Posted on by Jason Major

Messages from Mercury

MESSENGER's view from Mercury's south pole

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It’s been just over two months since the MESSENGER spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mercury, back on March 18, and it’s been enthusiastically returning image after image of our solar system’s innermost planet at a unprecedented rate. Which, of course, is just fine with us!

The image above shows Mercury’s southern hemisphere and the bright rays of the 50-km-wide crater Han Kan. It was acquired on May 17, 2011.

Below are more recent images from MESSENGER… some of which show regions and features that have never previously been mapped – or even named!

Unnamed double peak-ring basin. Acquired May 13.
Detail of the mountains that make up the rim of Caloris Basin. Acquired May 5.
Narrow-angle camera view of the 100-km-wide Atget crater. Acquired May 10.
Color map of Mercury's surface. The bright crater is Snorri (21km wide). Acquired April 15.

Click on the images to see more detail on the MESSENGER mission site.

MESSENGER’s orbit about Mercury is highly elliptical, taking it 200 kilometers (124 miles) above its northern surface at the closest pass and 15,193 kilometers (9,420 miles) away from the south pole at furthest. Check out this video showing an animation of how a typical MESSENGER orbit would be executed.

Image credits: Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft’s seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System’s innermost planet. During the one-year primary mission, MDIS is scheduled to acquire more than 75,000 images in support of MESSENGER’s science goals.

Posted on by Matt Williams

How Satellites Stay in Orbit

GPS Satellite
According to a new proposal, GPS satellites may be the key to finding dark matter. Credit: NASA

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An artificial satellite is a marvel of technology and engineering. The only thing comparable to the feat in technological terms is the scientific know-how that goes into placing, and keeping, one in orbit around the Earth. Just consider what scientists need to understand in order to make this happen: first, there’s gravity, then a comprehensive knowledge of physics, and of course the nature of orbits themselves. So really, the question of How Satellites Stay in Orbit, is a multidisciplinary one that involves a great of technical and academic knowledge.

First, to understand how a satellite orbits the Earth, it is important to understand what orbit entails. Johann Kepler was the first to accurately describe the mathematical shape of the orbits of planets. Whereas the orbits of planets about the Sun and the Moon about the Earth were thought to be perfectly circular, Kepler stumbled onto the concept of elliptical orbits. In order for an object to stay in orbit around the Earth, it must have enough speed to retrace its path. This is as true of a natural satellite as it is of an artificial one. From Kepler’s discovery, scientists were also able to infer that the closer a satellite is to an object, the stronger the force of attraction, hence it must travel faster in order to maintain orbit.

Next comes an understanding of gravity itself. All objects possess a gravitational field, but it is only in the case of particularly large objects (i.e. planets) that this force is felt. In Earth’s case, the gravitational pull is calculated to 9.8 m/s2. However, that is a specific case at the surface of the planet. When calculating objects in orbit about the Earth, the formula v=(GM/R)1/2 applies, where v is velocity of the satellite, G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of the planet, and R is the distance from the center of the Earth. Relying on this formula, we are able to see that the velocity required for orbit is equal to the square root of the distance from the object to the center of the Earth times the acceleration due to gravity at that distance. So if we wanted to put a satellite in a circular orbit at 500 km above the surface (what scientists would call a Low Earth Orbit LEO), it would need a speed of ((6.67 x 10-11 * 6.0 x 1024)/(6900000))1/2 or 7615.77 m/s. The greater the altitude, the less velocity is needed to maintain the orbit.

So really, a satellites ability to maintain its orbit comes down to a balance between two factors: its velocity (or the speed at which it would travel in a straight line), and the gravitational pull between the satellite and the planet it orbits. The higher the orbit, the less velocity is required. The nearer the orbit, the faster it must move to ensure that it does not fall back to Earth.

We have written many articles about satellites for Universe Today. Here’s an article about artificial satellites, and here’s an article about geosynchronous orbit.

If you’d like more info on satellites, check out these articles:
Orbital Objects
List of satellites in geostationary orbit

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast about the space shuttle. Listen here, Episode 127: The US Space Shuttle.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite
http://science.howstuffworks.com/satellite6.htm
http://www.bu.edu/satellite/classroom/lesson05-2.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/C007258/Keep_Orbit.htm#

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Retrograde

Neptune's largest Moon, Triton. Astronomers think that Triton is a captured Kuiper Belt Object. Credit: NASA/JPL

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When objects in the Solar System orbit other objects, they can either go in a regular prograde direction, or in a retrograde direction.

Almost all of the orbits in the Solar System are caused by the initial collapse of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago from the solar nebula. As the cloud of gas and dust collapsed down into the stellar disk, the conservation of angular momentum caused the disk to rotate. The Sun formed out of a bulge in the center of the Solar System, and the planets formed out of lumps in the protoplanetary disk.

And so, all of the planets in the Solar System orbit in a prograde direction. And then the planets themselves also collapsed down, and started rotating because of the conservation of angular momentum. And again, almost all of the planets rotate in a prograde direction; except one: Venus. When seen from above their north pole, all the planets rotate in a counter-clockwise direction. But Venus is actually rotating in a clockwise direction.

It’s believed that most of the moons in the Solar System formed in place around their planets. And so they orbit in a prograde direction as well, orbiting in the same direction that their planet turns. There are a few exceptions; however, like Neptune’s moon Titan, which orbits in a retrograde direction.

Because the Earth and the planets are orbiting the Sun, we get a changing perspective of their position as we go around the Sun. The planets can seem to slow down, stop, and then move backwards in the sky. Of course, they’re not actually going backwards in their orbit, but we’re seeing that from our perspective. When the planets move in this backwards direction, they’re said to be “in retrograde”. And then they start moving forward again and come out of retrograde.

We’ve written a few articles about retrograde orbits for Universe Today. Here’s an article about Mercury in retrograde, the 2009 Mercury retrograde dates, and here’s an article about Venus in retrograde.

If you’d like more information on orbits, check out this cool list of orbit diagrams. And here’s more info on Neptune’s moon Triton, which follows a retrograde orbit.

We’ve also done an episode of Astronomy Cast about Neptune. Listen here, Episode 63: Neptune.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

After Loss of Lunar Orbiter, India Looks to Mars Mission

India Moon Mission
Artist concept of Chandrayaan-1 orbiting the moon. Credit: ISRO

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After giving up on re-establishing contact with the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chairman G. Madhavan Nair announced the space agency hopes to launch its first mission to Mars sometime between 2013 and 2015. Nair said the termination of Chandrayaan-1, although sad, is not a setback and India will move ahead with its plans for the Chandrayaan-2 mission to land an unmanned rover on the moon’s surface to prospect for chemicals, and in four to six years launch a robotic mission to Mars.


“We have given a call for proposal to different scientific communities,” Nair told reporters. “Depending on the type of experiments they propose, we will be able to plan the mission. The mission is at conceptual stage and will be taken up after Chandrayaan-2.”

On the decision to quickly pull the plug on Chandrayaan-1, Nair said, “There was no possibility of retrieving it. (But) it was a great success. We could collect a large volume of data, including more than 70,000 images of the moon. In that sense, 95 percent of the objective was completed.”

Contact with Chandrayaan-1 may have been lost because its antenna rotated out of direct contact with Earth, ISRO officials said. Earlier this year, the spacecraft lost both its primary and back-up star sensors, which use the positions of stars to orient the spacecraft.

The loss of Chandrayaan-1 comes less than a week after the spacecraft’s orbit was adjusted to team up with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for a Bi-static radar experiment. During the maneuver, Chandrayaan-1 fired its radar beam into Erlanger Crater on the moon’s north pole. Both spacecraft listened for echoes that might indicate the presence of water ice – a precious resource for future lunar explorers. The results of that experiment have not yet been released.

Chandrayaan-1 craft was designed to orbit the moon for two years, but lasted 315 days. It will take about 1,000 days until it crashes to the lunar surface and is being tracked by the U.S. and Russia, ISRO said.

The Chandrayaan I had 11 payloads, including a terrain-mapping camera designed to create a three-dimensional atlas of the moon. It is also carrying mapping instruments for the European Space Agency, radiation-measuring equipment for the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and two devices for NASA, including the radar instrument to assess mineral composition and look for ice deposits. India launched its first rocket in 1963 and first satellite in 1975. The country’s satellite program is one of the largest communication systems in the world.

Sources: New Scientist, Xinhuanet