Tag: science

Hubble data detects persistent water vapor on one of Europa’s hemispheres

1:30 pm

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope spanning sixteen Earth years, scientists have detected the presence of water vapor on Europa, but strangely spread only across one of the moon’s hemispheres.

Previous observations of water vapor on Europa have been associated with plumes erupting through the ice, as photographed by Hubble in 2013. They are analogous to geysers on Earth, but extend more than 60 miles high. They produce transient blobs of water vapor in the moon’s atmosphere, which is only one-billionth the surface pressure of Earth’s atmosphere.

The new results, however, show similar amounts of water vapor spread over a larger area of Europa in Hubble observations spanning from 1999 to 2015. This suggests a long-term presence of a water vapor atmosphere only in Europa’s trailing hemisphere – that portion of the moon that is always opposite its direction of motion along its orbit. The cause of this asymmetry between the leading and trailing hemisphere is not fully understood.

First, it must be emphasized that the amounts of atmospheric water being discussed are tiny, so tiny that on Earth we might consider this a vacuum.

Second, that the water vapor is only seen on the trailing hemisphere suggests there is some sort of orbital influence involved, though what that influence is remains unknown.

Hopefully when Europa Clipper finally arrives in orbit around Jupiter in 2030, with a path that will fly past Europa fifty times, we will some clarity on these questions.

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A gecko on Mars

12:24 pm

Gecko on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is also today’s picture of the day from the science team of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO. That picture, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, can be seen to the right. As the caption authors Sharon Wilson and Sarah Sutton write:

The smooth volcanic surfaces in the Gordii Fossae region are sometimes interrupted by long, narrow troughs, or fissures. These fissures form when underground faults, possibly involving magma movement, reach the near-surface, allowing material to collapse into pits or an elongated trough. This fissure appears to have erupted material that flowed onto the surface.

If you use your imagination, this trough resembles a gecko with its long tail and web-shaped feet!

This impression is even more evident in the wider image taken by MRO’s context camera below.
» Read more

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Webb telescope finally arrives at launch site in French Guiana

2:54 pm

Webb deployment

After almost twenty years of construction (a decade behind schedule) and a cost of $10 billion, ($9.5 billion over budget), the James Webb Space Telescope today arrived at the processing facility at Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport, where it will be prepared for a December 18, 2021 launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Once launched the telescope, which is not a replacement for Hubble because it observes in the infrared (not optical) and is optimized for deep space cosmology, will take two weeks to reach its orbital position about a million miles from Earth, as shown in the graphic.

Let us all cross our fingers and toes that it all works as designed, for if it doesn’t this will be the biggest failure ever in the history of NASA.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Brownstone Institute blackballed by LinkedIn for associating with famed Harvard epidemiologist

11:12 am

They’re coming for you next: The non-profit Brownstone Institute, founded in 2021 to provide an outlet for educated dissent on science and economic issues, has found itself repeatedly censored by LinkedIn in the past two weeks because one of its founders is famed Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff.

Brownstone Institute: Censored

If you are a regular reader of this column you might remember Kulldorff’s name. He was blacklisted by the CDC, Twitter, and LinkedIn in late August because he dissents from the oppressive lockdown policies those organizations advocate. He was also one of the leading authors of the Great Barrington Declaration [also available here a pdf], which strongly opposes the policies of lockdowns, mandates, and the other totalitarian actions taken by governments since 2020, and instead calls for the more traditional (and successful) “focused” approach for dealing with epidemics and diseases: Protect the vulnerable (the old and sick) from the disease while letting everyone else (the young and healthy) live normal lives and thus get infected quickly, become immune, and thus squelch off the virus.

Kulldorff is also one of the world’s preeminent experts on vaccine safety and “helped develop the CDC’s current system for monitoring potential vaccine risks.”

Anyway, it appears that on October 1st, LinkedIn suddenly discovered that Kulldorff was one of the senior scholars at the Brownstone Institute, and began deleting the institute’s posts.
» Read more

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Dusty chaos in Martian canyons

1:37 pm

Outcrops in dusty chaos on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the dusty dry floor of the chaos region of rough terrain in a side canyon of Valles Marineris, near its outlet. The color strip and the bright outcrops suggest that this terrain contains interesting minerals and resources. To determine exactly what those materials are however requires more information not available in this photo.

This ancient chaos terrain is the leftover eroded sea floor of a intermittent inland sea, leftover water from the catastrophic floods that are theorized to have flowed out of Valles Marineris and carved its gigantic canyons.

The overview map below shows this hypothesized sea.
» Read more

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Ancient fossil river in the very dry equatorial regions of Mars

1:27 pm

Inverted Channel on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 29, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label an “inverted channel in Arabia Terra,” a small example of the more than 10,000 miles of fossilized rivers in this region on Mars that scientists have identified using MRO.

They are made of sand and gravel deposited by a river and when the river becomes dry, the channels are left upstanding as the surrounding material erodes. On Earth, inverted channels often occur in dry, desert environments like Oman, Egypt, or Utah, where erosion rates are low – in most other environments, the channels are worn away before they can become inverted. “The networks of inverted channels in Arabia Terra are about 30m high and up to 1–2km wide, so we think they are probably the remains of giant rivers that flowed billions of years ago. [emphasis mine]

Since this fossilized river is located at 11 degrees north latitude, smack in the middle of the dry equatorial regions of Mars, it has certainly been a dry desert for a very long time. You can see how barren the terrain appears by looking at the wider view afforded by MRO’s context camera below.
» Read more

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As expected, Pluto’s atmosphere is freezing as its orbit takes it from the Sun

10:48 am

Data from ground-based telescopes has now confirmed that Pluto’s nitrogen atmosphere has begun it annual winter freeze out as the planet’s somewhat elliptical 248-year-long orbit takes it away from the Sun.

For about 25 years, Pluto has been moving farther and farther away from the sun, so its surface temperature has been going down. And with these recent observations, the researchers found evidence showing that Pluto’s atmosphere is actually refreezing back onto its surface as the dwarf planet gets colder and colder. Pluto is so far from the sun that, as time goes on, it will get distinctly farther away (and colder) before getting closer to the sun in other regions of its immense orbit.

The astronomers were able to detect this refreezing by observing the planet as it eclipsed a star in 2018.

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Data from Perseverance confirms Jezero Crater once held a lake

6:52 am

figure 5 from paper showing ancient lake in Jezero Crater

According to a newly published paper, the data obtained by the rover Perseverance has confirmed and refined what orbital data has suggested, that Jezero Crater once held a lake. From the abstract:

We analyze images taken by the rover in the three months after landing. The fan has outcrop faces that were invisible from orbit, which record the hydrological evolution of Jezero crater. We interpret the presence of inclined strata in these outcrops as evidence of deltas that advanced into a lake. In contrast, the uppermost fan strata are composed of boulder conglomerates, which imply deposition by episodic high-energy floods. This sedimentary succession indicates a transition, from a sustained hydrologic activity in a persistent lake environment, to highly energetic short-duration fluvial flows.

In other words, the crater first held a lake, which as it slowly dried out was periodically renewed by flash floods. The distinct delta of material that made Jezero Crater the prime landing site was apparently formed during the period when the lake existed. The conditions that caused the subsequent flash floods is as yet not been determined, though it likely is related to the red planet’s long term evolution.

The image above, figure 5 from the paper, shows the inferred lake in that early history. The red cross marks Perseverance’s landing site.

This data reinforces the fundamental scientific mystery of Mars. It shows evidence that liquid water once flowed on the surface of Mars, even though other long term data of the planet’s history says the Martian atmosphere has been too thin and too cold to allow that to happen. There is evidence that the atmosphere might have once been thicker, but no computer model or theory has been able to produce a time when it was warm enough.

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Chang’e-5 lunar samples youngest ever found

6:28 am

The uncertainty of science: The lunar samples returned to Earth by China’s Chang’e-5 lander have been found to be the youngest ever found, about two billion years old and a billion years younger than any other previous sample, with a composition that confirms the material in this area was also the youngest volcanism so far found on the Moon.

Collecting young lunar rocks was one of the main objectives for the Chang’e-5 mission, which sent a lander to the Moon in December 2020. The craft grabbed 1.7 kilogram (4 pounds) of lunar regolith from the vast volcanic plain of Oceanus Procellarum and flew back to Earth within the month. Observations from lunar orbit had identified this mare to be younger than other areas by its paucity of craters, which suggested that the lava there had flowed more recently. By dating the samples returned to Earth, the scientists confirm that volcanism occurred later in Oceanus Procellarum than other areas of the Moon.

Many news stories are claiming that the young age of these samples is a surprise, but this isn’t true. It was expected, as the quote above indicates.

However, the composition of the rocks did not match what was expected. Though created by volcanism, it appears the material did not have kind of composition seen in other lunar volcanic rocks. This is now a new puzzle for scientists.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Woman denied kidney transplant in Colorado because she is unvaccinated

1:10 pm

The unvaccinated denied healthcare in Colorado
No healthcare in Colorado permitted for the unvaccinated. Let them die!

Persecution is now cool! A woman who has stage 5 renal failure was suddenly told by UCHealth (University of Colorado Health) — just before her kidney transplant operation — that she was banned from the hospital because both she and her donor are unvaccinated.

“Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list,” Jaimee Fougner, Leilani Lutali’s kidney donor, told CBS4. “How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfectly good kidney and can save her life?”

Lutali said she received a letter from Colorado health system UCHealth at the end of September explaining that she and Fougner have 30 days to begin the vaccine process. They would be removed from the kidney transplant list if they refuse the shots. “I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong,” said Lutali. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID shot.”

According the article, when they first scheduled the surgery in August they were told by the hospital that being unvaccinated was not a problem. This changed suddenly in late September, at the last moment.
» Read more

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The wavy and beautiful edge of the northern ice cap of Mars

12:32 pm

The scarp of the north pole icecap on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the many layered scarp that forms the edge of the northern polar ice cap on Mars, probably more than 2,000 feet high.

Those layers are significant, as they indicate the many climate cycles that scientists think Mars has undergone over the eons as the red planet’s rotational tilt, or obliquity, rocked back and forth from 11 degrees inclination to as much as 60 degrees. At the extremes, the ice cap was either growing or shrinking, while today (at 25 degrees inclination) it appears to be in a steady state.

Why the layers alternate light and dark is not known. The shift from lighter colors at the top half and the dark bottom half marks the separation between the top water ice cap and what scientists label the basal unit. It also marks some major change in Mars’ climate and geology that occurred about 4.5 million years ago.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: The boom in sunspots returns!

12:11 pm

It is time for my monthly sunspot update, based on the most recent NOAA monthly graph, showing the changes in the Sun’s sunspot activity during September. That graph is below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context.

In September sunspot activity boomed once again, producing the most sunspots in a month since 2016 and ending the slight drop in activity in August to return to the pattern the Sun has exhibited since the end of solar minimum. Consistently the number of sunspots on the visible hemisphere of the Sun since 2020 has exceeded the April 2020 prediction of the NOAA scientist panel, as indicated by the red curve in the graph.

» Read more

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Land of Martian slope streaks

12:37 pm

Land of Martian slope streaks
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical example of the many slope streaks found in the rough and very broken region north of the Martian volcano Olympus Mons, the largest in the solar system.

See this May 2019 post for a detailed explanation of slope streaks. While they appear to be avalanches, they do not change the topography of the ground, sometimes flow over rises, and appear to be a phenomenon entirely unique to Mars. While no theory as yet explains them fully, the two most favored postulate that they are either dust avalanches or the percolation of a brine of chloride and/or perchlorate in a thin layer several inches thick close to the surface. In both cases the streak is mostly only a stain on the surface that fades with time.

The location of this cool image however tells us something more about them.
» Read more

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BeppiColombo’s first images of Mercury

10:52 pm

Mercury by BebiColomo
Click for full image.

This past weekend the European/Japanese duel-orbiter mission made its first flyby of Mercury, taking its first images of that planet.

The photo to the right is one example, cropped and reduced slightly to post here. It was taken by the spacecraft’s monitoring cameras, designed for engineering purposes, which means the resolution is not very high and the camera is positioned so that parts of the spacecraft were visible in each shot. For example, the white strut in the lower right is the spacecraft’s magnetometer boom, which also was used to gather data during the flyby.

Still, the photos demonstrated that the spacecraft is pointing correctly and on course. It will complete five more Mercury fly-bys before going into orbit in 2025.

The next flyby will occur in June ’22.

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Inactive volcano vent on Mars

1:57 pm

Inactive volcanic vent on Mars
Click for full image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced and annotated to post here, was taken on July 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The left image shows a pit that the scientists label a “vent” near the giant volcano Pavonis Mons. The right image is identical, except that I have brightened it considerably to bring out the details in the shadowed area.

As you can see, this pit is filled, and does not appear to have any existing openings into more extensive underground passages.

The white dot on the overview map on the right shows this vent’s location, to the south of Pavonis Mons, and in line with the giant crack that splits three of Mars’ four largest volcanoes. The vent is even aligned the same as that crack, from the northeast to the southwest. The black dots mark the locations of the many cave pits found in this region.

Was this a volcanic vent? If you look at the full image you will see that this pit aligns with a shallower pit to the southwest, with a depression linking the two. Visually this suggests this is a faultline which in turn makes for a good outlet point for lava flow.

Though the data suggests this is a volcanic vent, that supposition is as yet unproven. The full image does not show much evidence of a flow from the pit, which suggests instead that we are merely looking at a spot where the ground cracked along fault lines.

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Two nearby asteroids found with more precious metals than Earth’s entire global supply

10:04 am

The precious metals on asteroid 1986 DA, compared to the world's reserves

Capitalism in space: Astronomers have now identified two metal-rich asteroids in orbit near the Earth, with one having a precious metal content that likely exceeds the Earth’s entire reserves.

From the paper’s conclusion:

We estimated that the amounts of Fe, Ni, Co, and the PGM present in 1986 DA could exceed the reserves worldwide. Moreover, if 1986 DA is mined and the metals marketed over 50 yr, the annual value of precious metals for this object would be ∼$233 billion.

The graphic to the right, figure 13 from the paper, illustrates the amount of precious metals available in asteroid 1986 DA, compared to the world’s entire reserves (FE=iron, Ni=nickel, Co=cobalt, Cu=copper, PGM=platinum group metals, Au=gold). From this single metal asteroid a mining operation could literally double the metal that had been previously mined on Earth.

In estimating the value of these metals, the paper tries to account for the certain drop in price caused by the flooding of so much material into the market. It is a guess however. What is clear is that this asteroid could easily serve as a supply house not for Earth but for all future colonies in space. While expensive for Earth use, for colonies already in space the material would be relatively easy to reach and mine. The colonies will already have the transportation infrastructure, since they couldn’t exist without rockets and interplanetary spacecraft. And mining and processing this asteroid material will be far easier and cheaper than trying to find it on Mars and then process it.

Asteroid 1986 DA is estimated to be about 1.7 miles across, based on radar data obtained during a close Earth fly-by in 2019. The second asteroid, 2016 ED85, appears to have a similar content from spectroscopy, but no radar data has as yet been obtained of it, so much less is known.

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Biden signs budget continuing resolution, preventing shutdown

9:00 am

At the very last second Congress and President Biden passed and signed another budget continuing resolution that will keep the federal government operating till December and thus preventing another shutdown.

From NASA’s narrow perspective, the action means that the asteroid mission Lucy will likely launch in October as planned. From the perspective of the nation, this last second action merely illustrates the overall failure of the federal government and the elected officials who have been tasked to run it. They are all incompetent, and wouldn’t last five seconds in a real job outside the government.

That the voters keep re-electing them also speaks poorly of America today. We all should be ashamed.

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Orbit of biggest comet ever detected refined

10:59 am

Astronomers have now been able to better refine the orbit and size of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, comet with the largest nucleus ever detected.

A new analysis, led by Bernardinelli and Bernstein themselves, found that the comet nucleus is around 150 km wide, based on its brightness. If so, that makes it the largest comet ever discovered, by quite a margin. Most are only a few kilometers to several dozen kilometers wide, while some particularly big ones, like Hale-Bopp, may be up to 80 km (50 miles) wide. The previous record-holder, Sarabat’s Comet of 1729, has been estimated at about 100 km wide.

The team was also able to calculate the orbit of Comet BB in more detail. This object is on an incredibly long round trip into and out of the solar system – at its most distant point, some 1.5 million years ago, it was about 40,400 AU away. Last time it swung through our neighborhood was about 3.5 million years ago, when it came within 18 AU of the Sun.

But its current inward journey will be its closest so far. Astronomers have already calculated that in 2031, Comet BB will peak at 10.9 AU, almost reaching the orbit of Saturn.

It is presently unclear how bright the comet will be when it reachest its closest point. It will be much farther from the Sun than most bright comets, but its large size may change what is normally expected.

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Ingenuity’s 14th flight scrubbed by helicopter

10:22 am

Though Ingenuity successfully completed a preflight high speed test of its rotors on September 15th, when it came time to do its fourteenth flight two days later, intended as a short airborne test of that high speed, the helicopter’s computer sensed an issue prior to take-off and scrubbed the flight.

The goal of the high speed test and short flight were to see if Ingenuity could fly during the winter months when the atmosphere of Mars is thinner, thus requiring a higher rotor speed. Initially it was not expected the helicopter would still be operational at this point, so this is another example of it pushing its expected capabilities. The scrub however might be signalling the end date for Ingenuity, related to servo motors that help control the helicpoter:

Ingenuity performs an automated check on the servos before every flight. This self-test drives the six servos through a sequence of steps over their range of motion and verifies that they reach their commanded positions after each step. We affectionately refer to the Ingenuity servo self-test as the “servo wiggle.”

The data from the anomalous pre-flight servo wiggle shows that two of the upper rotor swashplate servos – servos 1 and 2 – began to oscillate with an amplitude of approximately 1 degree about their commanded positions just after the second step of the sequence. Ingenuity’s software detected this oscillation and promptly canceled the self-test and flight.

Our team is still looking into the anomaly. To gather more data, we had Ingenuity execute additional servo wiggle tests during the past week, with one wiggle test on Sept. 21, 2021 (Sol 209) and one on Sept. 23, 2021 (Sol 211). Both of the wiggle tests ran successfully, so the issue isn’t entirely repeatable.

One theory for what’s happening is that moving parts in the servo gearboxes and swashplate linkages are beginning to show some wear now that Ingenuity has flown well over twice as many flights as originally planned (13 completed versus five planned). Wear in these moving parts would cause increased clearances and increased looseness, and could explain servo oscillation. Another theory is that the high-speed spin test left the upper rotor at a position that loads servos 1 and 2 in a unique, oscillation-inducing way that we haven’t encountered before.

Because communications with Mars are now paused for two weeks because the Sun is in the way, the engineering team is holding off further tests until communications resume.

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