material from the surroundings into a disk. Eventually, if a growing protostar accumulates enough mass, its core becomes hot and dense enough for nuclear fusion to occur, and the new star begins to shine. Some scientists have suggested that brown dwarfs form the same way but simply don’t accumulate enough mass to ignite hydrogen fusion, and calculations show that it’s at least theoretically possible for objects with masses as low as those of brown dwarfs to be born this way.

But other scientists have proposed that brown dwarfs are runts kicked out of stellar litters. In this scenario, brown dwarfs are born in multiple star systems and compete with their siblings for matter from the natal cloud. In such systems, the slowest-growing object may be ejected before it gathers enough material to become a star, computer simulations suggest.

One way to distinguish between the two possibilities is by studying disks of dust and gas around young brown dwarfs. If brown dwarfs form as stars do, they should have large, long-lived accretion disks like those found around young stars. But if they have been ejected from multiple star systems, their disks should be shaved down by the gravitational interactions that lead to ejection.

Jayawardhana and colleagues searched for dusty disks around young brown dwarfs by observing their infrared emission with the 8-meter Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and the 10-meter Keck I telescope in Hawaii. Because dust particles in a disk absorb light and re-radiate the energy at infrared wavelengths, a brown dwarf with a disk will emit more infrared light than one without a disk.

“We found that the majority of brown dwarfs are surrounded by dusty disks at an age of a million years or so,” said Jayawardhana. “That’s similar to young stars at the same age.” Although it’s not possible to directly determine the disks’ sizes, their presence around some brown dwarfs as old as 10 million years suggests that they aren’t pared away in early life.

Other spectroscopic observations, using the twin 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes in Chile (in which the University of Michigan is a partner institution) and the Keck I telescope, showed that brown dwarfs also accrete material from surrounding disks the same way as stars do?although at a slower pace. “We detect telltale signs of gas flowing from the inner edge of the disk onto the brown dwarf at velocities of over a hundred kilometers per second,” said Jayawardhana. In one intriguing case, astronomers have alsofound evidence of material spewing out from the poles of a brown dwarf. Such jets have been seen in young stars of the same age, but not until now in brown dwarfs. “If confirmed, the presence of jets would further strengthen the case for remarkably similar infancies for brown dwarfs and Sun-like stars,” said Jayawardhana, whose collaborators include Subhanjoy Mohanty (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Gibor Basri (University of California, Berkeley), David Barrado y Navascues (Laboratory of Space Astrophysics and Fundamental Physics in Madrid, Spain), David Ardila (Johns Hopkins University), Beate Stelzer (Astronomical Observatory of Palermo in Italy), and Karl Haisch, Jr. and Diane Paulson (both at the University of Michigan).

“I wouldn’t say that the story is signed, sealed and delivered,” Jayawardhana said, “but the preponderance of evidence is very much leaning in the direction of these things forming the same way as stars.” And the evidence uncovered so far leads to even more tantalizing prospects. “Now that we know many young brown dwarfs are surrounded by disks,” he said, “I can’t help but wonder if comets and asteroids?if not small planets?could form in these disks.”

This research was supported primarily by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Original Source: University of Michigan News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

NASA Reorganizes to Support Bush Strategy

Image credit: NASA

NASA announced on Thursday that it would be reorganizing aspects of the agency to better support the new vision of space exploration laid out by George Bush earlier in the week. The Office of Exploration Systems was created, and will be led by Craig Steidle to build the equipment that will take humans back to the Moon. A special committee was appointed by the President, and is expected to deliver a more concrete plan for the space initiative within four months.

In a move designed to align the agency with the new exploration agenda outlined yesterday by President George W. Bush, NASA Deputy Administrator Frederick D. Gregory announced a comprehensive restructuring of the offices within Headquarters in Washington.

The alignment impacts NASA management, the strategic Enterprises, and the agency’s functional offices. The new alignment goes into effect immediately and reflects the new vision and the results of a comprehensive review of Headquarters operations, which first began when Gregory became Deputy Administrator in 2002.

Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Craig E. Steidle is the new Associate Administrator, Office of Exploration Systems. Since retiring from the Navy in March, 2000, he has been an independent aerospace consultant. He was Chief Aerospace Engineer and Vice Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, which develops, acquires and supports naval aeronautical systems, when he retired.

The Office of Exploration Systems is established to set priorities and direct the identification, development, and validation of exploration systems and related technologies. Users and technologists will work together to enable a balancing of factors between requirements, program schedules and costs.

Steidle entered the Navy after graduating with merit from the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. He trained as an attack pilot, test pilot and test pilot instructor. Steidle commanded the Navy’s F/A-18 Program, naval aviation’s largest production, research and development program, as well as the largest Foreign Military Sales Program. The Secretary of Defense presented Steidle with the Navy’s Outstanding Program Manager Award. While Director of the Joint Strike Fighter Program, the program was awarded the David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award.

Steidle earned Master of Science degrees in Systems Management and Aerospace Engineering. He is a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Dr. J. Victor Lebacqz is the new Associate Administrator, Office of Aeronautics, which was previously known as the Office of Aerospace Technology. He has served as Acting Associate Administrator of the Office of Aerospace Technology since July 2003. He was appointed as Deputy Associate Administrator in December 2002.

The new Office of Aeronautics was created to reflect NASA’s commitment to aviation research and aeronautics technologies for the nation’s civil and defense interests.

“This alignment gives us the ability to specifically focus on our aeronautics and exploration systems,” Gregory said. “These management adjustments will give us new opportunities for more effective leadership, policy and program success.”

The changes are consistent with NASA’s ongoing responses to the management and cultural issues addressed by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. “We live in a different world than we did just a few years ago, and our management structure should reflect the priorities and objectives of our commitments,” Gregory added.

The Office of the NASA Administrator will be streamlined to allow for more independent leadership in areas vital to the execution of NASA’s vision and mission. Among the changes, three new independent offices will be created.

The new offices include:

* The Office of Chief Engineer is established to ensure agency development efforts and mission operations are planned and conducted using sound engineering
* The Office of Health and Medical Systems is established to ensure the well-being of the NASA workforce and to provide independent oversight authority for healthcare, related research and information
* The Office of the Chief Information Officer is established to manage the agency’s Information Technology (IT) investments, lead the development of an IT strategic plan, and create a roadmap to guide the agency’s IT programs and policies.
* The Office of Institutional and Corporate Management (Code O) is established to lead the oversight of NASA’s management systems, institutional, and corporate activities

Leadership for the new offices, as well as staffing requirements and resource allocations, will be addressed as the new alignment is implemented this calendar year.

For additional information about NASA and management programs on the Internet, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Original Source: NASA News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Scientists Could Choose More Dangerous Targets on Mars

Image credit: NASA/JPL

If the next Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, is as successful as Spirit, then engineers might loosen up a bit and send rovers to more dangerous locations on Mars. Selecting landing sites on Mars is a difficult job; you need to balance the scientific payoff with the chance of losing the rover when it first arrives at Mars. If the terrain is too rocky, the rover could be destroyed before the mission even begins. One possible target for a future mission is near a volcano called Apollinaris Patera, which could have kept water liquid – a potential home for life.

The anticipated Mars landing on Jan. 24 of the Opportunity rover will be a bit more challenging than the Spirit’s bounce onto the red planet earlier this month, according to a University at Buffalo geologist, but if it’s successful, then scientists will be able to be much bolder about selecting future Mars landing sites.

“If both of these landers survive with airbag technology, then it blows the doors wide open for future Mars landing sites with far more interesting terrain,” said Tracy Gregg, Ph.D., University at Buffalo assistant professor of geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and a planetary volcanologist.

Gregg, who headed a national conference at UB in 1999 regarding the selection of future Mars landing sites, is chair of the geologic mapping standards committee of the NASA Planetary Cartography Working Group.

“With the success of Spirit, I feel so much more confident about future Mars landers,” said Gregg. “The airbags seem to be able to withstand quite a bit of trauma.”

Gregg remembers attending a conference presentation a few years ago by Matt P. Golombek, Ph.D., planetary geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and, at the time, the principal investigator on the Mars Pathfinder mission, in which he proposed the airbag landing technology.

“He listed the 15 steps that had to happen at exactly the right time and in exactly the right way in order for this technology to work. The general mood in the lecture hall was, ‘Yeah, right, good luck,'” Gregg remembered. “Well, the next year, he got up to a standing-room-only crowd at a meeting of the same organization and he described all of the same steps that the Pathfinder had successfully completed on Mars. He got a standing ovation.”

The selection of Mars landing sites is a complex balancing act, Gregg says, where the potential for important scientific discoveries has to be balanced against the requirement that sites be absolutely safe so that the rovers can perform well and send data back to earth.

Both Gusev Crater, where the Spirit landed, and Sinus Meridiani, where Opportunity is scheduled to land, were chosen, Gregg says, because they are not expected to have large boulders, steep cliffs or deep craters that could pop an airbag or swallow up the lander preventing the transmission of radio signals.

“If Opportunity survives the landing on Jan. 24, there is a high possibility that we will get to see layers of ancient rock, deposited when Mars was warm and wet and could have supported life,” she says. “Evidence of river channels, which we expect to see at Sinus Meridiani, could be remnants of that early, warm history.”

When pictures start coming back from Opportunity, Gregg will have her eyes peeled, searching for layers in the walls of the dried-up river channels.

“Those layers could be lava flows,” explained Gregg, noting that often the best place to look for evidence of life on any planet is near volcanoes.

“That may sound counterintuitive, but think about Yellowstone National Park, which really is nothing but a huge volcano,” she says. “Even when the weather in Wyoming is 20 below zero, all the geysers, which are fed by volcanic heat, are swarming with bacteria and all kinds of happy little things cruising around in the water.

“So, since we think that the necessary ingredients for life on earth were water and heat, we are looking for the same things on Mars, and while we definitely have evidence of water there, we still are looking for a source of heat.”

Gregg hopes that a future landing Mars site will be near a volcano, particularly one called Apollinaris Patera.

“A landing site near a volcano might be possible, now that the airbag technology has worked so wonderfully,” she says.

Original Source: University of Buffalo News Release

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Mini-Van Sized Rover for 2009

Image credit: NASA

Pathfinder was the size of a shoebox; the Mars Exploration Rovers are as big as golf-carts; but a future Martian rover could be as big as a mini-van. Engineers from Montana State University are helping to design the Mars Scientific Laboratory (MSL), which could make its way to the Red Planet by 2009. Unlike Spirit and Opportunity, which are solar powered, the MSL will have a nuclear reactor, so it will be able to remain operational on the surface for an entire Martian year (two years on Earth), and measure long-term climate changes.

If you think the Mars rovers are interesting, wait until you see a mini-van clambering over the planet’s red rocks and dusty lake beds.

The two golf-cart size rovers that are mesmerizing the country now are preparing the way for a 2009 mission to Mars called the Mars Scientific Laboratory, says William Hiscock, head of the physics department and director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium based at Montana State University-Bozeman. The 2009 mission will involve a rover, too, but that vehicle will be the size of a mini-van.

Lest anyone picture adventurous soccer parents doubling as astronauts, Hiscock said the upcoming rover, like the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, will be remotely controlled. It will be nuclear powered instead of solar powered.

Nuclear power is a good thing, because it means the rover won’t be disabled by dust covering the power source, Hiscock said. The current rovers are expected to run 90 days before they’re done in by conditions like dust or extreme temperature changes.

“Dust builds up on solar panels, decreasing the light getting in. The power fades away because of it,” Hiscock explained.

Roving around Mars is like being 100,000 feet above sea level on Earth, Hiscock added. So when day turns into night, temperatures can drop up to 200 degrees, only to surge again the next day.

“That puts a lot of thermal stress on electronics and wiring,” Hiscock said. “Eventually probably, something just breaks after going through so many cycles.”

The Sojourner rover that landed on Mars in 1997 and still sets on the planet was disabled by dust and extreme temperatures, Hiscock said. It weighed 23 pounds, which means the Spirit and Opportunity are almost big enough to roll over it. The two rovers each weigh about 400 pounds.

Michelle Larson, deputy director of the Montana Space Grant Consortium, said the larger size of the 2009 rover will give it the ability to survive longer than current and past rovers.

“Therefore, science experiments performed on the 2009 rover will be able to make long duration measurements to see how the environment changes in time,” Larson said. “The intent is to have the science instruments on the rover operating for an entire Martian year (which is approximately two Earth years).”

The 2009 mission will investigate the capacity of the Mars environment to sustain life, Larson said. Among other things, the mission will look for organic carbon compounds and features that might have resulted from biological processes. The mission will look at the geology and geochemistry of the landing area, investigate the role of water and other processes that may have been relevant to past living conditions. The mission will look at the effects of cosmic and solar radiation on the Martian surface.

Original Source: Montana State University News Release