Tag: science

Lacking funds to build its spacecraft, the VERITAS project team goes to Iceland

12:29 pm

Because NASA has cut almost all funding for the VERITAS mission to Venus in order to fund its overbudget, badly managed, and behind schedule Mars Sample Return mission, the VERITAS science team, held over with only a tiny holding budget for the next seven years, has taken a geology trip to Iceland to study the volcanoes there.

Early last month, one such field campaign took the mission’s science team to a barren and rocky region in Iceland. There, they studied rocks and surfaces near an active volcano named Askja. Such volcanic areas are being used as analogs of Venus to understand the different types of eruptions that may occur on its surface, and to test out various technologies and techniques to prepare for the VERITAS (or Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) mission, which is not expected to launch sooner than 2031.

The article at the link focuses on this research, but the real story is this quote:

The VERITAS science team — which is being supported by a shoestring budget of $1.5 million until 2028, after NASA pulled the mission’s funding earlier this year and disbanded its entire engineering wing — collected samples of young rocks and recent lava flows near the Askja volcano that will be analyzed in a lab, according to a NASA statement.

The reason the budget was pulled was to scrap together any funds available from within NASA’s planetary program for that Mars Sample Return Mission, which is doing to the planetary program what the Webb Space Telescope did to NASA’s astronomy program: killing it. As long as NASA and Congress remain committed to that sample return mission, do not expect many new planetary missions to other planets to fly. Its budget has already quadrupled, and its launch is already expected to be delayed. Worse, the mission’s basic design remains tentative, with many major components nothing more than cool graphics on powerpoint presentations, despite having spent gigantic amounts already.

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A mountain buried by lava on Mars

10:53 am

A mountain buried by lava on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 6, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

This 500-to-600-foot-high hill represents what is likely the top of a much larger mountain, now buried by the flood lava that surrounds it. The edge of that flood lava can be seen best along the base of the hill’s northern slope, where this now hardened lava had washed up against that slope.

That this Martian mountain is very old can be discerned from two features. One, it had to have been there when the lava flowed, and scientists estimate these lava flows are at least one billion years old. Second, peak’s rounded shape and eroded edges (showing terraced layers) suggest it has been here for far longer, allowing Mars’ thin atmosphere and climate to weather it down.
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Almost all of Mars’ geological mysteries in one spot

11:26 am

Almost all of Mars' geological history in one spot

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The scientists label it “Mesas in shallow trough,” but that is only describes a small part of what can be seen here, as I interpret it.

The picture itself shows a small portion of the floor of an unnamed 32-mile-wide crater, with the crater’s southeast interior rim beginning its rise in the lower right. First, note the meandering hollow in the upper left, suggesting some past flow. Second, note the pattern of small ridges on the flat crater floor, suggesting some past drying process that left cracks that later filled with material that formed the ridges at a later time. Third, the mesas themselves suggest chaos terrain, often formed on Mars in connection with glacial flows. Fourth, note that the trough which holds the mesas is on the edge of the crater floor, suggesting the trough and mesas mark the erosion that once occurred at the edge of some material, possibly ice, that once filled that floor.

The trough and small meander also signify something far larger that can only be seen when we zoom out.
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OSIRIS-REx Sample from Bennu successfully recovered

10:18 am

Engineers today successfully recovered the asteroid sample capsule from the probe OSIRIS-REx, carrying several grams of material from the potentially dangerous asteroid Bennu.

The samples will be shipped to special facilities to protect the material from being exposed to Earth’s environment when the capsule is opened. It will take several months at least before the first research results are announced.

OSIRIS-REx, now renamed OSIRIS-APEX, now heads for the potentially dangeous asteroid Apophis, where it will orbit that asteroid beginning in 2029, shortly after Apophis makes its next close fly-by of Earth.

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Strange wormlike tube features on slopes of Martian shield volcano

1:20 pm

Strange tubes on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on June 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists label the strange tubelike features that are scattered throughout this picture as “landforms,” which is correctly vague because their origin is utterly inexplicable. The ground here is on the eastern slope of a small 20-mile-wide very flat shield volcano located about 150 miles northwest of the giant volcano Ascraeus Mons. The dark wind streaks point down that grade to the east, away from the shield volcano’s peak about 1,000 feet away. (If you look at the full image this indistinct peak is at dead center, with a linear depression (the volcano’s vent) beginning there and heading to the northeast for about four miles.)

Why these many tubes are all oriented in a northwest-southwest direction, at right angles to the slope, is baffling, especially because they hold to that same orientation all across the shield volcano, no matter the downward direction of the slope.
» Read more

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Webb infrared data suggests Europa’s C02 comes from within

9:41 am

Europa as seen by Webb's near-infrared camera
Europa as seen by Webb’s near-infrared camera.
Click for original image.

Two different research papers, using infrared data from the Webb Space Telescope, have independently concluded that the carbon dioxide previously detected on the surface of Europa is found concentrated in the same region, and has the earmarks of coming from beneath the surface.

In one study, Samantha Trumbo and Michael Brown used the JWST [Webb] data to map the distribution of CO2 on Europa and found the highest abundance of CO2 is located in Tara Regio – a ~1,800 square kilometer region dominated by “chaos terrain,” geologically disrupted resurfaced materials. According to Tumbo and Brown, the amount of CO2 identified within this recently resurfaced region – some of the youngest terrain on Europa’s surface – indicates that it was derived from an internal source of carbon. This implies that the CO2 formed within Europa’s subsurface ocean and was brought to the surface on a geologically recent timescale. However, the authors say that formation of CO2 on the surface from ocean-derived organics or carbonates cannot be entirely ruled out. In either interpretation, the subsurface ocean contains carbon.

In an independent study of the same JWST data, Geronimo Villanueva and colleagues found that the CO2 on Europa’s surface is mixed with other compounds. Villanueva et al. also find the CO2 is concentrated in Tara Regio and interpret that as demonstrating that the carbon on the moon’s surface was sourced from within. The authors measured the ice’s 12C/13C isotopic ratio, but could not distinguish between an abiotic or biogenic source. Moreover, Villanueva et al. searched for plumes of volatile material breaching moon’s icy crust. Although previous studies have reported evidence of these features, the authors did not detect any plume activity during the JWST observations. They argue that plume activity on Europa could be infrequent, or sometimes does not contain the volatile gasses they included in their search.

As always, these conclusion must be viewed with some skepticism, as the data is somewhat sparse and coarse. Webb’s resolution is not enough to truly pinpoint the source location with great accuracy, and the conclusion that the CO2 comes from underground depends on many assumptions. For example, in the image above, the white area roughly corresponds to Tara Regio, but with very large margins.

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Independent review: NASA’s Mars sample return mission is in big trouble

9:27 am

Perseverance's first set of core samples, placed on the floor of Jezero Crater
Perseverance’s first set of core samples,
placed on the floor of Jezero Crater

An independent review of NASA’s Mars sample return mission (MSR) to pick up the core samples being collected by the rover Perseverance has concluded that the project has serious fundamental problems that will likely cause it to be years late and billions over-budget, assuming it ever flies at all.

You can read the report here [pdf]. After thirteen pages touting the wonders and importance of the mission to get those samples back to Earth, the report finally gets to its main point:

However, MSR was established with unrealistic budget and schedule expectations from the beginning. MSR was also organized under an unwieldy structure. As a result, there is currently no credible, congruent technical, nor properly margined schedule, cost, and technical baseline that can be accomplished with the likely available funding.

Technical issues, risks, and performance-to-date indicate a near zero probability of [the European Mars orbiter intended to bring the sample back to Earth] or [the Earth sample facility] or [the Mars ascent vehicle] meeting the 2027/2028 Launch Readiness Dates (LRDs). Potential LRDs exist in 2030, given adequate funding and timely resolution of issues.

• The projected overall budget for MSR in the FY24 President’s Budget Request is not adequate to accomplish the current program of record.

• A 2030 LRD for both [the sample return lander] and [the Mars orbiter] is estimated to require ~$8.0-9.6B, with funding in excess of $1B per year to be required for three or more years starting in 2025.

Based on this report, a mission launch in 2030 is only “potentially” possible, but only wild-eyed dreamers would believe that. It also indicates that the budget for each component listed above requires several billion dollars, suggesting the total amount needed to achieve this mission could easily exceed in the $30 to $40 billion, far more than the initial proposed total budget for the U.S. of $3 billion.

None of this is really a surprise. Since 2022 I have been reporting the confused, haphazard, and ever changing design of the mission as well as its ballooning budgets. This report underlines the problems, and also suggests, if one reads between the lines, that the mission won’t happen, at least as presently designed.

The report does suggest NASA consider “alternate architectures in combination with later [launch readiness dates].” Can you guess what might be an alternate architecture? I can, and its called Starship. Unlike the proposed helicopters and ascent rocket and Mars Orbiter, all of which are only in their initial design phases, Starship is already doing flight tests (or would be if the government would get out of the way). It is designed with Mars in mind, and can be adapted relatively quickly for getting those Perservance core samples back.

Otherwise, expect nothing to happen for years, even decades. In February 2022 I predicted this mission would be delayed from five to ten years from its then proposed ’26 launch date. A more realistic prediction, based on this new report, is ten to twenty years, unless NASA takes drastic action, and the Biden administration stops blocking Starship testing.

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A close-up of the giant crack that almost splits Mars

11:58 am

A close-up of the crack that splits Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The intended science focus of the image is likely the floor of this canyon on the lower right, showing what appears to be a patch of uprised topography surrounded by what looks like glacial debris, which at this latitude of 39 degrees north is expected on Mars.

The grade at this location is downhill to the southwest, so if this is a glacier it is flowing in that direction.

The cliff is about 3,000 feet high, dropping that distance in about a mile and a half. Thus, this is only slightly less steep than the very steep cliff wall of the caldera of Olympus Mons, highlighted as a cool image two days ago.

What makes this canyon interesting — besides its spectacular scenery — is its larger context, recognized when one looks at this location from afar and thus sees how it shaped a vast portion of the global surface of Mars.
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Visible ice layers in a crater in the lower mid-latitudes of Mars?

2:27 pm

Visible ice layers in the low-mid-latitudes of Mars?
Click for original image. For the original color image, go here.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what appear to be horizontal layers in the inner wall of a small one-mile-wide and 150-foot deep unnamed crater on Mars. I have included the color version below, zoomed in to make those layers and their colors very clear.

As I have not contacted the scientists who requested this picture, I can only guess at its purpose. My guess however relates to those horizontal blue layers, reminiscent of the ice layers seen in Martian scarps at the high latitudes at about 50 to 55 degrees.

Normally it is rare to see horizontal layers like this in craters on Mars. Instead, what you usually see are downward-pointing gullies along with drainage and avalanche-type patterns, though the latter two might not be formed by either drainage or avalanches.

In this case these horizontal layers are clear and pronounced, making this crater a possibly important and somewhat unique find, based on its location.
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Image released of permanently shadowed floor of Shackleton Crater

11:01 am

Shadowcam-LRO mosaic
Click for original image.

NASA today released a mosaic combining images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s high resolution camera LROC and the Shadowcam camera on South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter that shows for the first time the entire permanently shadowed floor of Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s south pole.

That mosaic, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is to the right. I have added the black cross to mark the location of the south pole, just inside Shackleton, the large crater on the right. The inset shows the floor of the crater at higher resolution.

LROC can capture detailed images of the lunar surface but has limited ability to photograph shadowed parts of the Moon that never receive direct sunlight, known as permanently shadowed regions. ShadowCam is 200-times more light-sensitive than LROC and can operate successfully in these extremely low-light conditions, revealing features and terrain details that are not visible to LROC. ShadowCam relies on sunlight reflected off lunar geologic features or the Earth to capture images in the shadows.

Thus, in the mosaic to the right the interior of Shackleton was imaged by Shadowcam, and then placed on a mosaic of LROC pictures.

If you click on the full image at high resolution and look closely at the crater floor, it is difficult to determine if there is any ice there. There are several mounds that could be ice, but could also be accumulated dirt and debris. What is most significant however is the smooth interior walls of the crater. It appears it will very possible for a rover to drive down those walls and into Shackleton.

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High School students discover new orbital changes from asteroid impacted by DART

10:26 am

In observing Dimorphos, the small asteroid that the probe DART impacted in September 2022, researchers as well as students at a California high school have discovered unexpected orbital changes.

Recent observations have indicated the asteroid is tumbling since the impact. However:

Dimorphos also appeared to be continuously slowing down in its orbit for at least a month after the rocket impact, contrary to NASA’s predictions. California high school teacher Jonathan Swift and his students first detected these unexpected changes while observing Dimorphos with their school’s 2.3-foot (0.7 meter) telescope last fall. Several weeks after the DART impact, NASA announced that Dimorphos had slowed in its orbit around Didymos by about 33 minutes. However, when Swift and his students studied Dimorphos one month after the impact, the asteroid seemed to have slowed by an additional minute — suggesting it had been slowing continuously since the collision. “The number we got was slightly larger, a change of 34 minutes,” Swift told New Scientist. “That was inconsistent at an uncomfortable level.”

Swift presented his class’s findings at the American Astronomical Society conference in June. The DART team has since confirmed that Dimorphos did indeed continue slowing in its orbit up to a month after the impact — however, their calculations show an additional slowdown of 15 seconds, rather than a full minute. A month after the DART collision, the slowdown plateaued.

One explanation proposed for this slowdown points at the spray of rocks and boulders that surrounded Dimorphos after DART’s impact. When some of those boulders fell back onto the asteroid, they might have caused the orbital slowdown, and as the number of new impacts dropped, the slowdown stabilized.

Now that a full year has passed since the impact, it is possible to assess the full orbital changes to the asteroid. Thus, a new report is expected shortly.

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The northern interior rim of the largest volcano in the solar system

3:29 pm

Northern interior rim of Olympus Mons
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 8, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northernmost interior rim of the caldera of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system.

This one picture provides another way to illustrate the monumental scale of much of Mars’ topography. From the top to the bottom this steep scarp descends about 5,900 feet, in a little more than two miles. Compare that to the trails that descend the Grand Canyon’s south rim, which drop about the same distance but do it in distances ranging from three to five times longer.

In other words, this cliff wall is steep. Finding a route for a trail either up or down would be difficult at best.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 59th flight, a hop setting a new altitude record

11:11 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.
On September 16, 2023 the Ingenuity engineering team successfully flew the Mars helicopter for its 59th flight, a vertical hop lasting two minutes and twenty-three seconds that set a new altitude record of 66 feet in the air.

This flight matched the flight plan precisely. Six pictures from the flight were downloaded today, showing the helicopter as it hovered at this top altitude while tilting itself to the ground. To see this tilting, go here and set the date to Sol 915. Click on the first picture and then use the right and left arrow keys to scroll from picture to picture, essentially creating a short animation that shows the change in the helicopter’s shadow on the ground.

On the overview map above, the green dot marks Ingenuity’s location during this flight, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s present location. It is possible that by tilting, the helicopter was able to take a color picture from the air of the rover to the south, but this is unconfirmed. It could have also tilted to get a view of the ground ahead.

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Update on Curiosity’s journey in Mount Sharp, including its future route

9:52 am

Curiosity's future planned route
Click for original image.

The Curiosity science team yesterday released a new 360 panorama taken on August 19, 2023 by the rover’s high resolution camera, as part of an effort to document an important geological location finally reached after two previous attempts failed.

Three billion years ago, amid one of the last wet periods on Mars, powerful debris flows carried mud and boulders down the side of a hulking mountain. The debris spread into a fan that was later eroded by wind into a towering ridge [dubbed Gediz Vallis Ridge], preserving an intriguing record of the Red Planet’s watery past.

Now, after three attempts, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has reached the ridge, capturing the formation in a 360-degree panoramic mosaic. Previous forays were stymied by knife-edged “gator-back” rocks and too-steep slopes. Following one of the most difficult climbs the mission has ever faced, Curiosity arrived Aug. 14 at an area where it could study the long-sought ridge with its 7-foot (2-meter) robotic arm.

That panorama can be viewed here. The rover spent eleven days at this geological location, and has since moved on.

Because that panorama covers some of the same ground I have previously posted from the rover’s navigation cameras, I have instead posted above the graphic from the press release, with additional annotations, because that graphic provides new information about Curiosity’s future travels.

The white line marks Curiosity’s past travels as well as the planned route as previously released by the science team. The red line marks the additional route that the rover will follow beyond, weaving its way up Mount Sharp.

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OSIRIS-REx makes last course correction before releasing asteroid sample return capsule

8:54 am

OSIRIS-REx’s engineers on September 17, 2023 successfully completed the last course correction necessary before releasing the sample return capsule carrying about nine ounces of material from the asteroid Bennu, set to land in Utah on September 24th.

The spacecraft briefly fired its thrusters Sunday to change its velocity by 7 inches per minute (3 millimeters per second) relative to Earth. This final correction maneuver moved the sample capsule’s predicted landing location east by nearly 8 miles, or 12.5 kilometers, to the center of its predetermined landing zone inside a 36-mile by 8.5-mile (58-kilometer by 14-kilometer) area on the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range.

Details on that landing can be found here. The capsule will be coming in at speeds comparable to that of an Apollo capsule, returning from the Moon, and will use the same maneuvers and parachutes to slow its speed to only eleven miles per hour at landing. Four helicopters will than rush to recover the capsule as quickly as possible to reduce the chance the sample will be contaminated by the Earth’s environment.

OSIRIS-Rex (renamed OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer or OSIRIS-APEX) will meanwhile fire its engines and head towards the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis, with a rendezvous scheduled in 2029.

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Two galaxies merging

11:32 am

Merging galaxies
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey project to photograph the entire Arp catalog of 338 “peculiar galaxies,” put together by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. From the caption:

The larger galaxy (in the left of this image) is an extremely energetic galaxy type known as a Seyfert galaxy, which house active galactic nuclei at their cores. Seyfert galaxies are notable because despite the immense brightness of the active core, radiation from the entire galaxy can be observed. This is evident in this image, where the spiraling whorls of the whole galaxy are readily visible. The smaller companion is connected to the larger by a tenuous-seeming ‘bridge’, composed of dust and gas. The colliding galactic duo lie about 465 million light-years from Earth.

Note that if you ignore the blue whorls of the left galaxy, the two bright cores of these merging galaxies are about the same size. As it is unclear how long this merger has been on-going, it is possible that the galaxy on the right, in circling the left galaxy, drew out those whorls and that tenuous bridge. Other scenarios are also possible, however, such as the galaxy on the left stripping and scattering the arms of the galaxy on the right.

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India’s Aditya-L1 solar telescope initiates some science observations

9:18 am

According to India’s space agency ISRO, its Aditya-L1 solar telescope has begun science observations with one instrument, even as it continues its journey to its final position at L1, one million miles from the Earth.

The activation of STEPS occurred on September 10, 2023, at a distance exceeding 50,000 km from Earth. This distance equates to more than eight times the Earth’s radius, placing it significantly beyond the Earth’s radiation belt region. Following the successful completion of essential health checks for the instrument, the data collection process continued until the spacecraft had travelled beyond the 50,000 km mark from Earth.

All units of STEPS are currently operating within normal parameters. A graphical representation illustrates the measurements, showcasing fluctuations in the energetic particle environment within Earth’s magnetosphere, which were collected by one of the instrument’s units.

It is expected Aditya-L1 will reach L1 in January, where it will begin round-the-clock observations of the Sun, in parallel with NASA’s Soho telescope, which has been at L1 since the 1990s.

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A triangular Martian hill

12:35 pm

A triangular Martian hill
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels an “unusual shaped hill” that is estimated to be about 20 to 40 feet high.

What makes it unusual? First, it sticks up out of the endless northern lowland plains for no obvious reason, though its shape suggests the existence of bedrock topography that is now buried by the dust and debris that coats the surface of those plains.

Second, the hill itself suggests that it formed after it was covered with debris. Note the crater near its northeast cliff. It appears that the cliff chopped off part of the crater, suggesting that the hill was once level with the surrounding terrain. Some later underground pressure pushed it upward, with its angled sides determined by existing faults.

Why those forces tilted the hill upward as it did, with only its eastern fringes raised, is a question a wide view might answer.
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New analysis of Chandrayaan-1’s lunar orbital data might explain its detection of widespread surface hydrogen on the Moon

9:52 am

The Earth's magnetic field, shaped by the solar wind
The Earth’s magnetic field, shaped by the solar wind

One of the significant finds coming from India’s first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, was the detection of hydrogen in many places across the entire lunar surface, in places where it seemed impossible for hydrogen to be there, even if it was locked in a molecule like water.

Researchers in Hawaii now think they have found an explanation by linking that data to the Earth’s long magnetotail, formed by the solar wind pushing against the Earth’s magnetic field. The graphic to the right illustrates that process. The scientists focused on the kind of weathering processes that occurred both when the Moon was inside that tail, and when it was not.

Li and co-authors analyzed the remote sensing data that were collected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument onboard India’s Chandrayaan 1 mission between 2008 and 2009. Specifically, they assessed the changes in water formation as the Moon traversed through Earth’s magnetotail, which includes the plasma sheet.

“To my surprise, the remote sensing observations showed that the water formation in Earth’s magnetotail is almost identical to the time when the Moon was outside of the Earth’s magnetotail,” said Li. “This indicates that, in the magnetotail, there may be additional formation processes or new sources of water not directly associated with the implantation of solar wind protons. In particular, radiation by high energy electrons exhibits similar effects as the solar wind protons.”

In other words, the evidence suggests that the hydrogen signal seen by Chandrayaan-1 might have been a very temporary implacement of that hydrogen by the solar wind, which ceases during the Moon’s periodic passages through the magnetotail. The Moon’s harsh environment then causes that hydrogen to vanish, only to reappear when it is once again exposed to the solar wind.

None of this is confirmed, so some skepticism is required. If true, however, it would provide further evidence that the hydrogen signal seen at the lunar poles that scientists hope is evidence of ice in the permanently shadowed craters might be nothing of the sort, and we shall find little ice there.

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Polygons and scallops in the high mid-latitudes of the Martian lowland plains

12:46 pm

Polygons and scallops in the high mid-latitudes of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Only yesterday I posted an image of polygons in the dry equatorial regions of Mars, where little evidence of near-surface ice is found and are thought to be the remnants from a long-dried lakebed.

Today we take a look at some polygons in the mid-latitudes of the icy northern lowland plains, where near-surface ice appears ubiquitous and as it sublimates away with the changing seasons causes all kinds of strange formations, including polygons.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a good example, centered on a 0.6-mile-wide bright crater that appears to be filled with glacial ice. The image was taken on June 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and is located at 44 degrees north latitude on the western edge of Utopia Basin. As noted by the MRO science team in 2006 for a different MRO picture with similar features:
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Webb captures new infrared image of bi-polar jets shooting from baby star

10:54 am

HH 211 as seen by Webb
Click for original image.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have taken a new infrared image of the baby star Herbig-Haro 211 (HH 211), known best for the bi-polar jets that shoot out in opposite directions at very great speeds.

That picture is to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, and has about 5 to 10 times the resolution of previous infrared images.

The image showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) as well as the narrow bipolar jet that powers them. …. The inner jet is seen to “wiggle” with mirror symmetry on either side of the central protostar. This is in agreement with observations on smaller scales and suggests that the protostar may in fact be an unresolved binary star.

Earlier observations of HH 211 with ground-based telescopes revealed giant bow shocks moving away from us (northwest) and moving towards us (southeast) and cavity-like structures in shocked hydrogen and carbon monoxide respectively, as well as a knotty and wiggling bipolar jet in silicon monoxide. Researchers have used Webb’s new observations to determine that the object’s outflow is relatively slow in comparison to more evolved protostars with similar types of outflows.

The team measured the velocities of the innermost outflow structures to be roughly 48-60 miles per second (80 to 100 kilometers per second). However, the difference in velocity between these sections of the outflow and the leading material they’re colliding with — the shock wave — is much smaller. The researchers concluded that outflows from the youngest stars, like that in the center of HH 211, are mostly made up of molecules, because the comparatively low shock wave velocities are not energetic enough to break the molecules apart into simpler atoms and ions.

The baby star at the center of these jets, about a 1,000 light years away, is estimated to be only a few ten thousand years old, and presently has a mass less than a tenth of the Sun. With time it will accrete more matter and become a full-sized star.

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Moon’s south pole permanently shadowed regions are younger than expected

1:26 pm

Map of Moon's south pole, with permanently shadowed regions indicated
Click for original image.

A new long range model of the Moon’s orbit and rotational tilt now suggests that the permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) in its south polar regions are much younger than previous predicted, which reduces the likely amount of ice that has been preserved there.

The map of the south pole region to the right, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, shows the locations of those shadowed regions, with their predicted ages indicated by the colors (Gyr = billion years). Note that the Nova-C lander, planned for launch in mid-November, will land somewhat near some relatively young PSRs, as indicated by the red cross. From the press release:

“We calculated the lunar spin axis orientation and the extent of PSRs based on recent advances for the time evolution of the Earth-Moon distance,” he said. Early in its history, the Moon (which is 4.5 billion years old) was bombarded by comets and volcanism released water vapor from its interior, but continuously shadowed areas started to appear only 3.4 billion years ago. By that time these processes had started to die down, so most of the water that was delivered to the Moon or outgassed from its interior could not have been trapped in the polar regions. Any ice in the polar regions today must have a more recent origin.

“We have been able to quantify how young the lunar PSRs really are,” Schorghofer said. “The average age of PSRs is 1.8 billion years, at most. There are no ancient reservoirs of water ice on the Moon.”

Since other data suggests the presence of ice, it is possible that these reserves are regularly renewed by the arrival of impacts. It also suggests however that there might be less ice available than hoped. Above all, the red colored regions appear to be the most valuable real estate to explore first.

Note: The landing sites for both India’s Vikram lander and Russia’s Luna-25 lander were well beyond the map’s upper right edge, far outside the region where any permanently shadowed craters are located. The news outlets that talked about finding water or ice on either mission were simply illustrating their ignorance and sloppy reporting.

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The drying out of Mars’ tropics

11:45 am

The drying out of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 26, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team calls the features surrounding these small 20 to 60 foot high hills “polygon features,” an apt description and a geological feature that is seen in many places on Mars.

When these features are found in the icy higher latitudes, it is believed they are formed in connection to the freeze-thaw cycle that causes cracks in the near surface ice. When found in the dry equatorial regions, where these polygons are located, they are usually thought to be ancient evidence of past standing water that left behind these cracks, much like the cracks seen in mud after the water has evaporated away on Earth.

The formation of these tiny hills is a bit more complex.
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Chandra: New X-ray composite images of galaxies and supernovae remnants

10:51 am

Chandra image
Click for original image.

The science team for the Chandra X-Ray observatory today released five new composite images of two galaxies, two supernovae remnants, and the center of the Milky Way, combining data from multiple telescopes looking in radio, infrared, optical, and X-ray wavelengths.

The image to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, is one of those pictures. From the press release:

As the galaxy moves through space at 1.5 million miles per hour, it leaves not one — but two — tails behind it. These tails trailing after ESO 137-001 are made of superheated gas that Chandra detects in X-rays (blue). ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows light from hydrogen atoms (red), which have been added to the image along with optical and infrared data from Hubble (orange and cyan).

The inset shows just the Hubble optical image, reduced by about 50%, to get a clearer sense of the galaxy itself. It appears to be a jelly-fish galaxy, flying through space at right angles to its plane and with tendrils of stars trailing off below.

The other four images are as interesting. The full set, including separate images in the individual wavelengths prior to combination, can be found here.

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Astronomers discover two new polar-ring galaxies

9:13 am

Polar ring galaxy
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Using a combination of optical and radio telescopes as well as computer modeling, astronomers think they have identifed polar rings of gas orbiting two different galaxies, adding these to the relatively small population of known polar-ring galaxies.

Polar ring galaxies are unique in that they have an outer ring of gas and stars circling the galaxy at right angles to its plane. A composite image of one of these new galaxies is to the right, cropped, reduced and sharpened to post here. From the press release:

Jayanne English, a member of the WALLABY research team and also an expert in astronomy image-making at the University of Manitoba, developed the first images of these gaseous polar ring galaxies using a combination of optical and radio data from the different telescopes. First, optical and infrared data from the Subaru telescope in Hawaii provided the image for the spiral disk of the galaxy. Then, the gaseous ring was added based on data obtained from the WALLABY survey, an international project using CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope to detect atomic hydrogen emission from about half a million galaxies.

The creation of this and other astronomical images are all composite because they include information that our eyes can’t capture. In this particular case, the cold hydrogen gas component, invisible to the human eye, is seen in radio “light” using CSIRO’s ASKAP. The subtle colour gradient of this ring represents the orbital motions of the gas, with purple-ish tints at the bottom tracing gas that moves towards the viewer while the top portion moves away. The emission from the ring was separated from the radio emission emanating from the disk of the galaxy using virtual reality tools, in collaboration with Professor Tom Jarrett (University of Cape Town, South Africa).

As the abstract of the research paper notes, the computer models used “show that the data are consistent with PRGs [polar-ring galaxies] but do not definitively prove that the galaxies are PRGs.” There is much uncertainty, as it is difficult to determine the orientation of some rings relative to their galaxy’s plane.

Nonetheless, these result suggest polar ring galaxies might be more common, and thus might help refine the theories of galaxy formation and merger.

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The orbits of the nearest stars orbiting the Milky Way’s central black hole are impossible to predict

8:13 am

The uncertainty of science: Using a computer program developed in 2018 that can predict with accuracy the orbits of more than three interacting objects, scientists have found that the orbits of the 27 nearest stars orbiting the Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star) are impossible to predict after only a very short time.

“Already after 462 years, we cannot predict the orbits with confidence. That is astonishingly short,” says astronomer Simon Portegies Zwart (Leiden University, the Netherlands). He compares it to our solar system, which is no longer predictable with confidence after 12 million years. “So, the vicinity of the black hole is 30,000 times more chaotic than ours, and we didn’t expect that at all. Of course, the solar system is about 20,000 times smaller, contains millions of times less mass, and has only eight relatively light objects instead of 27 massive ones, but, if you had asked me beforehand, that shouldn’t have mattered so much.”

According to the researchers, the chaos emerges each time in roughly the same way. There are always two or three stars that approach each other closely. This causes a mutual pushing and pulling among the stars. This in turn leads to slightly different stellar orbits. The black hole around which those stars orbit is then slightly pushed away, which in turn is felt by all the stars. In this way, a small interaction between two stars affects all 27 stars in the central cluster. [emphasis mine]

To my mind, the quote by the scientist above should be considered the most absurd statement by a scientist ever spoken, except that nowadays scientists make such idiotic statements all the time. To think that such different conditions wouldn’t produce different results suggests a hubris that is astonishing for a person supposedly trained in the scientific method.

Regardless, these results suggest that acquiring an understanding of the dynamics that created these stars is going to be very difficult, if not impossible. The conditions change so rapidly, and in an unpredictable manner, that any theory proposed will be simply guessing.

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Weird rocks on Mars

1:02 pm

Weird rocks seen by Curiosity and Perseverance
For original images, go here and here.

Time for two cool images, this time from both of the American rovers on Mars.

The left picture above was taken on September 9, 2023 by the high resolution mast camera on Curiosity. It shows what appears to be a many-layered but rounded rock which appears typical of the many boulders that cover the terrain through which Curiosity is presently traveling. In the past the layered rocks that Curiosity has observed lower on the flanks of Mount Sharp have not been rounded. Instead, the delicate layers have often extended outward at the rock’s edges, almost like paper or threads. For some reason, the layers in the rocks here have been eroded smooth, suggesting they were once covered by flowing water or ice, able to round the rough edges in a way that Mars’ thin atmosphere can’t.

What is puzzling is the location, higher on Mount Sharp. One would expect the reverse, with such erosion more typical lower on the mountain and uneroded delicate layers more common higher on the mountain.

The right picture above was taken on September 8, 2023 by one of the high resolution mast cameras on the rover Perseverance in Jezero Crater, about 5,000 miles to west of Curiosity. It shows a rock whose shape is so strange it is hard to fathom a geological process that would result in this form. Possibly the rock was a surface layer on a larger round boulder, and the normal freeze-thaw cycle of Mars caused it crack off as one piece. The lump in the middle however makes this explanation questionable.

Also puzzling is the curved shape. On Mars almost no geological layers have been found that are curved. They are generally flat and horizontal, reflecting the lack of tectonic processes that on Earth often twist and squash layers.

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Repeating moonquakes on Moon found to be caused by remaining sections of Apollo 17’s LM

10:41 am

Scientists reviewing the archive seismic data produced by the seismometers placed on the Moon by the Apollo missions have discovered that repeating small moonquakes in that data were actually caused by base of Apollo 17’s Lunar Module (LM) that provided a launchpad for the part of the LM that lifted the astronauts off the Moon.

Triangulating the origin of the mystery quakes, researchers surprisingly realized they came from the Apollo 17 lunar lander base, which expands and vibrates each morning as it becomes heated by the sun.

“Every lunar morning when the sun hits the lander, it starts popping off,” Allen Husker, a Caltech research professor of geophysics who worked on the project, said in a statement. “Every five to six minutes another one, over a period of five to seven Earth hours. They were incredibly regular and repeating.”

That the extreme range of temperatures experienced by the LM could cause detectable quakes as the LM base expanded suggests strongly how difficult it is for a spacecraft to survive the lunar night lasting 14 Earth days. For all we know, that base has now literally fallen apart due to these stresses. This in turn suggests it is highly unlikely that India’s Pragyan rover will come back to life when the sun rises on September 22, 2023.

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Lucy gets first images of its first target asteroid, Dinkinesh

10:32 am

The asteroid Dinkinesh as seen by Lucy

The asteroid probe Lucy has obtained its first images of Dinkinesh, the first of the ten asteroids the spacecraft is hoping to visit during its twelve year voyage to the Trojan asteroids.

The image to the left shows the motion of that asteroid over a two day period when Lucy was getting the pictures.

Lucy took these images while it was 14 million miles (23 million km) away from the asteroid, which is only about a half-mile wide (1 km). Over the next two months, Lucy will continue toward Dinkinesh until its closest approach of 265 miles (425 km) on Nov. 1, 2023. The Lucy team will use this encounter as an opportunity to test out spacecraft systems and procedures, focusing on the spacecraft’s terminal tracking system, designed to keep the asteroid within the instruments’ fields of view as the spacecraft flies by at 10,000 mph (4.5 km/s). Lucy will continue to image the asteroid over the next months as part of its optical navigation program, which uses the asteroid’s apparent position against the star background to determine the relative position of Lucy and Dinkinesh to ensure an accurate flyby. Dinkinesh will remain an unresolved point of light during the long approach and won’t start to show surface detail until the day of the encounter.

Lucy’s primary targets are asteroids in the two Trojan groups that orbit the Sun in the two Lagrange points in same orbit as Jupiter, fore and aft of the gas giant by 60 degrees. For a map of Lucy’s full mission profile, go here.

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Frank Rubio on ISS sets new record for an American in space

10:10 am

Though Frank Rubio was only supposed to do a six month mission, a leak on the Soyuz capsule that brought him and his two crewmates into space has resulted in all three doing a mission exceeding one year, and setting a new record for an American in space.

Today Rubio broke the old American record of 355 days, set by Mark Vande Hei in 2022. When they return on September 27, 2023, all three will have spent 371 days in space, the third longest manned mission in history, exceeded only by Sergei Avdeyev’s 381 in 1999 and Valeri Polyakov’s 437 in 1994-1995, both on Russia’s Mir space station.

Based on my interviews with Polyakov and Musa Manarov (who was on the first mission with Vladimir Titov to spend one year in space — 366 days total — in 1988) for my book Leaving Earth, it will take Rubio about one year to fully recover from this mission, though he will likely be able to function almost normally within a month or so.

It remains interesting that these American records set by Rubio and Vande Hei occurred because of decisions by the Russians, not the American space agency NASA. NASA has consistently resisted doing long missions on ISS, even though this is exactly the kind of medical research required if we are to send humans on multi-year missions to Mars and beyond. Even more embarrassing, the longest NASA planned mission, flying Scott Kelly for 340 days, was touted by NASA as a year-long mission, even though it was never going to and did not achieve that distinction.

In doing this research the Russians have always led, and appear to continue to do so on ISS.

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