A first look from GRAIL, showing the lunar far side! A camera aboard ‘Ebb’ — one of NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the Moon. The camera is the MoonKAM, which is part of a special program for students to study the Moon.
Planet hunter extraordinaire Geoff Marcy recently let his frustration surface about the current state of the search for other habitable solar systems. Despite the phenomenal planet-finding success of NASA’s Kepler mission, Marcy, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley, correctly pointed out that NASA budget cuts have severely hampered the hunt for extrasolar life.
A decade ago, only a few dozen extrasolar planets had been detected. Today, by some recent gravitational microlensing estimates, there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way. But without the ability to characterize these extrasolar planetary atmospheres from space, we are astrobiologically hamstrung.
NASA’s goal had been that by 2020, we would have a pretty good idea about how frequently terrestrial Earth-mass planets orbit other stars — whether those planets have atmospheres that resemble our own; and, more crucially, whether those atmospheres exhibit the telltale signs of planets harboring life.
But consider how the federal government spends our tax dollars on a daily basis. Each and every day for more than a decade, the U.S. military spent roughly $1 billion a day funding congressionally-undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In contrast, NASA’s cancelled SIM and TPF missions were both originally estimated to have cost less than $1.5 billion dollars each.
Artist concept of the now-cancelled Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. Credit: NASA
SIM, the Space Interferometry Mission, was to have focused on finding extrasolar earths in a targeted search; its follow-on mission, NASA’s TPF, the Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, was to have characterized the atmospheres of these earth twins in an attempt to remotely detect the signatures of life.
The astronomical community continues to be resourceful as it can in working around these problems. But if NASA had followed through with the SIM and TPF missions in the timeframe that it first announced, we would have a very good idea of our own earth’s galactic pecking order by now.
Instead, war-funding has taken priority. On the home front, we’ve let the attacks of 9/11 take us down a road that has resulted in our airports resembling Orwellian netherworlds. Most of us now accept that we must basically disrobe and be physically prodded before boarding an aircraft.
Kids born at the beginning of what was supposed to be a great new millennium — remember 2001: A Space Odyssey, anyone? — have instead grown up accustomed to running the gauntlet just to take their teddy bears onto the plane with them.
Contrast the country’s current poisoned national mood with the heady days of euphoria surrounding this country’s Moon shots.
Dare we attempt to again turn at least a portion of our swords back into ploughshares?
If the U.S. is going to continue to lead the world in science and technology, the country will have to quit living in a state of perpetual geopolitical paranoia and take space seriously again.
No one wants to turn a blind eye to our national defense and NASA may never return to its glory days. But something is amiss when within a generation, we’ve gone from John F. Kennedy pointedly challenging the nation to test its mettle by safely sending a man to the moon and back before the end of the decade to this current era of national teeth gnashing.
Newt Gingrich was openly ridiculed on the morning TV news shows for advocating that the U.S. use private enterprise to help us put a manned lunar colony on the moon. Mitt Romney responded that he’d fire any employee that walked into his office and suggested such a plan.
Perhaps Gingrich is not the ideal messenger for jumpstarting a long dormant manned lunar program. But our country has reached a sad nadir when a presidential candidate is publicly mocked for advocating the hard work of boldly revamping our national space policy.
NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has found that there's more oxygen in our solar system than there is in the nearby interstellar material. That suggests that either the sun formed in a different part of the galaxy or that outside our solar system life-giving oxygen lies trapped in dust or ice grains unable to move freely in space. Credit: NASA/Goddard
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If we could board the starship Enterprise-D and were able to look through Giordi LaForge’s visor we might be able to see the interstellar medium – the ‘stuff’ between the stars — as wispy clouds of oxygen, hydrogen, helium and neon. Instead, since we are back in the 21st century, we have the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, which has now made the first–ever direct observations of neutral hydrogen and oxygen atoms drifting into our solar system from the region outside our heliosphere. Surprisingly, this material is more ‘alien’ than scientists were expecting, as the matter in the galactic wind doesn’t contain the same exact material as what our solar system is made of.
The most important finding is there is less oxygen ‘out there.’ For every 20 neon atoms in the galactic wind, there are 74 oxygen atoms. In our own solar system, however, for every 20 neon atoms there are 111 oxygen atoms. That translates to more oxygen in any given region of the solar system than in the local interstellar space.
“Our solar system is different than the space right outside it and that suggests two possibilities,” said David McComas the principal investigator for IBEX. “Either the solar system evolved in a separate, more oxygen-rich part of the galaxy than where we currently reside or a great deal of critical, life-giving oxygen lies trapped in interstellar dust grains or ices, unable to move freely throughout space.”
Either way, the scientists said, this affects scientific models of how our solar system – and life – formed. And more than just helping to determine the distribution of elements in the interstellar medium, these new measurements provide clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and even the history of other stars in the Milky Way.
“This alien interstellar material is really the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of — and it’s very important to be measuring it directly,” McComas said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
If Spock were a member of this mission, he would probably raise an eyebrow and say, “Fascinating.”*
Our heliosphere is the region of space dominated by the Sun and is inflated, like a bubble, in local interstellar material by the million mile-per-hour solar wind. This bubble keeps out the ionized or charged particles and magnetic fields from the galaxy and so protects us from dangerous Galactic Cosmic Rays. Credit: SwRI
Interstellar clouds hold the elements of exploded supernovae, which are dispersed throughout the galaxy. As the interstellar wind blows these charged and neutral particles through the Milky Way, the spacecraft can measure samples that make it into our solar system. IBEX scans the entire sky once a year, and every February, its instruments point in the correct direction to intercept incoming neutral atoms. IBEX counted those atoms in 2009 and 2010 and has now captured the best and most complete glimpse of the material that lies so far outside our own system.
In addition to sampling the raw “star stuff,” the findings are important because the interstellar gas surrounding us can affect the strength of the Sun’s heliosphere – the area of influence by the Sun, and like a shielding bubble, protects us from dangerous galactic cosmic rays, the majority of which would come into the inner solar system if not for this bubble.
IBEX also discovered that the interstellar wind is approximately 7,000 miles per hour slower than previously thought. This indicates that our solar system is still in what’s referred to as the “local interstellar cloud.” However, the scientists noted that we will transition into a different region at any time within a few thousand years (very short on astronomical time scales) where conditions will change and affect the heliosphere’s protective capability. And no one knows if that change will be for the better or worse.
As our solar system travels around the Milky Way through the vast sweep of cosmic time, the ever-changing nature of the heliosphere has likely had implications on the evolution of life on Earth as varying levels of radiation spurred genetic mutations and, perhaps, wholesale extinctions.
“This is all very exciting, and it has important implications as the Sun moves through space and in and out of interstellar clouds , the flux of galactic cosmic rays varies,” said Priscilla Frisch, senior scientist, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and part of the IBEX mission. “And that is recorded in the geo-isotopic records. Someday maybe we can link the Sun’s motion through interstellar clouds with geological records on Earth, and trace the geological history of Earth.”
The conditions necessary to make the heliosphere, namely the balance of an outward pushing stellar wind and the inward compression of surrounding interstellar gas is so common, that perhaps most stars have analogous structures, called astrospheres. Photographs of three such astrospheres are shown, as taken by various telescopes. Credit: NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/Goddard/SwRI
Additionally, while the new findings provide a greater understanding of our heliosphere, it will also aid scientists in exploring analogous structures called “astrospheres,” surrounding other stars throughout the galaxy.
“We know at least two cases of another star with a planetary system and an astrosphere around it, and these are the true analogs to our own solar system,” said Seth Redfield, assistant professor, Astronomy Department, Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, also speaking at the press briefing. “The discovery of other planets coupled with our understanding of the impact these galactic cosmic rays could potentially have on planets and the emergence and evolution of life. These are connections that we haven’t explored fully, and with these new findings from IBEX, are now coming together to a very interesting topic to explore.”
Artist impression of IBEX (NASA)
IBEX is a small spacecraft, roughly the size of a card table, and is one of NASA’s low-cost missions. It is in Earth orbit, but can observe the edges of the solar system with detectors that “look” outward and collect particles called energetic neutral atoms. With data from IBEX, scientists are creating the first map of the boundary of our solar system.
These latest findings from IBEX were presented in a series of science papers appearing in the Astrophysics Journal on January 31, 2012.
“This set of papers provide many of the first direct measurements of the interstellar medium around us,” says McComas. “We’ve been trying to understand our galaxy for a long time, and with all of these observations together, we are taking a major step forward in knowing what the local part of the galaxy is like.”
Phobos-Grunt Model. This is a full-scale mockup of Russia's Phobos-Grunt. The spacecraft was supposed to collect samples of soil on Mar's moon Phobos and return them to Earth for study. Credit: CNES
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Roscosmos said today that a computer malfunction caused by cosmic rays was the reason for the failure of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Additionally, ‘counterfeit’ chips in the computer may have played a role, said Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) head Vladimir Popovkin. The original mission was to do a sample return from Mars’ largest moon, but the spacecraft crashed back to Earth on January 15 after the rocket failed to send it out of Earth orbit shortly after the launch in November. This determination comes from a study done by a commission led by Yuri Koptev, former head of the Russian Space Agency.
“There was a restart of the two sets of on-board computer system so [it] moved to the highest energy saving mode and the standby command,” said Popovkin, quoted by the Russian RIA Novosti news agency. “The most likely reason is the impact of heavy charged space particles.”
A Russian scientist was also quoted by RIA Novosti that the outcome of the accident investigation should not be cause for dismissals and resignations as much as a “lesson to developers of new interplanetary spacecraft,” said Alexander Zakharov, scientific secretary of Institute of Space Research, which developed instruments and the scientific program the station.
As far as the counterfeit computer chips, Popovkin said the components were imported. “The cause probably is in this,” he said. Reportedly, NASA and the U.S. Defense Department has also encountered counterfeit products, according to an article in Itar-Tass.
Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com reported more in detail about possible shortcomings in the design of the probe’s flight control system, called the BKU, saying that “the most likely culprit in the failure of the probe’s propulsion unit to ignite soon after it had entered orbit on November 9 was a programming error in the flight control system.”
Zak said an industry source revealed that the commission studying the failure “concluded that the mission failure was the result of the design error and the lack in the ground testing of BKU,” adding that “its shortcomings had been well documented long before the ill-fated launch.” The BKU was the the main computer and the “brain” of the spacecraft.
Additionally, Zak reported that the most probable cause was a “simultaneous robooting of two operational processors in the main computer” and the computers “could crash as a result of errors in their software or as a result of some external reasons, such as electromagnetic incompatibility,” industry sources said.
The assertion that “foreign radars” had possibly caused the malfunction was apparently tested by the company that built the Phobos-Grunt probe, NPO Lavochkin, with no problems coming from simulated radar interference.
“With all external failure scenarios effectively debunked, the most probable cause of the failure was narrowed down to the lack of integrated testing,” Zak reported.
As to the probability of any pieces of the original Phobos-Grunt spacecraft surviving the fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, most experts agree that most of the debris ended up in the Pacific Ocean. However, some debris may have fallen onto regions of Chile and possibly Argentina.
Luciano Anselmo from the Space Flight Dynamics Laboratory (ISTI/CNR) in Pisa, Italy left a comment on a previous Universe Today article saying that the Phobos-LIFE capsule, which was designed to survive re-entry “should have impacted the ground approximately 820 km eastward along the trajectory and 15 minutes later (w.r.t. the 80 km ‘entry’ point), with a velocity around 70 km/h.”
However, Anselmo added that “based on the orbit data available from the different sources involved, our estimation of the final uncertainty is plus/minus 12 minutes. Other observations, or the lack of them, both from the ground or from space, might be used to reduce such uncertainty, but nothing of reliable and unclassified has been provided so far, to my knowledge.”
New estimates of water ice on Mars suggest there may be large reservoirs of underground ice at non-polar latitudes. The map here shows "water-equivalent hydrogen". Oranges and reds on the map (values greater than 4.5 weight % water-equivalent hydrogen at the surface) point out areas where the amount of deeply buried water ice is greater than what can fit in the pore spaces of the surface rocks. Image credit: Feldman et al., 2011
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Many models predict that water ice shouldn’t be stable on Mars today, anywhere beyond the poles, no matter how deep you bury it. And yet, a recently published study shows that large regions outside the polar areas may, in fact, contain a relative abundance of water. This is exciting, not only because water has implications for the possibility of life on Mars, but also because it can provide a valuable resource to future explorers, both as a fuel and for life support. And if this water is near the equator, that makes it much easier to get to.
Over the past 7 years, lots of spacecraft observations have given us evidence for the presence of water on Mars, either at the surface or not far below. Radar data have shown that large amounts of water ice are stored at the poles (Lots of Pure Water Ice at Mars North Pole). And pictures of gullies have hinted at reserves of water beneath the surface (NASA Says Liquid Water Made Martian Gullies). Now, a team of scientists, led by Dr. William Feldman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, have taken a new look at some of that data.
Dr. Feldman and his team used data from the Mars Odyssey Neutron Spectrometer (MONS) to estimate the amount of water ice that is present outside of the polar regions of Mars, where water ice is not expected to be found. The MONS is an instrument that counts Martian neutrons from orbit. These “neutron counts” are sensitive to the presence of hydrogen and how deep it is below the surface. Using models that take the characteristics of the Martian surface and the relationship of hydrogen to water into account, the MONS data can be used to predict the amount and depth of water and water ice in the surface. Doing just that, Dr. Feldman’s team produced a nearly global map of potential underground ice deposits.
New estimates of water ice on Mars suggest there may be large reservoirs of underground ice at non-polar latitudes. The map here shows "water-equivalent hydrogen". Oranges and reds on the map (values greater than 4.5 weight % water-equivalent hydrogen at the surface) point out areas where the amount of deeply buried water ice is greater than what can fit in the pore spaces of the surface rocks. Image credit: Feldman et al., 2011.
This map shows the “weight percent of water-equivalent hydrogen”, or how much of the rock’s weight comes from hydrogen that is bound up in water molecules. Since hydrogen atoms are much lighter than the other atoms that make up a rock, a small weight percent of hydrogen equals a much larger volume of water ice. In fact, Dr. Feldman’s team estimate that values of 4.5 weight % hydrogen or greater (oranges and reds on the map), mean the volume of water ice at depth is larger than what can fit into pore spaces (the spaces between the grains that make up a rock). This means that you no longer have ice in a rock; now you have rocks in ice!
Four regions containing such bulk ice stand out in the map: Promethei Terra in the lower right of the map, Arabia Terra in the upper centre, Arcadia Planitia in the upper left, and Elysium Planetia spanning from the centre right, across the Martian “date line” (180 degrees longitude), to the centre left of the map. The ice deposits here are “buried less than about 1 m below the surface,” writes Dr. Feldman. He does admit that their findings may also indicate the presence of large quantities of minerals that contain water molecules in their chemical make-up. However, their results are supported by other evidence. In the Elysium Planetia region, evidence of glacial features has been seen in high resolution stereo data from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter ( Mars Express Reveals Possible Martian Glaciers). And in the Arcadia Planitia region, buried water ice has been identified in CRISM data, where an almost pure ice layer was excavated from less than 1 meter below the surface by four recent impact events.
Almost pure water ice is seen in the ejecta surrounding this impact crater (8 meters in diameter), which formed in 2008. The only reason we can see ice at the surface here is because this crater is so young. As time passes, the ice will all sublimate away. Image Credit: High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.
So, if ice is unstable at today’s conditions on Mars, how can Dr. Feldman and his team account for the presence of that much ice so close to the surface? Well, the bulk ice could have been deposited some 10-20 million years ago, at a time when ice was stable at the surface. If that happened, then the ice sheet could have been preserved under a layer of cemented dust and sediment. This duricrust would have partially shielded the ice from contemporary surface temperatures and atmospheric conditions, slowing the sublimation of the ice just enough so that some of it was left for us to detect today.
Viewing the South Pole of Vesta and Rhea Silvia Impact Basin. This image obtained by Dawn’s framing camera shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta and the circular Rheasilvia impact basin which scientists believe originated by a collision with another asteroid early in the asteroid's history. The image was recorded from a distance of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). The image resolution is about 260 meters per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
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The mysterious asteroid Vesta may well have more surprises in store. Despite past observations that Vesta would be nearly bone dry, newly published research indicates that about half of the giant asteroid is sufficiently cold and dark enough that water ice could theoretically exist below the battered surface.
Scientists working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland have derived the first models of Vesta’s average global temperatures and illumination by the Sun based on data obtained from the Hubble Space Telescope.
“Near the north and south poles, the conditions appear to be favorable for water ice to exist beneath the surface,” says Timothy Stubbs of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The research by Timothy Stubbs and Yongli Wang, of the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute at the University of Maryland, was published in the January 2012 issue of the journal Icarus.
If any water lurks beneath Vesta, it would most likely exist at least 10 feet (3 meters) below the North and South poles because the models predict that the poles are the coldest regions on the giant asteroid and the equatorial regions are too warm. Global Map of Average Surface Temperature of Vesta
This global map of average surface temperature shows the warmer equatorial zone of the giant asteroid Vesta is likely too warm to sustain water ice below the surface. But roughly half of Vesta is so cold and receives so little sunlight on average that water ice could have survived there for billions of years. The dividing lines (solid gray) are found at about 27 degrees north latitude and 27 degrees south latitude. This map, with temperatures given in kelvins, comes from the first published models of the average global temperature and illumination conditions on Vesta. Credit: NASA/GSFC/UMBC
If proven, the existence of water ice at Vesta would have vast implications for the formation and evolution of the tiny body and upend current theories.
The surface of Vesta is not cold enough for ice to survive all the time because unlike the Moon, it probably does not have any significant permanently shadowed craters where water ice could stay frozen on the surface indefinitely.
Even the huge 300 mile diameter (480-kilometer) crater at the South Pole is not a good candidate for water ice because Vesta is tilted 27 degrees on its axis, a bit more than Earth’s tilt of 23 degrees.
By contrast, the Moon is only tilted 1.5 degrees and possesses many permanently shadowed craters. NASA’s LCROSS impact mission proved that water ice exists inside permanently shadowed lunar craters.
New modeling shows that, under present conditions, Vesta's polar regions are cold enough (less than about 145 kelvins) to sustain water ice for billions of years, as this map of average surface temperature around the asteroid's south pole indicates.
The models predict that the average annual temperature around Vesta’s poles is below minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit (145 kelvins). Water ice is not stable above that temperature in the top 10 feet of Vestan soil, or regolith.
At the equator and in a band stretching to about 27 degrees north and south in latitude, the average annual temperature is about minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit (145 kelvins), which is too high for the ice to survive.
“On average, it’s colder at Vesta’s poles than near its equator, so in that sense, they are good places to sustain water ice,” says Stubbs in a NASA statement. “But they also see sunlight for long periods of time during the summer seasons, which isn’t so good for sustaining ice. So if water ice exists in those regions, it may be buried beneath a relatively deep layer of dry regolith.”
Vesta is the second most massive asteroid in the main Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
NASA’s Dawn Asteroid Orbiter is the very first mission to Vesta and achieved orbit in July 2011 for a 1 year long mission.
Dawn is currently circling Vesta at its lowest planned orbit. The three science instruments are snapping pictures and the spectrometers are collecting data on the elemental and mineralogical composition of Vesta.
The onboard GRaND spectrometer in particular could shed light on the question of whether water ice exists at Vesta.
So far no water has been detected, but the best data is yet to come.
In July 2012, Dawn fires up its ion thrusters and spirals out of orbit to begin the journey to Ceres, the largest asteroid of them all.
Ceres is believed to harbor huge caches of water, either as ice or in the form of oceans and is a potential habitat for life.
Martian Vista from Opportunity at Endeavour Crater - 8 Years on Mars. NASA’s Opportunity rover celebrated 8 Years on Mars on January 24, 2012. This mosaic shows portions of the segmented rim of Endeavour crater (14 miles, 22 km wide) after the robot arriving at the craters foothills in August 2011. Large ejecta blocks from a smaller nearby crater are visible in the middle. At Endeavour, Opportunity will investigate the oldest minerals deposits she has ever visited from billions of years ago and which may hold clues to environments that were potentially habitable for microbial life. The rover will eventually drive to Cape Tribulation at right after surviving her 5th winter on Mars. Mosaic Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
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Today, the resilient Opportunity robot begins her 9th year roving around beautifully Earth-like Martian terrain where potentially life sustaining liquid water once flowed billions of years ago.
Opportunity celebrates her 8th anniversary on the Red Planet gazing at the foothills of the vast crater named Endeavour, promising a “mother lode” of “watery” science – an unimaginable circumstance since the nail biting landing on the hematite rich plains of Meridiani Planum on 24 January 2004.
“Opportunity is 97 months into the 3 month mission,” team members are proud and universally surprised to say.
“Milestones like 8 years on Mars always make me look forward rather than looking back,” Rover Principal Investigator Prof. Steve Squyres of Cornell University told Universe Today for this article commemorating Opportunity’s landing.
“We’ve still got a lot of exploring to do, but we’re doing it with a vehicle that was designed for a 90-sol mission. That means that every sol is a gift at this point.”
Opportunity has driven more than 21 miles (34 kilometers) across the Red Planet’s surface during what is truly humankind’s first overland expedition on another Planet. See our route map below.
Opportunity Rover Traverse Map at Meridiani Planum on Mars - 2004 to 2012
Traverse map shows the 8 Year Journey of Opportunity from Eagle Crater landing site on Sol 1- Jan. 24, 2004 - to 5th Winter Haven worksite at Greeley Haven at Endeavour Crater rim in January 2012. Opportunity embarked on a crater tour and discovered bountiful evidence for the flow of liquid water on Mars billions of years ago. The robot has shown that ancient ephemeral shallow lakes existed on Mars when the cratered terrain was cut by fluvial channels. Endeavour Crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. Opportunity has so far driven more than 21 miles (34 km) over 8 Years but was only expected to live for 90 Martian days. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/UA/Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
NASA’s twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity blasted off for Mars atop a pair of Delta II rockets in the summer of 2003 with a mission “warranty” of just 90 Martian days, or Sols.
Today is Sol 2846 of working operations for Opportunity, compared to an anticipated lifetime of only 90 Sols – that amounts to more than 31 times beyond the designer’s expectations.
Indeed, the long lived robot is now enduring her 5th Winter on Mars. And to glimpse the next Martian sunrise, the robo girls manmade components must survive the harsh extremes of frigid Antarctic-like temperatures each and every sol.
“I never thought that we would still be planning sequences for Opportunity today,” Ray Arvidson told Universe Today. Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis, is the deputy rover principal investigator.
“I seriously thought both Spirit and Opportunity would be finished by the summer of 2004.”
Opportunity's Eighth Anniversary View From 'Greeley Haven' (False Color). This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward (left) to northeastward (right) from the location where Opportunity is spending its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named "Greeley Haven. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
But, Opportunity is the gift to science that keeps on giving.
“I am feeling pretty good as the MER rover anniversaries approach,” Arvidson told me.
“Opportunity has shown that ancient ephemeral shallow lakes existed as Mars moved climatically from an early period when the cratered terrain was cut by fluvial channels to the current dry and cold conditions that dominate.”
“Both rovers have conclusively shown the need for lateral mobility to get to relevant outcrops and back out the secrets associated with past conditions,” Arvidson explained.
Barely a month ago the bountiful harvest from mobility was once again demonstrated when the science team lead by Squyres and Arvidson announced that Opportunity had discovered the most scientifically compelling evidence yet for the flow of liquid water on ancient Mars.
Squyres and Arvidson announced that Opportunity had found a bright vein – named “Homestake” – composed of the mineral gypsum located at the Cape York segment of Endeavour Crater where the intrepid robot is currently spending her 5th Martian Winter.
“This gypsum vein is the single most powerful piece of evidence for liquid water at Mars that has been discovered by the Opportunity rover,” Squyres explained.
Veins are a geologic indication of the past flow of liquid water.
See our mosaic below illustrating the exact location of the “Homestake” vein at Endeavour Crater – also published at Astronomy Picture of the Day; 12 Dec 2011.
Opportunity discovers Water related Mineral Vein at Endeavour Crater - November 2011
Opportunity rover discovered Gypsum at the Homestake mineral vein, while exploring around the base of Cape York ridge at the rim of Endeavour Crater. The vein is composed of calcium sulfate and indicates the ancient flow of liquid water at this spot on Mars. This panoramic mosaic of images was taken on Sol 2761, November 2011, and illustrates the exact spot of the mineral vein discovery.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Kenneth Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Published on Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD): 12 Dec 2011
Opportunity just arrived at the rim of the 14 mile (22 kilometer) wide Endeavour Crater in mid-August 2011 following an epic three year trek across treacherous dune fields from her prior investigative target at the ½ mile wide Victoria Crater.
“It’s like a whole new mission since we arrived at Cape York,” says Squyres.
For the next few months of the bitterly cold Martian winter, Opportunity will conduct a vigorous science campaign while remaining mostly stationary at a spot dubbed “Greeley Haven” in honor of Prof. Ronald Greeley, a team member from Arizona State University who recently passed away.
Opportunity Mars Rover at 5th Winter Worksite at Endeavour Crater
This mosaic shows the view of NASA’s Opportunity rover parked at “Greeley Haven” worksite where the robot will spend her 5th Martian Winter. This mosaic of images shows the Winter Haven view from the Cape York Ridge at the western rim of Endeavour Crater looking south along the crater rim. Tire tracks at right. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ Marco Di Lorenzo/Kenneth Kremer
At this moment Opportunity is snapping a 360 degree panorama, deploying her robotic arm onto nearby outcrops, collecting microscopic images, making measurements of mineral compositions with the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer and conducting radio science observations to elucidate the unknown structure of the Martian interior and core.
The rover is covered with a significant coating of dust which limits her ability to generate power from the life sustaining solar arrays. Since Opportunity is traversing just south of the equator, engineers have temporarily parked her on a northerly facing slope to maximize the electric power generation.
“Opportunity is currently sitting on an outcrop of impact breccias at Greeley Haven on Cape York,” said Arvidson.
Opportunity will remain at Greeley Haven until some time after the Winter Solstice of southern Martian winter occurs at the end of March. 'Greeley Haven' Site for Opportunity's Fifth Martian Winter. This mosaic of Greeley Haven was acquired by Opportunity on Sol 2793, Dec. 2, 2011. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
Then she’ll head south to further explore the veins and eventually drive to deposits of the clay mineral located a few miles (km) away along the craters rim.
“We’ll do good science while we’re at Greeley Haven. But as soon as we catch a wind gust or the seasons change, we’ll be on our way again,” Squyres told me.
The legendary twins Spirit and Opportunity surely rank as one of the greatest triumphs in space exploration.
The map above shows the predicted trajectory of the Fobos-Grunt probe upon reentry. Russian space officials initially said the probe landed at one of the red dots, but later acknowledged that it could have touched down anywhere along the area indicated by the red line segment. Credit: Robert Christy, www.zarya.info
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A week and a half after the re-entry of Russia’s Phobos–Grunt probe, experts have now made an official statement on their determination of where the spacecraft entered Earth’s atmosphere. But their report offers no information regarding if any pieces of the craft made it to Earth and where any remaining debris might be. Consequently, recovery of any pieces, including the Phobos-LIFE biomodule is highly unlikely.
“While this was an uncontrolled reentry, the location of the potential impact area was largely over ocean, with a correspondingly low probability of any detrimental effects,” said Prof. Heiner Klinkrad, Head of ESA’s Space Debris Office in Darmstadt, Germany.
The Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) reports that Phobos–Grunt re-entered on January 15, 2012 at 17:46 GMT, at an altitude of 80 km at 46°S and 87°W, near the South American coastline. About 7 minutes later, the report says, the spacecraft’s altitude was 10 km.
“Within the expected uncertainties, the prediction has been largely confirmed by observations,” ESA’s press release stated.
And that is all the information the IADC has provided, with no details on whether those observations were from observers on the ground or from satellite and radar facilities.
In fact, most of the initial information verifying that Phobos-Grunt was no longer in orbit came from ground observations of not seeing the spacecraft in orbit over Europe after 18:00 UTC on January 15 when it was supposed to have a visible pass.
IADC members include NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, European national agencies and the space agencies of Canada, China, India, Japan and Ukraine. The group primarily used orbit data from the U.S. Space Surveillance Network and the Russian Space Surveillance System to determine Phobos-Grunt’s path to destruction. Radar systems in Germany and France also provided orbit calculations.
Phobos-Grunt orbiter and lander. Credit: ESA
Before re-entry, predictions from the various agencies differed widely, and initially after the probe was said to have re-entered, there was confusion on when and where the re-entry took place. Roscosmos initially released a statement claiming that the probe had fallen safely in the Pacific, off the coast of Chile, but later there were reports that fragments of the spacecraft had fallen in the south Atlantic Ocean. Officials said the confusion was due to the large number of uncertainties in the spacecraft’s orbit and the space environment affecting the satellite.
Indeed, everyone involved in re-entry calculations acknowledges the problematic nature of trying to monitor things in real-time, such as atmospheric density in the specific location the object is traveling. Most of the time, the details can only be deduced after the time of re-entry, and any unknowns can alter the projected re-entry and impact point by wide margins.
And so it is not entirely surprising that the IADC cannot offer much information beyond the initial entry point and time for Phobos-Grunt.
Although much of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft was expected to disintegrate upon re-entry, Roscosmos said perhaps 20 to 30 fragments weighing a combined 200 kg (440 lb.) might survive and fall somewhere over a vast strip of the Earth’s surface between 51.4 deg. north and south of the equator.
The cause of the spacecraft’s malfunction has not yet been determined, and Roscosmos has indicated that a full report on the failure will be published on January 26, 2012, although an interim report said to be available by January 20 did not appear. The investigation is being conducted by Yuri Koptev, former head of the Russian Space Agency.
Shortly after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Nov. 9, 2011, the probe became stuck in low Earth orbit after its upper stage engines repeatedly failed to ignite to send the ship on an unprecedented sample return mission to Mars’ moon Phobos. Later, ESA tracking stations were instrumental in establishing short-lived contact with the probe, leading to hopes the spacecraft could be saved. But subsequent contact was not able to be made, and without contact and inputs from the ground, the spacecraft’s orbit disintegrated.
However, the story of Phobos-Grunt’s malfunctions and demise has included some wild claims ranging from accidental radar interference to outright sabotage, along with intimations of conspiracy theories.
Several times after the malfunction, Russian space officials suggested that US radar emissions may have accidently disabled the spacecraft; at first from a station in Alaska, and then — after it was pointed out that Phobos-Grunt had never flown over that location — another Russian official said it was perhaps radar from a military installation on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
But these claims were later dismissed by a Russian scientist, Alexander Zakharov from the Russian Academy of Science Space Research Institute, who was involved with the development of Phobos-Grunt. He told the Russian news agency Ria Novosti that the radar theory is “far-fetched,” and suggested instead that issues with the spacecraft itself were likely to blame.
“You can come up with a lot of exotic reasons,” Zakharov told RIA Novosti. “But first you need to look at the apparatus itself. There are problems there,” and he indicated there may have been some known problems with the second stage of the rocket.
Later, after re-entry, links to Phobos-Grunt tracking data on the Space Track website were removed, fueling speculation of a conspiracy to hide in formation of where the probe fell. Space Track is a public website that ordinarily details such events, and is operated by U.S. Strategic Command. The military also did not publish any confirmation of the probe’s fall, which is not the usual protocol.
But later, the US Strategic Command said a human error had accidentally misfiled the information (in the 2011 files instead of 2012). Shortly after the error was discovered, the information was re-posted to the site and is accessible at this time.
The Planetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) capsule, on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit:The Planetary Society
Meanwhile, hopes dim for finding the capsule for the Phobos-LIFE biomodule which included organisms in a small capsule to test the “transpermia” hypothesis –- the possibility that life can travel from planet to planet inside rocks blasted off one planetary surface by impact, to land on another planetary surface. The biomodule would have flown to Phobos and then returned to Earth with the sample return capsule of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft.
“Because we can’t predict the details of the re-entry, we can’t predict whether the Phobos LIFE biomodule will survive, and certainly we can’t predict whether it will land somewhere it could be recovered,” said Bruce Betts from The Planetary Society, which sponsored the LIFE mission. “In the unlikely event the Phobos LIFE biomodule is recovered, we would want to study the organisms inside. Though not the long deep space experience we had hoped for, there still will be scientific value to study of the organisms even after just two months in low Earth orbit.”
Multiple images of the International Space Station flying over the Houston area have been combined into one composite image to show the progress of the station as it crossed the face of the moon in the early evening of Jan. 4. (Lauren Harnett)
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On January 19, 2012, Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency began talking to the United States and Europe about the stuff dreams are made of… a manned research base on the Moon. The agency’s chief, Vladimir Popovkin, led off the discussion with officials from NASA and the European Space Agency for a permanent facility. “We don’t want man to just step on the Moon,” Popovkin told Vesti FM radio station, according to the Ria Novosti news agency. “Today, we know enough about it, we know that there is water in its polar areas … we are now discussing how to begin [the Moon’s] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency.”
But that’s not all. One giant leap for mankind often begins with one small step – or two. In this instance, Russia is planning to launch two unmanned missions to the Moon within the next 8 years. According to Popovkin, the plan is to either set up a stationary base on the lunar surface, or to put a working laboratory into orbit around it.
Don’t shoot these comments down just because they’ve come to light after a recent run of bad luck on behalf of Russia’s current space missions – most notably the doomed Mars probe Phobos-Grunt which crashed back to Earth following a malfunction. According to Fix News, “It was the latest mishap for Roscosmos and came after Russian president Dmitry Medvedev threatened to punish those responsible for previous space failures, which included the loss of satellites and botched launches.”
In the meantime, let’s focus on the positive contributions the Russians have made towards lunar exploration – in particular, the Luna missions which set many milestones. Of these, they were the first to successfully land a craft of the Moon, the first to photograph the far side, the first to achieve a soft landing and send back panoramic, close-up images, the first to become an artificial lunar satellite, the first to deploy rover missions and the first to return lunar soil samples which they shared with the international scientific community.
Russia? Keep talking… Spasiba for your contributions!
8 years ago today, January 24, the Opportunity rover landed on Mars. In what has become a tradition, Stu Atkinson and Astro0 from Unmanned Spaceflight have teamed up to create a poster and poem combo to celebrate the occasion. While we fondly remember Spirit’s now-finished journey, the poster features scenes from Opportunity’s view of the ‘Tribulation’ hill and the hills of the crater rim beyond. And no, Oppy didn’t actually spin out in double donuts on Mars to create the ‘figure 8.’
“For a little effect, we’ve added the ‘figure 8’ in the form of the rovers own tracks on Mars,” Astro0 said. “While they may have dreamed of doing it, I’m sure no rover driver would ever be tempted to leave such a mark on Mars for real. So it was only right and proper that I and Photoshop do it for them.”
Click on the image above for a larger version or visit the Astro0 website for higher resolution versions that you can download to print out as a poster or use for your computer wallpaper. Stu’s poem — which both waxes wistful about the year of the MER rovers landing and prognosticates Mars’ future — is written out below:
8 Years on Mars
Hard to believe the Homeworld has circled Sol eight times
Since the first MER bounced and boinged to a historic halt on Mars,
Spirit followed faithfully soon after by her sister, Opportunity,
Just as Clark had followed Lewis two centuries before.
Babies born bloodied and bawling on the day chase girls
In busy schoolyards now; wide-eyed, Star Trek t-shirt wearing
Interns who stumbled along the deer-stalked paths of JPL
Now have interns of their own, and peer at screens painted
Picasso-shades by read date beamed from the true Final Frontier…
In a thousand years, when Mars has oceans of retina-burning blue,
And honeymooning couples crump across the snow-capped summit
Of Olympus, the names ‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’ will still be
Spoken wistfully; and tourists from Titan, explorers from Europa
And Hyperion’s most respected historians will stand before
The rovers, displayed in all their restored gory in the Great
Museum of Mars and envy us, this generation which saw Gusev’s
Rugged Rocks and Meridiani’s misty mountains for the first time,
In 2004, the year Earth finally conquered Mars.
