Tag: science

All is so far well with Intuitive Machines Athena lunar lander

9:27 am

The Moon's South Pole with landers indicated
The Moon’s South Pole with landers indicated.
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet yesterday from Intuitive Machines, its Athena lunar lander is operating as expected since its launch last night.

The lander is in excellent health, sending selfies, and preparing for a series of planned main engine firings to refine her trajectory ahead of lunar orbit insertion, planned on March 3. Intuitive Machines is targeting a lunar landing opportunity on March 6.

If all goes as planned, Athena will land only 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole, as shown on the map to the right. This location had originally been picked for NASA’s now canceled VIPER rover, because the terrain would have allowed the rover to travel down into some permanently shadowed regions. NASA now hopes to use the Grace hopper on Athena to accomplish the same task.

Next week will also see a second privately built rover land on the Moon, though several days before Athena. Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander is scheduled to land on March 2, 2025 in Mare Crisium on the eastern edge of the Moon’s visible hemisphere. Furthermore, there is presently a third private lander on its way to the Moon, built by Japan’s Ispace. It is taking a longer route there, with its landing occurring in May.

There is also a fourth commercial lander, Astrobotic’s Griffin, that is presently targeting a launch by the end of 2025. It was originally supposed to carry VIPER, but has now replaced that with the commercial test prototype rover being built by the startup Venturi Astrolab, which is competing to get the contract to build the manned rover for NASA’s Artemis program.

Lunar exploration is certainly heating up.

Hat tip to reader Richard M for the Athena tweet update.

2 comments

Intuitive Machine’s Athena lunar lander to launch later today

12:41 pm

The second attempt by the startup Intuitive Machines to soft land a spacecraft on the Moon is scheduled to launch today at 7:16 pm (Eastern) time on a Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I have embedded the Space Affairs live stream feed below, because it starts only 45 minutes before launch. If you want to watch an extra hour of pre-launch blather and propaganda from NASA, the official live steam can be found here. Be warned however. All the live feeds are being produced by NASA, which tends to make believe it made everything happen, when in truth both the rocket and lander are privately owned and built. NASA is contributing most of the science instruments, but without SpaceX and Intuitive Machines, none of those instruments would go anywhere.

A very good description of the mission and the science instruments on board, including a hopper, and a drill, can be found here.

Secondary payloads on the rocket include a low cost NASA lunar orbiter and the first interplanetary probe of a private company.

The first, Lunar Trailblazer, has two instruments for mapping the existence of water on the lunar surface. The second, Astroforge’s Odin spacecraft, will attempt a close fly-by of the asteroid 2022 OB5, thought to be made up mostly of nickel-iron and thus potentially very valuable resource for mining.

» Read more

1 comment

Juno data proves volcanism on Io involves numerous lava lakes

11:47 am

The lava lakes of Io
A global map of Io’s lava lakes. Click for original figure.

Based on data and imagery produced by the Jupiter orbiter Juno as it made a series of fly-bys of the moon Io from 2022 to 2024, scientists have now mapped at least 40 lava lakes amid the numerous volcanoes on the planet. The map above, figure 2 of the paper, shows their location and approximate relative size across Io’s surface. From the paper’s abstract:

Recent observations from the Juno spacecraft have revealed at least 40 lava lakes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, using the JIRAM (Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper) imager. Most of the large depressions on Io, known as paterae, show signs of heat, indicating that lava lakes are common. The lava lakes vary in size from 10 to 100 km in diameter and have a thin crust, about 5–10 m thick, that appears to be a few years old. The heat observed mainly comes from the larger crust, not the small exposed lava, so it is hard to measure the total heat output from just the thermal data. Additionally, eight of these lava lakes are new discoveries and were not previously known as active hotspots.

One aspect of these lakes found repeatedly in this new data is that their lava appears to rise and fall as a unit, as if the lake’s floor bed acts like a huge piston pushing the whole lake up and down from below, rather than lava entering in or draining out from a central vent. This conclusion appears to settle the debate between these models for explaining why the lava almost never rises high enough to pour out from the lake. Instead, the lakes themselves appear to be stable features, not volcanic calderas from which lava flows to build a mountain.

0 comments

Lucy takes first picture of its next target asteroid

9:12 am

Lucy's future route through the solar system
Lucy’s route to the asteroids. Click for original blink animation.

The asteroid probe Lucy, on its way to the orbit of Jupiter to study numerous Trojan asteroids, has taken its first picture of the the main asteroid belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, which it will pass within 600 miles on April 20, 2025.

The map to the right shows the spacecraft’s looping route to get to the Trojans, with that image of Donaldjohanson in the lower right. Though the asteroid is about two miles side, it will remain an unresolved point of light until the day of the fly-by. This image was taken from a distance of 45 million miles. As for the asteroid’s name:

Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named for anthropologist Donald Johanson, who discovered the fossilized skeleton — called “Lucy” — of a human ancestor. NASA’s Lucy mission is named for the fossil.

After this encounter, Lucy will head to the Trojans, where it will visit its first six asteroids (including two binaries) in 2027-2028.

0 comments

The Europa Clipper team prepares for Mars fly-by

8:52 am

Europa Clipper's route to Jupiter
Click for original image.

As planned, Europa Clipper is set to do a very close fly-by of Mars on March 1, 2025, zipping past the red planet at a speed of 15.2 miles per second only 550 miles above its surface. The graphic to the right shows the spacecraft’s planned route to Jupiter, including an additional fly-by of Earth in 2026.

During this first fly-by the science team will test two of Europa Clipper’s instruments.

About a day prior to the closest approach, the mission will calibrate the thermal imager, resulting in a multicolored image of Mars in the months following as the data is returned and scientists process the data. And near closest approach, they’ll have the radar instrument perform a test of its operations — the first time all its components will be tested together. The radar antennas are so massive, and the wavelengths they produce so long that it wasn’t possible for engineers to test them on Earth before launch.

The spacecraft launched with transistors not properly hardened for the hostile environment around Jupiter. Engineers claimed these would “heal” themselves once in Jupiter orbit. No word on whether there has been any issue from these components since launch.

0 comments

Curiosity looks uphill into canyon

1:10 pm

Panorama taken on February 23, 2025
Click for full resolution. For original images, go here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The panorama above, reduced and sharpened to post here, was created by me from two photographs taken on February 23, 2025 (here and here) by the left navigation camera on the Curiosity rover on Mars.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, with the white dotted line its past travels and the red dotted lines its planned route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama above.

Several things to note. The boxwork indicated on lower left of the overview map is the rover’s next major geological target. Though the rover team has made no announcement of a major route change, they have clearly diverged from that route by heading south and uphill into this canyon.

In reviewing the interactive map, I have not found any really good route up to the boxwork, other than this canyon. My guess is that the rover team is scouting it out as a possible new route. The panorama above is part of that scouting, and it certainly suggests that the canyon would be a good way to go.

They might also be considering this change because the old route would take them downhill, which would only have them studying geological layers they have already seen up close in Curiosity’s earlier travels. The team might have decided to forego the old route because it would not only look at geology already documented, it would add stress to Curiosity’s already stressed wheels. Since it appears the terrain up hill is going to continue to be this rough for as far as the eye can see, they likely decided it was better to move into unexplored geology now rather than later.

1 comment

Bumpy frozen lava on Mars

2:50 pm

Bumpy frozen lava on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool picture time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 30, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample,” it was most likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s temperature.

The image is fascinating nonetheless, as the landscape is typically alien for Mars. What caused the many random ridges and knobs? Why are there oblong areas that are smooth and have no ridges? And why is there dark material inside that crater that appears to have been blown out to the northeast? If you click on the image to see the full image, not all the craters look this way. One has a similar dark feature, but others are as bland as the entire terrain.

The overview map below only increases these mysteries, even if it does provide some further data.
» Read more

0 comments

Hubble takes a close look at one tiny part of the Veil Nebula

12:47 pm

A small section of the Veil Nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of just one very tiny section of the supernova remnant known as the Veil Nebula, located about 2,400 light years away.

The white dot on the inset (showing the entire Veil Nebula) marks the area covered by this closeup, focused on the one bright section of nebula in the Veil’s southwest quadrant. From the caption:

This nebula is the remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that exploded about 10 000 years ago. … This view combines images taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, highlighting emission from hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen atoms. This image shows just a small fraction of the Veil Nebula; if you could see the entire nebula without the aid of a telescope, it would be as wide as six full Moons placed side by side.

Astronomers have been using Hubble to take periodic pictures of the Veil Nebular since 1994 in order to track changes as these gaseous gossamer strands evolve over time.

2 comments

Close-up of Blue Ghost’s landing zone on the Moon

12:26 pm

Close-up of Blue Ghost's landing zone
Click for original image.

The science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) on February 21, 2025 posted the picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, showing in close-up the March 2, 2025 landing zone for Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander.

The Blue Ghost landing region (image center, 18.56°N, 61.81°E) is heavily cratered due its ancient age (>3 billion years). … The landing region is near a large volcanic cone, Mons Latreille, which formed billions of years ago as part of the massive outpouring of basaltic magma that filled much of the Crisium basin.

Despite the many craters, there are plenty of smooth spots in this landscape. The real challenge for the lander is finding its way to them.

For a map showing this location on the Moon, go here.

0 comments

A Martian glacier of dust

3:14 pm

A Martian glacier of dust
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture above, rotated, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The tiny white dot near the lower center of the overview map below marks the location, on the northern wall of the smaller parallel canyon to the much larger part of Valles Marineris dubbed Coprates Canyon.

The scientists label this a “slope deposit.” What I see is a dust glacier flowing down hill in that long hollow (indicated by the arrows), with the ripple dunes actually acting almost like waves. Nor is this description unreasonable. On Mars the dust will gather in the hollows of these slopes and over time, with no rain and little wind to disturb them, will begin to flow down much like a glacier.

In this case, the descent is gigantic, considering the size of Valles Marineris. From the top to bottom of this image the elevation drop is about 14,000 feet over a distance of 11 miles.

Overview map

1 comment

New observations reduce odds of asteroid 2024 YR4’s 2032 Earth impact to practically zero

9:26 am

The uncertainty of science: According to a short update from NASA late yesterday, new ground-based observations have now reduced the odds that asteroid 2024 YR4’s will hit the Earth in 2032 to only 0.28 percent.

Observations made overnight on Feb. 19 – 20 of asteroid 2024 YR4 have further decreased its chance of Earth impact on Dec. 22, 2032, to 0.28%. NASA’s planetary defense teams will continue to monitor the asteroid to improve our predictions of the asteroid’s trajectory. With this new data, the chance of an impact with the Moon increased slightly to 1%.

Expect these numbers to change again in March, when the Webb telescope tracks the asteroid. And do not assume Webb will confirm these numbers. There remains great uncertainty in all these calculations, especially because there is great uncertainty about the size, mass, and make-up of 2024 YR4. It could be anywhere from 130 feet to 320 feet in diameter, and that difference makes these calculations uncertain.

In other words, it remains essential that work should begin on putting together a mission to visit and study this asteroid, now. Though it isn’t large enough to cause a worldwide extinction, it is big enough to do very significant damage, depending on where it hits.

5 comments

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers keep changing the odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting the Earth in 2032

8:53 am

In the past three days three different reports from both NASA and the European Space Agency have given three different percentages for the chances that asteroid 2024 YR4 will hit the Earth in 2032.

On Tuesday, NASA calculated that the space rock had a 3.1% chance of hitting Earth in 2032, while the European Space Agency’s risk assessment sits at 2.8%.

The narrow difference is due to the two agencies’ use of different tools for determining the asteroid’s orbit and modeling its potential impact. But both percentages rise above the 2.7% chance of collision once associated with an asteroid discovered in 2004 called Apophis, making 2024 YR4 the most significant space rock to be spotted within the past two decades.

However, another update shared by NASA on Wednesday showed that 2024 YR4 has a 1.5% chance of colliding with Earth in December 2032, based on new observations now that the full moon has passed. Astronomers have anticipated that such fluctuations are possible as they gather more observational data.

While the media has generally focused mostly on the higher numbers in their knee-jerk “We’re all gonna die” approach to everything, all these different numbers simply illustrate is the generally limited nature of our data about the asteroid’s orbit and its future path. For example because such asteroids are so small, it isn’t just gravity that influences their flight path through the solar system. The Sun’s light pressure can actually have an impact, but to determine how much you need to know the exact size, shape, and rotation of the object. Right now 2024 YR4’s size is estimated to range from 130 to 320 feet in width, determining this effect is presently impossible. Nor is this the only such variable.

At the same time, the data continues to suggest that the chances of this asteroid hitting the Earth are not trivial. The sooner we can find out everything about it the better. Getting a mission to it quickly would be the best way, but so far I have heard little from NASA or anyone about such an idea.

3 comments
1 … 45 46 47 48 49 … 729