Tag: exploration

Ingenuity in close-up after two years on Mars

9:48 am

Ingenuity in close-up after two years on Mars
Click for original image, with more information about it here.

With the Mars rover Perseverance now only about seventy-five feet away from the helicopter Ingenuity, the closest the two robots have been on Mars since Ingenuity was deployed in April 2021, the science team used Perseverance’s high resolution camera to take a new close up of the helicopter.

That picture, reduced and sharpened to post here, is to the right. From the caption:

Small diodes (visible more clearly in this image of helicopter) appear as small protrusions on the top of the helicopter’s solar panel. The panel and the two 4-foot (1.2-meter) counter-rotating rotors have accumulated a fine coating of dust. The metalized insulating film covering the exterior of the helicopter’s fuselage appears to be intact. Ingenuity’s color, 13-megapixel, horizon-facing terrain camera can be seen at the center-bottom of the fuselage.

This close-up is important to determine the overall state of the helicopter after two years on Mars. The engineering team that operates it does not know how much longer Ingenuity can last, so any data on its condition is extremely helpful.

That fine coat of dust on the panel and the rotors tells us that even flight and fast-rotating motion is not enough to keep such things clean on Mars. Thus we learn that there is likely no quick solution to the accumulation of dust on solar panels on Mars.

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Perseverance catches up with Ingenuity

10:57 am

Ingenuity as seen by Perseverance
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The photo above, cropped, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was taken on April 16, 2023 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance, and looks almost due west at the rim of Jezero Crater and the gap in that rim where the delta on which the rover presently travels poured through sometime in the distant past.

Near the center of the picture can be seen the helicopter Ingenuity, sitting where it landed after its fiftieth flight.

The overview map to the right provides the context. Ingenuity is the green dot, Perseverance the blue dot. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the picture. The red dotted line marks the planned route for Perseverance. Note how the rover has followed Ingenuity’s recent flight path almost precisely, moving to the north away from that red dotted line.

Ingenuity’s 51st flight is presently scheduled for tomorrow. The plan is to go about 600 feet to the west, landing approximately at the black dot.

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The very icy high northern latitudes of Mars

2:04 pm

Pedestal crater on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to me illustrates how the presence of near surface ice in the high latitudes of the northern lowland plains of Mars helps to produce a very strange and alien terrain.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 31, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical example of what the scientists have dubbed a “pedestal crater,” where the crater ends up higher than the surrounding terrain because the impact had packed the ground and made it more resistant to erosion.

This theory however does not explain entirely what we see here. That apron mesa surrounding the crater also resembles the kind of splash field that is created when an impact occurs in less dense ice-rich ground. Note too the soft stippled nature of the ground. Wind erosion is not the sole cause of change here.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes its 50th flight on Mars

10:28 am

Present location of Perseverance and Ingenuity on Mars
Click for interactive map.

The Ingenuity team yesterday announced that the Mars helicopter has successfully completed its 50th flight on Mars on April 13, 2023, flying 1,057.09 feet (322.2 meters) in 145.7 seconds, while setting a new altitude record of 59 feet. The green dot marks its new location on the overview map to the right, with the blue dot marking Perseverance.

Built with many off-the-shelf components, such as smartphone processors and cameras, Ingenuity is now 23 Earth months and 45 flights beyond its expected lifetime. The rotorcraft has flown for over 89 minutes and more than 7.1 miles (11.6 kilometers). “When we first flew, we thought we would be incredibly lucky to eke out five flights,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at JPL. “We have exceeded our expected cumulative flight time since our technology demonstration wrapped by 1,250% and expected distance flown by 2,214%.”

The helicopter is beginning to show signs of age, with its engineering team recognizing that its life could end at any time, especially because it now has to fly more often to keep ahead of Perseverance, while also keeping within communications range.

The helicopter however is now giving us clues as to where the Perseverance science team wants to send the rover. Notice how its path has shifted north away from its planned route (along the red dotted line) to travel just below the rim of Belva Crater, following Ingenuity. The helicopter team is thus providing the rover team some specific additional information about the ground ahead, aiding in planning travel.

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Lucy snaps its first pictures of four of the Trojan asteroids it will visit

10:05 am

Lucy's first look at four Trojan asteroid targets
Click for original movie.

Lucy's route through the solar system
Lucy’s route through the solar system

Though still many millions of miles away and really nothing more than tiny dots moving across the field of stars, the science team for the asteroid probe Lucy have used the probe to take its first pictures of four of the eight Trojan asteroids it will visit during its travels through the solar system, as shown on the map to the right. The dots along its path show where Lucy will fly past asteroids, some of which are binaries.

The image at the top is a screen capture from a very short movie created from all of the images Lucy took of each asteroid. If you click on the picture you will see that movie. As I say, at this distance, more than 330 million miles away, the asteroids are nothing more than dots. The short films of each were obtained by pictures taken over periods from two to 10 hours long, depending on the asteroid.

These asteriods are all in the L4 Trojans, the first that Lucy will visit from ’27 to ’28.

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Curiosity gets a software update that will speed its travels and better protect its wheels

9:45 am

Panorama on March 27, 2023 (Sol 3781)
Click for full resolution panorama. The original images can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Engineers this week completed a major software update on the Mars rover Curiosity that, among many other improvements, will allow it to travel more quickly across the rocky Martian surface but at the same time better protect its damaged wheels.

The team also wants to maintain the health of Curiosity’s aluminum wheels, which began showing signs of broken treads in 2013. When engineers realized that sharp rocks were chipping away at the treads, they came up with an algorithm to improve traction and reduce wheel wear by adjusting the rover’s speed depending on the rocks it’s rolling over.

The new software goes further by introducing two new mobility commands that reduce the amount of steering Curiosity needs to do while driving in an arc toward a specific waypoint. With less steering required, the team can reach the drive target quicker and decrease the wear that inherently comes with steering. “That ability was actually dreamed up during the Spirit and Opportunity days,” Denison said. “It was a ‘nice to have’ they decided not to implement.”

The software will also make it possible for Curiosity to travel more without the help of humans on Earth, which will also speed its travels up Mount Sharp, on ground that is getting increasingly rough, as shown in the mosaic above of navigation images from March 27th.

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A pyramid on Mars

1:04 pm

A pyramid on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “pyramidal mound”, which is I think understating the point somewhat.

This pyramid is almost perfectly square, with two perpendicular ridgelines rising from its corners to meet perfectly at the pyramid’s peak. A similar pyramid mound in the Cydonia region, where the so-called “Face on Mars” was found, caused endless absurd speculations in the 1990s of past Martian civilizations, all of which burst into nothingness when good high resolution images were finally obtained in the 2000s.

But what caused this very symmetrical natural feature?
» Read more

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Triple crater on Mars

1:19 pm

Triple crater on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on January 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists have labeled simply as a “triple crater,” a very apt description.

What caused this? The most obvious explanation is the arrival almost simultaneously of three pieces. As this asteroid or comet entered the thin Martian atmosphere as a single object, that atmosphere was thick enough to break it into three parts but not enough to destroy it entirely. When it hit the ground, the top piece hit first, with the center and bottom pieces following in sequence, thus partly obscuring the previous hits.

The smaller surrounding craters could either be additional pieces from the bolide, or secondary impacts from ejecta thrown out at impact.
» Read more

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SpaceX announces it will be providing a webcast for Starship’s first orbital flight

9:03 pm

Starship/Superheavy flight plan for first orbital flight
Click for original image.

SpaceX today revealed the details for its live stream of the first orbital launch of Superheavy/Starship, now targeting a launch date around April 21, 2023, depending on when the FAA issues the launch license.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin ~45 minutes before liftoff. As is the case with all developmental testing, this schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our social media channels for updates.

I will embed that live stream here on Behind the Black. Stay tuned for more information.

The flight plan is shown above. The website also provides a detailed timeline. If launch manages to pass through Max-Q and get to stage separation, Superheavy will do a flip to do a soft targeted landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Starship will continue into orbit, and then fire its engines to return to Earth to do a soft targeted landing in the Pacific northeast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

That is the plan. Much can go wrong along the way, considering Superheavy has never flown once, no less with Starship stacked on top. Furthermore, Starship has never flown in its present iteration. Previous suborbital tests were using much earlier prototypes vastly different that this prototype, #24 in the series.

Regardless whether all goes perfectly or some things fail, the launch will be a success because it will provide SpaceX data for future test flights, which are waiting in the wings.

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Weird surface cracking in the Martian northern lowland plains

11:56 am

Weird surface cracks on Mars

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The picture was simply labeled “Channel-like feature”, which hardly describes this strange terrain.

Apparently a mantle of surface material has covered and filled an ancient east-west channel. That surface material however has since cracked along the edges of that channel as well along its length. The cracks suggest that the material in the channel is moving downhill slowly, cracking along the cliff walls while also being pulled apart to form the north-south cracks.

My regular readers will I think be able to guess what is going on here, but if you can’t, the overview map below will help explain this.
» Read more

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Exploring the cratered southern highlands of Mars, part 4

3:53 pm

Overview map

Gullies in Asimov Crater
Click for full image.

Today is the last part in our four part exploration of the cratered southern highlands of Mars, begun last week. (For the early parts, go here-Part #1, here-Part #2, and here-Part #3.) Though there is no need, new readers should read the first three parts first, in order to get the larger perspective of this final post.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 20, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the eastern main gully descending down into a pit that sits in the north center of 52-mile-wide Asimov Crater, as shown in the inset on the overview map above. (For an MRO high resolution of the western gullies into this pit, see this January 2019 cool image post.)
» Read more

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The Earth hangs above the Moon

10:42 am

The Earth hangs above the Moon

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on December 10, 2015 and released by the LRO team this week. From the caption:

LRO slewed to the east as it passed over the northwest rim (-8.536°N, 251.028°E, 82 km altitude) of the Orientale basin and snapped this spectacular Earth-Moon sequence with the NAC and WAC [cameras]. Tropical Cyclone Bohale is visible in the center of the image. MODIS (onboard the NASA Aqua satellite) imaged the same storm 3 hours after LRO.

The NAC and WAC images of the Earth were projected using a Point-Perspective projection to recreate the view one would see from the LRO spacecraft while taking the NAC image. Due to the relatively slow speed of the spacecraft slew, many NAC framelets of the Earth were acquired. All these WAC frames were oversampled and averaged, enabling a “super-resolution” color image (115 pixels across!), which was then combined with the 4000-pixel-wide NAC image.

…[For the Earth:] North is to the left, Antarctica to the right, Australia at the top, and Africa at the bottom

NAC and WAC are names of two different LRO cameras, one of which captured the Earth in high resolution color while the other captured the Moon. The two images were then combined, superimposing the Earth at the right size onto the second lunar image.

As noted in the caption, this view is as LRO sees the Earth from Lunar orbit, while taking a slewed oblique image of the Moon. It however is not how things would look if you were standing on the surface of the Moon. For one, the photo is zoomed in to get details on the lunar surface, making the Earth appear much larger.

For another, the image is taken 82 kilometers or 51 miles above the Moon. This higher altitude changes the position of the Earth relative to the Moon, making it appear farther from the horizon.

To a person standing in Orientale basin at 8 degrees south latitude (near the equator), but also near the edge of the visible near side of the Moon, the Earth would likely be very close to the horizon, but much smaller. To get a comparable view of the Earth, the person would likely need to use binoculars.

Orientale basin is mostly on the far side of the Moon, though it was known to exist before the space age because ground-based telescopes could see it on the edge of the visible face. It was only with the first lunar orbiters was the basin imaged from directly above, revealing its large size and distinct concentric rings forming its several circular rims.

At this location, the Earth would essentially always remain at approximately the same spot in the sky, though its illuminated face would wax and wane, like the Moon’s does, during the Moon’s twenty-eight day-long day.

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