Tag: science

Radar antenna on Europe’s JUICE probe to Jupiter stuck

8:27 am

European Space Agency officials revealed yesterday that the 52-foot radar antenna on its JUICE probe to Jupiter has failed to deploy as planned, and that they are attempting to shake what they think is a small pin free that is in the way.

Engineers suspect a tiny pin may be protruding. Flight controllers in Germany plan to fire the spacecraft’s engine in hopes of shaking the pin loose. If that doesn’t work, they said they have plenty of time to solve the problem.

Juice, short for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, won’t reach the giant planet until 2031. It’s taking a roundabout path to get there, including gravity-assist flybys of Earth and our moon, and Venus.

The radar antenna is needed to peer beneath the icy crust of three Jupiter moons suspected of harboring underground oceans and possibly life, a major goal of the nearly $1.8 billion mission. Its targets include Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.

If this antenna cannot be freed, it will prevent JUICE from doing one of its prime missions.

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Glacier layers on the border of Hellas Basin

12:20 pm

Dipping glacial layers
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “dipping layers”, referring specifically to the mesas with the terraces on their western flanks.

The layers obviously signify past cycles of geological events on Mars. That the terraces are only on one side of the mesas suggests that they are tilted, with the downhill grade to the east.

These layers however pose several mysteries. First, why are they located so specifically in only certain places of this region? It appears that the layered terrain is only found in the lower hollows and valleys. Why?

Second, why are they tilted at all?
» Read more

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If global warming doesn’t kill us the fog will!

11:01 am

Shipping routes
Illustration showing the distance and time saved by going north
through the Arctic Ocean

A new report published by the American Geophysical Union, and touted by it though a press release today, says that while the melting Arctic Ocean icecap — caused by human-caused global warming — will make shipping more convenient, that shipping will be hindered by increased fog — caused by human-caused warming.

Arctic sea ice has been shrinking for decades. That loss has opened shipping channels in the Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route, allowing even non-icebreaker vessels to skip the time-consuming Panama and Suez Canals farther south. But as the ice recedes, cold air is exposed to more warm water, and warm vapor condenses into fog in those new passages. Hidden chunks of ice already pose risks to vessels making their way through foggy, low-visibility routes.
» Read more

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Astronomers discover 25 more repeating fast radio bursts, doubling the number known

10:18 am

Using a ground-based radio telescope in Canada that scans the northern sky each night, astronomers have discovered another 25 repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs), doubling the number that was previously known.

One surprising aspect of this new research is the discovery that many repeating FRBs are surprisingly inactive, producing under one burst per week during CHIME’s observing time. Pleunis believes that this could be because these FRBS haven’t yet been observed long enough for a second burst to be spotted.

The cause of FRBs still remains unsolved. The knowledge of specific repeating FRBs however will go a long way to figuring out this mystery, because other telescopes will be able to better observe later bursts, knowing when they are expected to occur.

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Engineers extend Voyager-2’s life by tapping into reserve power supply

9:54 am

Engineers have begun using a backup power supply on the Voyager-2 spacecraft — launched in 1977 and presently traveling in interstellar space — in order to extend the life of one of its five instruments one additional year.

To help keep those instruments operating despite a diminishing power supply, the aging spacecraft has begun using a small reservoir of backup power set aside as part of an onboard safety mechanism. The move will enable the mission to postpone shutting down a science instrument until 2026, rather than this year.

The solution is only temporary, as the end of the mission is inevitable as its radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) was only designed to provide power for about a half century (!). As time passes its power supply slowly declines, forcing engineers in recent years to shut down other systems to allow the science instruments to operate. That all the other systems on both Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 remained operational until the end of their RTGs tells us how well these spacecraft were built by their 1970s creators.

Assuming this works, engineers will do the same thing on Voyager-1 sometime next year. In both cases, however, power from the RTGs will likely run out entire sometime in the next 5-10 years, ending the missions.

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Frozen waves of lava on Mars

12:19 pm

Frozen waves of lava on Mars

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an area where the ground suddenly transitions from a crazy quilt of criss-crossing hollows and ridgelines to a very flat and smooth plain.

The location is at 21 degrees south latitude, so this is in the dry equatorial regions. Though it has a small resemblance to the chaos terrain that is found in many places on Mars, mostly in the mid-latitudes where glaciers are found, the scale here is too small and the ridges and canyons are not as sharply drawn. While chaos terrain usually forms sharply defined large flat-topped mesas with steep cliffs, here the ridges are small and the slopes to the peaked tops are somewhat gentle.
» Read more

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Experimental NASA high altitude balloon circles Antarctica in ten days

10:06 am

Overview map
Click for original image.

An experimental NASA high altitude balloon has successfully circled the continent of Antarctica in only ten days, flying at an average elevation of 107,000 feet.

The overview map to the right, annotated for posting here, shows its flight path so far.

“The balloon is performing exactly the way it was engineered to do, maintaining its shape and flying at a stable altitude despite the heating and cooling of the day-night cycle,” said Debbie Fairbrother, NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program chief. “As we continue to test, validate, and qualify this technology for future flights we’re also performing some cutting-edge science.”

The balloon is flying the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) payload, which has already returned brilliant research images from this flight.

Weather permitting, the balloon can be seen from the ground, especially at sunrise and sunset, as it continues on its globetrotting journey. People can track the real-time location of NASA’s super pressure balloon at this website: https://www.csbf.nasa.gov/map/balloon10/flight728NT.htm

The images have so far been of astronomical objects, such as the Antennae galaxy and the Tarantula nebula. Being so high above the atmosphere, the pictures are sharper than ground-based telescopes and have a much wider field of view.

The press release did not state how long this flight will last, but it did mention a second balloon mission is planned, flying a European cosmic-ray detector.

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The inexplicable tail of the asteroid Phaethon is from sodium, not dust

9:39 am

For years astronomers have puzzled over the strange behavior of the asteroid Phaethon, which though rocky would still produce a tail like a comet whenever its orbit took it close to the Sun.

New research by astronomers using several space telescopes designed to study the Sun has determined that this tail is made of sodium, not dust as previously believed, which also suggests that many of the other “comets” these solar telescopes have detected close to the Sun might instead be asteroids like Phaeton.

Hoping to find out what the tail is really made of, Zhang looked for it again during Phaethon’s latest perihelion in 2022. He used the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft — a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) – which has color filters that can detect sodium and dust. Zhang’s team also searched archival images from STEREO and SOHO, finding the tail during 18 of Phaethon’s close solar approaches between 1997 and 2022.

In SOHO’s observations, the asteroid’s tail appeared bright in the filter that detects sodium, but it did not appear in the filter that detects dust. In addition, the shape of the tail and the way it brightened as Phaethon passed the Sun matched exactly what scientists would expect if it were made of sodium, but not if it were made of dust.

Knowing these new facts, it might make it possible to map the asteroids that orbit very close to the Sun but are hard to detect optically using standard telescopes because of the Sun’s brightness. Instead, astronomers might be able to map them using these solar telescopes.

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One instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ends its mission

9:00 am

Because Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (MRO) CRISM instrument needed to be cooled to low temperatures to use infrared wavelengths for detecting underground minerals and ice on Mars, and the cryocoolers have run out of coolant, the science team has shut the instrument down.

In order to study infrared light, which is radiated by warm objects and is invisible to the human eye, CRISM relied on cryocoolers to isolate one of its spectrometers from the warmth of the spacecraft. Three cryocoolers were used in succession, and the last completed its lifecycle in 2017.

All the remaining instruments on MRO, including its two cameras, continue to operate nominally.

In its final task, CRISM produced a global map showing water related minerals on Mars, released last year, and a global map showing iron deposits, to be released later this year.

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The breakup of a Martian glacier

11:48 am

The breakup of a Martian glacier
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label a “contact” in the glacier country in the northern mid-latitudes of Mars.

The contact is clearly the region of breakup in the middle of the picture. To the right the surface is whole and very smooth. As we move to the left that surface begins to show cracks and holes until those holes and cracks eliminate that surface entirely, revealing a lower layer that is soft-looking and stippled.

In other words, this is the edge of a glacier, and is the place in which it is breaking up. Unlike Earth glaciers however this breakup process is entirely different.
» Read more

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Hakuto-R1 lands on Moon but ceases communications at touchdown

10:16 am

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

According to the Hakuto-R1 engineering team, the lander provided full data and maintained communications right up until touchdown, but at that point they lost contact with the spacecraft.

The loss of data at landing suggests something went wrong at touchdown. That they were able to maintain contact until then, and the data appeared correct, suggests that the spacecraft descended properly into Atlas Crater, but then touched down on some rough ground that either caused it to topple, or damaged it on contact.

This remains speculation however. We will have to wait for a full update from Ispace.

This was a engineering mission to test the company’s spacecraft design and its ability to operate a lunar mission. The failure at landing means it achieved about 8 to 9 of its 10 milestones. How this final failure will effect its next mission as well as its contract with NASA remains unclear.

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Review of InSight data allows scientists to further refine their model of Mars’ interior

10:04 am

Using archive data from the now defunct InSight Mars lander, especially two seismic detections that came from the planet’s far side, scientists now believe that Mars’ central core is significantly different than Earth’s, being entirely liquid and made up of much lighter materials than expected.

To determine these differences, the team tracked the progression of two distant seismic events on Mars, one caused by a marsquake and the other by a large impact, and detected waves that traveled through the planet’s core. By comparing the time it took those waves to travel through Mars compared to waves that stayed in the mantle, and combining this information with other seismic and geophysical measurements, the team estimated the density and compressibility of the material the waves traveled through. The researchers’ results indicated that Mars most likely has a completely liquid core, unlike Earth’s combination of a liquid outer core and solid inner core.

Additionally, the team inferred details about the core’s chemical composition, such as the surprisingly large amount of light elements (elements with low atomic numbers)—namely sulfur and oxygen—present in Mars’ innermost layer. The team’s findings suggested that a fifth of the core’s weight is made up of those elements. This high percentage differs sharply from the comparatively lesser weight proportion of light elements in Earth’s core, indicating that Mars’ core is far less dense and more compressible than Earth’s core, a difference that points to different conditions of formation for the two planets.

These differences, if confirmed, would certainly affect the way Mars’ surface evolved over the eons, and might help explain its giant volcanoes as well as the planet’s lack of a magnetic field.

The results however remain uncertain, because InSight provided only one seismometer on Mars. To better triangulate the data will require more than one, in the future.

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China once again outlines its lunar base plans; Russia out? Project delayed?

9:38 am

China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The original Chinese-Russian lunar base plan, from June 2021.

In outlining today China’s long term plans for establishing a manned lunar base near the south pole of the Moon, the project’s chief designer, Wu Weiren, revealed several changes in the program, almost all of which were indicated by what he did not say than what he did.

The graph to the right was released when this program was first announced in June 2021. At that time the plan was announced as a partnership of China and Russia, and was aiming to begin intermittent manned operations on the Moon in 2036.

According to Wu’s presentation today however, China apparently no longer considers Russia to be a full equal partner. It appears instead that Russia was mentioned as part of Wu’s effort to encourage many other countries to join the project. As reported by China’s state-run press:

During Tuesday’s event, Wu also highlighted the cooperation initiative for countries, organizations, and scientists worldwide to join the construction of the research station. In 2021, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) released a partnership guideline for the International Lunar Research Station.

That the state-run press made no mention of Russia in this description indicates strongly China’s devaluation of Russia’s contribution. This devaluation is not a surprise. As I noted in 2021,

[B]ased on Russia’s recent track record in the past two decades for promised space projects, we have no guarantee they will fly as scheduled, or even fly at all.

Since then Russia invaded the Ukraine and has suffered economically because of it. Its own first contribution to this partnership, Luna-25, has been delayed repeatedly, with its present launch now scheduled for July. It was always obvious that Russia — in its present state — could not match China, nor was it likely it would meet its promised targets.

Wu’s presentation also indicated that the third phase, when intermittent manned operations will begin, has been delayed from 2036 to 2040.

Overall, however, the Chinese plan remains stable and rational, and is likely to be carried out with reasonable success, based on how the country proposed and then achieved construction of its space station. The station was built essentially as described by the plan, with only a delay of a few years.

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Watching live the landing of Hakuto-R1 on the Moon

8:54 am

I have embedded below the live stream of Hakuto-R1’s landing on the Moon, scheduled for today. The original landing time was targeting “approximately” 8:40 (Pacific), but it is now past that. That time might actually have indicated the start of the live stream. The lander is presently out of contact, on the far side of the Moon.

The landing is targeting the floor of Atlas Crater, located in the northeast quadrant of the visible hemisphere of the Moon.

» Read more

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Ingenuity snaps picture of Perseverance during its 51st flight on Mars

11:04 am

Ingenuity's view on 51st flight, April 22, 2023
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On April 22, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity completed its fifty-first flight on Mars, flying 617 feet west for about 136 seconds at an altitude of about 39 feet. As has been routine for the past dozen or so flights, all these numbers were slightly higher than the flight plan, probably because the helicopter took extra time to find a good landing spot.

The panorama above, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by Ingenuity about halfway through the flight. Unlike the black and white images that the helicopter takes looking straight down, this color image looks at an oblique angle of 22 degrees below the horizon. The colors are not corrected. The view looks east, looking backwards into Belva Crater. You can see Perseverance on the left, with its tracks cutting across the frame. Belva is filled with ripple dunes.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Perseverance’s present position. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s take-off point, with the green line indicating the approximate flight path.

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The climb into Gediz Vallis

10:21 am

Panorama on Sol 3808, April 24, 2023
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

After three months traversing the geological layer that the scientists have dubbed the Marker Band, Curiosity has now climbed higher, passing what I dubbed the Hill of Pillows on the west so that it is now in a position to return to its planned route up Mount Sharp, as indicated by the red dotted line in the overview map to the right and the panorama above.

The panorama, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was created on April 24, 2023 using 31 images from the rover’s right navigation camera. The yellow lines on the overview map indicate approximately the area covered, with the blue dot marking Curiosity’s present position.

For scale, the top of Kukenan is about 5,200 feet above Curiosity, while the top of Chenapua is only about 115 feet higher. The white flanks are about 3,200 feet above Kukenan, and are about 4 to 5 miles away.

Looking back, the rim of Gale Crater on the far left of the panorama is about 20 miles away.

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Al-Amal snaps first close-up images of Martian moon Deimos

9:10 am

Deimos with Mars in the background
Click for full movie.

During its first close fly-by of the Martian moon Deimos on March 10, 2023, the United Arab Emirates Mars orbiter Al-Amal (“Hope” in English) obtained the first close-up images of the moon.

The picture to the right show Deimos with Mars in the background. The full set of images, compiled into a movie, can be seen by clicking on the image.

The results were outlined by science lead Hessa Al Matroushi at a conference today.

During the 10 March fly-by, the mission team used all three onboard instruments to take readings spanning from the infrared to the extreme ultraviolet. The relatively flat spectrum the scientists saw is suggestive of the type of material seen on Mars’s surface, rather than the carbon-rich rock often found in asteroids, suggesting that Deimos was formed from the same material the planet. “If there were carbon or organics, we would see spikes in specific wavelengths,” she says.

These results probably put an end to the theory that Mars’ moons came from the asteroid belt. Instead, they either formed when the planet did, or were thrown free and settled into orbit after a very large impact, such as the ones that created either the Hellas or Argyre basins, both of which happened several billion years ago and thus provide ample time for the space environment to smooth the moon’s surface and add some craters.

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The strange terrain in the basement of Mars

12:22 pm

Strange terrain inside Hellas Basin
Click for original image.

I’ve posted numerous cool images about the weird and alien terrain found routinely in what is Mars’ death valley, Hellas Basin. Today is no different. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 23, 2023 to fill a gap in the schedule of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Thus, it isn’t linked to any particular research, and its target was chosen by the camera science team almost at random.

What it shows is a strangely striated plain interspersed with rounded mesas and partly buried craters. The shape of the striations suggests that they were formed from wind blowing consistently from the north. This hypothesis is reinforced by the material that seems piled up at the base of the two bottom mesas, as if it was blown there.

Is ice or lava however?
» Read more

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Scientists predict solar maximum to arrive one year early

9:39 am

The scientists whose prediction of a more active upcoming solar maximum that has so far turned out more accurate than the consensus prediction have now updated their prediction, lowering it somewhat but also predicting the maximum will occur one year early, in 2024 instead of 2025.

The team’s finalized forecast for the current cycle expects it to peak in late 2024, one year earlier than NASA and NOAA had predicted. The cycle, the team thinks, will reach about 185 monthly sunspots during its maximum and thus be somewhat milder than what the team originally forecasted. This peak intensity will place this cycle at about the average compared to the historical record.

In other words, now that we are about halfway to maximum, they have concluded that while NOAA’s prediction was too low, their prediction was too high. They have now adjusted their expectations to be closer to what they now think will happen.

A short solar cycle however has historically corresponded to much higher sunspot activity. If this new prediction is correct (a short cycle with a mild maximum), it will mean that the Sun is still behaving in ways that the solar science community does not understand, or can predict.

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A spray of small impacts melting Martian ice?

11:01 am

A spray of small impacts melting Martian ice?

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on March 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and was taken not as part of any specific research request but by the MRO science team to fill a gap in its schedule while also maintaining the camera’s temperature. Sometimes these somewhat random times show nothing of interest. Sometimes they are fascinating, as in this case.

The photo shows what appear to be a spray of small impacts on an easily melted surface. Imagine spraying hot molten lava on a sheet of ice. Instead of creating a crater with an upraised rim, on impact each droplet would quickly melt a hole.

Did these small impacts all occur at the same time? My guess is yes, based on the overview map below.
» Read more

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New research expands lethal zone around supernovae

9:58 am

According to data collected from a number of orbiting space X-ray telescopes, astronomers now believe that the lethal zone for nearby habitable planets when a supernova explodes is much larger than previously thought, as great as almost 200 light years.

The calculations in this latest study are based on X-ray observations of 31 supernovae and their aftermath mostly obtained from Chandra, NASA’s Swift and NuSTAR missions, and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton. The analysis of these observations shows that there can be lethal consequences from supernovae interacting with their surroundings, for planets located as much as about 160 light-years away. “If a torrent of X-rays sweeps over a nearby planet, the radiation would severely alter the planet’s atmospheric chemistry,” said Ian Brunton of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who led the study. “For an Earth-like planet, this process could wipe out a significant portion of ozone, which ultimately protects life from the dangerous ultraviolet radiation of its host star.”

You can read the paper here [pdf], which includes a figure that suggests in certain circumstances the lethal zone can be 200 light years across. As the scientists note:

Perhaps the most interesting results are the distances at which the X-ray emission can impose lethal effects on an Earth-like biosphere. This larger range of influence has consequences for the Galactic habitable zone, such as the harmful implications for recently discovered exoplanets that would be susceptible to nearby [supernovae].

In other words, this data suggests the galaxy is far less hospitable to the development of life. It takes a lot of time for life to evolve, billions of years, and during that time a solar system traveling through the galaxy has now a much higher chance of passing too close to a supernova explosion.

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ULA delays first launch of Vulcan to June at the earliest

8:11 am

Peregrine landing site

An official from Astrobotics confirmed this week that an explosion during testing of the Centaur upper stage of its new Vulcan rocket will delay that rocket’s first launch for at least one to two months, from May to June or July.

On March 29, Tory Bruno, the CEO of Colorado-based spacecraft makers United Launch Alliance LLC, announced on his personal Twitter account that ULA’s Vulcan Centaur V rocket had experienced “an anomaly,” which preceded a tweet he shared on April 13 that showed a video of an explosion that occurred outside of a testing rig that housed the ULA rocket. He alluded to a hydrogen-related leak as being a possible culprit and in response the next day to other replies, Bruno said in a tweet that “June/July” will be the next earliest estimated launch timeline.

That timeline is the same one that John Thornton, CEO of North Side-based Astrobotic, shared during a speech as part of a kickoff event for the Aviation and Robotics Summit in the Strip District on Tuesday.

The main payload on that Vulcan inaugural launch is Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, carrying several NASA science instruments to the Gruithusien Domes region on the Moon, as indicated by the white dot on the picture above.

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Jumbled floor of ancient Martian channel

12:19 pm

Jumbled floor of ancient Martian channel
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 2, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

At first glance I thought I was looking at a variety of eroding glacial flows. I was completely wrong. This terrain is located on the floor of 900-mile-long Ares Vallis, thought to have been carved eons ago by some flow, either liquid catastrophic floods or glacial ice, but is now located in the very dry equatorial regions of Mars.

Then what caused these meandering ridges? The overview map below, plus the wider view of MRO’s context camera, provides us more data but little illumination. In fact, both leave us more questions and mysteries.
» Read more

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NASA’s Mars Sample Return project now overbudget

9:23 am

According to testimony by NASA’s administrator Bill Nelson to a Senate committee, its Mars Sample Return (MSR) project now needs a lot of additional funds in order to have any chance of staying on schedule.

Nelson told the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee today that he just learned two weeks ago during a visit to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is building MSR, that they need an additional $250 million this year and an additional $250 million above the request for FY2024 to stay on schedule for launch in 2028.

That FY2024 request warns that the projections for future MSR funding requirements are likely to grow and force NASA to descope the mission or reduce funding for other science projects. NASA just set up a second [independent review board] to take another look at the program.

The project is already beginning to suck money from other science missions, such as solar and astronomy and the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. In addition, its method for getting the samples back to Earth remains somewhat uncertain due to ESA’s decision to not build a lander/rover for the mission, requiring JPL to propose the use of helicopters instead.

I predict Congress will fund everything, by simply printing more money as it nonchalantly continues to grow the national debt to levels unsustainable. Meanwhile, replacing the present very complex return concept — involving a lander, helicopters, an ascent rocket, and a return capsule (from Europe) — with a much cheaper and simpler option that is now on the horizon, Starship, does not seem to have occurred to any of the these government wonks.

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The peeling floor of a crater in the southern cratered highlands

12:00 pm

Overview map
From Argyre Basin to Hellas Basin is about 7,000 miles.

The peeling floor of a crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The scientists labeled this image “Crater fill”, but that hardly suffices. First, the fill appears at first glance to resemble peeling paint. At closer inspection, rather than peeling paint we have instead a collection of ridges vaguely resembling cave rimstone dams that either enclose a blob-shaped region or simply meander about until they reach the crater’s interior rim.

The crater interior itself appears largely filled with material so that its rims are subdued. The location, as indicated by that black dot near the center of the overview map above, marks the location at 49 degrees south latitude, in the middle of the cratered southern highlands of Mars where many craters have strangely eroded interiors.

What makes this crater however more puzzling is that none of the surrounding nearby craters look like this. A context camera image taken March 23, 2019 shows that while some of the nearby craters have what appears to be glacial material in their interiors, none exhibit these meandering ridges. This crater stands unique, for reasons that are utterly unknown.

Are these ridges a manifestation of the glacial material filling the crater? Or are they bedrock sticking up through that glacial debris? Your guess is as good as mine.

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Ingenuity in close-up after two years on Mars

9:48 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A classic spiral galaxy

11:06 am

A classic spiral galaxy
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released today as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble picture of the week.

A large spiral galaxy. It has many narrow arms that are tightly-twisted in the centre, but at the ends they point out in different directions. The galaxy’s core glows brightly, while its disc is mostly faint, but with bright blue spots throughout the arms. A few smaller spiral galaxies at varying angles are visible in front, and it is surrounded by other tiny stars and galaxies, on a black background.

This galaxy is believed to be 260 million light years away, and was home to a supernova in 2020. This image was taken as a follow-up to that explosion.

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Perseverance catches up with Ingenuity

10:57 am

Ingenuity as seen by Perseverance
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

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

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

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

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

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The very icy high northern latitudes of Mars

2:04 pm

Pedestal crater on Mars
Click for full image.

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

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

This theory however does not explain entirely what we see here. That apron mesa surrounding the crater also resembles the kind of splash field that is created when an impact occurs in less dense ice-rich ground. Note too the soft stippled nature of the ground. Wind erosion is not the sole cause of change here.
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Ingenuity completes its 50th flight on Mars

10:28 am

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

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

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

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

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

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