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.
Search this image for the Mars polar lander! Credit: NASA/JPL/UofA. Click for larger version.
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The Mars Polar Lander was supposed to be a mission to the Red Planet’s south polar region to study the climate, weather and the ever-changing polar cap. But the spacecraft went missing in December of 1999 after entering Mars atmosphere, and its disappearance has been a mystery. Attempts at finding the presumably crashed lander using images from the Mars Global Surveyor have been unsuccessful. But now we have the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its powerful HiRISE Camera. A new campaign has begun to try and find the Mars Polar Lander, and the best thing about it is that you can help!
UPDATE: I’ve been contacted by several people wondering what they should do if they think they find something in the image. The HiRISE blog has instructions: contact the HiRISE folks with this form, or add to the comments in a previous HiRISE blog post.
HiRISE has been successful in imaging missions like the Mars Exploration Rovers and the Phoenix lander – as the location of those spacecrafts have been known. But now’s the chance to use HiRISE’s eyes to look for an object whose location is unknown.
“This HiRISE image is one of a sequence searching for either the parachute or the crumpled lander on the ground,” say the folks on the HiRISE website. “However, we expect the debris from this mission to be covered with dust and ice, making it a challenge to identify them. The more eyes that search these images the better, so try your luck!”
The terrain seen here appears to be composed of alternating layers of clean and dust-laden ice. Most of the surface is covered with patches of small channels. It is thought that these have been carved by vaporized ice. On Mars, the ice goes straight to a gas (a process called “sublimation”) rather than first melting. So, as the ice heats in the spring and summer, gas is generated and flows under the remaining ice. This flowing gas can move dust and slowly carve a small channels.
The lander was to touch down on the southern polar layered terrain, between 73°S and 76°S in the region, Planum Australe less than 1,000 km from the south pole, near the edge of the carbon dioxide ice cap in Mars’ late southern spring.
So what could have happened to the spacecraft? It has been speculated that either the thrusters failed as it began to land. Or perhaps the landing sequence failed entirely, and when the legs were deployed the software accidently reported that the lander was on the ground, cutting the parachute while the lander was actually hundreds of feet in the air. Bummer.
But the only way to know for sure it to find the remains of the spacecraft. So let’s get searching! And watch for more images from HiRISE to look for the lost MPL.
The folks at Goddard Space Flight Center working on the the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission have put together a flyover video from the first images taken by LRO’s cameras. Just a little appetite whetter for all the good things to come from LRO. Enjoy!
With a slope of about 10 degrees and a pointy rock under the test rover's belly, this sandbox setup at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is ready for engineers to use the test rover to assess possible moves for getting Mars rover Spirit out of a patch of loose Martian soil. Credit: JPL
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Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have intentionally driven their engineering rover into soft soil in a sandbox testbed, to simulate how the Spirit rover is stuck on Mars. And they did a good job of it, too, as the test rover, called SSTB1, is stuck, as well, with its wheels spinning and going nowhere. The science team has confirmed a rock on Mars, underneath Spirit is touching the underside of the rover, so engineers have placed a similar looking rock in the test sandbox, as seen above.
“We want to experiment with different extraction techniques down here on Earth before we actually do them for real on Mars,” said John Callas, project manager for the Mars rovers. “Our expectation is that it will some time to get Spirit out, so we will be able to get a better feel for that here in this facility to see how well the techniques work and how long it will take for them to work.”
The rover team spent several days of preparing a sloped area of soft, fine soil to simulate Spirit’s current sandtrap on Mars. On June 30 they maneuvered the test rover around, driving the wheels to the loose soil where the rover would sink and slide to the side, with a slope of about 10 degrees, as engineers believe Spirit has done on Mars.
You can follow the work being done to free Spirit from her predicament at the Free Spirit website. JPL regularly posts updates and videos showing what the rover teams are doing, and currently you can see a movie of how the test rover was driven in the sandbox to get stuck. A test rover rolls off a plywood surface into a prepared bed of soft soil. Credit: JPL
There are actually two test vehicles, and the folks at UnmannedSpaceflight.com have a page explaining the differences, as well as other FAQs about the attempts to free Spirit. The one being use for this current test, SSTB1 is a full size replica of the MER vehicles, but it has a few differences such as no solar panels, and a few other minor missing parts. It has the same mass as the ones on Mars, which means it has a higher weight on Earth than the MERs have on Mars.
The other test rover, SSTB Lite, is a stripped down vehicle with same wheel size, actuators and suspension system, but has other major components missing which gives it a weight on Earth that is similar to the weight of MER on Mars. However, when the Opportunity rover was stuck a couple of years in the Purgatory dune, engineers found that SSTB1 behaved more similarly to the MER vehicles, possibly because both the SSTB1 and the soil were subject to the same gravity vector. Mosaic of the area around Home Plate where Spirit remains stuck was made especially for Spaceflight Now (Used by permission). Credit: Kenneth Kremer, Marco DiLorenzo, NASA/JPL/Cornell/Spaceflight Now. Click for larger image.
So, just where is Spirit on Mars? Take a look at this great image created by Ken Kremer and Marco DeLorenzo of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, showing Spirit’s current location. It shows smooth area in the foreground, that concealed slippery water related sulfate material where rover became stuck. Once free, Spirit will drive to area near the unusually capped hill ahead designated Von Braun to sample water related evidence there. Let’s hope the engineer’s work here on Earth will “Free Spirit” and enable explorations of Von Braun, and beyond.
Caption for mosaic above: Mosaic of the area around Home Plate where Spirit remains stuck was made especially for Spaceflight Now (Used by permission). Credit: Kenneth Kremer, Marco DiLorenzo, NASA/JPL/Cornell/Spaceflight Now. Click the picture for a larger image.
It’s the spacecraft that just won’t quit. We ran a story about a year ago that the Ulysses spacecraft was dying of natural causes (running out of power to keep the spacecraft warm and functional) and its mission would likely end by July 1, 2008. The thing is, the spacecraft just kept hanging on…and hanging on….and hanging on. But now, after 18.6 years in space and defying several earlier expectations of its demise, Ulysses will finally be switched off. You can watch a live webcast of the final communication with the spacecraft, which will occur on June 30, 2009, starting at 15:35 GMT and go until 20:20 GMT.
“Ulysses has taught us far more than we ever expected about the Sun and the way it interacts with the space surrounding it,” said Richard Marsden, ESA’s Ulysses Project Scientist and Mission Manager.
Ulysses was the first spacecraft to survey the environment in space above and below the poles of the Sun in the four dimensions of space and time. Among many other ground-breaking results, the mission showed that the Sun’s magnetic field is carried into the Solar System in a more complicated manner than previously believed. Particles expelled by the Sun from low latitudes can climb up to high latitudes and vice versa, even unexpectedly finding their way down to planets.
And as a eulogy to the Ulysses spacecraft, here’s the last lines from the poem “Ulysses” by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson:
“Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done…
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world…
To sail beyond the sunset.”
The bright streak is the star Canopus. Credit: NASA/JPL
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When your rover has abundant energy but can’t go anywhere, what’s a scientist to do? How about making observations of the evening and night skies on Mars? With the benefit of a boost in electrical power from a wind gust cleaning off her solar panels, the Spirit rover has more energy available than she’s had for a couple of years. But unfortunately, Spirit is stuck in a patch of loose soil in the Home Plate region on Mars. While the engineers at JPL work hard at figuring out how to “Free Spirit” (see the new website dedicated to their efforts) scientists are making observations of her surroundings to aid in the effort to get her out. But there’s also enough power to do additional observations, and astronomy was a logical choice. “Certainly, a month or more ago, no one was considering astronomy with the rovers,” said Mark Lemmon, planetary scientist at Texas A&M University and member of the rover team. “We thought that was done. With the dust cleanings, though, everyone thinks it is better to use the new found energy on night time science than to just burn it with heaters.” Besides, Lemmon added, using all the energy in the daytime might lead to overheating.
The image above was taken on Spirit’s sol 1943 (June 22 on Earth)showing the night sky above her location.
But most of the “stars” in this raw image are not really stars, just hot pixels. “We use long and multiple exposures to make stars stand out,” Lemmon told Universe Today. “We can only see bright stars, looking through the dust, but can pick out most of the major stars in Orion for instance.”
But a star is visible in this image. “That streak in the 1943 images is the bright star Canopus,” said Jim Bell, planetary scientist at Cornell University and lead for the rovers’ Pancam team. “We’re monitoring stars to search for evidence of night-time clouds, fog, and hazes. We’re also occasionally trying to image Earth and Venus as they set in the west after sunset. We’ve had some success, but the twilight sky is so bright we’re still working on tweaking the exposure times.”
Of course, this isn’t the first time Spirit has done astronomy on Mars. She also made night sky observations back in 2005. In an article Bell wrote for Sky and Telescope in 2006 he described Spirit’s astronomy as “stone-knives and bear-skins backyard astronomy–but from Mars!” And certainly, this is exciting to have an additional opportunity to make astronomical observations from the surface of another world. Spirit's twilight observations from sol 1947. Credit: NASA/JPL
Bell added that the current astronomy campaign with Spirit has many similarities with the one four years ago, and Lemmon said they are focusing on a few different goals for looking at the twilight and night skies.
“The Canopus images may become a regular occurrence, as a way to monitor dust and/or ice in the sky at night–much as we use Sun images in the day,” Lemmon said. “For something like that, we can pick an aim (Canopus, Orion, etc.) and choose filters. We might use color filters to look for any differences that show up, or the clear filter for the most sensitive measurement. Star exposures can go up to 5.5 minutes (compare to 0.1-0.5 sec for a normal day image). We cannot track stars, so they trail after 10 seconds or so–as you see Canopus doing. In longer exposures, hot pixels and cosmic rays show up as points or cluster of light.”
Lemmon said attempting to image Earth and Venus has been challenging. “We’ve imaged both before, farther from the Sun. They are in the twilight, limiting the exposure we can use, and they are in a “bright” part of the sky.”
Lemmon added his personal favorite right now is actually the twilight imaging — not looking at stars but at how fast the twilight glow fades after sunset. “That is proving to be quite helpful in terms of understanding the distribution of dust in the atmosphere –which is closely tied to how weather works on Mars,” he said.
In 2005, the Pancam team was able to capture images of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos. “They are much brighter and let us use more filters if desired. We may pick this up again. I’m a fan of eclipse imaging, so we would need several quick images to see how fast the moon fades as sunlight is blocked by dust around Mars.”
The moons should start becoming more visible soon, and Lemmon said they will continue to take more images of Canopus and maybe other star fields. The team is not specifically looking for meteors or the orbiters around Mars, but there’s always the prospect of something fascinating showing up on future images.
“We’ve taken some recent images I hope will have new, interesting things in them,” Lemmon said. “But they are still on board the rover so we’ll have to wait and see what they show later.”
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The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its braking thrusters for 40 minutes early today, successfully inserting the spacecraft into orbit around the Moon. Over the next several days, LRO’s instruments will be turned on and its orbit will be fine-tuned. Then LRO will begin its primary mission of mapping the lunar surface to find future landing sites and searching for resources that would make possible a permanent human presence on the moon. Also, early Tuesday, the companion mission Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) sent back live video as it flew 9,000 km above the Moon, as it enters its elongated Earth orbit, which will bring it on course to impact the Moon’s south pole in October.
The two spacecraft reached the Moon four-and-a-half days after launch. LRO’s rocket firing began around 9:20 GMT (5:47 a.m. EDT) and ended at 10:27 GME (6:27 a.m. EDT), putting the spacecraft into an orbit tilted 30 degrees from the moon’s poles with a low point of 218 km (136 miles) and a high point of 3,000 km (1,926 miles). Over the next five days, additional rocket firings will put the spacecraft into the correct orbit for making its observations for the prime mission, which lasts a year — a polar orbit of about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, the closest any spacecraft has orbited the moon.
Meanwhile, at 12:20 GMT (8:20 EDT) on Tuesday, LCROSS made a relatively close flyby of the Moon, sending back live streaming video. Watch the replay here. LCROSS on its way to impact. Credit: NASA
LCROSS is now in its “cruise phase” and will be monitored by the mission operations team. During the flyby, the science team was able to obtain the data needed to focus and adjust the cameras and spectrometers correctly for impact.
LCROSS will never actually be lunar orbit, but is working its way to an elongated Earth orbit which will eventually bring it to the correct orientation for meeting up with the south pole of the Moon later this year. LCROSS will search for water ice on the moon by sending the spent upper-stage Centaur rocket to impact part of a polar crater in permanent shadows. The LCROSS spacecraft will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface.
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On Tuesday morning, the LCROSS spacecraft will fly by the Moon only 9,000 km above the lunar surface and send back live streaming video for about an hour. This relatively close encounter with the Moon, will help put LCROSS in the correct position to impact the lunar surface in October. LCROSS will never actually be lunar orbit, but is working its way to an elongated Earth orbit which will eventually bring it to the correct orientation for meeting up with the south pole of the Moon later this year. LCROSS will search for water ice on the moon by sending the spent upper-stage Centaur rocket to impact part of a polar crater in permanent shadows. The LCROSS spacecraft will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface. Live video streaming of the flyby begins at approximately 12:20 GMT (8:20 EDT) on Tuesday, June 23, 2009. Click here to watch.
The LCROSS instrumentation will send back data to Earth for approximately one hour. The first 30 minutes will contain a view of the lunar surface from an altitude of approximately 9,000 km. The video feed is set to display one frame per second. During the latter 30 minutes, the spacecraft will perform multiple scans of the moon’s horizon to calibrate its sensors. During this latter half hour, the video image will update only occasionally. The 3D visualization stream will show the spacecraft position and attitude throughout the swingby.
The Atlas V with LRO and LCROSS at the pad. Credit: NASA
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NASA is going back to the Moon today! The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and a piggyback mission called the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) are at the launch pad, ready to blast off on an Atlas V today (Thursday June 18), with launch windows at 5:12 p.m., 5:22 p.m. or 5:32 p.m. EDT. (9:12, 9:22 or 9:32 GMT). The dual mission will provide detailed lunar maps to aid in returning humans to the moon, while searching for water ice in permanently shaded craters at the moon’s poles.
LRO is scheduled for a one-year prime mission, exploring the moon from a polar orbit of about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, the closest any spacecraft has orbited the moon. Its primary objective is to conduct investigations to prepare for future explorations of the moon.
“LRO will circle the moon every two hours,” Craig Tooley, LRO project manager explained at a press briefing earlier this week. “As moon rotates, LRO will be able to see the entire surface, so every month, we will map the entire surface of moon. There will be gaps in our measurements because the view of the instruments are very narrow beneath the satellite ground track. Over the course of an entire year, we can fill in these gaps to have a global measurement of the moon and a new set of data, a new atlas so to speak showing temperature, minerals, images and other data.” Artist concept of LRO in lunar orbit. Credit: NASA
Tooley said that the Apollo missions accepted the risk of not knowing details of the landing sites. “They had safe landings, but we want to return to moon with repeated landings and have a higher degree of safety.”
LRO will be able to look at the distribution of rocks, boulders, and craters, with its 50 cm spatial resolution camera. “We’ll be able to see small boulders and know where it is safe to land,” said Rich Vondrak, project scientist. “NASA has identified fifty high priority sites that are potential landing sites for astronauts.”
LRO has a Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and a Wide Angle Camera (WAC). NAC is dedicated to high resolution, and Vondrak said the high priority regions will be mapped in high res the first year, and they are working with science community for areas to study during an extended mission.
The Lunar Oribter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) will provide a high resolution 3-D relief map of moon. “LOLA resolution will be 10 times better than what we currently have,” said Vondrak. “We’re looking forward to mapping Aiken Basin, a huge depression, very carefully, and the polar regions are of high interest. We’ll have new eyes on the moon to get new views to prepare for future exploration of the moon.”
Regions near the pole have nearly continuous sunlight, which could be a source of warmth and power for future explorers. There are also regions inside polar craters that are continuously dark and very cold, and previous missions have found evidence of hydrogen, which scientists expect to be associated with water ice, a potential resource for future explorers.
“We’ll do the best possible attempt of determining the characteristic of the lunar surface from orbit, but to really understand the water content of the surface, you would like to land there,” said Vondrak. “We are fortunate that LRO will carry a companion mission, LCROSS, to seek water on the moon.” Artist concept of LCROSS and Centaur stage heading for impact. Credit: NASA
LCROSS will search for water ice on the moon by sending the spent upper-stage Centaur rocket to impact part of a polar crater in permanent shadows. LCROSS will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface.
“LCROSS will shepherd the Centaur to the precise orbit, and accelerate it into the moon,” said LCROSS project scientist Tony Colaprete. “The two will separate, with LCROSS following the Centaur by four minutes, taking live “bent pipe” meausrments, sendin back live video (which will be shown live via webcast) taking measurements of the lunar regolith characteristics, looking for lunar water vapor or ice characteristics, then impacting the lunar surface itself. LCROSS will be a smashing success.”
The impact will take place about 100 days after launch, and the science team hopes to recruit amateur astronomers and students to help watch the impact from Earth. “This should be very engaging for the public, and their observations will help us, too,” said Colaprete.
If launch slips to Friday, June 19, the launch opportunities would be 6:41 p.m., 6:51 p.m. and 7:01 p.m EDT (10:41, 10;51 and 11:01 GMT).
Nature, the publishing group, is mixing the old with the new by “tweeting” the Apollo 11 moon mission as it happened — 40 years later. Followers on Twitter will be able to read about technical milestones, political challenges, and related events in the space race starting today, just over a month before the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing.
Apollo 11’s Twitter profile is here — and since the announcement this morning, already boasts 110 followers. The tweets will chronicle the Apollo 11 crew’s journey to the moon and back, and taper off during the weeks following the mission to give followers the context surrounding the moon mission and its implications for science and the wider world.
Source: Nature News. More information is available in an accompanying blog.
