Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A Cold War Meeting in Space 33 Years Ago Today

Deke Slayton and Aleksey Leonov meet in space. Credit: NASA

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On July 17, 1975, something momentous and unprecedented happened: two Cold War-rivals met in space. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project saw spacecraft from the United States and the Soviet Union docking together in space, ushering in a new era of cooperative ventures between the two countries that once were rivals in the “space race.” Preparing for the mission, the astronauts and cosmonauts had to visit each other’s countries for training, and the two space agencies had to share classified information with each other in order for the rendezvous and docking to work successfully. A few years ago, Tom Stafford, one of the American astronauts said the Apollo-Soyuz mission “showed the whole world that if the Soviet Union and America could work together in space, they could work together on the Earth.”

We almost take this cooperation for granted now, as for more than a decade, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have been regularly living and working together in Earth orbit, first in the Shuttle-Mir program, and now on the International Space Station. But, before the two Cold War-rivals first met in orbit, such a partnership seemed unlikely. Since Sputnik bleeped into orbit in 1957, there had indeed been a Space Race, with the U.S. and then-Soviet Union driven more by competition than cooperation. When President Kennedy called for a manned moon landing in 1961, he spoke of “battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny” and referred to the “head start obtained by the Soviets with their large rocket engines.”

But by the mid-70s things had changed. The U.S. had “won” the race to the moon, with six Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972. Both nations had launched space stations, the Russian Salyut and American Skylab. With the space shuttle still a few years off and the diplomatic chill thawing, the time was right for a joint mission.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project would send NASA astronauts Tom Stafford, Donald K. “Deke” Slayton and Vance Brand in an Apollo Command and Service Module to meet Russian cosmonauts Aleksey Leonov and Valeriy Kubasov in a Soyuz capsule. A jointly designed docking module fulfilled the main technical goal of the mission, demonstrating that two dissimilar craft could dock in orbit. But the human side of the mission went far beyond that.

Original News Source: NASA Image of the Day

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A Match Made in Space

Rocketplane XP spaceplane. Credit: Rocketplane

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Rocketplane Global has announced they will be offering the opportunity for people to get married in space. On their upcoming planned suborbital flights, the space tourism company is making available specialty charter flights that include space wedding ceremonies. Billed as “the ultimate high-end celebrity wedding,” the package was first un”veiled” in Japan earlier this month by Rocketplane Japan and First Advantage Travel. With the shirtsleeve cabin environment of the XP spaceplane and its redundant life support systems, the wedding party can wear clothing of their own choosing. No need for “bulky helmets or pressure suits which would detract from the beauty of the ceremony and of course the Wedding Kiss,” said the press release. No mention if the happy couples can then become part of the 60 Mile High Club.

Rocketplane’s press release didn’t provide the price, and the website listed for further information is in Japanese, but Rocketplane’s suggested retail price on their first flights to space is $250,000 a person, so the cost for a bride, groom and wedding party would likely be astronomical, no pun intended.

Reportedly, the special wedding charter flight package includes the actual wedding ceremony in space for the bride, groom and three guests, the space marriage license and certificates, an original wedding dress, full picture and video coverage of the wedding flight and a live broadcast of the ceremony to the ground, premium hotels and transportation, and an original website developed for the wedding customers. Additional options include a space theme honeymoon in Hawaii with chartered jet transportation and a complete VIP lodging and activities package and private tour of the observatories on Mauna Kea.

Wow.

One couple from the US has already signed up for the first space wedding. Check out their website, which says they are planning to be married in 2010.

Rocketplane CEO George French said this package shows how the Rocketplane XP spaceplane can be adapted for a wide variety of unique and special uses. “We are developing a variety of additional charter flight packages involving artists, media and cultural themes as well as additional corporate promotional campaigns,” he said.

While cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko got married via radio communication while he was on board the International Space Station (his fiancé was on Earth) no wedding ceremony has yet been performed with both the bride and groom in space.

Misuzu Onuki, Rocketplane’s Director of Asian Business Development said, “I believe that the wedding is one of the most important events in our lives, and getting married in the place closest to Heaven will be very appealing and be a key factor in the development of space tourism.”

Additional ways these charter flights could be used if for microgravity research payloads placed in racks with the scientists who developed the payload flying the mission and operating the experiments from on board. Also planned are Teacher in Space flights, which could include one or two teachers and dozens of student microgravity science experiments. A Japanese newspaper is sponsoring a contest for a Teacher in Space flight on board a Rocketplane flight.

Original News Source: Rocketplane Press Release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

“Baby Red Spot” May Have Met Demise on Jupiter

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter has been observed for over 150 years, and it doesn’t appear this anti-cyclonic storm is showing any signs of letting up. How does it maintain its power? Well, like a planetary Pac-Man, it “eats up” other storms, zapping them of their power. The sequence of images here from the Hubble Space Telescope shows three different storms on Jupiter: The Great Red Spot, Red Spot Jr. (otherwise known as Oval BA, to the south of GRS), and Baby Red Spot, to the left of GRS in the first two images. Baby got a little too close to big brother GRS, and may have been snuffed out. But GRS keeps on keeping on. These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008, by the Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

Red Spot Jr. first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed. More on Jr. or Oval BA over at the BA himself, Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy.

But poor little Baby Red Spot, which is in the same latitudinal band as the GRS. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The baby spot gets ever closer to the GRS in this picture sequence until it is caught up in GRS’s anticyclonic spin. In the final image the baby spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (east) of the GRS. The prediction is that the baby spot will now get pulled back into the GRS “Cuisinart” and disappear for good. This is one possible mechanism that has powered and sustained the GRS for at least 150 years.

Each image covers 58 degrees of Jovian latitude and 70 degrees of longitude (centered on 5 degrees South latitude and 110, 121, and 121.

Original News Source: HubbleSite

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Geologists Predicted Mars Avalanche

A Mars Avalanche, taken by NASAs HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter (Credit: NASA/HiRISE)

Remember the amazing images of an avalanche on Mars back in March of this year from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter? If not for two geologists studying landforms in Alaska, MRO scientists might not have been on the lookout for such an event, or may not have known what they were seeing. A serendipitous week-long trip to Alaska by Craig Kochel and Jeffrey Trop, geology professors at Bucknell University, helped them predict one of the most important, and breathtaking planetary observations ever made. Witnessing an avalanche, or landslide in action on Mars has helped us realize the Red Planet is still a dynamic, ever-changing planet.

The two geologists were in Alaska for an eight day trip in July 2006, studying geological features and the processes that create them. In preparing for the trip, they looked at photographs of the area they would be hiking through and noticed several features in the photographs that looked familiar. Kochel thought they reminded him of images he’d seen when working on the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s. In both the photographs and while they were hiking they saw triangle-shaped landforms called “fans” that especially looked like features on Mars. But, at first they didn’t know what they were.

During their short time in Alaska they saw over 200 snow, ice and/or rock avalanches. They realized these events were creating the fan-like features in Alaska, and determined similar avalanches on Mars were creating those same features. Additionally, they believed avalanches could still occur on Mars due to changes in temperatures from sunlight hitting a cliff wall.

At a presentation at the Lunar and Planetary science conference, Kochel and Trop shared their findings and explained that with a bit of luck and good timing, it would be possible to snap photographs of Martian avalanches.

Amazingly, soon afterwards the orbiter sent back images of an ice flow avalanche in action on Mars. Pieces of ice, dust and possibly rocks crashed down from high, steep areas, sending clouds of fine material billowing upwards. The cloud itself was about 180 meters across. The exact cause of the avalanche isn’t known with certainty, but it could be because the sun warmed layers of ice. This was the first time an avalanche had been observed on another world, and was the perfect confirmation of Kochel and Trop’s ideas.

Studies like this show that although Earth and Mars are very different places, in many ways they can be astoundingly similar.

Here are more images of the Mars Avalanche.

Original News Source: Astrobiology Magazine

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Snuggling Up to Venus

Artist's conception of Venus Express. Image credit: ESA

ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft will be cozying up to the planet it has been studying for over two years to begin new and more detailed observations of Venus. This week, engineers began executing a series of maneuvers to gradually bring the spacecraft to a new orbit, closer to Venus. In its new, modified orbit the spacecraft will be able to observe unexplored regions and investigate phenomena that were not within its reach before. The maneuvers will be executed through the month of July, settling it into its new orbit by August 4. Venus Express will eventually get close enough to the planet to dip slightly into the atmosphere, testing out its aerobraking capabilities to further alter its orbit, as well as evaluating the density of the upper atmosphere by measuring the drag on the spacecraft with its on-board accelerometers.

Until now, Venus Express has occupied a highly eccentric polar orbit: at its closest point (pericentre), the spacecraft is between 250 km and 400 km from the planet, and at its farthest (apocentre), it is about 66,000 km away. The pericentre is located at 84° north.

This eccentric orbit was designed to facilitate observation of the southern hemisphere for extended periods, while being able to obtain close observations of northern hemisphere and northern polar regions.
The lowering of the Venus Express orbit is the first step in for more ambitious explorations of Venus, especially of its atmosphere.

Venus Express has already found a highly variable quantity of the volcanic gas sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere of the planet. Scientists are trying to determine if this is evidence for active volcanoes on Venus, or by another unknown mechanism affecting the upper atmosphere.

Now, the altitude of the pericentre will now be lowered to between 185 and 300 km. This modification will enable the following science advantages:
• Study of the magnetic field in the northern polar region
• Study of the plasma environment deeper in the ionosphere
• To indirectly deduce the density of the planet’s atmosphere by measuring the force, or drag, exerted by the planet’s atmosphere on the body of the spacecraft as it moves closer to the planet

Venus Express is European Space Agency’s first mission to Venus. Launched in November 2005, the spacecraft arrived at the planet on 11 April 2006 and began science observations within a month. Since then, it has continuously been making new discoveries and revising our knowledge of Venus.

As of April of this year the spacecraft had returned over 1277 gigabits of data to Earth.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Where In The Universe Challenge #12

It’s time once again for another “Where In The Universe” challenge. See if you can guess where in our vast universe this picture was taken. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image, too. We’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback on this challenge, and readers seem to enjoy this weekly test of their visual space-themed recognition skills. And we’ve been enjoying the reader comments on their successful and the not-so-successful identification of these space images. We’ve learned so much about the universe by the images taken by all the different spacecraft, and scientists can refer again and again images to study the fine details. And sometimes, they see something they didn’t even know was there.

Alright, its time to make your guess, and no peeking below before your guess has been made.

This is an image of Jupiter’s rings, taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, from the dark side of Jupiter. The faint ring system is shown in this color composite as two light orange lines protruding from the left side of Jupiter’s limb. This picture was taken in Jupiter’s shadow through orange and violet filters. Voyager 2 was at a range of 1,450,000 kilometers (900,000 miles), and about 2 degrees below the plane of the ring.

We didn’t know Jupiter had rings until the Voyagers found them in 1979. Jupiter’s rings are very dark, unlike Saturn’s rings which contain lots of ice and are very reflective. Not until the Galileo mission which orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, did scientists figure out the rings were made of dust and materials kicked up by meteoroids slamming into Jupiter’s inner moons.


Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter on March 5, 1979, taking more than 18,000 images of planet and its moons. Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter on July 9, 1979, taking about the same number. Between the two Voyager spacecraft, three new moons and a thin, dark ring were discovered. Voyager images of Jupiter’s moon Io revealed active volcanoes, the first ever discovered on another body besides Earth.

How did you do on this challenge?

Posted on by Ian O'Neill

Japanese SELENE (Kaguya) Lunar Mission Spots Apollo 15 Landing Site (Images)

The Apollo 15 Lunar Module in 1971 (NASA)

The Japanese lunar mission SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer), also known as “Kaguya” has imaged the “halo” left behind in the lunar surface from Apollo 15’s lunar module engine exhaust plume. This is the first time a mission after the Apollo Program has detected such a feature. Apollo 15 landed on the Moon in 1971 in a region called Mare Imbrium, and SELENE’s Terrain Camera (TC) is continuing to reconstruct a 3D view of the region in unprecedented high-resolution.

The Hadley Rille, at the foot of the Apennine Mountains encircling the Mare Imbrium where Apollo 15 landed (NASA/JAXA)
The Hadley Rille, at the foot of the Apennine Mountains encircling the Mare Imbrium where Apollo 15 landed (NASA/JAXA)

Apollo 15 touched down on the lunar surface on July 31st, 1971 with David Scott and James Irwin, to carry out 18.5 hours of lunar extra-vehicular activity. This was the first “J mission” where a greater emphasis was placed on scientific studies. After the lunar module blasted off from the Moon, the lunar astronauts looked back on the launch site to see a fresh “halo” had formed after the surface was exposed to the module’s engine exhaust plume. The NASA astronauts took before and after shots of the landing zone where a lightening of the surface is evident. This halo had not been observed since Apollo 15, until the high resolution Terrain Camera on board SELENE imaged the region.

Apollo 15 halo as observed by SELENE (JAXA)
Apollo 15 halo as observed by SELENE (JAXA)

The image (pictured left) processed by the SELENE mission instrument team appears to show a bright patch in the exact location of the Apollo 15 lunar module landing zone at the foot of the Apennine Mountains around the Mare Imbrium close to “Hadley Rille.” The Hadley Rille is a sinuous rille with a length of 80km and depth of 300m. A “sinuous rille” is a long, narrow, meandering depression in the lunar surface (much like a river basin, minus water). One of the primary mission objectives of Apollo 15 was to understand the origin of this rille. The most likely cause of Hadley Rille is lava flow during early development of the Moon. For the Apollo 15 astronauts, this region will have been an awesome sight, especially being at the base of the towering Apennine Mountains.

Comparison between 3D SELENE landscape and Apollo 15 photo (JAXA/NASA)
Comparison between 3D SELENE landscape and Apollo 15 photo (JAXA/NASA)

The TC instrument has been instrumental in creating 3D visualizations of the lunar surface. In the example left, a comparison of the TC reconstruction and an actual Apollo 15 photograph are compared. Although some of the detail is missing (as the individual rocks are below the 10 meter resolving power of the orbiting camera), the scenes are identical. The SELENE mission (launched in 2007) continues to generate a huge amount of 3D data, contributing to some of the most detailed maps of the lunar surface ever created.

Source: JAXA

Posted on by Jerry Coffey

Olympus Mons: The Largest Volcano in the Solar System

Olympus Mons from Orbit
Olympus Mons from orbit. Credit: NASA

The largest volcano in the Solar System and the largest mountain in the Solar System are one in the same: Olympus Mons on Mars.

Olympus Mons is a shield volcano that towers to an amazing 26 km. That makes it 3 times the height of Mt. Everest. Unlike Everest, Olympus Mons has a very gentle slope. It is up to 550 km at its base. The edge of the volcano’s base is marked by a basal cliff that is 6 km high in some places, but has been eradicated by the overflow of lava in the Martian past.

Olympus Mons is the result of many thousands of basaltic lava flows. The extraordinary size of the volcano has been attributed to the lack of tectonic plate movement on the planet. The lack of movement allows the Martian crust to remain fixed in place over a magma hotspot allowing repeated, large lava flows. Many of these flows have levees along their edges. The cooler, outer margins of the flow solidify, forming the levees and leaving a central trough of molten, flowing lava. In images of the volcano you can see partially collapsed lava tubes seen as chains of pit craters. Broad lava fans formed by lava emerging from intact, subsurface tubes are easily visible as well. Some areas along the volcano’s base show lava flows spilling out into the surrounding plains, forming broad aprons, which are burying the basal escarpment. Crater counts taken by the high resolution images returned by the Mars Express spacecraft in 2004 seem to show that flows on the northwestern flank range in age from 2 million years old to 115 million years old. Since these flows are geologically young, it may indicate that the volcano is still active.

The Olympus Mons caldera complex is made up of at least six overlapping calderas and segments of caldera. Each caldera formed when the roof collapsed following depletion and retreat of the subsurface magma chamber, so each caldera represents a separate eruption. A ‘lake of lava’ seems to have formed the the largest and oldest caldera segment. Using geometric relationships based on caldera dimensions, scientists estimate that the magma chamber associated with this caldera lies about 32 km below the floor of the caldera. Crater size/frequency distributions indicate the calderas range in age from 350 million years ago to about 150 million years ago and may have all formed within 100 million years of each other.

As the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons has been extensively studied. Those studies have been helped by the closeness of Mars. Those studies will continue into the future as will the exploration of the entire planet.

We’ve had many stories about Olympus Mons on Universe Today. Here’s an article about landslides on the side of Olympus Mons, and anther about how Olympus Mons might have been active recently.

Here’s a website all about Olympus Mons, and more information from Exploring Mars.

We have recorded a whole series of podcasts about the Solar System at Astronomy Cast. Check them out here.

References:
NASA StarChild
NASA: Olympus Mons from Orbit

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Take Up a Collection For NASA

A NASA contractor needs urine. And lots of it, too, about 30 liters (8 gallons) a day, even on weekends. All the details, if you need to know or need to go, of how to collect the specimens are over at SpaceRef, but the quick scoop is that contractor Hamilton Sundstrand is seeking urine from workers at the Johnson Space Center. The company is working on the new Orion space capsule that will replace the shuttle and eventually take astronauts to the moon. This is nothing new. NASA has a long-standing tradition of collecting samples from its workers to help design better space toilets because “you can’t make fake urine,” said John Lewis, NASA’s head of life support systems for Orion.

The contractor is working on how to deal with pee up in space and on the moon. “Urine is a mess because urine is full of solids,” said Lewis. Those solids clog the venting system for dumping pee, so keeping the waste disposal system clear is “really a challenge,” he said.

Here’s an article we did a few months ago about recycling urine on long duration space flights.

An email soliciting urine was sent out to JSC employees, but wasn’t meant to go public, Lewis said. In part the email said:

The Orion Program will be holding a urine collection study starting Monday, July 21 and running through Thursday, July 31, 2008. We are looking for donors as we need to collect a large amount of urine per day for the entire 11 day period. Please contact [deleted] at [deleted]@hs.utc.com to express interest in donating or to get answers to any questions you have regarding the study. We will be hosting an informational meeting with encouraged attendance for potential urine donors from 11-11:30 a.m. Thursday, July 17, 2008 in the first floor conference room. In this meeting we will go over instructions and guidelines for the study and introduce volunteers to the equipment that will be used in the study. If you are unable to attend this meeting due to scheduling conflicts, we can set up another time to clarify the study operations on an individual basis.”

Again, if you need to know more, see the entire email here.

Don’t we just love to read other people’s mail?

Original News Sources: CNN, NASA Watch

Posted on by Jerry Coffey

Diameter of the Solar System

Artist's impression of the Oort Cloud. (NASA/JPL)

Defining the diameter of the Solar System is a matter of perspective and characterization. You can look at the Solar System’s diameter as ending at the aphelion of the orbit of the farthest planet, the edge of the heliosphere, or ending at the farthest observable object. To cover all of the objective bases, we will look at all three.

Looking at the aphelion(according to NASA figures) of the orbit of the farthest acknowledged planet, Neptune, the Solar System would have a radius of 4.545 billion km and a 9.09 billion km diameter. This diameter could change if the dwarf planet Eris is promoted after further study.

Sedna is three times farther away from Earth than Pluto, making it the most distant observable object known in the solar system. It is 143.73 billion km from the Sun, thus giving the Solar System a diameter of 287.46 billion km. Now, that is a lot of zeros, so let’s simplify it into astronomical units. 1 AU(distance from the Earth to the Sun) equals 149,597,870.691 km. Based on that figure, Sedna is nearly 960.78 AU from the Sun and the Solar System is 1,921.56 AU in diameter.

A third way to look at the diameter of the Solar System is to assume that it ends at the edge of the heliosphere. The heliosphere is often described as a bubble where the solar wind pushes against the interstellar medium and edge of where the Sun’s gravitational forces are stronger than those of other stars. The heliopause is the term given as the edge of that influence, where the solar wind is stopped and the gravitational force of our Sun fades. That occurs at about 90 AU, giving the Solar System a diameter of 180 AU. If the Sun’s influence ends here, how could Sedna be considered part of the Solar System, you may wonder. While it is beyond the heliopause at aphelion, it falls back within it at perihelion(around 76 AU).

Those determinations of the diameter of the Solar System may seem about as clear as mud, but they give you an idea of what scientists are trying to place a definitive value on. The distances involved are mind boggling and there are too many unknowns to place a absolute figure. Perhaps, an exact number will be determinable as the Voyager probes continue their outward journey.

Here’s an article on Universe Today about the closest star to Earth, and another about how long it would take to travel to the closest star.

Here’s an article from the Physics Factbook about the diameter of the Solar System, and a cool way to visualize it using the Earth as a peppercorn.

We have recorded a whole series of podcasts about the Solar System at Astronomy Cast. Check them out here.

References:
Neptune Fact Sheet
NASA: Planet-Like Body Discovered at Fringes of Our Solar System
NASA Science: Heliophysics
Wikipedia