Missions | Universe Today

The Phoenix Mars lander finally was successful in delivering a fairly fresh sample of Martian soil to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) oven on Wednesday and a "bake and sniff" test identified water in the soil sample. "We have water," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted."
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The story: The Lucifer Project is allegedly the biggest conspiracy theory NASA could possibly be involved in. First, back in 2003, the space agency (in co-operation with secret and powerful organizations) dropped the Galileo probe deep into Jupiter's atmosphere. On board, was a significant quantity of plutonium. As the probe fell though the atmosphere, NASA hoped atmospheric pressures would create an implosion, generating a nuclear explosion thereby kick-starting a chain reaction, turning the gas giant into a second Sun. They failed. So, in a second attempt, they will drop the Cassini probe (again, laden with plutonium) deep into Saturn's atmosphere in two years time, so this smaller gas giant can succeed where Jupiter failed…

The reality: As investigated briefly in Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1), we looked at some of the technical problems behind Galileo and Cassini being used as makeshift nuclear weapons. They cannot generate an explosion for many reasons, but the main points are: 1) Tiny pellets of plutonium used to heat and power the probes are in separate, damage-proof cylinders. 2) The plutonium is not weapon grade, meaning the 238Pu makes a very inefficient fissionable fuel. 3) The probes will burn up and break apart, therefore disallowing any chance of lumps of plutonium forming "critical mass" (besides, there is no chance the plutonium could possibly form a configuration to create an implosion-triggered device).

OK, so Galileo and Cassini cannot be used as crude nuclear weapons. But say if there was a nuclear explosion inside Saturn? Could it cause a chain reaction in the core, creating a second Sun?

• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1)
• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 2)

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The bright, hard surface feature beneath the Phoenix Mars Lander has visibly changed from when it was first imaged shortly after the lander touched down on the Red Planet. Scientists believe the area, called "Snow Queen" could possibly be ice. Thruster exhaust blew away surface soil covering Snow Queen as Phoenix landed, exposing a hard layer with several smooth, rounded cavities. Phoenix's Robotic Arm Camera (RAC) took its first close-up image of the area under the lander on May 31, the sixth sol of the mission. Now, more than 60 days since landing, cracks as long as 10 centimeters, or about four inches, have appeared in Snow Queen. A seven-millimeter (less than one-third inch) pebble or clod not seen there before has popped up on the surface, and some smooth texture has subtly roughened. These changes have been occurring slowly. "Images taken since landing showed these fractures didn't form in the first 20 sols of the mission," Phoenix co-investigator Mike Mellon of the University of Colorado, Boulder, said. "We might expect to see additional changes in the next 20 sols."
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The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights are stunningly beautiful. But they can also disrupt radio communications and GPS signals, and even cause power outages. What's behind the ethereal Northern Lights that causes them to shimmer and dance with colorful lights while sometimes wreaking havoc with electrical systems here on Earth? Using a fleet of five satellites, NASA researchers have discovered that explosions of magnetic energy a third of the way to the moon power substorms that cause sudden brightenings and rapid movements of the aurora borealis, called the Northern Lights. "We discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance," said Dr. Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles. Angelopoulos is the principal investigator for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission, or THEMIS.
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All the best sci-fi films have them, and they may become our future automated space explorers. Currently, one of the biggest drawbacks for using robots in space is that they depend on human input (i.e. commands need to be sent for every robotic arm motion and every rover wheel rotation). This means that, especially with missions operating far from Earth (such as the Phoenix Mars Lander and Mars Expedition Rovers), very simple and mundane tasks can take hours or even days to complete. One of the main reasons supporting manned exploration of space is that very complex science can be carried out very rapidly (after all, astronauts are human and many robotic operations that take weeks can be completed in seconds). But say if our robotic explorers had a high degree of automation? Say if they could sever the requirement for human input and carry out tasks with intelligent reasoning? As robotic and computer technology increases in sophistication, one Caltech scientist believes space exploration by artificial intelligence is closer than we think…
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Space is far from empty. The Solar System can be viewed as a "bubble" of solar matter - filled with particles emitted by the Sun as the solar wind - extending well beyond the orbit of Pluto. The solar wind velocity is supersonic for most of this distance (exceeding a million miles per hour), but the point at which it begins to interact with the interstellar medium (ISM), the solar wind drops to subsonic velocities, creating a region of compression known as the termination shock. After 26 years of flight, the Voyager 1 deep space probe entered this bizarre, turbulent region of space, where solar particles build up and magnetic fields become twisted. Now a new mission has been designed to watch this region of space from afar to begin to understand the boundary of our solar system, where violent turbulence rules and high-energy atoms are generated…
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NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander scraped up some icy soil with its robotic arm and scoop and then attempted to quickly deliver the sample to the oven on board. But not enough soil made it to the oven; the icy soil stuck to the scoop. Engineers determined the rasping and scraping activity collected a total of 3 cubic centimeters of icy soil, more than enough to fill the tiny oven cell of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. However, images returned from the lander Saturday showed that much of the soil remained lodged in the robotic arm's scoop after the delivery attempt. "Very little of the icy sample made it into the oven,” said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager. “We believe that the material that was intended for the targeted cell is the material that adhered to the back of the scoop.”

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The story: On October 15th 1997, the Cassini-Huygens mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to explore Saturn and its moons. It continues to study the ringed gas giant today and its mission has been extended till 2010. Cassini is is powered by 32.8 kg (72 lbs) of plutonium fuel. A radioactive power source is the only option for missions travelling beyond the orbit of Mars as sunlight is too weak for solar panels to be effective. However, NASA (in association with secret organizations, such as the Illuminati or the Freemasons) wants to use this plutonium for a "higher purpose", dropping Cassini deep into Saturn at the end of its mission where atmospheric pressures will be so large that it will compress the probe, detonating like a nuclear bomb. What's more, this will trigger a chain reaction, kick-starting nuclear fusion, turning Saturn into a fireball. This is what has become known as The Lucifer Project. This second sun will have dire consequences for us on Earth, killing millions from the huge influx of radiation by this newborn star. Earth's loss becomes the Saturn moon Titan's gain, suddenly it is habitable and the organizations playing "God" can start a new civilization in the Saturn system. What's more, exactly the same thing was attempted when the Galileo probe was dropped into Jupiter's atmosphere in 2003…

The reality: Now that the Cassini mission has been extended by two years, we can expect this conspiracy theory to become more and more vocal in the coming months. But like the Galileo/Jupiter/second sun theory, this one is just as inaccurate, once again using bad science to scare people (much like Planet X then)…

• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1)
• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 2)

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This panorama mosaic of images was taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on board NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander. This mosaic documents the midnight sun during several days of the mission, from Sol 46, or the 46th day of the mission to Sol 56 (that would be to July 12 - 22, 2008 here on Earth.) The foreground and sky images were taken on Sol 54, when the lander pulled an all-nighter to coordinate work with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The solar images were taken between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., local solar time, on the different nights of the 11 sol period. During this period, the sun's path got slightly lower over the northern horizon, causing the lack of smoothness to the curve. This pan captures the polar nature of the Phoenix mission in its similarity to time lapse pictures taken above the Arctic Circle on Earth.

The latest activities of the lander has brought it closer to analyzing a sample of icy soil in the TEGA oven.
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For the first time, the Phoenix lander stayed up all night. But there was no partying for the little lander, just hard work. Phoenix coordinated its schedule to work together with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to make joint observations to study Mars' atmosphere. More on that in a minute, but the other big news from the Phoenix lander is that the doors to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) oven successfully opened, and the device is now ready to accept a sample of icy soil. If you remember, way back in the beginning of the mission, on about Sol 8, the first time the science team relayed orders for the spring-loaded oven doors to open, the doors only opened partially and the team had to vibrate the oven to get the soil inside. But this time, the 10 cm (4 inch) doors stands wide open, and today Phoenix will perfect its techniques to quickly get the icy soil sample inside the oven before the ice sublimates.
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OK, everyone: get out your funky 3-D glasses for a whole new look at Mars! We've seen the smooth plains of Meridiani from Opportunity in 3-D; we've gazed upon the rocky terrain of Gusev Crater from Spirit in more than two dimensions. But now it's time to feast your eyes on Mars' arctic tundra as its never been seen before: in super frozen 3-D from the Phoenix lander! The image above shows a color, stereoscopic 3D view of the Martian surface near the lander, and is one of Phoenix's workplaces called "Wonderland." But wait! There's more…..
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The Japanese lunar mission SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer), also known as "Kaguya" has imaged the "halo" left behind in the lunar surface from Apollo 15's lunar module engine exhaust plume. This is the first time a mission after the Apollo Program has detected such a feature. Apollo 15 landed on the Moon in 1971 in a region called Mare Imbrium, and SELENE's Terrain Camera (TC) is continuing to reconstruct a 3D view of the region in unprecedented high-resolution.
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The Phoenix Mars Lander successfully used a rasp on the end of its robotic arm to drill into the frozen soil on Mar's arctic tundra. This effort loosened the icy material, which was then scraped up and collected in the lander's scoop. Images and data sent from Phoenix early today indicated the shaved material in the scoop had changed slightly over time during the hours after it was collected, which is a sign that the material includes water ice. Water ice sublimates, or evaporates on Mars surface because of the low surface pressure on the Red Planet. It can exist just under the surface, however, protected by the soil.
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It's not that the Phoenix lander's mission to Mars is over – not by a longshot. But Phoenix did stick a fork in it. The "fork" is a four-pronged thermal and electrical conductivity probe that Phoenix poked into the Martian soil for the first time. The probe tool can help the science team assess how easily heat and electricity move through the soil from one spike to another. These measurements can provide information about frozen or unfrozen water in the soil. The probe is mounted on the "knuckle" of Phoenix's Robotic Arm. The probe has already been used for assessing water vapor in the atmosphere when it is held above the ground.
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Remember the amazing image that the HiRISE Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured of the Phoenix Lander as it descended to Mars' surface via parachute back on May 25? Well, the HiRISE scientists have done a little more processing of the image, and have turned up an additional detail they didn't see at first: Phoenix's heat shield. The heat shield, which had been jettisons just after parachute deployment, can be seen falling toward the surface. You have to look really, really close to see it. But that's what these HiRISE folks do. It was incredible that they found the lander with the parachute in the image (go see the big, huge image they had to hunt for it HERE) and these guys get the eagle eyes of the year award for finding the heat shield.
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If humans ever build a city on Mars, perhaps (in its retirement) the Phoenix Lander can apply for a job with the city's public works department to scrape ice off sidewalks. Phoenix has been trying to dig down deeper into the "Snow White" trench and has been digging, scooping and scraping the ice layer that earlier soil scooping exposed. The robotic arm team is working to get an icy sample into the Robotic Arm scoop for delivery to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA). Ray Arvidson of the Phoenix team, known as the "dig czar," said the hard Martian surface that Phoenix has reached is proving to be a difficult target, and compared the process to scraping a sidewalk. "We have three tools on the scoop to help access ice and icy soil," Arvidson said. "We can scoop material with the backhoe using the front titanium blade; we can scrape the surface with the tungsten carbide secondary blade on the bottom of the scoop; and we can use a high-speed rasp that comes out of a slot at the back of the scoop."

"We expected ice and icy soil to be very strong because of the cold temperatures. It certainly looks like this is the case and we are getting ready to use the rasp to generate the fine icy soil and ice particles needed for delivery to TEGA," he said.
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The Phoenix Mars Lander used its robotic arm to deliver a second sample of soil for analysis by the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory. Data received from Phoenix on Sunday night confirmed the soil was in the lab's cell number 1. This image taken by the the lander's Surface Stereo Imager shows the Robotic Arm scoop positioned over the Wet Chemistry Lab Cell 1 delivery funnel on Sol 41, or July 6. Test results will be compared in coming days to the results from the first Martian soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory two weeks ago. That laboratory is part of Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer.

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Until humans can actually set foot on the Red Planet, the next best thing would be a sample return mission, to bring Martian soil samples back to Earth. A sample return would exponentially increase our knowledge and understanding Mars and its environment. And in order to pull off a mission of this magnitude, international cooperation might be required, and in fact, may be preferred. The International Mars Exploration Working Group (IMEWG), organized an international committee to study an international architecture for a Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission concept. After several months of collective work by scientists and engineers from several countries worldwide, the “iMARS” group is ready to publish the outcome of its deliberations and the envisioned common architecture for a future international MSR mission, and they will discuss their findings at an international conference on July 9 and 10 in France.
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The "vibrating" done to get the first Mars arctic soil sample into Phoenix's TEGA (Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer) oven may have caused a short circuit that could happen again the next time the oven is used, perhaps with fatal results. A team of engineers and scientists assembled to assess TEGA after a short circuit was discovered in the instrument, and came to a fairly disheartening conclusion. “Since there is no way to assess the probability of another short circuit occurring, we are taking the most conservative approach and treating the next sample to TEGA as possibly our last,” said Peter Smith, Phoenix’s principal investigator. Therefore, the Phoenix team is doing everything they can to assure the next sample delivered to TEGA will be ice-rich.
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The GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) spacecraft blasted off on June 11, 2008, and after acclimating to the cold reaches of space, the instruments on board are now powering up and have sent back signals to Earth indicating that all systems are operational. Meanwhile back on Earth, several bases of operations for the telescope are gearing up for processing data from the various instruments.
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What do black holes, magnetars and supernovae have in common? They all emit X-rays. But it's difficult, if not impossible to study certain aspects of the X-ray emissions from these powerful objects. And there's much we don't understand about how black holes distort space-time around them, or how magnetars affect their surroundings, or how cosmic rays are accelerated by shocks in supernova remnants. A proposed new NASA mission called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEMS), will use a new technique to study what has been unattainable until now. GEMS won't study the X-ray emission of these objects directly, but will build up a picture indirectly by measuring the polarization of X-rays emitted from these violent regions.

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For the first time, a spacecraft has detected signals from both stars of a binary pulsar system in X-rays. XMM-Newton is watching both stars radiate pulsating X-rays, providing scientist with the perfect laboratory for high-energy physics and a never-ending source of intriguing physical problems. The binary pulsar PSR J0737-3039 was first spotted by astronomers in 2003 in radio wavelengths, but now X-rays can be used to investigate this system in greater detail.
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Phoenix's scientific team team held a press conference today to officially make their big announcement, which was fairly evident from pictures on the Phoenix website late yesterday: They found what they have been looking for. "It is with great pride and lot of joy that announce today we have found the proof that we have been seeking that show that this hard, white material is water ice," said the project's principle investigator Peter Smith. The image here shows a trench dug by Phoenix's robotic arm scoop that exposed a white area, and left a couple of small chunks of white material, which scientists thought could possibly be ice. A few days later, the ice is gone. "In the course of sitting through the cold and very dry Martian environment for several days, it sublimated," said Mark Lemmon, co-investigator on the Phoenix's Surface Stero Imager. "The ice went away into vapor without any melting taking place." But how do the scientists know for sure this is water ice?
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Phoenix scientists have been keeping an eye on the white material uncovered in a trench dug by the lander's scoop. Dice-size nuggets of the bright material have vanished, convincing scientists the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it. The image here is a "movie" showing the material disappearing after four days. "It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."
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The Phoenix lander began digging in an area called "Wonderland" early Tuesday, taking its first scoop of soil from a polygonal surface feature within the "national park" region that mission scientists have been preserving for science. The lander's Robotic Arm created the new test trench called "Snow White" on June 17, the 22nd Martian day, or sol that Phoenix has been on the Red Planet. However, all of the newly planned science activities will resume no earlier than Sol 24 as engineers look into how the spacecraft is handling larger than expected amounts of data.
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