Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Worlds to Explore? Kepler Spacecraft Finds 750 Exoplanet Candidates

Artist concept of Kepler in space. Credit: NASA/JPL

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The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft’s observations. “This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s lead scientist. “The number of candidate planets is actually greater than all the planets that have been discovered in the last 15 years.”

This is an astounding amount of potential exoplanets from data taken during such a short period of time, however Borucki added that they expect only about 50% of these candidates to actually turn out to be planets, as some may be eclipsing binary stars or other artifacts in the data. But still, even half would be the biggest group discovery of exoplanets ever.

And the exciting part is that 706 targets from this first data set have viable exoplanet candidates with sizes from as small as Earth to around the size of Jupiter. The team says the majority have radii less than half that of Jupiter.

The Kepler team has found so many candidates, they are sharing. They will keep the top 400 candidates to verify and confirm with observations using other telescopes – with observations done by Kepler team members. And today they have released the other 350 candidates, including five potential multiple planet systems.

However, some astronomers are upset about this and think the Kepler team should release all of their findings from the first year, as is typically done with NASA data.

Kepler launched on March 6, 2009, and has been on the hunt for exoplanets. Of course, the holy grail is finding an Earth-like or Earth-sized planet, especially those in the habitable zone of stars where liquid water and possibly life might exist. In the spring of 2009 the Kepler Mission conducted high precision photometry on nearly 156,000 stars to detect the frequency and characteristics of small exoplanets. Kepler studied an area in the constellation Cygnus, looking for the small changes in light that would signal a planet passing in front of its star.

But it takes time to verify candidates and find out if they are actually exoplanets. Usually, confirming the transit of an extrasolar planet requires observations of three different transits. While NASA’s policy requires astronomers to release their data from NASA instruments in a year, the Kepler team has worked out an agreement with the space agency so they can keep a certain portion of their data until they actually have time to verify this huge amount of exoplanet data. Between launch delays of other telescopes, cloudy nights for Earth based telescopes, and viewing a part of the sky that is only visible from the ground from April until September, they haven’t had the observing time they needed to check out all their planet candidates. The extension of the deadline gives the Kepler team the time to make sure they have gone through and found all the false positives and other potential misinterpretations of the Kepler data.

Dennis Overbye in the New York Times has written an article that delves more deeply into this little controversy. What is propriety data, and what is public? It’s a tough argument either way: scientists who have put years of their life into building a spacecraft should have the time they need to verify their data. But others feel the science should be open and available, and a policy is a policy: the deadline for releasing the data is here.

Whatever your feelings on open or closed data (and the Kepler team is only getting an extra six months on just part of their data, by the way), you have to be impressed with the quantity of potential exoplanet finds. And Kepler still has at least two years left of observations.

Papers of interest:

Characteristics of Kepler Planetary Candidates Based on the First Data Set: The Majority are Found to be Neptune-Size and Smaller

Five Kepler target stars that show multiple transiting exoplanet candidates

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Subaru Telescope Takes Montage of Hayabusa’s Return to Earth

The composite image from 11 images, each with 5 sec exposure, spaced by 35-50 sec. The magnitude of Hayabusa is estimated to be 21 mag. Credit: Subaru Telescope Team

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The world watched and waited for the Hayabusa spacecraft to make its return to Earth on June 13, 2010 and the people of Japan — who built and launched the little spacecraft that could (and did!) — were especially hopeful in watching and waiting. Japan’s Subaru Telescope (although located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii) turned its expectant eyes towards Hayabusa and captured the spacecraft’s flight between the Moon and Earth in 11 different images.

A note from the Subaru Telescope team:

During the busy time preparing the observations, Doctor Masafumi Yagi and his team managed to maneuver the telescope just in time to catch Hayabusa before it disappeared down south in the twilight sky. At that time, Hayabusa was a little less than half way between Moon and Earth. Five seconds exposures, each spaced by 35 – 50 seconds in the V filter with Suprime Cam, it showed up in clear trace at the position expected to be. Brightness is estimated to be only 21 magnitudes. At this level, one can see a background galaxy clearly.

We are waiting to hear more from the project team at ISAS/JAXA. In the meantime, congratulations to all who are involved in this unprecedented endeavor.

A GIF animation of the 11 images is available here — but be warned, the file is huge. You can click on the top image for a full-sized huge-ified image, too.

And here are some images of the recovery teams who picked up the sample return canister in the Woomera Prohibited Area in Australia. The canister will be taken to Japan and opened in a few weeks, or perhaps months, after rigorous testing. Only then will we find out if any asteroid samples made it in the canister for the ride back to Earth.

Recovery team makes sure all is safe with the sample return canister. Credit: JAXA
The recovery team handles the heat sheild for the Hayabusa sample return capsule. Credit: JAXA, Hayabusa Twitter feed.
JAXA's Hayabusa space capsule is transported inside a box to a clean room inside the Instrumentation Building at the Woomera Test Range, South Australia. Credit: Australian Science Media Centre

You can see more images of the canister retrieval at the Hayabusa Twitpic page and the Australian Science Media Centre’s Flickr page

Source: Subaru

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Vast Oceans Likely Covered One Third of Mars

n illustration of what Mars might have looked like some 3.5 billion years ago when an ocean likely covered one-third of the planet’s surface, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. (Illustration by University of Colorado)

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Like rising waters from a flood, the evidence for past water on Mars — and large amounts of it – keep mounting. The latest study, which combined the analysis of water-related features including scores of delta deposits and thousands of river valleys with a look at the possibility of a global hydrosphere on early Mars, found that a vast ocean likely covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago.

“Collectively, these results support the existing theories regarding the extent and formation time of an ancient ocean on Mars,” said Gaetano Di Achille and Brian Hynek from the Univesity of Colorado at Boulder, in their article in Nature Geoscience, “and imply the surface conditions during the time probably allowed the occurrence of a global and active hydrosphere integrating valley networks, deltas and a vast ocean as major components of an Earth-like hydrologic cycle.”

The idea of an ocean on Mars has been repeatedly proposed and challenged over the past two decades, and just last week, another study proposed lakes in the Hellas Basin region on Mars. This new study provides further support for the idea of a sustained sea on the Red Planet during the Noachian era more than 3 billion years ago.

More than half of the 52 river delta deposits identified by the CU researchers — each of which was fed by numerous river valleys — likely marked the boundaries of the proposed ocean, since all were at about the same elevation. Twenty-nine of the 52 deltas were connected either to the ancient Mars ocean or to the groundwater table of the ocean and to several large, adjacent lakes, Di Achille said.

The study is the first to integrate multiple data sets of deltas, valley networks and topography from a cadre of NASA and European Space Agency orbiting missions of Mars dating back to 2001, said Hynek. The study implies that ancient Mars probably had an Earth-like global hydrological cycle, including precipitation, runoff, cloud formation, and ice and groundwater accumulation.

Di Achille and Hynek used a geographic information system, or GIS, to map the Martian terrain and conclude the ocean likely would have covered about 36 percent of the planet and contained about 30 million cubic miles, or 124 million cubic kilometers, of water. The amount of water in the ancient ocean would have formed the equivalent of a 1,800-foot, or 550-meter-deep layer of water spread out over the entire planet.
The volume of the ancient Mars ocean would have been about 10 times less than the current volume of Earth’s oceans, Hynek said. Mars is slightly more than half the size of Earth.

The average elevation of the deltas on the edges of the proposed ocean was remarkably consistent around the whole planet, said Di Achille. In addition, the large, ancient lakes upslope from the ancient Mars ocean likely formed inside impact craters and would have been filled by the transport of groundwater between the lakes and the ancient sea, according to the researchers.

A second study headed by Hynek and involving CU-Boulder researcher Michael Beach of LASP and CU-Boulder doctoral student Monica Hoke being published in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Planets — which is a publication of the American Geophysical Union — detected roughly 40,000 river valleys on Mars. That is about four times the number of river valleys that have previously been identified by scientists, said Hynek.

The river valleys were the source of the sediment that was carried downstream and dumped into the deltas adjacent to the proposed ocean, said Hynek. “The abundance of these river valleys required a significant amount of precipitation,” he said. “This effectively puts a nail in the coffin regarding the presence of past rainfall on Mars.” Hynek said an ocean was likely required for the sustained precipitation.

“One of the main questions we would like to answer is where all of the water on Mars went,” said Di Achille. He said future Mars missions — including NASA’s $485 million Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, or MAVEN, which is being led by CU-Boulder and is slated to launch in 2013 — should help to answer such questions and provide new insights into the history of Martian water.

The river deltas on Mars are of high interest to planetary scientists because deltas on Earth rapidly bury organic carbon and other biomarkers of life and are a prime target for future exploration. Most astrobiologists believe any present indications of life on Mars will be discovered in the form of subterranean microorganisms.
“On Earth, deltas and lakes are excellent collectors and preservers of signs of past life,” said Di Achille. “If life ever arose on Mars, deltas may be the key to unlocking Mars’ biological past.”

Hynek said long-lived oceans may have provided an environment for microbial life to take hold on Mars.

Source: CU-Boulder

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Latest Satellite Views of Oil Leak, Plus Dramatic Video of Where the Oil May End Up

Satellite view of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on June 12, 2010, from the Aqua satellite. NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team.

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56 days into the the still-leaking Deepwater Horizon oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico, satellite views are becoming a daily viewing habit. This latest image, taken on June 12, 2010 shows the oil particularly visible across the northern Gulf of Mexico when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image at 1:55 p.m. CDT. Oil appears to have reached beaches and barrier islands in Alabama and the western Panhandle of Florida. The problem for wildlife, and particularly birds, is that from above, the water does not look different. And when they dive in for prey, the get soaked with oil. Estimates are that between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels a day are gushing from the damaged well. On June 3rd, BP lowered a containment cap onto a cut pipe to catch some of the flow. This cap, says the company, is now collecting more than 10,000 barrels of oil a day, ferrying it up to a tanker on the surface. But no one can be absolutely sure of the estimates.

As the oil is coming ashore along the gulf coast, everyone wonders how far the oil will travel. Researchers National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) have completed a detailed computer modeling study that indicates the oil might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer. The video of their results, captured in a series of dramatic animations, below, has caused quite a stir.

The results seem fairly dramatic, but Dr. Synte Peacock, an oceanographer at NCAR said in an interview in EarthSky.org on that the simulations used a dye, and not oil. A dye would travel to the Atlantic Ocean, but oil would behave differently.

However, her team still thinks it’s very likely that oil will get into the Atlantic.

If it does, she said, people shouldn’t expect oil to coat Atlantic beaches and wildlife. That’s because, over the months it would take to travel there – if it does travel there – some oil will evaporate, be eaten by microbes, and become diluted in sea water.

Dr. Peacock added that in all the possible scenarios and simulations that were tested, oil from the oil spill traveled outside of the Gulf within 6 months. But she added that it’s still unclear if or how the oil will affect beaches on the Atlantic Coast. That eventual outcome is partially dependent on local weather around the time the oil reaches a beach.

NASA Earth Observatory image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.

This satellite image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows a false color image of on June 10, 2010, where parts of the oil slick are nearing the Mississippi Delta. Vegetation appears red and water appears in shades of blue and white.

Sources: NASA Earth Observatory, EarthSky

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Weird Collection of Worlds in the Latest Cache of CoRoT Expoplanets

Family portrait of the first 15 CoRoT planets. Credit: Patrice Amoyel (CNES)

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The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) spacecraft has been busy, and using this exoplanet-finding-machine astronomers recently found six new extrasolar planets, which contain an odd assortment of new worlds. They include shrunken-Saturns to bloated hot Jupiters, as well a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter. “Each of these planets is interesting in its own right, but what is really fascinating is how diverse they are,” said co-investigator Dr Suzanne Aigrain from Oxford University’s Department of Physics. “Planets are intrinsically complex objects, and we have much to learn about them yet.”

CoRoT is dedicated to looking for planets orbiting other stars, and finds them when they transit, or pass in front of their stars. CoRot now has found 15 of the total 461 exoplanets.

Once CoRoT detects a transit, additional observations are made from the ground, using a number of telescopes all over the world. Although astronomers cannot see the planets directly, they use the space- and ground-based data to measure the sizes, masses, and orbits of these new planets precisely. This is why, among all known exoplanets, those with transits yield the most complete information about planet formation and evolution.

‘Every discovery of an extrasolar planetary system is a new piece in the puzzle of how these systems do form and evolve. The more systems we uncover, the better we can hope to understand the processes at play,’ said Magali Deleuil, researcher at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) and head of the CoRoT exoplanet program.

The six new planets are:

CoRoT-8b: the smallest in this batch: At about 70% of the size and mass of Saturn, CoRoT-8b is moderately small among the previously known transiting exoplanets. Its internal structure should be similar to that of ice giants, like Uranus and Neptune, in the Solar System. It is the smallest planet discovered by the CoRoT team so far after CoRoT-7b, the first transiting Super-Earth.

CoRoT-10b: the eccentric giant: The orbit of CoRoT-10b is so elongated that the planet passes both very close to and very far away from its star. The amount of radiation it receives from the star varies tenfold in intensity, and scientists estimate that its surface temperature may increase from 250 to 600°C, all in the space of 13 Earth-days (the length of the year on CoRoT-10b).

CoRoT-11b: the planet whose star does the twist: CoRoT-11, the host star of CoRoT-11b, rotates around its axis in 40 hours. For comparison, the Sun’s rotation period is 26 days. It is particularly difficult to confirm planets around rapidly rotating stars, so this detection is a significant achievement for the CoRoT team.

CoRoT-12b, 13b and 14b: a trio of giants: These three planets all orbit close to their host star but have very different properties. Although CoRoT-13b is smaller than Jupiter, it is twice as dense. This suggests the presence of a massive rocky core inside the planet. With a radius 50% large than Jupiter’s (or 16 times larger than the Earth’s), CoRoT-12b belongs to the family of `bloated hot Jupiters’, whose anomalously large sizes are due to the intense stellar radiation they receive. On the other hand, CoRoT-14b, which is even closer to its parent star, has a size similar to Jupiter’s. It is also massive, 7.5 times the mass of Jupiter, which may explain why it is less puffed up. Such very massive and very hot planets are rare, CoRoT-14b is only the second one discovered so far.

CoRoT-15b: the brown dwarf: CoRoT-15b’s mass is about 60 times that of Jupiter. This makes it incredibly dense, about 40 times more so than Jupiter. For that reason, it is classified as a brown dwarf, intermediate in nature between planets and stars. Brown dwarfs are much rarer than planets, which makes this discovery all the more exciting.

Source: Oxford University

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Water Could Be Widespread in Moon’s Interior

Moon rocks from the Apollo 11 mission. Credit: NASA

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A new look at Moon rocks from the Apollo missions, along with a lunar meteorite show a much higher water content in the Moon’s interior than previously thought. Using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) which can detect elements in the parts per million range, scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory found the minimum water content ranged from 64 parts per billion to 5 parts per million—at least two orders of magnitude greater than previous results. The science team says their research suggests that the water was preserved from the hot magma that was present when the Moon began to form some 4.5 billion years ago. “The concentrations are very low and, accordingly, they have been until recently nearly impossible to detect,” said team member Bradley Jolliff of Washington University in St. Louis. “We can now finally begin to consider the implications—and the origin—of water in the interior of the Moon.”

The prevailing belief is that the Moon came from a giant-impact event, when a Mars-sized object hit the Earth and the ejected material coalesced into the Moon. In this new study of lunar samples, scientists determined that water was likely present very early in the formation history as the hot magma started to cool and crystallize. This result means that water is native to the Moon.

The SIMS technique measures hydroxyl by bombarding the grains of a type of phosphorous, water-bearing mineral called apatite with high-energy particles and counting the ions that are ejected. Based on the SIMS measurements, the scientists authors place the lower limit for the total lunar water at 100 times greater than previous estimates, and speculate that water may be “ubiquitous” in the moon’s interior.

The study could alter current theories about lunar magmatism (how igneous rock formed from magma), and how the moon formed and evolved.

Water is showing up in all sorts of unexpected places on the Moon. In September of 2009, a trio of spacecraft detected a ubiquitous layer of a combination of water (H2O) and hydroxyl (OH) that resides in upper millimeter of the lunar surface. It doesn’t actually amount to much; only about two tablespoons of water is believed to be present in every 1,000 pounds (450 kg). Then in October of 2009, the LCROSS impactor and spacecraft detected “buckets” of water in the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole.

In 2008 water was found inside volcanic glass beads in Apollo Moon rocks, which represent solidified magma from the early moon’s interior. That finding led to this new study, using the SIMS. The scientists combined the measurements taken with the spectrometer with models that characterize how the lunar magma crystallized as the Moon cooled. They then inferred the amount of water in the apatite’s source magma, which allowed them to extrapolate the result to estimate the total amount of water that is present on the moon.

“For over 40 years we thought the Moon was dry,” said lead author of the new study, Francis McCubbin.

The research is published in the on-line early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 14.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Hayabusa Sample Return Capsule Retrieved

Hayabusa's sample return cannister and parachute on the ground in the Australian outback. Credit: JAXA

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Scientists from Japan were given the go-ahead to retrieve the sample return capsule from the Hayabusa spacecraft, which is hoped to contain the first piece of asteroid ever brought to Earth, perhaps providing insight into the origins of asteroids – and our universe. The capsule was ejected three hours before reaching Earth, and the sample canister descended through Earth’s atmosphere, preceding the spacecraft which broke up in spectacular fashion (click here to see the video) over the Australian Outback. The capsule lay in the Woomera Prohibited Area until morning when Aboriginal elders deemed it had not landed in any indigenous sacred sites, giving the OK for the scientists to retrieve it.

The insulated and cushioned re-entry capsule, 40 cm in diameter and 25 cm deep has a mass of about 20 kg. The capsule had a convex nose covered with a 3 cm thick ablative heat shield to protect the samples from the high velocity (~13 km/s) re-entry.

Apparently, it landed right on target. The director of the Woomera test range, Doug Gerrie, said the probe had completed a textbook landing in the South Australian desert. “They landed it exactly where they nominated they would.

Hayabusa's heat shield was also recovered from the Australian outback. Credit: JAXA

The capsule will remain sealed until it arrives at the JAXA facility near Tokyo, and may remain unopened for weeks as it undergoes testing.

The mission launched in 2003, and endured a series of technical glitches over its five-billion-kilometer (three-billion-mile) journey to the asteroid Itokawa and back. A large solar flare in late 2003 “injured” the solar panels, providing less power to Hayabusa’s ion engines, delaying the rendezvous with the asteroid. Then, as the spacecraft approached Itokawa, Hayabusa lost the use of its Y-axis reaction wheel. While it flew near the asteroid and sent back data, scientists and engineers aren’t sure if the spacecraft was successful in obtaining samples, as while it appears Hayabusa landed briefly, it is not certain the “bullets” fired to stir up dust for the container to capture. The return to Earth was delayed by three years from more thruster and navigational failures, but the JAXA team nursed and coaxed the spacecraft back home to a spectacular return. There was concern that the parachute batteries may be been depleted due to the extra time it took to get back to Earth, but obviously they worked quite well.

Sources: JAXA, NASA, AFP

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Hayabusa Returns!

Japan’s little spacecraft that could returned to Earth, putting on quite a show over the Australian outback, making a fiery reentry. Hayabusa returned around 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) in the Woomera Prohibited Area of South Australia. In the video you’ll see a little speck of light ahead of the falling debris: that’s the sample return canister with, hopefully, some precious goods aboard – samples from asteroid Itokawa. The canister separated about three hours before reaching Earth, and returned to Earth via parachute. The canister has been recovered, and will be taken to Japan where scientists will open it to find out if there is anything inside.

The return was monitored scientists from around the world, including a NASA crew on aboard a DC-8 airplane who took the video footage.
Continue reading “Hayabusa Returns!”

Posted on by Steve Nerlich

Astronomy Without A Telescope – Is Time Real?

Time is an illusion caused by the passage of history (Douglas Adams 1952-2001).

The way that we deal with time is central to a major current schism in physics. Under classic Newtonian physics and also quantum mechanics – time is absolute, a universal metronome allowing you determine whether events occur simultaneously or in sequence. Under Einstein’s physics, time is not absolute – simultaneity and sequence depend on who’s looking. For Einstein, the speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant and time changes in whatever way is required to keep the speed of light constant from all frames of reference.

Under general relativity (GR) you are able to experience living for three score and ten years regardless of where you are or how fast you’re moving, but other folk might measure that duration quite differently. But even under GR, we need to consider whether time only has meaning for sub-light speed consciousnesses such as us. Were a photon to have consciousness, it may not experience time – and, from its perspective, would cross the apparent 100,000 light year diameter of the Milky Way in an instant. Of course, that gets you wondering whether space is real either. Hmm…

Quantum mechanics does (well, sometimes) require absolute time – most obviously in regards to quantum entanglement where determining the spin of one particle, determines the spin of its entangled partner instantaneously and simultaneously. Leaving aside the baffling conundrums imposed by this instantaneous action over a distance – the simultaneous nature of the event implies the existence of absolute time.

In one attempt to reconcile GR and quantum mechanics, time disappears altogether – from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for quantum gravity – not that many regard this as a 100% successful attempt to reconcile GR and quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, this line of thinking highlights the ‘problem of time’ when trying to develop a Theory of Everything.

The winning entries for a 2008 essay competition on the nature of time run by the Fundamental Questions Institute could be roughly grouped into the themes ‘time is real’, ‘no, it isn’t’ and ‘either way, it’s useful so you can cook dinner.’

The ‘time isn’t real’ camp runs the line that time is just a by-product of what the universe does (anything from the Earth rotating to the transition of a Cesium atom – i.e. the things that we calibrate our clocks to).

How a return to equilibrium after a random downward fluctuation in entropy might appear. First there was light, then a whole bunch of stuff happened and then it started getting cold and dark and empty.

Time is the fire in which we burn (Soran, Star Trek bad guy, circa 24th century).

‘Time isn’t real’ proponents also refer to Boltzmann’s attempt to trivialise the arrow of time by proposing that we just live in a local pocket of the universe where there has been a random downward fluctuation of entropy – so that the perceived forward arrow of time is just a result of the universe returning to equilibrium – being a state of higher entropy where it’s very cold and most of the transient matter that we live our lives upon has evaporated. It is conceivable that another different type of fluctuation somewhere else might just as easily result in the arrow pointing the other way.

Nearly everyone agrees that time probably doesn’t exist outside our Big Bang universe and the people who just want to get on and cook dinner suggest we might concede that space-time could be an emergent property of quantum mechanics. With that settled, we just need to rejig the math – over coffee maybe.

I was prompted to write this after reading a Scientific American June 2010 article, Time Is An Illusion by Craig Callender.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Hayabusa on the Homestretch on Return to Earth

Hayabusa's sample return capsule descends under parachute toward the Woomera desert, Australia. Credit: Corby Waste and Tommy Thompson for NASA / JPL

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After overcoming multiple serious glitches, and a three-year delay in its four billion miles (six billion kilometers) round-trip journey, JAXA’s Hayabusa spacecraft is expected to land in Australia around 14:00 UTC on Sunday, June 13; (midnight local time in Australia, 11 pm in Japan and 11:00 a.m. ET in the US). Scientists and space enthusiasts alike are hoping there is some precious cargo aboard in the sample return capsule: dust from an asteroid.

The latest word from JAXA, as of this writing, is that all systems were doing well on Hayabusa. The teams assessed the trajectory of Hayabusa and confirmed that everything was nominal.

If all goes well, Hayabusa will release a canister that will land in the Woomera Prohibited Area in the outback of South Australia; Hayabusa itself will follow, putting on a show over Australia as it breaks up and incinerates in Earth’s atmosphere.

You can follow the landing in several ways. A NASA team will be attempting to observe the re-entry of Hayabusa in a DC-8 plane, and they hope to have a webcast at this link.

There will be a “Hayabusa Live” website and a Hayabusa blog will be updated frequently, plus this Hayabusa Twitter feed.

Here’s a link to a finder chart and more from Paul Floyd at his website, Night Sky Online.

The Hayabusa spacecraft, formerly known as MUSES-C launched on May 9, 2003 and rendezvoused with the asteroid Itokawa in mid-September 2005. Hayabusa studied the asteroid’s shape, spin, topography, color, composition, density, and history. Then in November 2005, it attempted to land on the asteroid to collect samples but failed to do so. However, it is hoped that some dust swirled into the sampling chamber. You can listen to Universe Today writer Steve Nerlich (from Cheap Astronomy) tell the story of Hayabusa’s trials and tribulations on this 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.

The aim of the $200 million Hayabusa project was to learn more about asteroids and to help in our understanding of the origin and evolution of the solar system.

If Hayabusa is indeed carrying samples from the asteroid, it would be only the fourth sample return of space material in history — including the moon matter collected by the Apollo missions, comet matter by Stardust and solar matter in the Genesis mission.

We’re all hoping for the best for this first sample return from an asteroid, and it should be an interesting time in Australia. Dozens of scientists will be watching and waiting to see the return.

A view of Woomera from the Ghan train. Credit: Col Maybury

Plus, as Col Maybury from radio station 2NUR in Australia tells me, all traffic around the area will be stopped, including the Ghan train, one of the world’s great trains that travels from south to north across the continent of Australia, and it happens to be passing through Woomera right at the time Hayabusa should be returning. Col said he called the train company, and was told that the train engineers are to keep a look out for the entry trail.

“So a mighty train named after Afghan camel drivers may have to halt for a small spacecraft or be hit by a flying object,” Col wrote me in an email. He will have a live report on Radio 2NUR-FM on Tuesday the 15th at 10:20 am in Newcastle, 12:20 GMT, talking with the Woomera officials for a follow-up of the Hayabusa event.

Preliminary analysis of the samples will be carried out by the team in Japan, but after one year scientists around the world can apply for access to bits of the asteroid material for research.