Comet 67P on July 28
On the left is today’s Rosetta image of Comet 67P. If you compare it with yesterday’s image, it is larger, as the spacecraft has now edged closer, only 1,390 miles away.
Tag: science
Opportunity breaks Soviet record
With a drive of 157 feet yesterday, the Mars rover Opportunity broke the Soviet record, set by Lunokhod 2 in 1973, for the longest distance traveled by a vehicle on another planet.
Planet of geysers
Using Cassini data assembled over the past seven years, scientists have now identified 101 distinct geysers erupting on the surface of the Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Over a period of almost seven years, Cassini’s cameras surveyed the south polar terrain of the small moon, a unique geological basin renowned for its four prominent “tiger stripe” fractures and the geysers of tiny icy particles and water vapor first sighted there nearly 10 years ago. The result of the survey is a map of 101 geysers, each erupting from one of the tiger stripe fractures, and the discovery that individual geysers are coincident with small hot spots. These relationships pointed the way to the geysers’ origin.
The really important discovery here however is this:
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Today’s Rosetta comet picture
ESA has released today’s image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (which hereafter I am going to refer to as Comet 67P because that is easier to pronounce and remember) from a distance of about 1578 miles.
They plan to release new images every day this week.
I plan to post those images here as well.
Russia regains control of biology satellite
Russian engineers have re-established contact with its Photon-M biology spacecraft carrying fruit flies, mushrooms, and five geckos.
Protecting the Mars orbiters from comet flyby
Engineers are repositioning the American spacecraft orbiting Mars so that they will be better protected by the planet when Comet Siding Spring flies past on October 19.
The comet’s nucleus will miss Mars by about 82,000 miles (132,000 kilometers), shedding material hurtling at about 35 miles (56 kilometers) per second, relative to Mars and Mars-orbiting spacecraft. At that velocity, even the smallest particle — estimated to be about one-fiftieth of an inch (half a millimeter) across — could cause significant damage to a spacecraft.
NASA currently operates two Mars orbiters, with a third on its way and expected to arrive in Martian orbit just a month before the comet flyby. Teams operating the orbiters plan to have all spacecraft positioned on the opposite side of the Red Planet when the comet is most likely to pass by.
The loss of skepticism in science
In April I taped a half hour television interview with George Noory for his subscription-based video show, Beyond Belief. Below is a clip from that interview, where I describe the terrible state of climate research, and how politics is destroying the very heart of what science stands for. Too many people are no longer open-minded. Rather than relay on the data they push their theories instead.
Robert Zimmerman discusses the truth about climate change with George Noory!
Russia loses contact with Photon-M
Russia has lost contact with its Photon-M biology spacecraft, launched last week with a four geckos on board.
The Russians say that the receipt of telemetry from the spacecraft shows it is successfully operating autonomously without help from the ground. And since the Russians have a great deal of experience building spacecraft that can function on their own, I have no reason to disbelieve them in this. What is not clear is whether the spacecraft can come home on its own.
Exoplanets with no water
The uncertainty of science: Though planet formation theories said they should have water, in looking for water on three exoplanets astronomers were surprised to discover practically none there.
The three planets, known as HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-12b, are between 60 and 900 light-years away from Earth and were thought to be ideal candidates for detecting water vapor in their atmospheres because of their high temperatures where water turns into a measurable vapor. These so-called “hot Jupiters” are so close to their star they have temperatures between 1,500 and 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, however, the planets were found to have only one-tenth to one one-thousandth the amount of water predicted by standard planet-formation theories.
“Our water measurement in one of the planets, HD 209458b, is the highest-precision measurement of any chemical compound in a planet outside our solar system, and we can now say with much greater certainty than ever before that we’ve found water in an exoplanet,” said Nikku Madhusudhan of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, England. “However, the low water abundance we have found so far is quite astonishing.” Madhusudhan, who led the research, said that this finding presents a major challenge to exoplanet theory. “It basically opens a whole can of worms in planet formation. We expected all these planets to have lots of water in them. We have to revisit planet formation and migration models of giant planets, especially “hot Jupiters,” and investigate how they’re formed.”
New Rosetta comet images
New images from Rosetta have a resolution of 100 meters per pixel and are finding that the neck connecting the comet’s two sections is apparently much brighter than the rest of the nucleus.
As earlier images had already shown, 67P may consist of two parts: a smaller head connected to a larger body. The connecting region, the neck, is proving to be especially intriguing. “The only thing we know for sure at this point is that this neck region appears brighter compared to the head and body of the nucleus”, says OSIRIS Principal Investigator Holger Sierks from the Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. This collar-like appearance could be caused by differences in material or grain size or could be a topographical effect.
It looks like this comet is going to turn out to be one of the most fascinating objects any space probe has visited in a long time.
An exoplanet with an orbit like Mars
Using Kepler astronomers have discovered a Uranus-sized exoplanet with the longest known orbit, 704 days.
Kepler-421b orbits an orange, type K star that is cooler and dimmer than our Sun. It circles the star at a distance of about 110 million miles. As a result, this Uranus-sized planet is chilled to a temperature of -135° Fahrenheit.
As the name implies, Kepler-421b was discovered using data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. Kepler was uniquely suited to make this discovery. The spacecraft stared at the same patch of sky for 4 years, watching for stars that dim as planets cross in front of them. No other existing or planned mission shows such long-term, dedicated focus. Despite its patience, Kepler only detected two transits of Kepler-421b due to that world’s extremely long orbital period.
The planet’s orbit places it beyond the “snow line” – the dividing line between rocky and gas planets. Outside of the snow line, water condenses into ice grains that stick together to build gas giant planets.
Posted from Bright Angel Lodge on the rim of the Grand Canyon.
Caves on the Moon!
Scientists have now identified more than 200 cave pits on the Moon.
The pits range in size from about 5 meters (~5 yards) across to more than 900 meters (~984 yards) in diameter, and three of them were first identified using images from the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft. Hundreds more were found using a new computer algorithm that automatically scanned thousands of high-resolution images of the lunar surface from LRO’s Narrow Angle Camera (NAC).
This work is essentially the same as that done by James Fincannon and I back in 2011 (see links here, here, here, and here) but with much greater thoroughness.