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June 8, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

10 Years & Top 10 Discoveries from Marvelous Mars Express

Mars Express over water-ice crater. ESA Celebrates 10 Years since the launch of Mars Express. This artists concept shows Mars Express set against a 35 km-wide crater in the Vastitas Borealis region of Mars at approximately 70.5°N / 103°E. The crater contains a permanent patch of water-ice that likely sits upon a dune field – some of the dunes are exposed towards the top left in this image. Copyright ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin-G.Neukum

This week marks the 10th anniversary since the launch of the European Space Agencies’ (ESA) Mars Express orbiter from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia on June 2, 2003 and a decade of ground breaking science discoveries at the Red Planet.

2003 was a great year for Mars exploration as it also saw the dual liftoffs of NASA’s now legendary rovers Spirit & Opportunity from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The immense quantity and quality of science data returned from Mars Express -simultaneously with Spirit and Opportunity – has completely transformed our understanding of the history and evolution of the Red Planet.

All three spacecraft have functioned far beyond their original design lifetime.

Earth’s exploration fleet of orbiters, landers and rovers have fed insights to each other that vastly multiplied the science output compared to working solo during thousands and thousands of bonus Sols at Mars.

Inside a central pit crater. Perspective view of a 50 km diameter crater in Thaumasia Planum. The image was made by combining data from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express with digital terrain models. The image was taken on 4 January 2013, during orbit 11467, and shows a close up view of the central ‘pit’ of this crater, which likely formed by a subsurface explosion as the heat from the impact event rapidly vapourised water or ice lying below the surface. Copyright ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin-G.Neukum

Mars Express derived its name from an innovative new way of working in planetary space science that sped up the development time and cut costs in the complex interactive relationships between the industrial partners, space agencies and scientists.

Indeed the lessons learned from building and operating Mars Express spawned a sister ship, Venus Express that also still operates in Venusian orbit.

Mars Express (MEX) achieved orbit in December 2003.

MEX began science operations in early 2004 with an array of seven instruments designed to study all aspects of the Red Planet, including its atmosphere and climate, and the mineralogy and geology of the surface and subsurface with high resolution cameras, spectrometers and radar.

The mission has been granted 5 mission extensions that will carry it to at least 2014.

The mission has been wildly successful except for the piggybacked lander known as Beagle 2, which was British built.

The ambitious British lander was released from the mothership on December 19, 2003, six days before MEX braked into orbit around Mars. Unfortunately the Beagle 2 was never heard from again as it plummeted to the surface and likely crashed.

The high resolution camera (HRSC) has transmitted thousands of dramatic 3D images all over Mars ranging from immense volcanoes, steep-walled canyons, dry river valleys, ancient impact craters of all sizes and shapes and the ever-changing polar ice caps.

It carried the first ever radar sounder (MARSIS) to orbit another planet and has discovered vast caches of subsurface water ice.

MEX also played a significant role as a data relay satellite for transmissions during the landings of NASA’s Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover. It also occasionally relays measurements from Spirit & Opportunity to NASA.

Arima twins topography. This colour-coded overhead view is based on an ESA Mars Express High-Resolution Stereo Camera digital terrain model of the Thaumasia Planum region on Mars at approximately 17°S / 296°E. The image was taken during orbit 11467 on 4 January 2013. The colour coding reveals the relative depth of the craters, in particular the depths of their central pits, with the left-hand crater penetrating deeper than the right (Arima crater). Copyright: ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin-G.Neukum

Here is a list of the Top 10 Discoveries from Mars Express from 2003 to 2013:

Mars Express mineralogy maps. This series of five maps shows near-global coverage of key minerals that help plot the history of Mars. The map of hydrated minerals indicates individual sites where a range of minerals that form only in the presence of water were detected. The maps of olivine and pyroxene tell the story of volcanism and the evolution of the planet’s interior. Ferric oxides, a mineral phase of iron, are present everywhere on the planet: within the bulk crust, lava outflows and the dust oxidised by chemical reactions with the martian atmosphere, causing the surface to ‘rust’ slowly over billions of years, giving Mars its distinctive red hue. Copyright: ESA/CNES/CNRS/IAS/Université Paris-Sud, Orsay; NASA/JPL/JHUAPL; Background images: NASA MOLA

#1. First detection of hydrated minerals in the form of phyllosilicates and hydrated sulfates – evidence of long periods of flowing liquid water from the OMEGA visible and infrared spectrometer provided confirmation that Mars was once much wetter than it is today and may have been favorable for life to evolve.

#2. Possible detection of methane in the atmosphere from the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) which could originate from biological or geological activity.

#3. Identification of recent glacial landforms via images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) are stem from viscous flow features composed of ice-rich material derived from adjacent highlands.

#4. Probing the polar regions. OMEGA and MARSIS determined that the south pole consists of a mixture frozen water ice and carbon dioxide. If all the polar ice melted the planet would be covered by an ocean 11 meters deep.

#5. Recent and episodic volcanism perhaps as recently as 2 million years ago. Mars has the largest volcanoes in the solar system . They are a major factor in the evolution of the martian surface, atmosphere and climate.

#6. Estimation of the current rate of atmospheric escape, helps researchers explain how Mars changed from a warm, wet place to the cold, dry place it is today.

#7. Discovery of localised aurora on Mars

#8. A new, meteoric layer in the martian ionosphere created by fast-moving cosmic dust which burns up as it hits the atmosphere.

#9. Unambiguous detection of carbon dioxide clouds. The freezing and vaporisation of CO2 is one of the main climatic cycles of Mars, and it controls the seasonal variations in surface air pressure.

#10. Unprecedented probing of the Martian moon Phobos – which could be a target for future landers and human missions.

The Mars-facing side of Phobos. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

And don’t forget to “Send Your Name to Mars” aboard NASA’s MAVEN orbiter- details here. Deadline: July 1, 2013

Ken Kremer

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Learn more about Conjunctions, Mars, Curiosity, Opportunity, MAVEN, LADEE, CIBER and NASA missions at Ken’s upcoming lecture presentations

June 11: “Send your Name to Mars on MAVEN” and “LADEE Lunar & Antares Rocket Launches from Virginia”; NJ State Museum Planetarium and Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP), Trenton, NJ, 730 PM.

June 12: “Send your Name to Mars on MAVEN” and “LADEE Lunar & Antares Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Franklin Institute and Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 8 PM.

June 23: “Send your Name to Mars on MAVEN” and “CIBER Astro Sat, LADEE Lunar & Antares Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Rodeway Inn, Chincoteague, VA, 8 PM

June 6, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

First-Ever Video of an ATV Vehicle Into Orbit!

Separation of an Ariane booster (Screenshot)

Yesterday, June 5, the European Space Agency launched their ATV-4 Albert Einstein cargo vessel from their spaceport in French Guiana. Liftoff occurred at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 GMT), and in addition to over 7 tons of supplies for the ISS a special payload was also included: the DLR-developed STEREX experiment, which has four cameras attached to the Ariane 5ES rocket providing a continuous 3D view of the mission, from liftoff to separation to orbit and, eventually, docking to the Station on June 15.

The dramatic video above is the first-ever of an ATV vehicle going into free-flight orbit — check it out!

“The highlight of the STEREX deployment will be observing the settling of ATV-4 in orbit. STEREX for this event will include three-dimensional video sequences to study the dynamic behavior of the spacecraft during the separation phase. This opens up for the ATV project engineers an entirely new way to monitor the success of their work and also to gain important new experiences for the future.” – DLR blog (translated)

If you look along the horizon at around 5:20, you can make out the plume from the launch.

At 20,190 kg (44, 511 lbs) ATV Albert Einstein is the heaviest spacecraft ever launched by Ariane. Read more here.

(HT to Daniel Scuka at ESA.)

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

ESA Launches ‘Albert Einstein’ Cargo Spacecraft to the Space Station

Ariane 5 VA213 carrying ATV Albert Einstein lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 21:52 GMT on June 5, 2013. Credit: ESA

ESA used a little E=mc^2 and launched the Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4) resupply ship, named “Albert Einstein” in honor of the iconic physicist, famous for his handy little equation. Liftoff of the Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana occurred at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 GMT) on June 5, 2013. This is second-to-last of ESA’s five planned ISS resupply spacecraft; the first one launched 2008, and all have been named after scientists.

ATV-4 will take a leisurely 10 days to reach the station, with docking scheduled for June 15.

You can watch the launch video below.

The three previous ATVs were named for Jules Verne, Johannes Kepler and Edoardo Amaldi.

The 13-ton ATV-4 will deliver more than 7 tons of supplies to the station when it docks to the aft port of the Russian Zvezda service module a week from Saturday.

The cargo includes 5,465 pounds of dry cargo, experiment hardware and supplies, 1,896 pounds of propellant for transfer to the Zvezda service module, 5,688 pounds of propellant for reboost and debris avoidance maneuver capability, 1,257 pounds of water and 220 pounds of oxygen and air.

Before the ATV-4 arrives at the station, the Russian ISS Progress 51 cargo spacecraft will undock from the Zvezda port at 13:53 UTC (9:53 a.m. EDT), Tuesday, June 11.

May 22, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A Mega-Merger of Massive Galaxies Caught in the Act

A rare and massive merging of two galaxies that took place when the Universe was just 3 billion years old.

Even though the spacecraft has exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant necessary to observe the infrared energy of the distant Universe, data collected by ESA’s Herschel space observatory are still helping unravel cosmic mysteries — such as how early elliptical galaxies grew so large so quickly, filling up with stars and then, rather suddenly, shutting down star formation altogether.

Now, using information initially gathered by Herschel and then investigating closer with several other space- and ground-based observatories, researchers have found a “missing link” in the evolution of early ellipticals: an enormous star-sparking merging of two massive galaxies, caught in the act when the Universe was but 3 billion years old.

It’s been a long-standing cosmological conundrum: how did massive galaxies form in the early Universe? Observations of distant large elliptical galaxies full of old red stars (and few bright, young ones) existing when the Universe was only a few billion years old just doesn’t line up with how such galaxies were once thought to form — namely, through the gradual accumulation of many smaller dwarf galaxies.

But such a process would take time — much longer than a few billion years. So another suggestion is that massive elliptical galaxies could have been formed by the collision and merging of large galaxies, each full of gas, dust, and new stars… and that the merger would spark a frenzied formation of even more stars.

Investigation of a bright region first found by Herschel, named HXMM01, has identified such a merger of two galaxies, 11 billion light-years distant.

The enormous galaxies are linked by a bridge of gas and each has a stellar mass of about 100 billion Suns — and they are spawning new stars at the incredible rate of about 2,000 a year.

“We’re looking at a younger phase in the life of these galaxies — an adolescent burst of activity that won’t last very long,” said Hai Fu of the University of California at Irvine, lead author of a new study describing the results.

ESA's Herschel telescope used liquid helium to keep cool while it observed heat from the early Universe — ESA’s Herschel telescope used liquid helium to keep cool while it observed heat from the early Universe

Hidden behind vast clouds of cosmic dust, it took the heat-seeking eyes of Herschel to even spot HXMM01.

“These merging galaxies are bursting with new stars and completely hidden by dust,” said co-author Asantha Cooray, also of the University of California at Irvine. “Without Herschel’s far-infrared detectors, we wouldn’t have been able to see through the dust to the action taking place behind.”

Herschel first spotted the colliding duo in images taken with longer-wavelength infrared light, as shown in the image above on the left side. Follow-up observations from many other telescopes helped determine the extreme degree of star-formation taking place in the merger, as well as its incredible mass.

The image at right shows a close-up view, with the merging galaxies circled. The red data are from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Submillimeter Array atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and show dust-enshrouded regions of star formation. The green data, taken by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array, near Socorro, N.M., show carbon monoxide gas in the galaxies. In addition, the blue shows starlight.

Although the galaxies in HXMM01 are producing thousands more new stars each year than our own Milky Way does, such a high star-formation rate is not sustainable. The gas reservoir contained in the system will be quickly exhausted, quenching further star formation and leading to an aging population of low-mass, cool, red stars — effectively “switching off” star formation, like what’s been witnessed in other early ellipticals.

Dr. Fu and his team estimate that it will take about 200 million years to convert all the gas into stars, with the merging process completed within a billion years. The final product will be a massive red and dead elliptical galaxy of about 400 billion solar masses.

The study is published in the May 22 online issue of Nature.

Read more on the ESA Herschel news release here, as well as on the NASA site here. Also, check out an animation of the galactic merger below:

Main image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/UC Irvine/STScI/Keck/NRAO/SAO

May 7, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

ESA’s Vega Rocket Launches Three Satellites to Space

ESA’s Vega launcher on the launchpad at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Credit: ESA.

The second flight of ESA’s newest launch vehicle has successfully sent three different satellites to space. Launching at 02:06 GMT on 7 May from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, the Vega rocket carried two Earth observation satellites — ESA’s Proba-V, Vietnam’s VNREDSat-1A — and Estonia’s first satellite, the ESTCube-1 technology demonstrator were released into different orbits. The complex mission required five upper-stage boosts, with the flight lasting about twice as long as its first launch, in February 2012.

ESA officials said the success demonstrates the Vega rocket’s versatility.

Watch the launch video below.

“It is another great day for ESA, for its Member States and for Europe,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA. “Thanks to decisions taken by Member States, ESA and European industry are demonstrating once again their capabilities of innovation. Among the Member States, special mention goes to Italy which has led the Vega Programme, Belgium which has led the Proba projects at ESA, and France which has led the development and maintenance of the European spaceport here in Kourou. We are also proud to have made possible the launch of the first satellite from Estonia.”

The three solid-propellant stages performed flawlessly and after two burns of the liquid-propellant upper stage, the Proba?V was released into a circular orbit at an altitude of 820 km, over the western coast of Australia, some 55 minutes into flight.

After releasing Proba-V, the upper stage performed a third burn and the top half of the egg-shaped Vega Secondary Payload Adapter was ejected. After a fourth burn to circularize the orbit at an altitude of 704 km, VNREDSat-1A was released 1 hour 57 minutes into flight. ESTCube?1 was ejected from its dispenser three minutes later.

The fifth and last burn put the spent upper stage on a trajectory that ensures a safe reentry that complies with new debris mitigation regulations.

Source: ESA

April 16, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

ATV-4 Albert Einstein Says ‘Fill ‘er Up!’

Europe's ATV 4 Albert Einstein prepares for its cargo-carrying mission to the International Space Station. Credit: ESA

The next European cargo mission to the International Space Station is preparing for launch, and in this new image, a fuelling operator at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana inspects the ATV-4 Albert Einstein as it is filled with propellant. Launch is currently scheduled for June 5, 2013 on an Ariane 5ES rocket to bring about 7 tons of cargo the ISS, including fuel to give the space station an orbital re-boost.

These Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs) bring other supplies such as equipment, experiments, water, air, nitrogen, oxygen and fuel.

As the ISS circles Earth, it slowly loses altitude, and occasionally needs a boost to keep it in the proper orbit. ATVs, Progress resupply ships and the thrusters on the Zvezda service module are used to re-boost the station; Soyuz spacecraft are also used “in a pinch” said Johnson Space Center News Chief Kelly Humphries, but they mainly want to save the Soyuz fuel for the departing crew heading back to Earth.

Watch this video as astronaut Jeff Williams demonstrates the acceleration experienced inside the cabin during a reboost on January 24, 2010 (the acceleration starts about 3:50 in the video):

April 6, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Terran Fleet at Mars Takes a Break for Conjunction – Enjoy the Video and Parting View

Curiosity and Mount Sharp - Parting Shot ahead of Solar Conjunction. Enjoy this parting view of Curiosity's elevated robotic arm and drill are staring at you - back dropped with her ultimate destination - Mount Sharp - in this panoramic vista of Yellowknife Bay basin snapped on March 23, Sol 223, by the rover's navigation camera system. The raw images were stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com). See video below explaining Mars Solar Conjunction

Curiosity and Mount Sharp – Parting Shot ahead of Mars Solar Conjunction
Enjoy this parting view of Curiosity’s elevated robotic arm and drill staring at you; back dropped with her ultimate destination – Mount Sharp – in this panoramic vista of Yellowknife Bay basin snapped on March 23, Sol 223, by the rover’s navigation camera system. The raw images were stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com)
See video below explaining Mars Solar Conjunction[/caption]

Earth’s science invasion fleet at Mars is taking a break from speaking with their handlers back on Earth.

Why ? Because as happens every 26 months, the sun has gotten directly in the way of Mars and Earth.

Earth, Mars and the Sun are lined up in nearly a straight line. The geometry is normal and it’s called ‘Mars Solar Conjunction’.

Conjunction officially started on April 4 and lasts until around May 1.

From our perspective here on Earth, Mars will be passing behind the Sun.

Watch this brief NASA JPL video for an explanation of Mars Solar Conjunction.

Therefore the Terran fleet will be on its own for the next month since the sun will be blocking nearly all communications.

In fact since the sun can disrupt and garble communications, mission controllers will be pretty much suspending transmissions and commands so as not to inadvertently create serious problems that could damage the fleet in a worst case scenario.

Right now there are a trio of orbiters and a duo of rovers from NASA and ESA exploring Mars.

The spacecraft include the Curiosity (MSL) and Opportunity (MER) rovers from NASA. Also the Mars Express orbiter from ESA and the Mars Odyssey (MO) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from NASA.

Because several of these robotic assets have been at Mars for nearly 10 years and longer, the engineering teams have a lot of experience with handling them during the month long conjunction period.

“This is our sixth conjunction for Odyssey,” said Chris Potts of JPL, mission manager for NASA’s Mars Odyssey, which has been orbiting Mars since 2001. “We have plenty of useful experience dealing with them, though each conjunction is a little different.”

But there is something new this go round.

“The biggest difference for this 2013 conjunction is having Curiosity on Mars,” Potts said. Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter relay almost all data coming from Curiosity and the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, as well as conducting the orbiters’ own science observations.

The rovers and orbiters can continue working and collecting science images and spectral data.

But that data will all be stored in the on board memory for a post-conjunction playback starting sometime in May.

Ken Kremer

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Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries and NASA missions at Ken’s upcoming lecture presentations:

April 20/21 : “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars – (in 3-D)”. Plus Orion, SpaceX, Antares, the Space Shuttle and more! NEAF Astronomy Forum, Suffern, NY

April 28: “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars – (in 3-D)”. Plus the Space Shuttle, SpaceX, Antares, Orion and more. Washington Crossing State Park, Titusville, NJ, 130 PM

March 22, 2013December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Meet Hopper: A Key Player in the Planck Discovery Story

The cabinets containing the Grace Hopper Cray XE6 supercomputer. (Credit: LBNL/Dept of Energy).

Behind every modern tale of cosmological discovery is the supercomputer that made it possible. Such was the case with the announcement yesterday from the European Space Agencies’ Planck mission team which raised the age estimate for the universe to 13.82 billion years and tweaked the parameters for the amounts dark matter, dark energy and plain old baryonic matter in the universe.

Planck built upon our understanding of the early universe by providing us the most detailed picture yet of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the “fossil relic” of the Big Bang first discovered by Penzias & Wilson in 1965. Planck’s discoveries built upon the CMB map of the universe observed by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and serves to further validate the Big Bang theory of cosmology.

But studying the tiny fluctuations in the faint cosmic microwave background isn’t easy, and that’s where Hopper comes in. From its L2 Lagrange vantage point beyond Earth’s Moon, Planck’s 72 onboard detectors observe the sky at 9 separate frequencies, completing a full scan of the sky every six months. This first release of data is the culmination of 15 months worth of observations representing close to a trillion overall samples. Planck records on average of 10,000 samples every second and scans every point in the sky about 1,000 times.

That’s a challenge to analyze, even for a supercomputer. Hopper is a Cray XE6 supercomputer based at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing center (NERSC) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Named after computer scientist and pioneer Grace Hopper, the supercomputer has a whopping 217 terabytes of memory running across 153,216 computer cores with a peak performance of 1.28 petaflops a second. Hopper placed number five on a November 2010 list of the world’s top supercomputers. (The Tianhe-1A supercomputer at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin China was number one at a peak performance of 4.7 petaflops per second).

One of the main challenges for the team sifting through the flood of CMB data generated by Planck was to filter out the “noise” and bias from the detectors themselves.

“It’s like more than just bugs on a windshield that we want to remove to see the light, but a storm of bugs all around us in every direction,” said Planck project scientist Charles Lawrence. To overcome this, Hopper runs simulations of how the sky would appear to Planck under different conditions and compares these simulations against observations to tease out data.

“By scaling up to tens of thousands of processors, we’ve reduced the time it takes to run these calculations from an impossible 1,000 years to a few weeks,” said Berkeley lab and Planck scientist Ted Kisner.

But the Planck mission isn’t the only data that Hopper is involved with. Hopper and NERSC were also involved with last year’s discovery of the final neutrino mixing angle. Hopper is also currently involved with studying wave-plasma interactions, fusion plasmas and more. You can see the projects that NERSC computers are tasked with currently on their site along with CPU core hours used in real time. Maybe a future descendant of Hopper could give Deep Thought of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame competition in solving the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Also, a big congrats to Planck and NERSC researchers. Yesterday was a great day to be a cosmologist. At very least, perhaps folks won’t continue to confuse the field with cosmetology… trust us, you don’t want a cosmologist styling your hair!

March 21, 2013December 23, 2015 by John Williams

Planck’s Cosmic Map Reveals Universe Older, Expanding More Slowly

Like archaeologists sifting through the dust of ancient civilizations, scientists with the ESA Planck mission today showed a map of the oldest light in the Universe. The first cosmology results of the mission suggest our Universe is slightly older and expanding more slowly than previously thought.

Planck’s new estimate for the age of the Universe is 13.82 billion years.

The map also appears to show more matter and dark matter and less dark energy, a hypothetical force that is causing an expansion of the Universe.

“We are measuring the oldest light in the Universe, the cosmic microwave background,” says Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics with NASA. “It is the most sensitive and detailed map ever. It’s like going from standard television to a new high definition screen. The new details have become crystal clear.”

Overall, the cosmic background radiation, the afterglow of the Universe’s birth, is smooth and uniform. The map, however, provides a glimpse of the tiny temperature fluctuations that were imprinted on the sky when the Universe was just 370,000 years old. Scientists believe the map reveals a fossil, an imprint, of the state of the Universe just 10 nano-nano-nano-nano seconds after the Big Bang; just a tiny fraction of the time it took to read that sentence. The splotches in the Planck map represent the seeds from which the stars and galaxies formed.

The colors in the map represent different temperatures; red for warmer, blue for cooler. The temperature differences being only 1/100 millionth of a degree. “The contrast on the map has been turned way up,” says Charles Lawrence, the US project scientist for Planck at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Planck, launched in 2009 from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, is a European Space Agency mission with significant contribution from NASA. The two-ton spacecraft gathers the ancient glow of the Universe’s beginning from a vantage more than 1 million miles from Earth.

735692main_pia16874-43_946-710 — This graphic shows the evolution of satellites designed to measure the light left over from the Big Bang that created our Universe about 13.8 billion years ago. Called the cosmic background radiation, the light reveals information about the early Universe. The three panels show the same 10-square-degree patch of sky as seen by NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP, and Planck. Planck has a resolution about 2.5 times greater than WMAP. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA

This is not the first map produced by Planck. In 2010, Planck produced an all-sky radiation map. Scientists, using supercomputers, have removed not only the bright emissions from foreground sources, like the Milky Way, but also stray light from the satellite itself.

As the light travels, matter scattered throughout the Universe with its associated gravity subtly bends and absorbs the light, “making it wiggle to and fro,” said Martin White, a Planck project scientist with the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“The Planck map shows the impact of all matter back to the edge of the Universe,” says White. “It’s not just a pretty picture. Our theories on how matter forms and how the Universe formed match spectacularly to this new data.”

“This is a treasury of scientific data,” said Krzysztof Gorski, a member of the Planck team with JPL. “We are very excited with the results. We find an early Universe that is considerably less rigged and more random than other, more complex models. We think they’ll be facing a dead-end.”

An artists animation depicting the “life” of a photon, or a particle light, as it travels across space and time from the beginning of the Universe to the detectors of the Planck telescope. Credit: NASA

Planck scientists believe the new data should help scientists refine many of the theories proposed by cosmologists that the Universe underwent a sudden and rapid inflation.

February 24, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

European Asteroid Smasher Could Bolster Planetary Defense

US-European Asteroid Impact and Deflection mission – AIDA.

Planetary Defense is a concept very few people heard of or took seriously – that is until last week’s humongous and totally unexpected meteor explosion over Russia sent millions of frightened residents ducking for cover, followed just hours later by Earth’s uncomfortably close shave with the 45 meter (150 ft) wide asteroid named 2012 DA14.

This ‘Cosmic Coincidence’ of potentially catastrophic space rocks zooming around Earth is a wakeup call that underscores the need to learn much more about the ever present threat from the vast array of unknown celestial debris in close proximity to Earth and get serious about Planetary Defense from asteroid impacts.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission, or AIDA, could significantly bolster both our basic knowledge about asteroids in our neighborhood and perhaps even begin testing Planetary Defense concepts and deflection strategies.

After two years of work, research teams from the US and Europe have selected the mission’s target – a so called ‘binary asteroid’ named Didymos – that AIDA will intercept and smash into at about the time of its closest approach to Earth in 2022 when it is just 11 million kilometers away.

“AIDA is not just an asteroid mission, it is also meant as a research platform open to all different mission users,” says Andres Galvez, ESA studies manager.

Asteroid Didymos could provide a great platform for a wide variety of research endeavors because it’s actually a complex two body system with a moon – and they orbit each other. The larger body is roughly 800 meters across, while the smaller one is about 150 meters wide.

So the smaller body is some 15 times bigger than the Russian meteor and 3 times the size of Asteroid 2012 DA14 which flew just 27,700 km (17,200 mi) above Earth’s surface on Feb. 15, 2013.

The low cost AIDA mission would be comprised of two spacecraft – a mother ship and a collider. Two ships for two targets.

The US collider is named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART and would smash into the smaller body at about 6.25 km per second. The impact should change the pace at which the objects spin around each other.

ESA’s mothership is named Asteroid Impact Monitor, or AIM, and would carry out a detailed science survey of Didymos both before and after the violent collision.

“The project has value in many areas,” says Andy Cheng, AIDA lead at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, “from applied science and exploration to asteroid resource utilisation.” Cheng was a key member of NASA’s NEAR mission that first orbited and later landed on the near Earth Asteroid named Eros back in 2001.

Recall that back in 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission successfully lobbed a projectile into Comet Tempel 1 that unleashed a fiery explosion and spewing out vast quantities of material from the comet’s interior, including water and organics.

NASA’s Deep Impact images Comet Tempel 1 alive with light after colliding with the impactor spacecraft on July 4, 2005. ESA and NASA are now proposing the AIDA mission to smash into Asteroid Didymos. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD

ESA has invited researchers to submit AIDA experiment proposals on a range of ideas including anything that deals with hypervelocity impacts, planetary science, planetary defense, human exploration or innovation in spacecraft operations. The deadline is 15 March.

“It is an exciting opportunity to do world-leading research of all kinds on a problem that is out of this world,” says Stephan Ulamec from the DLR German Aerospace Center. “And it helps us learn how to work together in international missions tackling the asteroid impact hazard.”

The Russian meteor exploded without warning in mid air with a force of nearly 500 kilotons of TNT, the equivalent of about 20–30 times the atomic bombs detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Over 1200 people were injured in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region and some 4000 buildings were damaged at a cost exceeding tens of millions of dollars. A ground impact would have decimated cities like New York, Moscow or Beijing with millions likely killed.

ESA’s AIDA mission concept and NASA’s approved Osiris-REx asteroid sample return mission will begin the path to bolster our basic knowledge about asteroids and hopefully inform us on asteroid deflection and Planetary Defense strategies.

Ken Kremer