Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Hubble Makes ‘Pillars Of Creation’ Look Better Than Ever

The Eagle Nebula's pillars of creation taken in 1995 (right) and 2015. The new image was obtained with the Wide Field Camera 3, installed by astronauts in 2009. Credit: Left: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team. Right: NASA, ESA/Hubble, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)

When you look at that image on the right, make sure to thank the STS-125 crew. And all the people who defended the idea of sending one last repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope before the space shuttle was decommissioned.

That’s because the famous “Pillars of Creation” image taken in 1995 by Hubble just got a huge upgrade. Using a camera the astronauts installed in 2009, astronomers recently revisited the iconic image and got far more detail this time around. And please, do yourself a favor to click through and see the ethereal infrared image Hubble got at the same time.

Embedded in these Eagle Nebula towers, which are sometimes called elephant trunks, are stars under creation. And in a short span of 20 years, you can see how the stars are slowly blowing the pillars apart. This is leading some press officials to call the structures “pillars of destruction.” And astronomers can chart how everything is changing over time.

“I’m impressed by how transitory these structures are. They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes,” stated Paul Scowen of Arizona State University in Tempe, one of the astronomers who led the 1995 observations.

The Eagle Nebula's pillars of creation captured in infrared light with the Hubble Space Telescope, in 2015. Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team
The Eagle Nebula’s pillars of creation captured in infrared light with the Hubble Space Telescope, in 2015. Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team

“These pillars represent a very dynamic, active process,” Scowen added. “The gas is not being passively heated up and gently wafting away into space. The gaseous pillars are actually getting ionized (a process by which electrons are stripped off of atoms) and heated up by radiation from the massive stars. And then they are being eroded by the stars’ strong winds (barrage of charged particles), which are sandblasting away the tops of these pillars.”

One large find from the two images showed a “narrow jet-like feature” that could have been emanating from a brand-new star. It’s been getting larger over the past two decades, moving more than 60 billion miles further into the universe.

The new images were presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle this week.

Sources: Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre and Space Telescope Science Institute

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Dream Chaser Spacecraft Maker Loses NASA Crew Contract Protest

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Dream Chaser just before tow tests at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Aug. 2, 2013. Credit: NASA/Ken Ulbrich

Update, 4 p.m. EST: Sierra Nevada’s statement, which was posted after the story was first published, is now mentioned below.

Sierra Nevada’s protest concerning NASA’s commercial crew program was turned down today (Jan. 5), according to a statement from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The company is developing a spacecraft called the Dream Chaser, which was in competition for NASA funding along with Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Dragon to bring crews to the International Space Station. A few months ago, NASA awarded further development money to Boeing and SpaceX, prompting a protest from Sierra Nevada.

At the time, Sierra Nevada both protested the decision and requested a stop-work order on all commercial crew work. The stop-work order was lifted fairly quickly, but the protest remained under review. From today, this was the crux of the GAO statement, which you can read in full here:

In making its selection decision, NASA concluded that the proposals submitted by Boeing and SpaceX represented the best value to the government.  Specifically, NASA recognized Boeing’s higher price, but also considered Boeing’s proposal to be the strongest of all three proposals in terms of technical approach, management approach, and past performance, and to offer the crew transportation system with most utility and highest value to the government.  NASA also recognized several favorable features in the Sierra Nevada and SpaceX proposals, but ultimately concluded that SpaceX’s lower price made it a better value than the proposal submitted by Sierra Nevada.

In making its selection decision, NASA concluded that the proposals submitted by Boeing and SpaceX represented the best value to the government.  Specifically, NASA recognized Boeing’s higher price, but also considered Boeing’s proposal to be the strongest of all three proposals in terms of technical approach, management approach, and past performance, and to offer the crew transportation system with most utility and highest value to the government.  NASA also recognized several favorable features in the Sierra Nevada and SpaceX proposals, but ultimately concluded that SpaceX’s lower price made it a better value than the proposal submitted by Sierra Nevada.

Other key points:

  • The prices for each proposal were as follows: Sierra Nevada was $2.55 billion, Boeing’s was $3.01 billion and SpaceX’s $1.75 billion.
  • NASA, the GAO said, had “no undue emphasis” on any proposal’s schedule or the chances of a particular system making it to orbit by 2017. Also, the agency did say in its request for proposals that the 2017 certification goal would be a part of the process — a different point than what Sierra Nevada argued, who said the agency had added that stipulation while the process was underway.
  • NASA’s review of SpaceX’s price and “financial resources” was adequate, along with its evaluation of the competing proposals in terms of mission suitability and past performance. This was in contrast to Sierra Nevada’s argument.

This is part of what Sierra Nevada had to say about the decision. The company also said it plans to maintain ties with NASA. The full statement is here.

While the outcome was not what SNC expected, we maintain our belief that the Dream Chaser spacecraft is technically very capable, reliable and was qualified to win based on NASA’s high ratings of the space system. We appreciate the time and effort contributed to this process by the GAO and NASA to fully evaluate such a critical decision for the United States …

SNC also plans to further the development and testing of the Dream Chaser and is making significant progress in its vehicle design and test program. In addition, SNC is continuing to expand its existing, while developing new, partnerships domestically and abroad in order to expand the multi-mission flexibility of the system, reduce overall long-term costs of the vehicle and ensure long-term affordability and sustainability for the Dream Chaser.

A public record of the decision is expected in a few weeks. Right now, due to the proprietary nature of the information, only NASA personnel and a few “outside counsel” are able to view it, the GAO added.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

NASA Robot Runs Into Snag After It’s Unpacked On Space Station

Robonaut 2
An example of some of the tasks Robonaut 2 can perform. Credit: NASA

We’re all a little scared (in the impressed-with-technology sense!) of Robonaut, that robot on the International Space Station that is expected to start using legs to move around in the next few months. Eventually, it could even do repairs on the outside — saving astronauts time and keeping them safer.

This fun timelapse video shows Expedition 42 astronaut Terry Virts taking the robot out from what looks like a suitcase on the wall. After he set up Robonaut, however, the machine ran into a few problems.

“The ground teams deployed software and received telemetry from Robonaut. However, [they] were unable to obtain the commanded leg movement that was planned for the day. Ground teams are assessing a forward plan,” NASA wrote in the last ISS update concerning the robot, in mid-December.

While the astronauts patiently wait, they have been posting a few fun tweets about the robot in recent days. Check out what they’ve been saying below.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

NASA Mars Landing Craft Idea Is More Than Just Child’s Play

Artist's conception of the futuristic Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) entering the atmosphere of Mars. Credit: NASA

Assuming we can get humans all the way to Mars, how the heck do we land them on the Red Planet? The challenge is the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, making parachutes tricky. Heavier payloads require unique ideas to get them on the surface, such as the wild ride we saw for the Curiosity rover.

Since humans and their cargo would have much more mass, one of the ideas NASA is exploring is something called the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD). And here’s the surprising thing — it looks a little like those donut toys that small children play with.

“In a real spacecraft, a connected stack of donut rings would be inflated before entering a planet’s atmosphere to slow the vehicle for landing,” NASA wrote in an update last June. “The spaceship would look a lot like a giant cone with the space donuts assembled, similar to a child’s stacking ring toy. The stacked-cone concept would allow NASA to land heavier payloads to the surface of the planet than is currently possible, and could eventually be used to deliver crews.”

The concept has been heavily highlighted in the media this week, but what is less spoken about is the uncertainty of the project. The June update came after NASA performed structural testing on a prototype in NASA Armstrong’s Flight Loads Laboratory for seven months in 2013 and 2014. And that was the end of a three-year project under NASA’s Game-Changing Technology program.

What project officials hope for is that they will win a proposal to do more work in 2016. If that works out, they’ll perform more testing on the project. NASA says the technology could be available for use as soon as 2020, but we’ll have to see how things work out.

The principal investigator for its materials and structure is Anthony Calomino, who is with NASA Langley. You can find more information on HIAD on this website.

The Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator prototype undergoes structural tests at NASA Armstrong's Flight Loads Laboratory in this undated photo. Tests took place in 2013 and 2014. Credit: NASA
The Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator prototype undergoes structural tests at NASA Armstrong’s Flight Loads Laboratory in this undated photo. Tests took place in 2013 and 2014. Credit: NASA
Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Infographic: Dragon, Reusable Rockets And Other 2014 SpaceX Milestones

Part of an infographic posted by user EchoLogic on Reddit.

SpaceX has a big year ahead of it. The company not only plans to launch more Dragon cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station, but it will also work on developing a human-rated version that could one day do the same for astronauts. Meanwhile, it has a unique idea to land a rocket stage on an ocean platform.

While the Hawthorne, Calif.-based firm has drawn criticism for the slower-than-advertised launch pace, its 2014 achievements drew the attention of a Redditor that made an impressive infographic celebrating what SpaceX accomplished.

“So, this effectively took up $24 and 7 hours of my life (Had to buy Imgur Pro to host the large file + I’m slow at Photoshop & Illustrator), but hey, I don’t care,” EchoLogic wrote on Reddit last week. “I thought I’d make an infographic summarizing SpaceX’s 2014. Nothing new for those who are deep in the loop, but sometimes some perspective helps!”

The full infographic (which you can see here) commemorates the Dragon launches to the space station, the commercial services resupply contract SpaceX has with NASA, and developments on commercial crew and the Falcon 9-R. Enjoy!

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Asteroids Don’t Break Up Like You Think They Do: Study

Artist's impression of an asteroid breaking up. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The early Solar System was a shooting gallery. Smaller-body collisions happened far more frequently than we see it today, pockmarking the Moon and Mercury. On a larger scale, simulation show the Earth came close to blowing apart when a Mars-sized object crashed into us long ago.

So we’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s asteroid collisions that cause these tiny bodies to break up, given their numbers and the history of our neighborhood. But it turns out, a new study says, that the larger asteroids likely have another way of coming apart.

“For asteroids about 100 meters [328 feet] in diameter collisions are not the primarily cause of break ups – rapid rotation is,” the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory stated.

“Moreover, because the rate of collisions depends on the numbers and sizes of objects but rotation does not, their results are in strong disagreement with previous models of collisionally-produced small asteroids.”

Most near-Earth asteroids fall into three classes named after the first asteroid discovered in that class. Apollo and Aten asteroids cross Earth's orbit; Amors orbit just beyond Earth but cross Mars' orbit. Credit: Wikipedia
Most near-Earth asteroids fall into three classes named after the first asteroid discovered in that class. Apollo and Aten asteroids cross Earth’s orbit; Amors orbit just beyond Earth but cross Mars’ orbit. Credit: Wikipedia

It turns out that rotation has a strong effect on such a small body. First, the asteroid is emitting stuff that can produce a spin — water evaporating, or its surface expanding as heat from the Sun strikes it. Also, the Sun’s pressure on the asteroid creates a rotation. Between these different effects, at the right (or wrong) moment it can cause a catastrophic breakup.

As a simulation (coupled with observations from the Pan-STARRS telescope), the research is not done with complete certainty. But the model shows 90% confidence that asteroids in the so-called “main belt” (between Mars and Jupiter”) experience disruptions in this way, at least once per year.

The research was published in the journal Icarus and is also available in preprint version on Arxiv. It was led by Larry Denneau at the University of Hawaii.

Source: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Surprise! Asteroid Crashes And Raindrop Splashes Look Almost Alike

Close-up view of a raindrop falling on a granular surface, which produces effects similar to an asteroid collision (but on a much smaller scale). Credit: Xiang Cheng, University of Minnesota et al./APS Physics/YouTube (screenshot)

It’s hard to study what an asteroid impact does real-time as you’d need to be looking at the right spot at the right time. So simulations are often the way to go. Here’s a fun idea captured on video — throwing drops of water on to granular particles, similar to what you would find on a beach. The results, the researchers say, look surprisingly similar to “crater morphology”.

A quick caution — the similarity isn’t completely perfect. Raindrops are much smaller, and hit the ground at quite a lower speed than you would see an asteroid slam into Earth’s surface. But as the authors explain in a recent abstract, there is enough for them to do high-speed photography and make extrapolations.

Although the mechanism of granular impact cratering by solid spheres is well explored, our knowledge on granular impact cratering by liquid drops is still very limited. Here, by combining high-speed photography with high-precision laser profilometry, we investigate liquid-drop impact dynamics on granular surface and monitor the morphology of resulting impact craters. Surprisingly, we find that despite the enormous energy and length difference, granular impact cratering by liquid drops follows the same energy scaling and reproduces the same crater morphology as that of asteroid impact craters.

There are of course other ways of understanding how craters are formed. A common one is to look at them in “airless” bodies such as the Moon, Vesta or Ceres — and that latter world will be under extensive study in the next year. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is en route to the dwarf planet right now and will arrive there in 2015 to provide the first high-resolution views of its surface.

Amateurs can even collaborate with professionals in this regard by participating in Cosmoquest, an organization that hosts Moon Mappers, Planet Mappers: Mercury and Asteroid Mappers: Vesta — all examples of bodies in a vacuum with craters on them.

The research was presented at the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics annual meeting and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was led by Runchen Zhao at the University of Minnesota.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

The CIA Cheekily Blames Itself For 1950s UFO Sightings

Undated image of a U-2 aircraft on an "operational mission." Credit: Central Intelligence Agency

A single aircraft in the 1950s and 1960s accounted for half of all UFO sightings collected by the Air Force at the time, according to a newly highlighted CIA report. The agency made a coy reference to the report on its Twitter account Monday (Dec. 29): “Reports of unusual activity in the skies in the ’50s? It was us,” the tweet read.

The aircraft was known as the U-2, and was deemed an essential piece of security hardware in an era that had very few satellites. Recall it wasn’t until 1957 that the first satellite was launched — Sputnik, a Soviet one — and it wasn’t until 1958 that the first American one (Explorer 1) followed.

According to the Air Force, the U-2 was a top-secret project completed by Lockheed Skunk Works and Kelly Johnson, and which flew in August 1955. It was used for flying over the Soviet Union (a former republic that now includes Russia and several surrounding countries) starting in the late 1950s. In 1962, the aircraft played a pivotal role in the Cuban Missile Crisis after a U-2 pilot captured photographs of nuclear missiles in that country.

A photograph of a launch pad at the Tyaratam Missile Testing Range in the Soviet Union taken by a U-2 flight. It is now a part of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Central Intelligence Agency
A photograph of a launch pad at the Tyaratam Missile Testing Range in the Soviet Union taken by a U-2 flight. It is now a part of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: Central Intelligence Agency

U-2’s UFO confusion is explained in the report, called “The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974.” (At least some of the information covered was also in a 2013 release about the U-2 program, which Universe Today covered at the time.)

High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect — a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) … Such reports were most prevalent in the early evening hours from pilots of airliners from east to west. When the Sun dropped below the horizon of an airliner flying at 20,000 feet, the plane was in darkness. But, if a U-2 was airborne in the vicinity of the airliner at the same time, its horizon from an altitude of 60,000 feet was considerably more distant, and being so high in the sky, its silver wings would catch and reflect the rays of the Sun.

According to the CIA, the pilots talked about their sightings with the local air traffic controllers and even wrote into the Air Force. This led to the famous Project Blue Book investigation that dealt with UFO sightings. “This enabled the investigators to eliminate the majority of the UFO reports, although they could not reveal to the letter writers the true cause of the UFO sightings,” the CIA report adds.

For more information about Project Blue Book, you can consult this CIA webpage or this mini-library of information at the National Archives. A version of the U-2 still flew as of at least 2005, which you can read more about at this Air Force website.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Where Did Europa’s Water Geyser Go? Hubble Double-Checking Its Work

Rendering showing the location and size of water vapor plumes coming from Europa's south pole. Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Roth/SWRI/University of Cologne

It was about this time last year that Europa really began to excite us again. Following a sci-fi movie about the Jupiter moon, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope announced they had found possible water vapor near the icy moon — maybe from geysers erupting from its icy surface. (That is, if the finding was not due to signal noise, which researchers acknowledged at the time.)

As NASA ramped up (distant) plans to get close to Europa again, scientists began plumbing data from the Cassini spacecraft to see if its glance at the moon circa 2001 revealed anything. Turns out that the spacecraft didn’t see any sign of a plume. Which leads to the greater question, what is happening?

Now scientists are scurrying for a second look. Hubble is in the midst of a six-month search of the moon (from afar) to see if any more of the plumes are showing up. Now the theory is that the plumes, if they do exist, would be intermittent — at least, that’s according to the team looking at data from Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectograph (UVIS).

Europa (bottom left) in orbit around its planet, Jupiter, as spotted from the Cassini spacecraft in 2000. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Europa (bottom left) in orbit around its planet, Jupiter, as spotted from the Cassini spacecraft in 2000. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

“It is certainly still possible that plume activity occurs, but that it is infrequent or the plumes are smaller than we see at Enceladus,” stated co-author Amanda Hendrix, a Cassini UVIS team member with the Planetary Science Institute in Pasadena. “If eruptive activity was occurring at the time of Cassini’s flyby, it was at a level too low to be detectable by UVIS.”

This finding was part of a greater set of observations showing that it’s not really Europa that is contributing plasma (superheated gas) to space — it’s the ultra-volcanic moon Io. And Europa itself is sending out 40 times less oxygen than previously believed to the area surrounding the moon.

“A downward revision in the amount of oxygen Europa pumps into the environment around Jupiter would make it less likely that the moon is regularly venting plumes of water vapor high into orbit, especially at the time the data was acquired,” NASA stated. This would stand in contrast to, say, Saturn’s Enceladus — which Cassini has seen sending plumes high above the moon’s surface.

The findings were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting earlier this month and also published in the Astrophysical Journal. The research was led by Don Shemansky, a Cassini UVIS team member with Space Environment Technologies.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Could Lizard Hands Help Us Clean Up Space Junk?

Image of a gecko foot, whose ability to stick on to surfaces inspired NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a possible space debris snagging system. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

We’ve written extensively about the orbital debris problem here on Universe Today. In a nutshell, just about every time we launch something from Earth there are bits and pieces that are left behind. Screws. Paint flecks. Sometimes bigger pieces from rocket stages, or at worst, dysfunctional satellites.

Added to the list of lasers, magnets, robot hands and other ideas to get space junk out of orbit is a new one from NASA — gecko grippers. Yes, lizard hands. The idea is by using techniques from these animal appendages, we might be able to efficiently snag dead satellites or other debris at low cost.

Space debris is all whizzing above us and puts us at risk for devastating crashes that can create a sort of prison of debris for any spacecraft hoping to fly above the atmosphere. We’ve already had to move the shuttle and International Space Station due to threats, and the fear is as more satellites reach space, the problem will get worse.

Here’s what NASA has to say about the idea, which is led by Aaron Parness, a robotics researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

The gripping system … was inspired by geckos, lizards that cling to walls with ease. Geckos’ feet have branching arrays of tiny hairs, the smallest of which are hundreds of times thinner than a human hair. This system of hairs can conform to a rough surface without a lot of force. Although researchers cannot make a perfect replica of the gecko foot, they have put “hair” structures on the adhesive pads of the grippers.

The grippers were put through their paces in a simulated microgravity test in August (recently highlighted on NASA’s website). On a plane that flew parabolas with brief “weightless” periods, the grippers managed to grab on to a 20-pound cube and a 250-pound researcher-plus-spacecraft-material-panels combination.

NASA-funded researchers test "gecko grippers" on a simulated-microgravity flight to see how effective they could be for snagging satellites. Here, a researcher has strapped spacecraft-like panels to his body to perform the test. Credit: NASA/YouTube (screenshot)
NASA-funded researchers test “gecko grippers” on a simulated-microgravity flight to see how effective they could be for snagging satellites. Here, a researcher has strapped spacecraft-like panels to his body to perform the test. Credit: NASA/YouTube (screenshot)

The key limitation was researchers actually held on to their invention themselves, but eventually they hope to use a robotic leg or arm to achieve the same purpose. Meanwhile, on the ground, the grippers have been used on dozens of spacecraft surfaces in a vacuum and in temperatures simulating what you’d find in orbit.

There’s no guarantee that the system itself will make it to space, as it’s still in the early stages of testing. But in a statement, Parness said he thinks it’s possible that “our system might one day contribute to a solution.” NASA also said these could be used for small satellites to attach to the space station, but development would need to move quickly in that case. The station is only guaranteed to be in use until 2020, with possible extension to 2024.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory