Tag: science

A cracking Martian glacier?

12:21 pm

A cracking Martian glacier?
Click for entire image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 4, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

I have cropped it to show at full resolution the area that contains what the scientists apparently consider the most interesting feature in this image, which they have labeled as “pits forming lines.” These are the vertical cracks and strings of holes that can be seen in this glacier-like flow. In addition, you can see that the cracking is not just vertical, but also extends out in horizontal directions, though the widest cracks are all vertical.

The next image below, which is a lower resolution crop of the full photo, shows a wider view to provide a better picture of the glacier itself.
» Read more

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Hubble’s wide field camera returns to operation

1:39 pm

Though the Hubble Space Telescope returned to science operations on March 12th after going into safe mode, its wide field camera did not.

Engineers however now report that they have successfully restored the camera to operations as well. The reason for the delayed restoration exemplifies Hubble’s aging status.

Analysis showed that voltage levels in WFC3 power supplies have slowly decreased over time as their electronics aged. The electronics experience colder temperatures when the hardware is turned off in safe mode. This factor coupled with the power the instrument components draw as they are turned back on contributed to the small voltage fluctuation that suspended WFC3 recovery operations. Further detailed analysis indicated that it would be safe to slightly reduce the low voltage limit to avoid a future suspend, and it would be safe to recover the instrument to its science state.

The instrument has now been safely recovered. Standard calibration of the instrument and other pre-observation activities will be conducted this week.

All the telescope’s equipment has been adjusted in recent years to deal with the varying ages of its instruments and its main structure. For example, this wide field camera was installed during the last shuttle serving mission in 2009, and is therefore one of Hubble’s newest components. It however is now more than a decade old, and thus needs careful handling to function properly.

Other components are far older, such as the primary motor to open and close the telescope’s “lens cap”. That failed during this safe mode, forcing engineers to switch to a back up motor to control the cap. Whether they can recover that primary motor is presently unclear, though unlikely.

Expect more such issues in the coming years.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: 30,000 videos banned by YouTube for stating COVID conclusions that disagree with health authorities

1:04 pm

BANNED!

They’re coming for you next: Google’s YouTube has now blacklisted more than 30,000 videos simply because they stated conclusions relating to COVID-19 vaccines that either contradicted or challenged opinions or conclusions held by the World Health Organization or other governmental health authorities.

The headline is only listing the videos removed by YouTube because they state conclusions relating to various coronavirus vaccines that YouTube disagrees with. It turns out this is only the tip of the iceberg.
» Read more

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How the blobby craters on Mars help map the planet’s existing accessible water

2:45 pm

Distorted blobby crater rim in Utopia Planitia
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image on the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is part of a series of cool images that have repeatedly shown the blobby and squishy look of crater impact sites in the Martian northern lowland plain dubbed Utopia Planitia. Taken on January 2, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows the southeast rim of a very distorted crater that appears filled with glacial material and is also surrounded by an apron of smooth material.

At 42 degrees north latitude, it is somewhat expected to find evidence of glacial-like features in such a crater. Moreover, throughout the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude band in Utopia Planitia are found numerous such blobby craters (other examples found here, here, and here), all suggesting that the impact occurred on a flat plain with a layer of water ice close to the surface. The heat of the impact melted that ice layer. In such a circumstance, the crater rims were easily deformed because as liquid water (for a short time) it could flow into any number of shapes.

At least that’s my theory. According to Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Arizona,

The exact processes that create the patterns are still debated. The flattened/degraded rims are not necessarily related to this morphology, as such craters can have sharp rims, so they may relate to post-impact modification.

In other words, later erosion after the crater formed could have rounded the rim and maybe even distorted it from a circle.

Regardless, the processes that made this crater rim look as it does were clearly widespread, as shown in the wider view below, provided by the context camera on MRO.
» Read more

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Hubble about to resume science operations even with new issues

9:14 am

Engineers have fixed the computer software issue that caused the Hubble Space Telescope to go into safe mode this week, and are preparing it to return to full science operations.

It appears the problem was caused by a software upgrade that caused a conflict.

More serious however was this problem, which could have damaged the telescope beyond repair had it had been randomly pointed at the Sun during safe mode.

In entering safe mode on Sunday, however, the team discovered that the aperture door located at the top of the telescope failed to automatically close. This door is a safeguard designed to keep the Sun’s damaging light and heat out of the telescope’s interior, protecting its sensitive instruments and their surroundings. It serves as a safety net if Hubble accidently points in the direction of the Sun due to an error or hardware problem.

…The team has looked at spacecraft engineering data, run various tests, and verified that the door did indeed remain open despite the commands and power being sent to close it. Additional attempts to move the door by sending commands from the ground to its primary motor also failed to make the door move. However, the same commands sent from the ground to its backup motor did indicate movement, and that motor is now set as the primary motor. The team is looking at options to further reduce any associated risk.

It appears the primary motor that moves the door has failed. Fortunately there is a backup motor, but this is just one more item where the telescope has lost redundancy. We are very lucky that during safe mode the telescope didn’t end up pointing at the Sun, even for a very short time, for that would have ended Hubble’s operation for good. I suspect the safe mode software includes protections against that occurrence, but the possibility nonetheless existed.

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Curiosity faces the mountains

11:48 am

A cropped section from Perseverance's 1st panorama
A cropped section from Perserverance’s 1st panorama.
Click for full image.

Though the present excitement over the spectacular images and sounds coming down from Perseverance is certainly warranted, what must be understood is that this rover is presently only at the beginning of its journey, and is thus sitting on relatively boring terrain, from a merely visual perspective. The scientists might be excited, but to the general public, all we really are seeing is a flat dusty desert with some scattered rocks on the floor. In the far distance can be seen some hills and mountains (Jezero Crater’s rim), but they are very far away.

Curiosity, which the press and the public has largely forgotten about, is actually just beginning what will likely be the most breath-taking part of its journey. As I noted in my last rover update last week, Curiosity is now at the very base of Mount Sharp, and is about to enter the mountain’s canyons and initial slopes. For its past eight-plus years of roving it has been on the flat floor of Gale Crater, followed by some weaving among the smallest foothills of Mount Sharp. The views have been intriguing and exciting from a research perspective, but hardly breath-taking from a picture-taking point of view.

That is now changing. The picture below, taken by Curiosity just this week, gives us a taste of what is to come.
» Read more

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A proposal to rebuild Arecibo as a better radio telescope

9:47 am

Even as the National Science Foundation (NSF) proceeds with the disassembly of the destroyed Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, some astronomers are proposing that a new radio telescope be built in its place, with a new design that will not require the instrument platform floating above a single dish.

Here’s the idea as outlined in a white paper circulated by Roshi and his colleagues: The Next Generation Arecibo Telescope would pack hundreds, maybe even more than 1,000 smaller radio dishes into the same space now occupied by the single 305-meter dish. Those smaller antennas would combine forces to act like a single larger telescope (no suspended instrument platform required).

Ideally, those dishes would be on a single, tiltable platform to access more of the sky from the Arecibo site; it’s possible multiple platforms could do the same.

The revamped telescope would have twice the sky coverage of the legacy dish, 500 times the field of view in individual images, at least double the sensitivity, and five times the radar power.

The cost for this new radio telescope is presently estimated to be about half a billion. Considering that the NSF didn’t have the money to operate the old Arecibo telescope, which was why it wasn’t properly maintained and collapsed, I doubt it has the cash to build this replacement. Congress, which likes printing money it doesn’t have, might step in and fund it, but if so that will only add to the national debt that is certainly going to cause the bankruptcy of the nation at some point in the future, a point that is getting closer and closer with each new trillion that Congress nonchalantly spends, on almost a monthly schedule.

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Strange ridge ripples on the windswept plateau above Mars’ biggest canyon

3:25 pm

Strange ridges on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is once again another of what I dub a “what the heck?” photo. The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 17, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and captures some very strange ridges on the plateau above Mars’ biggest canyon, Valles Marineris.

The image, labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” was taken not as part of any specific research project but scheduled by MRO’s science team in order to maintain the camera’s temperature. When they do this they try to take pictures covering something interesting, but often it is a potshot that sometimes shows little of interest.

In this case the photo shows something very strange. The ridges in the sample are packed into one area only, but if you look at the full image you will see that they are also scattered about randomly and sometimes isolated on the flat plains surrounding this spot.

Interestingly, these ridges resemble the first “What the heck?” image I ever posted in 2019. That photo was located at about the same elevation as these ridges, but due west in the volcanic plains near Mars’s giant volcanoes and just off the western edge of the overview map below.
» Read more

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First results from UAE’s Al-Amal/Hope Mars orbiter

10:36 am

First data from Al-Amal
Click for full image.

The first science results from the United Arab Emirates Al-Amal Mars orbiter (“Hope” in English) have been released by the American universities operating one instrument.

The image to the right shows that data. The right globes show the areas of actual temperature data for both the Martian surface and atmosphere, with the left globes extrapolating that data across the entire planet.

The purple-green-blue hues show that the measurements were taken of the Martian nightside, although dawn on the planet can be seen on the right-hand side of the surface temperature image, as depicted by the red hues. Features such as Arabia Terra, which has cold nighttime temperatures, can be observed in the upper left portion of the surface temperature data, depicted by the blue and purple hues.

“EMIRS [the infrared spectrometer] is going to acquire about 60 more images like this per week once we transition into the primary science phase of the Emirates Mars Mission,” said EMIRS Instrument Scientist Christopher Edwards, who is an assistant professor and planetary scientist at [Northern Arizona University]. “We’ll use these images and sophisticated computer programs to build up a complete global, daily understanding of the Martian atmospheric components, like dust, water ice, water vapor and atmospheric temperature.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words above illustrate the true nature of this U.S./UAE joint mission. Right now the spacecraft is being operated by Emirate engineers in the UAE, but the spacecraft and its instruments were really built by U.S. universities, paid for by the UAE. As such, those American universities remain in charge of running those instruments, though UAE students are also being used to do that work as part of their education.

None of this is to denigrate the effort by the UAE. It used its financial resources to buy the expertise of American universities and companies to build this Mars orbiter, but did so with the express requirement that those American universities and companies also educate and train its people in such work.

That deal however once again illustrates the value of private enterprise and freedom. The UAE wanted to teach its people how to fly a planetary space mission. American universities had the knowledge to do it. The former then bought the skills from the latter, while the latter then got a science mission for free.

A match made in heaven with both benefiting marvelously.

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A iceberg of water ice floating on a Martian dry ice sea

12:19 pm

Ice mesa near Mars' south pole
Click for full image.

British biologist John Haldane once once wrote, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped to post here, is a fine example of Haldane’s words. It was taken on January 15, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of a single lone mesalike feature sticking up in a flat expanse of Mars’ south polar dry ice/water ice cap.

I emailed Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona, who had requested the photo, to ask him what he thinks we are looking at. His response:

This region has a thick layer of CO2 ice sandwiched between water ice that’s above and below. CO2 ice is denser than water ice so I think a fragment of water ice of the underlying layer has risen up through the denser CO2 ice that covers this area (what geologists call a diapir).

Byrne also admits this remains merely “just a wild theory,” not yet confirmed.

Assuming this theory to be right, in a sense then this mesa is not really a mesa at all but an iceberg of water, floating not in a saltwater liquid ocean as on Earth but on a frozen sea of dry ice. Talk about queer! The wider shot below, taken by MRO’s context camera, illustrates how isolated this water iceberg is on that dry ice sea.
» Read more

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Meteorite recovered in driveway in UK only days after landing

9:18 am

Meteorite hunters successfully recovered a meteorite only days after it plowed through the atmosphere and landed in a driveway in Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom on February 28th.

The fragment, weighing nearly 300 grams, and other pieces of the space rock were located after scientists reconstructed the flight path of the fireball that unleashed a sonic boom as it tore across the sky shortly before 10pm UK time on Sunday 28 February. The black chunk of rock, a carbonaceous chondrite never seen before in the UK, thumped on to a driveway in the Cotswolds town of Winchcombe, scientists at the Natural History Museum in London said, adding that further fragments were retrieved nearby.

Ashley Green, a scientist at the museum, said it was “a dream come true” to be one of the first people to see and study a meteorite that had been recovered almost immediately after coming down.

Footage of the bright streak captured by the public, and a camera network operated by the Natural History Museum’s UK Fireball Alliance, helped researchers calculate that the meteor had spent most of its orbit between Mars and Jupiter before it ploughed into Earth’s atmosphere.

I seriously doubt that no carbonaceous chondrite asteroids have never been found in Great Britain before. Instead, what the reporter misunderstood was that this was the first such asteroid in the UK recovered immediately after its arrival. Carbonaceous chondrites are very fragile. Much of their material will quickly erode and disappear, preventing researchers from obtaining a complete census of their entire make-up. Grabbing this thing mere days after landing means they will have a sample more closely resembling these kinds of asteroids in space.

In this way this rock is not much different than the samples being brought back from Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx. It isn’t as pristine, but it certainly carries far more information that meteorites recovered decades or even centuries after landing.

Similar quick recoveries in the past few years have forced some major rethinking about the make-up of the asteroid population. This meteorite will likely add to that revolution.

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Hubble goes into safe mode

3:19 pm

Due to a software issue, the Hubble Space Telescope shifted into safe mode early yesterday and stopped doing its programmed science observations.

The engineers seem confident all will eventually be well, but we must also remember the telescope’s infrastructure (not its instruments) was built in the early 1980s and has been in space since 1990. That makes many parts of this telescope 40 years old. We are increasingly faced with the possibility of a fatal fault occurring that shuts it down for good, with no way at the present time to reach it and fix it, and with the only comparable optical space telescope in the works one being built by China to fly in formation with its space station.

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Mars: Planet of many glaciers

12:08 pm

Moraines on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image more than simply cool, it reveals a wider picture of Mars that should be quite exciting to future colonists. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on January 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). What drew my attention to it was the title given to this uncaptioned photo: “Moraine-Like Ridges in Nereidum Montes.”

Moraines are the debris pile pushed ahead of any glacier. The picture shows what appear to be a series of moraines, likely caused by different periods of glacier activity when the glacier was growing. It also suggests that past active periods were more active than later ones, as with each active period the moraine did not get pushed out quite as far.

The location, Nereidum Montes, intrigued me, as I am not that familiar with it. I emailed the scientist who requested the image, Dan Berman, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, and asked him for more information. He suggested I read a very recent paper he co-wrote entitled “Ice-rich landforms of the southern mid-latitudes of Mars: A case study in Nereidum Montes.” From that paper I was able to produce the map of Mars below that shows the regions on the planet where scientists now think hold the greatest concentrations of glaciers.
» Read more

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OSIRIS-REx begins last approach of Bennu

9:12 am

Approaching Bennu for the last time
Click for full image.

The science team for OSIRIS-REx released today the first picture taken as the spacecraft begins its last approach of the asteroid Bennu. To the right is that picture, cropped and expanded to post here. From the caption:

This image shows a top-down view of asteroid Bennu, with a portion of the asteroid’s equatorial ridge and northern hemisphere illuminated. It was taken by the PolyCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on March 4, from a distance of about 186 miles (300 km). The spacecraft’s cameras are pointed directly at Bennu’s north pole. Two large equatorial craters are visible on the asteroid’s edge (center and center left).

If all goes well, the probe will fly past the asteroid on April 7th, obtaining high resolution images of its entire surface as it rotates below, including very close-up images of the Nightingale sample grab location during its closest approach.

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Yutu-2 and Chang’e-4 reactivated for 28th lunar day on Moon

9:01 am

The new colonial movement: Engineers have reactivated both Yutu-2 and Chang’e-4 to begin their 28th lunar day on the far side of the Moon.

The article, from China’s state-run press, provides only one real tidbit of information, that Yutu-2 has now traveled 429 meters (1,378 feet) from the landing site. They still have about a mile to go to reach their next big geological target, which should take years at the pace the rover is setting.

Both spacecraft though have been unmitigated successes. Their nominal mission had been to survive three lunar day-night cycles, about 90 Earth days. They have survived 28, or more than two years since landing in January 2019.

This success suggests that China’s Mars rover has a good chance of doing as well. Its planned mission length is also 90 days, similar to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, both of which lasted many years.

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Perseverance begins journey with 1st test drive

9:22 pm

Perseverance's future planned route
Click for full image.

On March 4th the engineers on the Perseverance science team successfully completed the rover’s first test drive.

Ground teams commanded the rover to drive forward, turn in place, and then back up. The first 33-minute test drive covered just 21 feet, or 6.5 meters,but Perseverance will soon travel much farther. “Our first drive went incredibly well,” said Anais Zarifian, a Perseverance mobility test engineer at JPL.

Perseverance has six aluminum wheels, each with titanium spokes for support, and a suspension capable of traveling over rocks as big as the wheels themselves. The one-ton rover is based on the design of NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, but with some improvements.

The wheels on Perseverance are sightly narrower, have a larger diameter, and are made of thicker materials, Zarifian said. Engineers also changed the tread pattern on the wheels to reduce the risk of damage from sharp rocks, which created dings and cuts in Curiosity’s wheels.

The map above shows the route the science team has presently chosen for Perseverance, a revision from earlier routes created prior to landing. The white dot on the right is the rover’s present position, the blue and purple lines are two alternative routes they are considering for their route to the delta coming out of Neretva Vallis. The yellow route up the delta is especially exciting in that it gets them onto it much sooner than previous plans.

Which route they choose for the initial journey I think will partly depend on which provides the best location to test fly Ingenuity, the experimental helicopter on the rover. Scientists and engineers I am sure are presently poring over high resolution images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in order to make that choice. At this link, centered on Perseverance’s present location, you can take a look at all those images by MRO by selecting the arrow icon at the top and then clicking on any red box. Because so many photos have been taken there is a lot of overlap, so each click will give you many pictures to look at.

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Ice-filled Martian sinkhole

2:19 pm

Ice-filled pit on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The pit shown in the high resolution photo to the right (image rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here) was taken on January 25, 2021 and labeled by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) “Collapse Pit in Graben with Ice Fill.”

There is a lot of information in that title. First, a graben is a geological feature where a section of terrain drops relative to the surrounding terrain, producing a depression. Second, it appears the graben in this region is mostly filled with debris, probably wind-blown dust or sand or volcanic ash.

Third, at this particular spot the filling material sank, like a sinkhole on Earth, creating the pit.

And fourth, and maybe most intriguing, the scientists think that this pit is now filled with ice. At 47 degrees north latitude, the location is prime for such ice, and the interior material resembles similar glacial features seen in many other mid-latitude craters.
» Read more

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Rover update: Panorama from Curiosity; Perseverance unwinds

10:25 am

Summary: Curiosity has crept to the foot of Mt Sharp at last, while Perseverance checks out its equipment.

Curiosity

Curiosity panorama Sol 3049
Click for full resolution.

Overview map

This rover update will be short but very sweet. While the press and public has been oo’ing and ah’ing over the first panorama from Perseverance, Curiosity yesterday produced its own panorama above showing the looming cliffs of Mt. Sharp, now only a short distance away. The original images can be found here, here, here, and here.

The overview map to the right, from the “Where is Curiosity?” webpage, shows the rover’s location, with the yellow lines roughly indicating the view afforded by the panorama above. If you compare this panorama with the one I posted in my previous rover update on February 12, 2021, you can get a sense of how far the rover has traveled in just the past two weeks. It now sits near the end of the red dotted line pointing at the mountain, right next to what had been a distant cliff and now is only a short distance to the rover’s right.

Somewhere on the mountain slopes ahead scientists have spotted in orbiter images recurring slope lineae, seasonal streaks on slopes that appear in the spring and fade as they year passes. As Curiosity arrives at the next geological layer a short distance ahead at the base of these cliffs (dubbed the sulfate unit), it will spend probably several months studying both that sulfate unit as well as those lineae. Expect the rover to drill a few holes for samples as it watches to see any changes that might occur on that lineae.

Now, on to Perseverance!
» Read more

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Dao Vallis: A giant river of ice on Mars

1:38 pm

The glacier in Dao Vallis
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on December 26, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an apparent glacial flow in a canyon heading downhill to the southwest, with evidence of a gully on its western wall whose collapse apparently squeezed into that glacial flow, pushing it to the east.

What makes this particular image interesting is not its uniqueness but just the opposite. Almost every high resolution picture along the length of this 750 mile long canyon, dubbed Dao Vallis, shows the same thing, an ice-filled ravine with that ice flowing like a river downhill.

The overview map below provides some spectacular context.
» Read more

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NASA lunar rover experiences big budget overruns

9:48 am

NASA revealed yesterday that the budget for VIPER, a new NASA-built lunar rover, has increased from $250 million to $433.5 million.

The cost of the mission has gone up significantly. At the time NASA announced VIPER in October 2019, it projected a cost of about $250 million. As part of the confirmation review, known as Key Decision Point C, NASA set a formal cost commitment for the mission. NASA spokesperson Alison Hawkes said March 3 that the new lifecycle cost for the mission is $433.5 million.

NASA didn’t disclose the reason for the cost increase, but NASA officials said in June 2020 that they were postponing VIPER’s launch by about a year to late 2023 to change the rover’s design so it can meet the goal of operating for 100 days on the lunar surface. At the time, the agency declined to comment on VIPER’s cost.

This is very typical of modern NASA. Even though its planetary program produces some spectacular spacecraft and results, that program — like all NASA-built programs — rarely does so for the budget promised. For the planetary program, however, the overage for VIPER is startlingly high, especially in so short a time.

Be prepared for more delays and overages for this project, since that is usually what happens for NASA projects that experience such large budget increases.

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