Koppernigk

First a wipe, then a devil

"n its six-and-a-half years on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had never seen a dust devil before this month, despite some systematic searches in past years and the fact that its twin rover, Spirit, has seen dozens of dust devils at its location halfway around the planet.

A tall column of swirling dust appears in a routine image that Opportunity took with its panoramic camera on July 15. The rover took the image in the drive direction, east-southeastward, right after a drive of about 70 meters (230 feet). The image was taken for use in planning the next drive.

"This is the first dust devil seen by Opportunity," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, a member of the rover science team. ..." (JPL)

Ready for a real big snowfight

"While orbiting Saturn for the last six years, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has kept a close eye on the collisions and disturbances in the gas giant’s rings. They provide the only nearby natural laboratory for scientists to see the processes that must have occurred in our early solar system, as planets and moons coalesced out of disks of debris.

New images from Cassini show icy particles in Saturn’s F ring clumping into giant snowballs as the moon Prometheus makes multiple swings by the ring. The gravitational pull of the moon sloshes ring material around, creating wake channels that trigger the formation of objects as large as 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter.

“Scientists have never seen objects actually form before,” said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at Queen Mary, University of London. “We now have direct evidence of that process and the rowdy dance between the moons and bits of space debris.”

Murray discussed the findings today (July 20, 2010) at the Committee on Space Research meeting in Bremen, Germany, and they are published online by the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 14, 2010. A new animation based on imaging data shows how one of the moons interacts with the F ring and creates dense, sticky areas of ring material. ..." (JPL)

Mercury's exosphere scrutinized

"Analysis of data from MESSENGER’s third and final flyby of Mercury in September 2009 has revealed the first observations of emission from an ionized species in Mercury’s exosphere, new information about magnetic substorms, and evidence of younger volcanism on the innermost planet than previously recognized. The results are reported in three papers published online on July 15 in the Science Express section of the website of Science magazine.

Mercury’s exosphere is a tenuous atmosphere of atoms and ions derived from the planet’s surface and from the solar wind. Observations of the exosphere provide a window into the extensive interactions between Mercury’s surface and its space environment. The insights such observations provide into surface composition, transport of material about the planet, and loss of material to interplanetary space improve our understanding not only of the current state of Mercury but also of its evolution.

The spacecraft’s observations of Mercury’s exosphere indicate remarkably different spatial distributions among the neutral and ionized elements in the exosphere. The third flyby produced the first detailed altitude profiles of exospheric species over the north and south poles of the planet. “These profiles showed considerable variability among the sodium, calcium, and magnesium distributions, indicating that several processes are at work and that a given process may affect each element quite differently,” says MESSENGER participating scientist and lead author Ron Vervack, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md. ..." (NASA)

Venus, a hot and interesting place

When the Venus Express scanned Venus with UV-light, it got a good look of the top layer of Venuses impressive cloud cover. It observed dark patches in the clouds that absorbed more UV light than other clouds. What could be the cause of that?

Maybe these patches are a result of convection. Heated by the Sun enormous convection bubbles mix the upper and lower clouds, resulting in a thicker and more absorbing patch. The explanation can be much more exciting as well. In the upper atmosphere probes have found hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide which react together, so there must be an external source creating them, otherwise they would be depleted by now, and it also found carbonyl sulfide which is difficult to create by anorganic means.

It might well be that extremophiles, life forms well adapted to the conditions in Venusian clouds, are creating these gases. We know extremophiles flourish on Earth in extreme conditions, both cold and hot, both base and extreme acid (up to pH 0).

Venus Express also determined that the atmosphere of Venus is losing two hydrogen atoms for each oxigen atom. Slowly all the water on Venus is dissipating and lost in space. Together with rock obviously originating from a wet environment, it hints at a past with much more water.

Venus is a fascinating planet that can us learn a lot more about the processes on our own planet. Venus Express is a great resource, circling the planet for years by now at low altitude. Let's hope there's still a lot to come.

Small is beautiful: tiny satellites

"When it comes to laptop computers and cell phones, bigger isn’t better. The same logic applies to satellites: the bulkier the satellite, the more time it takes to design and build, and the more expensive it is to put into orbit.

Researchers are now taking advantage of the electronics technologies that have made personal gizmos compact and affordable to make satellites that weigh and cost a fraction of their predecessors. These pocket- and backpack-sized satellites are changing the way astrobiology research is done. ..." (Astrobiology Magazine)

Don't let thermal photons get you off course

New Horzions went slightly off speed and off couse on its way to Pluto. It has been corrected with a little tap on the pedal. More interesting was to read why it went off course:

"What “pushed” New Horizons slightly off course? According to mission navigation team members from KinetX, Inc., it was a tiny amount of force created from thermal photons from New Horizons’ radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) power source - reflecting off the backside of the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna." (JPL)

Curious for Curiosity

"NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, is sitting pretty on a set of spiffy new wheels that would be the envy of any car show on Earth.

The wheels and a suspension system were added this week by spacecraft technicians and engineers. These new and important touches are a key step in assembling and testing the flight system in advance of a planned 2011 launch.

Curiosity, centerpiece of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, is a six-wheeler and uses a rocker-bogie suspension system like its smaller predecessors: Spirit, Opportunity and Sojourner. Each wheel has its own drive motor, and the corner wheels also have independent steering motors. Unlike earlier Mars rovers, Curiosity will also use its mobility system as a landing gear when the mission's rocket-powered descent stage lowers the rover directly onto the Martian surface on a tether in August 2012. ..."

See black hopping Mars Bunnies

In the category "Have A Look Around" Mars Rover Opportunity sent us a panoramic view of multiple places it still wants to visit. If you follow this link you can see a big version of it.

As you can see there are multiple black Mars Bunnies hopping around; JPL will have to process this picture vigorouslyto cover up that there's life on Mars and that there are idiots on Earth - a fact they frantically try to hide from the general public. Job well done, NASA.

Oh well, on a more serious note.

"Since the summer of 2008, when NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity finished two years of studying Victoria Crater, the rover's long-term destination has been the much larger Endeavour Crater to the southeast. By the spring of 2010, Opportunity had covered more than a third of the charted, 19-kilometer (12-mile) route from Victoria to Endeavour and reached an area with a gradual, southward slope offering a view of Endeavour's elevated rim.

On the 2,239th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's mission on Mars (May 12, 2010), the rover used its panoramic camera (Pancam) to take multiple exposures of the horizon toward the southeast. The Pancam team combined these images into this super-resolution view showing details of a portion of the rim of Endeavour about 13 kilometers (8 miles) away plus more-distant features. Super-resolution is an imaging technique combining information from multiple pictures of the same target in order to generate an image with a higher resolution than any of the individual images.

Above the dark plains in the lower portion of the view, the horizon in the left half is mostly a portion of Endeavour's western rim. The paler-looking terrain on the horizon beyond Endeavour in the right half of the image is part of a thick deposit of material ejected by the impact that excavated Iazu Crater, south of Endeavour. The observed increase in brightness of Iazu's ejecta relative to Endeavour's features is consistent with modeling by science team members Michael Wolff, of the Space Science Institute, and Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis, applying optical characteristics Opportunity has measured in the Martian atmosphere. ..." (JPL)

Swing Low, Titan

"This (past, JIMvD) weekend, Cassini will embark on an exciting mission: trying to establish if Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, possesses a magnetic field of its own. This is important for understanding the moon’s interior and geochemical evolution.

For Titan scientists, this is one of the most anticipated flybys of the whole mission. We want to get as close to the surface with our magnetometer as possible for a one-of-a-kind scan of the moon. Magnetometer team scientists (including me) have a reputation for pushing the lower limits. In a world of infinite possibilities, we would have liked many flybys at 800 kilometers. But we went back and forth a lot with the engineers, who have to ensure the safety of the spacecraft and fuel reserves. We agreed on one flyby at 880 kilometers (547 miles) and both sides were happy. ..." (JPL Blog)

The most beautiful desert in the Solar system

Read more about this part real, part simulated image on Mars (large!). The prespective is fantastic. And there might have been .... water .... in the past too... a recent stunning discovery..... again. :)

Hayabusa back home

Hayabusa has returned to Earth and it has burnt in the atmosphere. Right now they're looking for the capsule that should already have landed. Below you can see Hayabusa's spectacular re-entry around the three minute mark.

update: the beacon of the capsule has been heard, sources say and it will be tracked by helicopters, but retrieval shouldn't take place until daylight, a few hours from now. That is, around midnight CEST or 22.00 h UT.

Hayabusa about to burn and land at the same time

Ion propelled spacecraft Hayabusa is finally returning home. On Sunday it's expected to burn up in the atmosphere while a capsule with (possible) asteroid fragments will enter at equally large speed. Eventually it should land safely in Autstralia, in the Woomera range.

I don't know if there's a way to follow it live, but the Hayabusa sites are here and here. The site of the Planetary Society and Emily Lakdawalla's blog is also a good place to visit on a regular basis for news and updates. You can find it here.

Ions ahead

"Deep in the heart of the asteroid belt, on its way to the first of the belt's two most massive inhabitants, NASA's ion-propelled Dawn spacecraft has eclipsed the record for velocity change produced by a spacecraft's engines.

The previous standard-bearer for velocity change, NASA's Deep Space 1, also impelled by ion propulsion, was the first interplanetary spacecraft to use this technology. The Deep Space 1 record fell on Saturday, June 5, when the Dawn spacecraft's accumulated acceleration over the mission exceeded 4.3 kilometers per second (9,600 miles per hour). ..." (SpaceDaily)

Quite close - quite a distance

Hayabusa is still on its way to Earth. It has now completed the so-called TCM3-procedure, which aims it to land in the Woomera area in Australia. This means that the spacecraft is at 3.6 million kilometers from home, roughly 9 to 10 times the distance of the Moon from Earth. A press release can be found here. As far as I understand Hayabusa - propelled by an ion motor - is bound to land this month. When (and if) it does, Japanese scientists will find out if it really returned asteroid samples.

Below you see a picture generated with Celestia. It shows Earth from a distance of 3.6 million kilometers. Yes, it's the speck in the middle, believe me. And below you can see the speck of the Moon. That's quite a distance...

SHARAD on MRO tells NASA about Martian Ice

"Data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have helped scientists solve a pair of mysteries dating back four decades and provided new information about climate change on the Red Planet.

The Shallow Radar, or SHARAD, instrument aboard MRO revealed subsurface geology allowing scientists to reconstruct the formation of a large chasm and a series of spiral troughs on the northern ice cap of Mars. The findings appear in two papers in the May 27 issue of the journal Nature.

"SHARAD is giving us a beautifully detailed view of ice deposits, whether at the poles or buried in mid-latitudes, as they changed on Mars over the last few million years," said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

On Earth, large ice sheets are shaped mainly by ice flow. According to this latest research, other forces have shaped, and continue to shape, polar ice caps on Mars. The northern ice cap is a stack of ice and dust layers up to two miles deep, covering an area slightly larger than Texas. Analyzing radar data on a computer, scientists can peel back the layers like an onion to reveal how the ice cap evolved over time. ... " (NASA)

Spot the secret plane

Spot the X37-B! It seems the little bugger is circling the Earth and will be called back shortly - all without crew aboard. And you can try to find it. Maybe in your neighborhood, you never know.

Ikaros on its merry solar way

Some press releases don't need to be long. This one's about the Ikaros solar sail probe flying to Venus:

"The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) acquired the signal transmitted from the IKAROS at the Usuda Deep Space Station and confirmed its solar power generation and stable posture, and established communications. We will turn on onboard devices one by one." (JAXA)

More on the highly interesting mission can be found here.

Hayabusa takes a family portrait

What you see here is a picture of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of about 13.5 million kilometers. That's 35 times the distance between Earth and Moon. The picture was taken by the Hayabusa spacecraft returning home. It's a star tracker picture, meaning it's not used for observation, but navigation.

You can read more about the picture - and about Hayabusa on its way back to Earth with comet samples on this page.

Proba-2 and x-cam

This is a picture from the Proba-2, circling Earth at a height of about 800 km. It's a very nice picture showing a part of South America (Argentina). More interesting is the view into space. Are those actually stars in the background? It means the exposure program of the small X-cam this picture was taken with is very smart. Which could be the case.... Read more about the x-cam aboard the Proba-2 here.

Click on the picture below to see a full size version.

Akatsuki and Ikaros ready for takeoff

"A new Japanese weather probe and daring solar sail concept are scheduled to blast off together on Monday for a six-month journey to study Venus.

The Venus Climate Orbiter, named Akatsuki, represents the main payload sitting aboard the H-2A rocket slated for launch at 5:44:14 p.m. EDT (2144:14 GMT) on Monday, May 17, though it will be early Tuesday at Japan's Tanegashima Space Center launching site. The launch requires a precise time window each day in order to achieve a successful trajectory toward Venus.

But Akatsuki, which means "Dawn" in Japanese, won't fly alone. The solar sail, named Ikaros (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun), gets to piggyback aboard the rocket as one of five smaller secondary payloads. The four remaining payloads represent small Earth satellites and experiments built by private universities and corporations.

Both the 1,100-pound (499 kg) Akatsuki spacecraft and the 700-pound (315 kg) Ikaros should set off for Venus on the same course, if everything goes smoothly. But only Akatsuki has an actual date scheduled with Venus. ..." (SPACE.com)

(more here and here)