Tag: engineering

Where the flood lava of two gigantic Martian volcanoes meet

5:46 pm

Where the flood lava of two gigantic Martian volcanoes meet
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates once again the importance of looking not simply at the picture but at the surrounding larger context in order to understand the Martian features within the photograph.

The photo to the left, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is at 26 north latitude, so it is in the dry equatorial regions. It shows what appears to be a large Martian flood lava plain, with at least two different flood lava events appearing to flow to the northeast, with the second only partly covering the first.

From this high resolution image it seemed probable that the source of the flow was from the southwest, an assumption that at first glance is strengthened by the overview map below.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 48th flight on Mars

11:33 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On March 21, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 48th flight on Mars, flying 1,305 feet for 149.9 seconds with a top altitude of 39 feet. As has now become routine on all the recent flights, the distance and time in the air exceeded slightly the planned amounts, probably because Ingenuity needed slightly more time to find a good landing spot.

The link provides a very short movie created from images looking down during the flight.

The map to the right provides the context. The green dot and line indicates Ingenuity’s new position and flight path respectively. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location, a spot the mission planners had previously targeted as a prime place for obtaining core samples. The red dotted line shows the rover’s planned route.

Since the science team is now using Ingenuity for scouting purposes, its turn towards the rim of Belva Crater suggests they are considering this detour for Perseverance as well.

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NASA engineers continue to struggle to save the Flashlight lunar probe

10:30 am

In an update today, NASA reports that engineers continue to troubeshoot the failure of the experimental thrusters on the Lunar Flashlight cubesat, in an effort to improvise a way to get the probe into lunar orbit.

Shortly after launch on Dec. 11, 2022, the operations team for NASA’s Lunar Flashlight determined that three of the four CubeSat’s thrusters were underperforming. This cast doubt on whether the mission could complete its stretch science goal of detecting surface ice at the Moon’s South Pole. After analyzing the situation, team members at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Georgia Tech arrived at a creative maneuvering technique that would use the one fully-functioning thruster to get into planned orbit. But when attempting the modified maneuvers in January, that thruster also experienced a rapid loss in performance and the team determined that Lunar Flashlight would likely be unable to reach its planned near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon.

After further troubleshooting, the operations team has been working on ways to restore partial operation of one or more thrusters to keep the spacecraft within the Earth-Moon system. They have had some success but continue to try new things to clear the suspected obstructions in the thruster fuel lines. They have until the end of April to generate the required thrust to preserve the opportunity to allow for monthly flybys of the lunar South Pole.

Though it increasingly appears Lunar Flashlight will not make lunar orbit, the mission is not a failure, since it was first and foremost an engineering mission testing a variety of new cubesat technologies, including the failed thrusters. Their failure and the efforts by engineers to recover them is important data for developing better cubesat thrusters on future such planetary probes.

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Italy funds development by Avio of smallsat rocket and methane engine

10:13 am

In a move that might eventually separate Italy from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Arianespace commercial division, the Italian government on March 13, 2023 announced that it has committed $308 million to the Italian company Avio to develop both a methane-fueled engine and the smallsat rocket to go with it.

The money will be used by Avio on two projects, one to develop an upgraded version of its M10 methane-fueled engine that has already completed two dozen static fire tests, and the other to develop the smallsat rocket, with a targeted first launch in 2026.

While the investment is officially in partnership with the ESA, its wholly-Italian nature suggests in the end it will not be part of Arianespace, but function as an independent competing rocket operated and owned by Avio, which is also the company that developed Arianespace’s Vega family of rockets.

If Italy allows Avio to pull free of ESA and operate as a separate competing rocket company, it will do Europe a favor. Right now the monopolistic nature of ESA is preventing it from competing successfully in the new commercial launch market. Having separately owned and competing private companies will only energize this European industry, which has generally been moribund for years.

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First set of SpaceX’s second generation Starlink satellites experiencing issues

9:57 am

According to a tweet from Elon Musk yesterday, the first set of 21 larger second generation Starlink satellites, launched on February 27, 2023 by a Falcon 9 rocket, have experiencing “some issues.”

Some sats will be deorbited, others will be tested thoroughly before raising altitude above Space Station.

More information here.

Starting around March 15, their orbital altitude started to decrease at varying rates: most gradually, but at least two more steeply, descending to about 365 kilometers. All 21 remain in orbit, but that unusual behavior prompted speculation of problems with the satellites.

The second set of new Starlink satellites is scheduled for launch no earlier than March 30, 2023, but expect that launch to be delayed in order for SpaceX engineers to troubleshoot these issues and then apply what they have learned on the new satellites.

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Russia launches military satellite

9:50 am

Using its Soyuz-2 rocket, Russia today launched a classified military satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northern Russia.

The rocket flew north over the Arctic, with its first and second stages falling into the ocean.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

19 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in launches 21 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 21 to 18. SpaceX now trails the entire world combined, including American companies, 19 to 20.

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Second stage on Relativity’s first launch fails to fire

9:36 am

The first test launch of Relativity’s 3D rocket, Terran-1, achieved the mission’s minimum goals, with the first stage performing exactly as planned and the 3D-printed rocket successfully completing engine cut-off and stage separation.

At that point the second stage engine failed to fire, and the upper stage fell into the ocean.

I have embedded the live stream from last night below. The company had made it clear that their number one goal for this flight was getting that 3D-printed rocket through max-q, the time when the atmospheric pressures on the rocket are their greatest. In this area the launch was a success.

This was also the first American launch of a methane-fueled rocket, and it was fascinating seeing the difference in the rocket’s plumes from other fuel types. Terran-1’s engine plumes were a clear distinct blue, quite different from the white and smokey plumes produced by solid-fueled and kerosene-fueled rocket engines, and the almost invisible plume of space shuttle’s hydrogen-fueled engines.

As yet, no methane-fueled rocket has reached orbit, though two Chinese companies and Relativity have tried. SpaceX will try itself when it launches Superheavy/Starship.
» Read more

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Confused glaciers in a Martian crater

5:59 pm

Confused glaciers in a Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a strangely blobby crater in the northern mid-latitudes where glacial features are frequently found inside craters.

In this case however the glacier seems very confused. As this is in the northern hemisphere, you would expect glacial material to survive on the north-facing southern interior slopes of the crater, where there is year-round less sunlight. The mottled eroded terrain in the south part of the crater floor suggests this. However, the crater also clearly has a terraced glacier on its south-facing northern interior slopes.

Why has the glacial material survived in both places, but not in the center of the crater?

In addition, there is that strange roughly circular feature attached to the south side of the crater. What formed it? Is it a glacier on the plains surrounding the crater? Or are we looking at volcanic material?

This crater is also unique. The crater just to its southwest (partly seen in the cropped image above), is a much more typical glacial-filled mid-latitude crater, its interior material more evenly distributed and its circular rim only slightly distorted.
» Read more

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No ice inside permanently shadowed crater near Moon’s south pole?

12:44 pm

Marvin crater as seen by Shadowcam
Click for original image.

Overview map

Using a camera on South Korea’s lunar orbiter Danuri, dubbed Shadowcam and designed to look into the permanently shadowed craters at the Moon’s poles, scientists have taken an image that sees into the forever dark region of one such crater.

The picture to the right, released on March 13, 2023 by the Shadowcam science team, is of the crater Marvin, located about 16 miles to the east of the south pole. The pink outline indicates the area that is thought to be permanently shadowed.

The second image to the right provides a wider view of the south pole region, with the craters labeled and outlined by the green lines. The orange lines mark permanently shadowed areas. The white box indicates the approximate area covered by the Shadowcam picture. One of the candidate landing sites for Starship, as part of NASA’s Artemis program, is the eastern rim of Shackleton, essentially at the south pole itself.

Previous data suggests that ice should be found in those permanently shadowed areas, because other orbiters have detected evidence of hydrogen there. The Shadowcam picture above however shows nothing that strongly suggests the presence of ice, unless that darker flat area on the floor of the crater is ice-infused dust. If so however, it is quite ancient and solid, based on the presence of several craters within it.

The press release makes no mention of this question, probably because the scientists are still analyzing the data. This first look however suggests the ice is not there, or is in a form that is going to require a lot of processing to extract the water from it.

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Samples from Ryugu found to contain uracil, one of the four nucleobases in RNA

11:02 am

Japanese researchers analyzing the samples returned by Hayabusa-2 from the rubble-pile asteroid Ryugu have identified the molecule uracil, one of the four nucleobases that form the molecule RNA.

Hayabusa 2 collected 5.4 grams from two spots on Ryugu and delivered them to Earth on December 6, 2020. Early studies showed the samples contained many organic compounds. That led Oba’s group to analyze two 10-milligram samples using the same sensitive technique they had used earlier on meteorites. The technique can detect nucleic acid bases at levels down to parts per trillion in small samples.

Now, they report in Nature Communications that uracil is present at a level of parts per billion in both Ryugu samples. While this concentration is different than they’d previously found in meteorites, Oba says that might be because the parent bodies of the meteorites and of Ryugu underwent different levels of aqueous alteration and other processes. They also detected niacin (vitamin B3) as well as other organic molecules, but they didn’t find any other nucleobases.

RNA is formed from four nucleobases, uracil, adenine, cytosine, and guanine. To form DNA, the fundamental building block of life, uracil is replaced by thymine.

This data reinforces other data that suggests the formation of these essential molecules for life is relatively common and easy, at least in our solar system.

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Dimorphus is dry, based on data obtained before and after DART hit it

10:52 am

Data collected by the ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile before and after the impact by the DART probe in September 2022 has revealed that the rubble-pile asteroid Dimorphos is very dry, with little or no water.

[The astronomers] observed the Didymos–Dimorphos system on 11 occasions, from just before the impact to about a month afterwards. MUSE [one of VLT’s instruments] is able to split the light from the double-asteroid into a spectrum, or rainbow, of colors, to look for emission at specific wavelengths that corresponds to specific molecules. In particular, Opitom’s team searched the ejecta for water molecules and for oxygen that could have come from the break-up of water molecules by the impact. However, no evidence of water was detected. Dimorphos, at least, seems to be a dry asteroid.

You can read the paper here.

Some theories prior to DART’s impact suggested that there could be ice within some inner solar system asteroids. Finding none instead suggests that inner solar system asteroids are very distinct and different from the icy comets and asteroids either coming from or orbiting in the outer solar system.

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Webb detects “hot sand clouds” in atmosphere of exoplanet

10:40 am

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected “hot sand clouds” in atmosphere of exoplanet 40 light years away, along with evidence of water, methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sodium, and potassium.

You can read the paper here [pdf]. The exoplanet itself appears to have some features that resemble that of a brown dwarf, or failed star, instead of an exoplanet.

Although VHS 1256 b is more on the heavier side of the known exoplanets, its gravity is relatively low compared to more massive brown dwarfs. Such very low-mass stars can only burn deuterium for a relatively short duration. Consequently, the planet’s silicate clouds can appear and remain higher in its atmosphere, where the JWST can detect them. Another reason its skies are so turbulent is the planet’s age. In astronomical terms, it is pretty young. Only 150 million years have passed since it formed. The planet’s heat stems from the recent formation process – and it will continue to change and cool over billions of years.

The sand clouds are hot, in the range of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

These results were obtained as part of an early-release program from Webb, and illustrate the potential of the infrared space telescope for learning many specific details about brown dwarfs and exoplanets.

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Russia’s Luna-25 unmanned lunar lander to be delivered to Vostochny in early June

10:23 am


Click for interactive map.

According to Russia’s state-run press, its Luna-25 unmanned lunar lander will finally be delivered to its launchsite in Vostochny in the first ten days of June 2023, after many years of delays.

The press announcement made no mention of a launch date after delivery, though according to an earlier report Roscosmos is aiming for a July 13, 2023 launch date.

The landing site on the Moon is Boguslawsky crater, as indicated by the green dot on the map to the right. If it occurs as planned, it will join three other landers now targeting 2023 lunar landings, Ispace’s Hakuto-R1, Intuitive Machines Nova-C, and India’s Chandrayaan-3, with three of four landing in the Moon’s south pole regions. The white cross marks the location of the south pole itself, on the rim of Shackleton Crater.

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Virgin Orbit resumes limited operations

10:12 am

In anticipation of a possibly deal to save the company, Virgin Orbit officials have resumed limited operations, bringing back a small number of employees to work on crucial issues required for its next launch.

“Our first step will begin Thursday of this week, when we plan to return a subset of our team to focus on critical areas for our next mission,” Virgin Orbit said in a statement. “We are looking forward to getting back to our mission and returning to orbit.”

…Reuters reported that Virgin Orbit is working on a $200 million infusion from Texas-based venture capital investor Matthew Brown via a private share placement, citing a term sheet. Following a meeting by Virgin Orbit’s board on Tuesday, the two sides plan to close the deal on Friday, according to the non-binding term sheet, Reuters said.

Should the company resume full operations and launch again, I am certain it will not launch from the United Kingdom, at least not until the UK has fixed its launch licensing bureau, the Civil Aviation Authority, which took so long to approve Virgin Orbit’s launch from Cornwall it practically bankrupted the company.

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Hakuto-R1 enters lunar orbit

10:05 am

Lunar map showing Hakuto-R1's landing spot
Hakuto-R1’s planned landing site is in Atlas Crater.

The lunar lander Hakuto-R1, privately-built by the Japanese company Ispace, has now successfully entered lunar orbit in anticipation of its landing sometime next month.

Tokyo-based ispace said that its HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lander entered orbit at 9:24 p.m. Eastern March 20 after a burn by its main engine lasting several minutes. The company did not disclose the parameters of the orbit but said that the maneuver was a success.

…Entering orbit is the seventh of 10 milestones ispace set for the mission that started with launch preparations. The final three milestones are completing “orbital control maneuvers,” the landing itself and going into a steady state of activities after landing.

The spacecraft carries several payloads, the most significant of which is the United Arab Emirates Rashid rover.

If Hakuto-R1 completes its 10 milestones successfully, it will lay the groundwork for Ispace’s second Hakuto-R mission to the Moon in 2024, and an even larger lander on a third mission to follow, this time built in partnership with the American company Draper and carrying NASA payloads.

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A half-mile high Martian cliff on the verge of collapse

11:27 am

A half-mile Martian cliff on the verge of collapse
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows erosion gullies coming down off a mountain side, just north of a massive cliff that I estimate to be around 2,000 to 3,000 feet high.

Note the north-south-trending cracks. These suggest that this entire half-mile-high cliff face is slumping downward, cracking as it does so. The cracks at the start of the high flat-topped thumb-shaped mesa near the image bottom are especially intriguing. They suggest that this entire mesa might eventually separate and give way.

There is a specific reason this cliff face is slumping, as shown in the overview map below.
» Read more

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South Korean private rocket startup completes first suborbital rocket test

9:12 am

Innospace, a South Korean private rocket startup, on March 19, 2023 successfully completed the first test flight of a suborbital prototype, launching from Brazil’s Alcantara Launch Center.

The rocket flew for 4 minutes and 33 seconds before falling into the designated safety zone. The engine lasted for 106 seconds, which fell short of the previously planned 118 seconds, yet its performance was stable, according to Innospace. Hanbit-TLV, the test vehicle, is a 16.3-meter (53.5-foot) single-stage rocket designed to verify the performance of a 15-ton-thrust rocket engine developed by Innospace.

The company will now develop its full-scale orbital rocket, dubbed Hanbit-Nano, “capable of carrying 50-kilogram (110-pound) payload into space, equipped with a 15-ton-thrust hybrid engine powered by solid fuel and liquid oxidizer.” A 2024 launch is the goal, possibly from a new commercial spaceport in Norway.

More information here. The rocket also carried a payload for the Brazilian military, which is why by contract Innospace officials could not release the exact altitude reached by the rocket.

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A verde valley on Mars

12:59 pm

A verde valley on Mars
Click for original image.

In the southwest where I live, a valley dubbed “verde” (which means “green” in Spanish) is generally a place with a somewhat persistent river with lots of lush plant life. The Verde Valley in Arizona is the perfect example, with “close to 80% of the valley’s land … national forest.”

On Mars there is also a verde valley, but the name is not descriptive in the least. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows one section of the Martian Verde Vallis, draining south to north.

The dark rippled patches inside this shallow canyon are sand dunes. In fact, though MRO has not taken many high resolution images of Verde Vallis, every one shows the valley with further patches of ripple dunes. See for example this image of a section of the valley just a bit farther north.
» Read more

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Blobs and jellyfish in space

10:00 am

Blobs and Jellyfish
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released today.

The galaxy JW100 features prominently in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with streams of star-forming gas dripping from the disc of the galaxy like streaks of fresh paint. These tendrils of bright gas are formed by a process called ram pressure stripping, and their resemblance to dangling tentacles has led astronomers to refer to JW100 as a ‘jellyfish’ galaxy. It is located in the constellation Pegasus, over 800 million light-years away.

Ram pressure stripping occurs when galaxies encounter the diffuse gas that pervades galaxy clusters. As galaxies plough through this tenuous gas it acts like a headwind, stripping gas and dust from the galaxy and creating the trailing streamers that prominently adorn JW100. The bright elliptical patches in the image are other galaxies in the cluster that hosts JW100.

The image was part of a research project studying star formation in the tendrils of jellyfish galaxies.

The blob near the top of the image is another galaxy in this same galaxy cluster. It is an elliptical galaxy that also happens to have two central nuclei, caused when two smaller galaxies merged. The central regions of each have not yet merged into one.

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SpaceX launches two SES communication satellites

5:50 pm

Only a few hours after SpaceX launched 52 Starlink satellites from California, the company successfully launched two communications satellites for the Luxembourg company SES, using its Falcon 9 rocket launching from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The rocket’s two fairings completed their third and seventh flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

19 SpaceX
11 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 21 to 11 in the national rankings of this year’s launches, and the whole world combined 21 to 17. SpaceX by itself is tied with the rest of the world, including other American companies, 19 to 19.

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Starship launch still stalled by FAA

3:47 pm

According to a tweet by Elon Musk today, Starship will be ready for its first orbital test launch in a few weeks.

Musk also noted however that SpaceX is still awaiting the FAA’s launch license, and because of this he now expects the launch in the third week in April.

Why it is taking months for the FAA to issue this license is disturbing, and suggests that under the Biden administration the feds are behaving more and more like the incompetent Civil Aviation Authority in the UK, which stonewalled Virgin Orbit’s launch for months so that the company now sits on the verge of bankruptcy.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay for this story, who will be gone for the next two weeks on vacation. Have fun Jay.

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SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites

2:58 pm

SpaceX today successfully put another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 8th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

A second SpaceX launch today, this time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, is set to launch very shortly, so the leader board for the 2023 launch race will also change as well:

18 SpaceX
11 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 20 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 20 to 17. SpaceX now trails the entire world, including American companies. 18 to 19.

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The ubiquitous presence of ice in the Martian mid-latitudes

1:01 pm

Ice in the Martian mid-latitudes
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, rotated, and sharpened to post here, was taken on November 28, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “crater with mesa”, it gives us another example of the presence of glacial ice in the mid-latitudes of Mars.

That mesa is what planetary scientists have labeled “concentric crater fill,” a glacial feature found in numerous craters throughout the mid-latitude bands from 30 to 60 degrees latitude. The ground in the terrain surrounding the crater could be also be impregnated with ice, but based on the location as shown in the overview map below, it is just as likely to be lava.

In fact, the location of this particular crater illustrates why concentric crater fill might become the best source of ice for future colonists.
» Read more

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Both India’s Chandrayaan-3 and Intuitive Machine’s Nova-C lunar landers pass vibration tests

9:21 am


Click for interactive map.

According to separate announcements just released, both India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander/rover and Intuitive Machine’s private Nova-C lunar lander have passed their last ground tests and are now ready for launch to the Moon later this year.

India’s space agency ISRO successfully completed testing of its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover in early March, completing vibration tests of the spacecraft and proving it will be able to survive the stresses during launch. The spacecraft successfully completed radiation testing in February.

ISRO is now targeting June 2023 for Chandrayaan-3’s launch.

Intuitive Machines meanwhile announced yesterday that its Nova-C lander has completed vibration testing, and is ready for launch later this year.

The map to the right shows the landing sites of these planned landers near the Moon’s south pole (indicated by the white cross), as well as Russia’s long-delayed lunar lander, Luna-25, which is now targeting a July launch.

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Astra asks for more time from Nasdaq before its stock is delisted

8:54 am

The rocket startup Astra has now asked Nasdaq to give it an extra six months beyond the early April deadline to get its stock price above $1 in order to avoid getting delisted from the stock market.

With its share price at $0.42 upon closing Thursday, Astra Chief Financial Officer Axel Martinez wrote in a blog post that the space company formally requested on Monday another six-month window to raise the share price above $1 for 10 consecutive business days as required to stave off a delisting.

It appears the company might be considering a reverse-stock split, whereby stocks are combined with the total number reduced, thus artificially raising the stock price. Nasdaq will consider this tactic an acceptable solution, though it is also considered a last-ditch approach.

Right now Astra is no longer an operational rocket company, having discontinued its Rocket-3 rocket. It says it is developing a new rocket, dubbed Rocket-4, but whether it can get this operational before it runs out of money or gets delisted remains unknown.

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Rocket Lab and China launch satellites successfully

8:40 am

Both the American company Rocket Lab and China have successfully placed satellites in orbit in the past day.

First, Rocket Lab successfully placed two Earth observation satellites for the company Capella yesterday. This was also its second launch from Wallops Island in Virginia. The company made no attempt to recover the first stage.

Next, China today used its Long March 3B rocket to place its own Earth observation satellite into orbit from its Xichang spaceport, located in the country’s northeast but far from the ocean. No word on whether the rocket’s first stage and four strap-on boosters crashed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

17 SpaceX
11 China
4 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

For the rest of the year, I will only list the leaders with each launch update. At this moment, American private enterprise leads China 19 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 19 to 17. SpaceX alone now trails the rest of the world combined, including American companies, 17 to 19.

These numbers will likely change later today, as SpaceX has two launches scheduled in just a few hours. One launch will place two communications satellites in orbit for the Luxembourg company SES. The other will launch another 52 Starlink satellites.

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Endless ripple dunes in Mars’ third largest impact basin

2:24 pm

Ripple dunes in Mars' third biggest impact basin
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on November 30, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The section cropped shows only a small portion of the endless ripple dunes seen in this area. The color strip provides us some interesting other details as well as mysteries. The orange indicates dust on the ridges as well as the higher terrain near the center of the picture. The green in the hollows as well as to the east and west suggests coarser materials that have settled in lower elevations. This supposition is reinforced by the orange area near the bottom of the picture where the ripples have mostly dissipated. This is a high spot, and we appear to be looking at a dusty surface. (This impression is clearer in the full image.)

The latitude is high, 48 degrees south, but as far as I know orbital images have not found a lot of ice evidence in this part of Mars.
» Read more

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Student cubesat demonstrates how to use a solar sail for satellite deorbit

10:04 am

Using cheap off-the-shelf parts students at Brown University have successfully tested a simple solar sail in space and shown how it can be used to de-orbit satellites efficiently and inexpensively.

They built a satellite on a shoestring budget and using off-the-shelf supplies available at most hardware stores. They even sent the satellite — which is powered by 48 Energizer AA batteries and a $20 microprocessor popular with robot hobbyists — into space about 10 months ago, hitching a ride on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket.

…The students added a 3D-printed drag sail made from Kapton polyimide film to the bread-loaf-sized cube satellite they built. Upon deployment at about 520 kilometers — well above the orbit of the International Space Station — the sail popped open like an umbrella and is helping to push the satellite back down to Earth sooner, according to initial data. In fact, the satellite is well below the other small devices that deployed with it. In early March, for instance, the satellite was at about 470 kilometers above the Earth while the other objects were still in orbit at about 500 kilometers or more.

Based on the data, it is expected the cubesat will burn up in the atmosphere in five years, not twenty-five or so predicted for the other cubesats launched to the same orbital elevation.

This experiment above all proves that most of the very expensive demo missions to test this kind of technology have been grossly over-budget. The entire cost of this student-built project was just $10,000, and it actually was more successful in proving this technology than a number of past solar sail projects that cost millions.

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Another study finds evidence of active volcanism on Venus

9:52 am

Changes in volcanic vent on Venus over eight months
Click for original image.

Using archival data from the Magellan spacecraft that orbited Venus in the early 1990s scientists think they have identified an active vent that appeared to change shape based on radar images taken eight months apart.

From the abstract of their paper:

We examine volcanic areas on Venus that were imaged two or three times by Magellan and identify a ~2.2 km2 volcanic vent that changed shape in the eight months between two radar images. Additional volcanic flows downhill from the vent are visible in the second epoch images, though we cannot rule out that they were present but invisible in the first epoch due to differences in imaging geometry. We interpret these results as ongoing volcanic activity on Venus.

This result is different that other research released last month that used Magellan data to identify geological features on Venus most likely to be active. In today’s results the scientists think they have spotted an actual volcanic eruption, as shown in the two images to the right. The image is taken from Figure 2 of the paper, with the changes in the center bottom vent clearly visible.

There is much uncertainty in these results that must be mentioned. The images are not optical but radar, so the scientists had to do a lot of computer processing to get the final result. They also compared this work with computer simulations to help confirm their conclusions.

The results also leave open the question of the total amount of volcanism presently active on Venus. As the scientists note in their conclusion, “With only one changed feature, we cannot determine how common currently active volcanism is on Venus.”

Nonetheless, the research using both new and archival data in the past thirty years is increasingly telling us that there is some active volcanism on Venus, hidden beneath its thick hellish cloudy atmosphere.

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