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Stream of Particles from Io

Jupiter’s moon Io is peppered with volcanoes spewing gas and dust up to 400 km (284 miles) high. You’d think that this material would all settle down again onto the moon, but something very unusual is happening: it’s being accelerated to a velocity second only to the Sun’s solar wind. This new space hazard came as a complete surprise when it was first discovered pelting the NASA/ESA Ulysses spacecraft. The dust came in a tight stream, moving at 300 km per second (200 mps), and it was detected again when Galileo visited the Jovian system. It turns out that Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field picks up the material from Io and accelerates it.

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Cargo Ship Blasts Off

An unmanned cargo ship blasted off from Kazakhstan today, en route to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Progress 15 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 0503 UTC (1:03 am EDT), and safely reached orbit 10 minutes later. It’s carrying propellant, air, water, spare parts, life support components and equipment hardware. One special delivery is a set of new pumps for the US spacesuits on board the station that experienced cooling problems earlier this year. The crew used Russian-built spacesuits to make their latest spacewalks.

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Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Destroyed

Another X Prize contender’s rocket crashed over the weekend. Armadillo Aerospace’s lead engineer and funder John Carmack reported that their prototype rocket ran out of fuel on a test flight and crashed shortly after takeoff. The $35,000 hydrogen peroxide-powered “Black Armadillo” lifted off from the launch pad and then ran out of fuel 180 metres (590 feet) into the air; it crashed into the ground and was completely destroyed. The team hopes to be flying again in September with a completely new vehicle.

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Zubrin on Terraforming Mars

When Robert Zubrin imagines the human colonization of Mars, he sees us eventually terraforming the planet to make it more earthlike. In this interview with Astrobiology Magazine, Zubrin details how terraforming the Red Planet might happen, and how long it could take before you can step outside your protective dome without being simultaneously flash frozen, irradiated, and asphyxiated.

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Opportunity’s Exit Strategy

NASA’s Opportunity rover is continuing to circle the rocky rim of Endurance Crater, searching for the right place to try and go in. At its deepest point, the crater descends 20 metres (66 feet), so operators are looking for a sheet of stable rock that will stop the rover from slipping in the Martian sand. So far, it looks like the slope is 18 to 20 degrees, which is within the rover’s ability to climb back out – just barely. In Eagle crater, where Opportunity landed, the rover was unable to get out from a 17-degree slope because of fine dust at the top of the crater’s rim.

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Faking Titan in the Lab

Researchers from the University of Arizona have recreated some of the chemicals thought to be in the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. It’s unique in the Solar System, with a thick haze of hydrocarbons; some scientists believe it’s a similar environment to our own planet’s early history. They created these chemicals by bombarding an analog of Titan’s atmosphere with electrons, which produces “tholins” (organic polymers). These have been detected from Earth-based telescopes. By dissolving these tholins in liquid water creates amino acids, which are the building blocks for life.

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Asteroid That Nearly Ended Life on Earth

Approximately 250 million years ago, something nearly wiped out life on Earth; 90% of marine animals and 80% of land animals were snuffed out in the geologic blink of an eye. Researchers now believe they’ve found the culprit: an 8 to 11 km (5 to 7 mile) asteroid that stuck the Earth off the coast of Australia. The impact happened so long ago, there isn’t a crater, but geologists have found several clues that lead to this spot, including deposits of “shocked quartz” which can only be formed in a violent event like an asteroid strike.

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2004 Astronaut Class Named

NASA named its latest batch of astronauts; the 11 candidates include three teachers, who were selected from over 1,000 candidates. The introduction of the new astronauts comes at a time when the space shuttle fleet is still grounded because of the Columbia disaster – they probably won’t fly until 2009. The candidates are Joseph Acaba, Thomas Marshburn, Christopher Cassidy, R. Shane Kimbrough, Jose Hernandez, Robert Satcher, Shannon Walker, James Dutton, and Randolph Bresnik.

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NASA Considers Risking Rover on Dangerous Descent

NASA is currently making a difficult decision about whether to send its Opportunity rover down into Endurance Crater, which is 130 metres wide, and deep enough that the rover might not be able to climb back out. It’s clear that there’s some interesting science to be gathered in the crater, including more exposed rock surfaces. Opportunity will crawl around the rim of the crater and search for an ideal ramp that it could use to enter and exit safely.