Universe Today

July 15, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe #62

Here’s this week’s image for the WITU Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.

If you need some more challenges, look back at all previous 61 Where In the Universe Challenges.

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below

This the is Apollo 11 anniversary edition of WITU!

This is a microscopic look at one of the Moon rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts. It shows a glass spherule (about 0.6 mm in diameter) produced by a meteorite impact into lunar soil. Features on the surface are glass splashes, welded mineral fragments, and microcraters produced by space weathering processes at the surface of the moon.

The astronauts brought back 841 pounds of rocks from the lunar surface, and scientists say the rocks are completely unique and couldn’t have come from Earth. There is little or no water in these rocks, plus they are peppered with tiny micrometeorite hits, as seen on this sample. This could only happen to rocks from a planet with little or no atmosphere… like the Moon.

Enjoy the Apollo 11 anniversary hubbub and come back next week for another WITU challenge!

July 15, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

De-Orbit the ISS in 2016? Don’t Bet On It

International Space Station. Credit: NASA

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There’s been a fair amount of outcry this week regarding a quote in the Washington Post from International Space Station program manager Michael Suffredini that the ISS would be decommissioned, de-orbited and destroyed in 2016. Suffredini made that statement to the Augustine Commission, the presidential panel reviewing NASA’s future plans, at a hearing in June. But please don’t think ditching the space station is a done deal. Fiscal year 2016 is currently when the existing agreements between the international partners – and the all-important funding – expire. Suffredini also told the panel that discussions with the partners indicate all involved would like to see station operations continue past FY2016. NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told Universe Today that the heads of the participating space agencies recently reaffirmed their common interest in using the station “to its full capacity for a period that is meaningful for our stakeholders and its users.”

Additionally, Humphries said the international partners recently noted that as things stand now, a continuation of operations beyond 2015 wouldn’t be precluded by any significant technical challenges.

“NASA is working with the international partners to understand if there are any technical constraints to extending the life beyond 2016,” he said. “That’s the first step in confirming the belief that we don’t have any major technical concerns.”

The FY 2016 date was originally based on how long the station would be operational. That doesn’t take into account delays that have occurred in bringing various modules and hardware to orbit.

“Based on the projected design lifetime of the hardware that we have in orbit, the current International Space Station program baseline does have operations ending in fiscal year 2016, which is the end of calendar year 2015,” Humphries said. “However, there hasn’t been any policy decision made as to whether to continue or preclude any additional space station operations beyond 2016. And NASA hasn’t taken any action to preclude those operations.”

Humphries said that no one at NASA is going to speculate how long – or short – the station’s life might be. “NASA’s policy is not to make or allow any decision to be made that would cause the space station to be terminated on a particular date,” he said.

But as in all government sponsored space activities, funding is the biggest question mark. “The continued funding of the station is a decision that will be made by the leadership in the nations that are participating as partners in the endeavor,” Humphries said. However, he added, the heads of agencies did commit to work with their respective governments to assess whether or not they can support the station after 2015.

Suffredini simply laid out the course of action that would occur if agreements with the partnering nations were allowed to expire, which seems unlikely. As far as the funding, those details are up to the governments — and the taxpayers — of the participating nations. So if you have an opinion — one way or the other — make your voice be heard.

But what does Suffredini really think? As he told the Augustine Commission, “My opinion is it would be a travesty to de-orbit this thing.”

Sources: Washington Post, phone interview with Kelly Humphries

July 15, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Mercury’s Craters Get Artsy New Names

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The MESSENGER mission has been revealing more of Mercury’s surface, including plenty of craters so interesting that geologists have been christening them with names.

The International Astronomical Union released new names for 16 impact craters this week. All of the craters were discovered during the flyby in October, which is also when MESSENGER snapped these images–five minutes apart–as it left.

The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919. In keeping with the established naming theme for craters on Mercury, all of the craters are named after famous deceased artists, musicians, or authors. The newly named craters include:

Abedin, after Zainul Abedin, a Bangladeshi painter and printmaker who first attracted attention with his sketches of the Bengal famine of 1943.

Benoit, after Rigaud Benoit, an early member of the Haïtian art movement known as Naive Art, so-called because of its members’ limited formal training.

Berkel, after Sabri Berkel, a Turkish painter and printmaker.

Calvino, after Italo Calvino, an Italian writer of short stories and novels.

de Graft, after Joe Coleman De Graft, a prominent Ghanaian writer, playwright, and dramatist who was appointed the first director of the Ghana Drama Studio in 1962.

Derain, after Andre Derain, a French painter and co-founder of the Fauvism movement with Henri Matisse.

Eastman, after Charles A. Eastman, a Native American (Sioux) author, physician, and reformer who helped found the Boy Scouts of America.

Gibran, after Kahlil (Khalil) Gibran, a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer, best known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose.

Hemingway, after Ernest Hemingway, an American writer and journalist who had a significant influence on the development of 20^th century fiction.

Hodgkins, after Frances Hodgkins, a New Zealander painter.

Izquierdo, after María Izquierdo, a Mexican painter who used the landscape and traditions of Mexico as inspirations for her artwork.

Kunisada, after Utagawa Kunisada, a Japanese woodblock printmaker considered the most popular, prolific, and financially successful designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints in 19^th century Japan.

Lange, after Dorothea Lange, an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration

Matabei, after Iwasa Matabei, a Japanese artist who specialized in genre scenes of historical events and illustrations of classical Chinese and Japanese literature, as well as portraits.

Munkácsy, after Mihály Munkácsy, a Hungarian painter who lived in Paris and earned international reputation with his genre pictures and large-scale biblical paintings

Ngoc Van, a master in Vietnamese oil painting whose painting style was influenced by the French impressionist, Gauguin

Some of the names were suggested by MESSENGER team members, some were suggested by members of the public, and others were selected from a list of names that the IAU had previously approved for use on Mercury.

“Exploring new landforms on Mercury is a special experience that should be shared by everyone on our planet,” says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “It is highly appropriate that the naming of such features similarly acknowledges the contributions that individuals from all cultures have made to mankind’s advances.”

More information about the names of features on Mercury and the other objects in the Solar System can be found at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Planetary Nomenclature Web site.

The addition of these craters, along with the 27 features previously named, brings the total to 43 newly named surface features on Mercury since MESSENGER’s first flyby of the innermost planet. In September 2009 MESSENGER will complete a third and final flyby of Mercury before becoming the first spacecraft to orbit the planet, beginning in March 2011.

Lead image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. A portion of the same sequence, totaling 198 images in all, has also been made into a movie.

Source: MESSENGER

July 15, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Invasion of the Noctilucent Clouds

Noctilucent clouds over Blair, Nebraska, USA. Credit: Mike Hollingshead

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Be on the lookout for unusual – and beautiful – noctilucent clouds that are invading the North American and Europe. SpaceWeather.com says that these mysterious “night shining” clouds are on the increase. Some scientists think they’re seeded by space dust. Others suspect they’re a telltale sign of global warming. Whatever the reason, they are an amazing site, appearing around sunset. Mike Hollingshead took this gorgeous image on July 14 near Blair, Nebraska USA. “I’ve never seen noctilucent clouds before, even though I am often out looking,” he said. “These were wonderful.”

See below for another NLC image from my good buddy Stuart Atkinson in the UK:

Stuart Atkinson's image of NLCs near Kendal Castle in the UK. Credit: Stuart Atkinson

Stu took his NLC images (see more on his website Cumbrian Sky) in mid-June near historic Kendal Castle in the UK (one of Henry the 8th’s wives lived there, Stu says).

SpaceWeather.com has a great gallery of NLCs, which also includes observing tips. The site says reports of these clouds are pouring in from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, central California and possibly northern Nevada. These sightings are significant because they come from places so far south.

When noctilucent clouds first appeared in the late 19th century, they were confined to latitudes above 50 degrees N (usually far above). The latitude of Blair, Nebraska, is only 41°30′ N. (Cumbria in the UK is about 54 degrees N.) No one knows why NLCs are expanding their range in this way; it’s one of many unanswered questions about the mysterious clouds. Find out more about NLCs here.

When and where will NLC show up next? “No idea,” said Stu. “We can’t predict them in advance. They just… appear. All we can do is keep looking, on every clear night, just in case. We do know that this summer is expected to be a very good one for NLC-spotting because they appear more at “solar minimum”, and we’re in a deep, deep minimum now, so all we can do is keep an eye on the sky, and cross our fingers!”

And if you love clouds of all kinds, check out Mike Hollingshead’s website, Extreme Instability, which hosts an absolutely amazing collection of cloud images.

Source: SpaceWeather.com, Mike Hollingshead, Cumbrian Skies

July 15, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Ejected Black Holes Drag Clusters of Stars With Them

This artist’s conception shows a rogue black hole that has been kicked out from the center of two merging galaxies. The black hole is surrounded by a cluster of stars that were ripped from the galaxies. Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute

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The tight cluster of stars surrounding a supermassive black hole after it has been violently kicked out of a galaxy represents a new kind of astronomical object which may provide telltale clues to how the ejection event occurred. “Hypercompact stellar systems” result when a supermassive black hole is violently ejected from a galaxy, following a merger with another supermassive black hole. The evicted black hole rips stars from the galaxy as it is thrown out. The stars closest to the black hole move in tandem with the massive object and become a permanent record of the velocity at which the kick occurred.

“You can measure how big the kick was by measuring how fast the stars are moving around the black hole,” said David Merritt, professor of physics at the Rochester Institute of Technolyg. “Only stars orbiting faster than the kick velocity remain attached to the black hole after the kick. These stars carry with them a kind of fossil record of the kick, even after the black hole has slowed down. In principle, you can reconstruct the properties of the kick, which is nice because there would be no other way to do it.”

In a paper published in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Merritt and his colleagues discusses the theoretical properties of these objects and suggests that hundreds of these faint star clusters might be detected at optical wavelengths in our immediate cosmic environment. Some of these objects may already have been picked up in astronomical surveys. .

“Finding these objects would be like discovering DNA from a long-extinct species,” said team member Stefanie Komossa, from the Max-Planck-Institut for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.

The astronomers say the best place to find hypercompact stellar systems is in cluster of galaxies like the nearby Coma and Virgo clusters. These dense regions of space contain thousands of galaxies that have been merging for a long time. Merging galaxies result in merging black holes, which is a prerequisite for the kicks.

“Even if the black hole gets kicked out of one galaxy, it’s still going to be gravitationally bound to the whole cluster of galaxies,” Merritt says. “The total gravity of all the galaxies is acting on that black hole. If it was ever produced, it’s still going to be there somewhere in that cluster.”

Merritt and his co-authors think that scientists may have already seen hypercompact stellar systems and not realized it. These objects would be easy to mistake for common star systems like globular clusters. The key signature making hypercompact stellar systems unique is a high internal velocity. This is detectable only by measuring the velocities of stars moving around the black hole, a difficult measurement that would require a long time exposure on a large telescope.

From time to time, a hypercompact stellar system will make its presence known in a much more dramatic way, when one of the stars is tidally disrupted by the supermassive black hole. In this case, gravity stretches the star and sucks it into the black hole. The star is torn apart, causing a beacon-like flare that signals a black hole. The possibility of detecting one of these “recoil flares” was first discussed in an August 2008 paper by co-authors Merritt and Komossa.

“The only contact of these floating black holes with the rest of the universe is through their armada of stars,” Merritt says, “with an occasional display of stellar fireworks to signal ‘here we are.’”

Source: Rochester Institute of Technology

July 14, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Spirit’s Psychedelic Visions

While the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was taking exposures with different color filters during the 1,919th Martian day of the rover's mission (May 27, 2009), dust devils moved across the field of view.

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The Spirit rover has had memory problems, arthritic-like symptoms in her wheels, as well as her current dilemma of being stuck in loose Martian soil. But now, is she having psychedelic visions, too?! No, not to worry; she’s not having hallucinations or smoking any mind-altering Martian weed. This image is just a combination of three images taken seconds apart through different colored filters to create a special-effects portrait of a huge, moving dust devil on Mars. It shows the dust devil in different colors, according to where it was on the horizon when each exposure was taken.

Images from May 27, 2009 of a huge dust devil near Spirit. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/ASU

Amazingly, Spirit has recorded over 650 dust devils during her mission on Mars. This one is a whopper. Dust devils occur most frequently during the Martian springtime, when solar energy heats the surface, resulting in a layer of warm air just above the surface. Since the warmed air is less dense than the cooler atmosphere above it, it rises, making a swirling thermal plume that picks up the fine dust from the surface and carries it up into the atmosphere.

The rover team is working on creating a large color panorama of the area and these are three of the shots, which happened to catch the dust devil in action. The dust devils are interesting, and also have provided enough breeze to clean off Spirit’s solar panels, giving her a huge boost in energy. She’s been staying awake at night, taking astronomical images while stuck in her current location at “Troy.”

Back on Earth, the attempts to “Free Spirit” are proceeding at JPL. Using the engineering rover in a simulated test bed, engineers are trying out different ways to move the rover to best get her out, including a crablike backward drive, with the wheels turned indifferent directions. Keep current with the ongoing tests at the Free Spirit website.

Sources: JPL, Free Spirit

July 14, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Build Your Own Apollo 11 Landing Computer

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I’m classifying this one under “Extreme Geek.” But very cool Extreme Geek.

Remember the computer on the Apollo 11 Eagle lander that kept reporting “1201” and “1202” alarms as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin approached landing on the Moon? Well, now you can have one of your very own. Software engineer John Pultorak worked 4 years to build a replica of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), just so he could have one. And then he wrote a complete manual and put it online so that anyone else with similar aspirations wouldn’t have to go through the same painstaking research as he did. The manual is available free, but Pultorak says he spent about $3,000 for the hardware.

The 1,000 page documentation includes detailed descriptions and all schematics of the computer. You can find them all posted on Galaxiki, downloadable in pdf. format (the files are large).

During the first moon landing, the AGC guided Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin towards a large crater with huge boulders around it. Knowing he didn’t want to land there, Armstrong took manual control of the lunar module while Aldrin called out data from the radar and computer, guiding the Eagle to a safe landing with about 30 seconds of fuel left.

Even with that inauspicious beginning, the AGC did its job for the Apollo missions, and did it well. It had to control a 13,000 kg spaceship, orbiting at 3,500 kilometers per hour around the moon, land it safely within meters of a specified location and guide it back from the surface to rendezvous with a command ship in lunar orbit. The system had to minimize fuel consumption because the spacecraft only contained enough fuel for one landing attempt.

The original Apollo AGC cost over $150,000. It didn’t have a disk drive to store any software, and only 74 kilobytes of memory that had been literally hard-wired, and all of 4 Kb of something that is sort of like RAM.

It was developed by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and it a pretty amazing piece of hardware in the 1960s, as it was the first computer to use integrated circuits. The AGC mutlitasking operating system was called the EXEC, it was capable of executing up to 8 jobs at a time. The user interface unit was called the DSKY (display/keyboard, pronounced “disky”); an array of numerals and a calculator-style keyboard used by the astronauts to communicate with the computer.

Each Apollo mission featured two AGC computers – one in the Apollo Command Module and one in the Apollo Lunar Module.

Reportedly, Aldrin later said he kept the guidance system on while the descent radar was also on. The computer wasn’t designed for that amount of simultaneous input from both systems, which was why the alarms kept going off. But Aldrin’s reasoning was if the descent had to be aborted he didn’t want to have to turn on the guidance while they were doing their abort rocket burn to escape from crashing. As the story goes, while the alarms were going off, computer engineer Jack Garman told guidance officer Steve Bales in mission control it was safe to continue the descent and this was relayed to the crew. Garman remembered the 1201 and 1202 alarms occurring during one of the hundreds of simulations the team performed in preparation of the Apollo 11 mission, and knew it would be OK to continue.

The rest is history. And now you can build yourself a little piece of it.

Sources: Galaxiki, Apollo 11 Wikipedia

July 14, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Crew Emerges from Simulated Mars Mission

The Mars 500 crew at the halfway point of their mission. Credit: ESA

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Six crewmembers emerged from 105 days of isolation on Tuesday, completing a simulated Mars mission. This experiment was the first phase of the Mars 500 program to help understand the psychological and medical aspects of long spaceflights. “We have successfully completed our mission,” said crew member Oliver Knickel. “This is a big accomplishment that I am very proud of. I hope that the scientific data we have provided over the last months will help to make a mission to Mars possible.”

The simulated mission began on March 31 of this year. Inside the isolation facility in Moscow, Russia the crew participated in a range of scenarios as if they really were traveling to the Red Planet – including launch, the outward journey, arrival, transfer to and from the Martian surface, simulated emergencies, and finally the long journey home.

All communications with anyone outside the facility had a delay of up to 20 minutes each way, just as a real mission to Mars would have. The only thing missing was microgravity during the simulated flight and one-third of Earth’s gravity during the simulated time on Mars. Plus, of course, the crew never faced any of the real dangers of launch, spaceflight, landing or living on a planet hostile to human life.

The crew includes Knickel, a mechanical engineer in the German army, Cyrille Fournier, an airline pilot from France and four Russians: cosmonauts Sergei Ryazansky (commander) and Oleg Artemyev, Alexei Baranov, a medical doctor, and Alexei Shpakov, a sports physiologist.

An external view of the Module for Mars 500 Image Credit: ESA

The crew grew some of their own food to supplement the usual space-style pre-packaged meals. Any spare time was spent reading, watching films and playing music and games together.

“We had an outstanding team spirit throughout the entire 105 days,” said Cyrille Fournier. “Living for that long in a confined environment can only work if the crew is really getting along with each other. The crew is the crucial key to mission success, which became very evident to me during the 105 days.”

This initial 105-day study is the precursor to a complete simulation of a fully-fledged mission to Mars and back due to start in early 2010. That exercise will see another six-member crew sealed in the same chamber to experience a complete 520-day Mars mission.

Source: ESA

July 14, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Welcome “Copernicium,” Our Newest Element

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The newest element on the periodic table will likely be named in honor of scientist and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Element 112 will be named Copernicum, with the element symbol “Cp.”

“We would like to honor an outstanding scientist, who changed our view of the world”, says Sigurd Hofmann, head of the team who discovered the element.

Element 112 is the heaviest element in the periodic table, 277 times heavier than hydrogen. With that distinction, several interesting suggestions for a name have recently been floating around the blogosphere (Fat Bottomum was my favorite; another was naming it to honor Carl Sagan). But the scientists said they wanted to honor the scientist who paved the way for our view of the modern world by discovering that the Earth orbits the Sun. Our solar system is a model for other physical systems, such as the structure of an atom, where electrons orbit the atomic nucleus. Exactly 112 electrons circle the atomic nucleus in an atom of copernicium.

Thirteen years ago, element 112 was discovered by an international team of scientists at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany.

The element is produced by a nuclear fusion, when bombarding zinc ions onto a lead target. As the element already decays after a split second, its existence can only be proved with the help of extremely fast and sensitive analysis methods. Twenty-one scientists from Germany, Finland, Russia and Slovakia have been involved in the experiments that led to the discovery of element 112.

A few weeks ago, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, officially confirmed their discovery. In around six months, IUPAC will officially endorse the new element’s name. This period is set to allow the scientific community to discuss the suggested name “copernicium” before the IUPAC naming.

Since 1981, GSI accelerator experiments have yielded the discovery of six chemical elements, which carry the atomic numbers 107 to 112. The discovering teams at GSI already named five of them: element 107 is called bohrium, element 108, hassium; element 109, meitnerium; element 110, darmstadtium; and element 111 is named roentgenium.

Source: PhysOrg

July 14, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Could Ares Be Axed?

The Constellation program's Ares rockets. Credit: NASA

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Members of the Augustine Panel reviewing NASA’s future plans have asked the space agency to consider different approaches to send astronauts back to the moon. According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel, panel members have told NASA they want to see the effects of both “minor tweaks and wholesale changes to its Constellation Program,” which includes the newly designed Ares rocket and the Orion crew capsule. Ares has been controversial from the start, but NASA has spent the past four years and more than $3 billion creating and defending the rocket. Would starting over just mean a bigger gap between the shuttle and whatever comes next?

Current plans have the Ares rocket ready to launch by 2015, however, most critics say there’s no way the Constellation program can meet its 2015 launch schedule — let alone return astronauts to the moon by 2020 — given the technical problems and multibillion-dollar cost overruns on its Ares I rocket.

The White House named the 10-member review panel, chaired by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, to review NASA’s manned-space strategy for the next decade. The Sentinel reported, “One of the [panel’s] subcommittees has asked the [Constellation] program to present both the baseline … program and one of the variants that they have studied as well,” said one committee official, who asked not to be named because he’s not authorized to speak for the committee.

The official provided no details about the “variant,” but the request coincides with NASA pulling engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama from their work on Ares I to study creation of a smaller version of the Ares V that could carry both crew and heavy equipment.

Other possible options include a shuttle-derived architecture presented to the committee by shuttle program manager John Shannon, or the Direct 3.0 launch system created by a group of NASA engineers.

The Sentinel reports that NASA insiders and contractors say pulling engineers from Ares is “far from standard practice and could herald the demise of the Ares I.”

“They are looking at a whole new launch architecture,” the Sentinel quoted one NASA contractor familiar with the study. “Although it’s still too early to pronounce Ares I dead, it is safe to assume that members of the committees have doubts about it.”

Meanwhile, NASA presses ahead with a planned first launch test of the Ares I-X rocket planned for August 30. Just today the third motor segment for rocket has been moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building for to mate with the rest of the Ares stack tonight.

Stay tuned.

Source: Orlando Sentinel