Tag: science

Wavy crescent ridges on Mars

10:23 pm

Wavy crescents on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on November 19, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team has labeled “Crescentic forms,” which in some ways resemble crescents that I featured in a cool image back in November 2020.

Unlike those earlier crescents, today’s are linked together to form a longer wavy line. Furthermore, today’s crescents include some positive relief, with some parts standing above the surrounding terrain. The earlier crescents were entirely carved out of the ground, forming depressions.

And yet, the method of formation for both must be somewhat similar. I say this based on their location, as shown in the overview map below.
» Read more

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Wildfire reaches Kitt Peak National Observatory

12:10 pm

A wildfire has crested the peak and reached the Kitt Peak National Observatory, threatening a number of telescopes there.

Around 2:00 a.m. MST Friday morning the fire, contrary to the expectations of the firecrews, crested the southwest ridge where the Hiltner 2.4-meter Telescope, McGraw-Hill 1.3-meter Telescope, Very Long Baseline Array Dish and UArizona 12-meter Telescope are located. Because of the ongoing nature of the situation, it is currently not possible to assess whether any damage to the structures has occurred. We will report any damage as soon as possible.

Based on this report, however, it does appear that officials expect several of these telescopes to be damaged by the fire.

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TESS discovers solar system of rocky super-Earths only 33 light years away

9:00 am

Astronomers, using the space telescope TESS, have discovered two rocky super-Earths orbiting a red dwarf star HD 260655, only 33 light years away.

Both planets are “super-Earths” – terrestrial worlds like ours, only bigger. Planet b is about 1.2 times as big around as Earth, planet c 1.5 times. In this case, however, neither world is likely to support life. The temperature on planet b, nearest to the star, is estimated at 816 degrees Fahrenheit (435 Celsius), [while] planet [has a temperature of] c 543 Fahrenheit (284 Celsius), though actual temperature depends on the presence and nature of possible atmospheres.

The star’s nearness as well as the fact that these planets transit across its face means further study can not only determine if they have atmospheres, it can also roughly measure the atmospheres’ make-up.

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Rock growths on Mars!

1:02 pm

Rock growths on Mars!
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right was taken by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity on May 15, 2022, and shows several incredibly strange vertical fingers of rock that appear to grow out of the ground. From the caption:

These likely formed as groundwater trickled through rock in the ancient past, depositing mineral cements over time; many years later, when the rock was exposed to the atmosphere, wind eroded the softer material around the cemented portions.

This formation explanation of course is only an educated guess. There are other possibilities, suggested by how cave formations grow over time, that are less likely but still must be considered. For example, maybe we are looking at a feature that grew upward as condensation from Mars’ once thicker and wetter atmosphere deposited new material on it over time.

Unfortunately, the image release does not provide a scale. My guess is that the longest finger is between six to twelve inches long, but it could be much smaller.

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Russian scientists defy Rogozin, will not reactivate German instrument on Spektr-RG telescope

9:51 am

It appears that the Russian astronomers who use their instrument on the Spekr-RG space telescope are refusing to follow the orders of Dmitry Rogozin to reactivate the German instrument — dubed eROSITA — which the Europeans shut down in response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

[T]he head of the Russian Space Research Institute, Lev Matveevich Zelenyi, spoke out against the unauthorized activation of eROSITA to Gazeta: “Our institute – all the scientists – categorically object to this. This objection is both for political and technical reasons.”

“This is not a Russian device. I can’t judge how realistic this whole thing is, I don’t know if our specialists have processing codes… But even if they have, it will be simply impossible to publish this data – no journal will accept it and will do it right,” he added.

Rogozin however appears adamant about taking over eROSITA. But then again, Rogozin blusters a lot, with many of this worst blusters having no bite behind them.

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Lucy gets a bonus asteroid during its tour of the Trojans

9:44 am

Lucy's planned journey
Click for full image.

While doing observations in March of one of the eight asteroids the Lucy asteroid will visit in the two Trojan asteroid regions fore and aft of Jupiter, scientists discovered it had a companion, thus increasing the total asteroids to be seen close-up by Lucy to nine.

One of the Trojan asteroids on Lucy’s tour, named Polymele, has a companion. Scientists discovered an apparent satellite of Polymele during a ground-based occultation observation in March, when Polymele briefly passed in front of a star, temporarily blocking its light from reaching Earth. The occultation observations were intended to help the Lucy science team determine the shape of Polymele, which only appears as a point of light in telescope images.

“We got a really nice projected shape of Polymele, and then we were very surprised to detect an object about 200 kilometers (120 miles) away from Polymele,” Levison said last week in a presentation to NASA’s Small Bodies Advisory Group. “It’s 5 kilometers (3 miles) in diameter, and it’s sitting almost exactly in Polymele’s equatorial plane.”

Lucy’s science team has temporarily named the object Shaun, after “Shaun the Sheep” in the show “Wallace and Gromit.”

The graphic above, from the Lucy science team, shows the spacecraft’s planned journey during its mission.

Engineers continue their attempts to fully open one of Lucy’s two solar arrays. On June 9th they successfully used the array’s deployment motors again for a short burst to further open the array. The plan is to repeat these short bursts with the hope the array will eventually latch into its intended open position.

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Curiosity: Into the mountains

11:48 am

Panorama on Mars, June 15, 2022
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The journey of Curiosity into the mountains of Gale Crater continues. The photo above, taken on June 15, 2022 by the rover’s left navigation camera, looks straight ahead at one possible route into those mountains.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right indicates Curiosity’s position. The yellow lines show the approximate area covered by the photo, by my estimate. The recurring slope lineae is a streak that comes and goes seasonally, and could be caused by some form of seepage. The marker layer, as indicated by the arrows, is a geological layer found at about the same elevation in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp.

The red dotted line indicates the planned route of Curiosity, which it is presently striving to return to, having been forced to retreat from the Greenheugh Pediment because of its too-rough terrain.

For scale, Navarro Mountain is estimated to be about 450 feet high. Thus, the peak in the center of the panorama, which I think is the large mesa in the lower right corner of the overview map, is probably twice that height, about 1,500 to 1,700 feet high, and much higher than the two mesas that frame it on either side. Distance and perspective hide this difference.

When Curiosity finally gets inside Gediz Vallis and close to the side of that many-layered mesa, the view should be unbelievably amazing.

The science team has not yet revealed the precise route they plan to take to return to the planned route. While they may aim straight over the saddle in the photo above, I suspect they will instead bear west, following ground that is less steep.

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DNA tests of 800-year-old gravesite in Kyrgyzstan suggest that region was source of Black Death

10:07 am

Based on DNA tests of several 800-year-old graves in northern Kyrgyzstan near Lake Issyk Kul, it appears that the Black Death that first appeared in Europe in the 1300s and killed as much as half its population came from this region initially.

Working with Slavin and Russian collaborators including Valeri Khartanovich of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, where the Issyk Kul skulls were stored, Spyrou extracted DNA from the pulp of seven individuals’ teeth and found three were infected with Y. pestis. She was able to reconstruct a high-quality genome of the ancient strain that killed them. That strain “fell exactly on the origin point of that big bang event” in the evolution of Y. pestis, Spyrou says. “That was incredibly exciting.”

The strain was closely related to ones found in rodents near Issyk Kul today. The authors suggest it spilled over to humans, perhaps from a marmot, which are abundant in the Tian Shan mountain region of northern Kyrgyzstan, southern Kazakhstan, and northwestern China.

What is fascinating most about this discovery is that we actually have the names of some of the Black Death’s first victims, read from their tombstones: ““This is the tomb of the believer Sanmaq. [He] died of pestilence.”

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An eccentric debris disk circling a nearby star

11:17 am

Eccentric debris disk around star.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, astronomers have discovered that the debris disk surrounding a star about 60 light years away, discovered in 2006 by the Hubble Space Telescope, is not circular, but instead forms an eccentric ring about the star.

The photo to the right combines the Hubble data (the blue background) and the ALMA data (the orange-yellow ring). The star is the bright spot in the ring, not in its center but at one of the ellipse’s two foci.

This level of eccentricity, MacGregor said, makes HD 53143 the most eccentric debris disk observed to date, being twice as eccentric as the Fomalhaut debris disk, which MacGregor fully imaged at millimeter wavelengths using ALMA in 2017. “So far, we have not found many disks with a significant eccentricity. In general, we don’t expect disks to be very eccentric unless something, like a planet, is sculpting them and forcing them to be eccentric. Without that force, orbits tend to circularize, like what we see in our own Solar System.”

In other words, there must be at least one hidden planet, maybe more, orbiting the star, its gravity forcing the disk into this shape.

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Perseverance gets close to its first cliff

9:55 am

Perseverance's first cliff
Click for full image.

Time for some cool images from Perseverance! The rover, now on Mars for more than a year, has finally begun its journey up the delta of material that some time in the past flowed through a gap in the rim of Jezero Crater. In doing so, it has also finally got close to a nearby cliff, within fifty feet or so, and used its high resolution left mast camera (mastcam) to take the photos to the right. The first, cropped and reduced to post here, was a wider shot taken on June 10, 2022, with the red arrow pointing to the part of the cliff featured in the second image below, taken on June 12, 2022, after the rover had moved in closer. This second photo is also cropped and reduced to post here.
» Read more

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Russia proposes restart of ExoMars partnership with ESA

8:17 am

Russia’s aerospace corporation Roscosmos has proposed to the European Space Agency (ESA) that its partnership to launch and land ESA’s Franklin rover on Mars be renewed, despite the Ukraine War and Roscosmos’ confiscation of 36 OneWeb satellites.

[According to Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin] the equipment and Kazachok landing platform for the mission have the potential for launch in 2024. “ESA colleagues promised to make requests to their patrons, who are ESA member states. If they cooperate and give their consent, the mission may be implemented,” Rogozin said.

He estimates the likelihood of this scenario to be at about 708%. [sic] Roscosmos plans to get the response in late June. [emphasis mine]

It would not be surprising if ESA made this deal, despite its stupidity. Roscosmos’ actions recently, especially related to OneWeb, prove the people running it are very untrustworthy business partners. Yet Europe’s historic willingness to deal with the devil for short term gain — eventually and repeatedly leading to overall disaster — is legendary.

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Rotation of Earth’s inner core oscillates back and forth over time compared to surface

8:09 pm

The uncertainty of science: New data now suggests that the Earth’s inner core is no longer rotating faster than the planet’s outer layers — as had been measured in 1996 — but is now actually rotating slower.

Research published in 1996 was the first to propose the inner core rotates faster than the rest of the planet — also known as super-rotation — at roughly 1 degree per year. Subsequent findings from Vidale reinforced the idea that the inner core super-rotates, albeit at a slower rate.

Utilizing data from the Large Aperture Seismic Array, a U.S. Air Force facility in Montana, researcher Wei Wang and Vidale found the inner core rotated slower than previously predicted, approximately 0.1 degrees per year. The study analyzed waves generated from Soviet underground nuclear bomb tests from 1971-74 in the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemlya using a novel beamforming technique developed by Vidale.

The new findings emerged when Wang and Vidale applied the same methodology to a pair of earlier atomic tests beneath Amchitka Island at the tip of the Alaskan archipelago — Milrow in 1969 and Cannikin in 1971. Measuring the compressional waves resulting from the nuclear explosions, they discovered the inner core had reversed direction, sub-rotating at least a tenth of a degree per year.

This latest study marked the first time the well-known six-year oscillation had been indicated through direct seismological observation.

What the data really suggests is that the core’s rotation is somewhat independent of the upper layers, so that each can vary relative to each other. This difference must carry with it some profound consequences, related to the length of the day, earthquakes, plate tectonics, and any number of other seismic phenomenon, but at the moment too little is known to tie everything together.

A bit of trivial for my readers: In 2004 I wrote an article for Natural History describing the discovery that the core rotated faster than the Earth’s upper layers. It was that article that prompted John Batchelor to invite me to appear on his show for the first time. The rest is history.

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Dusty Gale Crater in the winter

11:18 am

Curiosity's view to the north, May 25, 2022
Click on image for full resolution panorama. For original photos, go here, here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from five images taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera on May 25, 2022, looks north across the floor of Gale Crater at its rim about 25 miles away.

The butte on the left I think (though I am not certain) is the backside of the same butte seen from the front in December 2021. Then, Curiosity was below it looking up. Now, Curiosity is above it looking down.

For scale, that butte is about ten feet high. Navarro Mountain on the right is about 450 feet high, but looks less impressive because it is farther away.

It is now winter in Gale Crater, a time period when there is more dust in the atmosphere. This fact becomes very evident if you compare this panorama with a similar one taken in December 2021 in the Martian fall. Then, the air is crystal clear, and the rim can be seen in great detail. Now, though visible (barely) on the left, the haze makes the more distant peaks on the right almost invisible.

Curiosity has climbed about 1,750 feet since it landed in 2012. It is still about 12,600 feet below the peak of Mount Sharp. The blue dot and yellow lines in the overview map to the right indicates Curiosity’s location when the panorama was taken, and the approximate area covered by it.

Be sure and look at the full resolution panorama, especially the section near the middle, where the dramatic nature of this terrain is most evident.

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Delay in Psyche launch wrecks smallsat asteroid mission

9:18 am

The two month delay in the launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission because of software issues has apparently wrecked a smallsat asteroid mission that was to launch as a secondary payload on the Falcon Heavy rocket.

Janus, a NASA smallsat mission selected in 2019, will launch two identical spacecraft as secondary payloads on the Falcon Heavy rocket whose primary payload is Psyche. After a series of Earth flybys, each Janus spacecraft was to fly by different binary asteroids, designated 1996 FG3 and 1991 VH.

However, the mission’s principal investigator said June 8 that mission plan is no longer possible. Speaking at a meeting of NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG), Dan Scheeres of the University of Colorado noted that mission plan assumed Psyche launched in August of this year as previously planned. NASA announced May 23 that the mission’s launch had been delayed to no earlier than Sept. 20 to provide more time for testing the spacecraft’s software.

With the revised launch date, he said it’s no longer possible for the spacecraft to perform those Earth flybys with the existing spacecraft design. “Those flybys were essential for setting up our flybys of our target binaries, 1991 VH and 1996 FG3,” he said.

The Janus team are right now scrambling to see if they can find other asteroids the spacecraft can reach, based on the new launch date. Their work however is badly hampered by the uncertainty of that date, which could still change for many reasons.

The heart of the problem, as Scheeres notes, is its status as a secondary payload.

“We have no ability to influence the launch dates or the targeting of the launch vehicle, and that arises from our status as a rideshare,” he said.

The article also describes two other NASA interplanetary smallsat missions that have been badly hindered because of their status as secondary payloads. All three stories strongly suggest that in the future it will make much more sense to put such missions on its own rocket, as the primary payload. This is what NASA did with its CAPSTONE smallsat mission to the Moon, which will launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket sometime before the end of the month.

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Chinese scientists detect a fast radio burst that defies the theories

10:08 am

The uncertainty of science: Using their large FAST radio telescope, Chinese scientists revealed this week that they have detected a new fast radio burst (FRB) whose behavior and location does not fit the present tentative theories for explaining these mysterious deep space objects.

The FRB was an exception from the beginning as it flared again and again in observations recorded by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), which nestles among the hills of China’s Guizhou province. The multiple flares put the source among the few percent of FRBs that repeat. But unlike most repeaters, this one doesn’t have any apparent cycle of bursting and quiescence.

“FRB 20190520B is the only persistently repeating fast radio burst known so far, meaning that it has not been seen to turn off,” Li says.

In addition, whatever made the FRB is also emitting a constant buzz of radio waves. Astronomers have found an association with a persistent radio source in only two other FRBs, and for one of these the low-level radio waves seem to come from ongoing star formation in the host galaxy. For FRB 20190520B, though, the radio source is far more compact, and Li’s team thinks the radio waves probably come from the FRB source itself.

The data also suggests the location does not fit the theories, and even suggests that FRBs might not all come from magnetars, as presently proposed.

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Amino acids found in asteroid samples brought back from Ryugu

10:01 am

Japanese scientists revealed this week that they have detected more than 20 types of amino acids in the asteroid samples brought back from Ryugu by the probe Hayabusa-2.

Kensei Kobayashi, professor emeritus of astrobiology at Yokohama National University, said the unprecedented discovery of multiple types of amino acids on an extraterrestrial body could even hint at the existence of life outside of Earth. “Proving amino acids exist in the subsurface of asteroids increases the likelihood that the compounds arrived on Earth from space,” he said.

It also means amino acids can likely be found on other planets and natural satellites, hinting that “life could have been born in more places in the universe than previously thought,” Kobayashi added.

Let me emphasize that this is not a discovery of life on Ryugu, only chemistry that is found in life on Earth. Such chemistry however can be found outside of life as well. What this detection suggests however that it is relatively common to produce such complex chemistry in hostile space environments, which increases greatly the possibility of life everywhere in the universe.

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Progress in completing the deployment of one of Lucy’s solar panels

9:45 am

Lucy solar panel graphic
Artist’s impression of solar panel

In the past month engineers for the Lucy asteroid mission have conducted a series of successful short tests to see if they can complete the unfolding of one of the probe’s two large solar panels.

On May 9, the team commanded the spacecraft to operate the array’s deployment motor using both the primary and back-up motor windings simultaneously to generate more torque, i.e. a harder pull. The motor operated as expected, further reeling in the lanyard that pulls the solar array open. After running the motor for a series of short intervals to avoid overheating, the team paused to analyze the results. Data from the spacecraft showed that the deployment was proceeding similarly to engineering ground tests, allowing the team to move forward with the second stage of the attempt. Analysis of the data also suggested that there was still additional lanyard to be retracted. The team sent the same commands again on May 12. Although this series of commands did not latch the solar array fully open, it did advance the deployment enough to increase the tension that stabilizes the arrays as was hoped.

On May 26, the spacecraft was again commanded to deploy the solar array. As in the first two attempts, both motor windings were operated simultaneously for short periods of time to avoid overheating. Afterwards the team again analyzed the data from the event, which again showed that the array was continuing to open. The team repeated the deployment command sequence a fourth time on June 2. While the array still did not latch, the data indicates that it continued to further deploy and stiffen throughout the attempt.

The graphic above illustrates the problem. The engineers will attempt further windings, and still hope the panel will open entirely and latch. If not, the stiffening suggests the panel will still stabilize in this open position, which up to now has been sufficient to produce about 90% of the power predicted and enough to complete the mission.

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Webb gets its first large micrometeoroid impact

9:18 am

In a carefully worded press release this week, NASA revealed that one segment of the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope had been hit by a micrometeoroid.

Between May 23 and 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope sustained an impact to one of its primary mirror segments. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data. Thorough analysis and measurements are ongoing. Impacts will continue to occur throughout the entirety of Webb’s lifetime in space; such events were anticipated when building and testing the mirror on the ground.

The reason such events were expected is because — unlike most telescopes (including Hubble) — Webb’s mirrors are not enclosed in a tube for protection. To do so would have made the telescope far too expensive to build or launch.

After describing in great detail all the work done prior to launch to anticipate such hits and deal with them, the press release then mentioned this fact almost as an aside:

This most recent impact was larger than was modeled, and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground.

Localized damage to the primary mirror of any telescope is not unusual. With ground-based telescopes such issues are not infrequent and easily worked around. The same applies to Webb. The engineers will calculate how to calibrate this particular segment to minimize distortion from the impact.

However, that the telescope experienced a hit larger than ever modeled, so soon after launch, suggests that those models were wrong, and that larger and more frequent hits can be expected. If so, this could be very worrisome, as over the long run it could shorten the telescope’s life in space significantly.

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Close-up on another flaky Martian rock

3:00 pm

Close-up on another flaky Martian rock
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The picture above, reduced to post here, was taken by Curiosity’s high resolution camera on June 5, 2022 (sol 3494). It shows a close up of another flaky rock near where the rover is presently sitting (the blue dot on the map to the right), similar to the one that I highlighted on May 28, 2022 but zoomed in closer.

Not only can you seen the layered flakes extending out from the rock’s main body, you can see what appear to be small deposits of material between the flakes, as if at one point the material was being placed here by condensation, either from the atmosphere or liquid.

The curvy rounded edges of the rock’s larger flakes could have been caused by the same process, or by long slow wind erosion over the eons since the flakes were formed.

The photo appears to be part of a larger mosaic that the rover’s science team is having the camera take of the strange geology that now surrounds Curiosity. The science team also appears to be continuing its beeline south towards the rover’s original planned route, indicated by the red dotted line on the map. The green dot marks the approximate location of a seasonal recurring dark streak on the cliffside, suggesting some form of seepage, while the white arrows mark a distinct layer that scientists have identified in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp.

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Jet streams on Jupiter

12:55 pm

Jet streams on Jupiter
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was created from a raw image from the Jupiter orbiter Juno by citizen scientist Sergio Diaz-Ruiz. As he notes in his caption:

Several jet streams at high latitude, near the north pole of the planet, crowned by clouds, contrast with a dark oval just over the center.

The original was taken on February 25, 2022 during Juno’s fortieth close approach to Jupiter. As Diaz-Ruiz notes, the contrast with the dark oval and the higher lighter clouds is striking. It is almost as if thermals rising over that oval are pushing the lighter clouds away.

This is only the fourth Juno image that Diaz-Ruiz has processed. All are quite stunning, and worth a look.

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South Korea cancels probe to asteroid Apophis

8:57 am

The South Korea government has canceled its proposed unmanned probe to asteroid Apophis that had been designed to reach the asteroid during its ’29 close approach of Earth and fly in formation with it.

The science ministry, which manages state-funded space programs, recently ruled the mission “unfeasible” and decided not to request the $307.7 million budget it initially sought for the mission. … “We’ve decided not to pursue Apophis probe mission because there were various issues making it difficult for the mission to be successful,” Shin Won-sik, a science ministry official, told SpaceNews. “To probe Apophis, we have to launch a spacecraft by 2027 at the latest. But with the rocket and spacecraft-making capabilities we have, it’s unrealistic to launch in time.”

South Korean officials insisted they are not abandoning all future asteroid missions, but merely shifting this effort to other asteroids in which there is less time pressure to launch. Right now they are considering a mission in the mid-2030s, which could also be an asteroid sample return mission.

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Spiders galore on Mars!

2:36 pm

Spiders galore on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on February 27, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and shows a nice collection of what scientists have informally (but permanently) labeled as spiders, strange formations that exists only in the regions of the Martian south pole.

The spiders are believed to have formed because of the coming and going of the dry ice mantle in the polar regions that falls as snow in the winter and then sublimates away come the spring. Because dry ice is mostly clear, the spring sunlight penetrates it and warms the underlying surface, which acts to warm the base of the dry ice mantle. CO2 gas builds up, trapped below the dry ice, until the pressure causes it to break the dry ice at a weak point and spew outward, carrying with it dust that blackens the surface above. You can see three examples in today’s image.

Spiders however only happen at the south pole. In the north much of the terrain is formed by unstable dunes, which change from year to year, thus causing the gas breakage to occur at random and different spots.

In the south however the terrain is more stable, a surface of ice and dirt. The spiders form because the trapped gas always follows the same path from year to year to the same weak points, carving riverlike tributaries until these feeders combine and build up enough gas pressure to crack the overlying dry ice so that the gas can escape.

Though the gas functions much like a river of water, it has one fundamental difference that makes this phenomenon wholly Martian and quite alien. On Earth rivers flow downhill. On Mars, the gas in these spider tributaries is flowing upward, seeking a path into the atmosphere above.

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Russia to take control of German telescope on space orbiter

9:12 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, revealed today that he has issued orders for the scientists running the Spektr-RG telescope to figure out how to take over operations of the German instrument on the telescope.

“I gave instructions to start work on restoring the operation of the German telescope in the Spektr-RG system so it works together with the Russian telescope,” he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV channel.

The head of Roscosmos said the decision was necessary for research. “They – the people that made the decision [to shut down the telescope] don’t have a moral right to halt this research for humankind just because their pro-fascist views are close to our enemies,” he said.

The Europeans had shut down operations when it broke off all of its space partnerships with Russia, following the Ukraine invasion and the decision of Russia to confiscate 36 OneWeb satellites rather than launch them as it was paid to do.

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Sunspot update: In May we had sunspots, sunspots, and more sunspots!

10:31 am

It is time for another sunspot update! On June 1 NOAA released its monthly update of its graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I do every month, I have posted it below, having added some addition details to provide a larger context.

In May the sunspot activity on the Sun almost literally exploded, producing some of the strongest solar flares in years as well as the most sunspots since the previous solar maximum in 2014. On several days there were as many as eight sunspot groups on the Sun, with one so large that it was visible to the naked eye on Earth (if viewed properly with a protective filter).
» Read more

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A rock stows away on Perseverance

10:24 am

Perseverance's stowaway
Click for full image.

Since early February the Mars Rover Perseverance has been toting with it a small rock in its front left wheel, as shown in the image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here and taken by the rover’s left hazard avoidance camera on February 6, 2022.

From an update today by the Perseverance science team:

Back on sol 341— that’s over 100 sols ago, in early February— a rock found its way into the rover’s front left wheel, and since hitching a ride, it’s been transported more than 5.3 miles (8.5 km). This rock isn’t doing any damage to the wheel, but throughout its (no doubt bumpy!) journey, it has clung on and made periodic appearances in our left Hazcam images.

You can see the most recent photo of the rock, taken on May 26, 2022, here. It is very clear that the rock’s repeated tumbling inside the wheel well has worn away its sharp edges as well as reduced its overall size. Given enough time its surface could even become somewhat smooth.

As the update notes, when this rock finally drops off it will create a potential mystery for future geologists, who if they are not aware that Perseverance moved it, will wonder how it got where it was, being geologically out-of-place in its new location.

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MAVEN returns to full operation

9:42 am

NASA announced yesterday that engineers have finally completely restored its Mars orbiter MAVEN, after a three month period when the spacecraft was in safe mode due to an attitude control problem.

To fix the problem engineers uploaded new software that allowed the spacecraft to determine its orientation in space not from its onboard inertial units, but from locking onto stars in the sky.

All instruments were healthy and successfully resumed observations; however, the spacecraft was constrained to pointing at the Earth until testing of all-stellar mode was completed, so the instruments were not oriented as they normally would be during science operations. Nevertheless, some limited science was still possible, and MAVEN even observed a coronal mass ejection impact Mars less than two days after the instruments were powered on.

Moreover, for some parts of the year it will still need its inertial units, so a fix for those time periods is still required.

Regardless, MAVEN can now resume acting as a communications relay between the Earth and the rovers on Mars, which for the past year has become its prime mission. While both rovers can communication without that relay, it is often necessary depending on a number of factors, and it also provides redundancy and a greater communications capacity.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Long Beach to discriminate against any employee who refuses COVID jab

1:07 pm

Genocide is coming to America
If they could, the Democrats would do this to anyone who opposes them.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: The local government of Long Beach, California will on June 6, 2022 begin harsh discrimination and punishment against any city employee who refuses to get the COVID jab.

Anyone granted the personal exemption option must pay for weekly COVID-19 testing (rapid antigen/PCR), which can be done during city work hours, with the cost of the testing deducted from the employee’s paycheck, according to Ambrosini’s memo. Those receiving medical or religious exemptions will still be subject to weekly COVID-19 testing, but at city expense, according to the memo.

All unvaccinated city employees must continue to wear a mask of at least medical or surgical grade while at work under this new policy, according to memo. Employees not doing so are subject to disciplinary measures, up to and including termination, according to the policy.

Employees found not in compliance with the vaccination mandate will be subject to a wide range of disciplinary measures, including up to six months of suspension and then possible separation or even termination should non-compliance continue, according to the city.

The absurdity and injustice of this is even more pronounced considering the vast evidence now available to show the COVID shots don’t provide any real protection while carrying a potential health risk to those that take it. The link above, from May 11, 2022, provides links to a lot of this research. Here are just a few more examples, published in only the past few weeks:
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Curiosity on a steep slope

11:57 am

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Click for full panorama.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was compiled from 29 photos taken on May 31, 2022 by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It shows the steepness of the slope that the rover ended up parking on yesterday after it completed its drive. As noted in today’s rover update by Abigail Fraeman, Planetary Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

Curiosity starts the plan parked at an impressive 17˚ pitch (front up) and 17˚ roll (left up) for a total 24˚ tilt. You can get a bit of a sense of the rover’s non-horizontal position by looking at its orientation with respect to the ground in the above Navcam mosaic. Even though this slope is getting close to the limit of what Curiosity can traverse, we don’t think we’ll have any problems unstowing the arm or driving the rest of the way to the top because of the terrain we’re on – nice smooth bedrock with only a thin sand cover is almost the Martian equivalent of a paved road.

On the far right of the image you can also see Curiosity’s tracks. The rover had first approached this slope about 80 feet to the west, then backed off slightly to parallel the slope as it came east and then turned uphill. In the far far distance can be seen the rim of Gale Crater, about about 30 miles away and obscured by the atmosphere’s winter dust.

The overview map above shows Curiosity’s location with the blue dot. The approximate area covered by the section of the panorama above is indicated by the yellow lines. The red dotted line shows the rover’s original planned route. The white arrows indicate what the scientists have dubbed the “marker horizon,” a distinct layer found in many places on the flanks of Mount Sharp that they are very eager to study up close. The green dot marks the approximate location of a recurring slope lineae, a place where the cliff is seasonally darkened by a streak that appears each spring and then fades.

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Astronomers used Japanese weather satellite to monitor the dimming of Betelgeuse

10:19 am

Belelgeuse as seen by weather satellite
From Figure 1 of the paper. Click for full image and caption.

In a paper published on May 30th, astronomers described how they used the Japanese weather satellite Himawari-8 to monitor the dimming of Betelgeuse that occurred in 2019 and 2020.

“We saw a tweet stating that the moon was in its images,” Daisuke Taniguchi, a Ph.D. student in astronomy at the University of Tokyo and first author of the paper, told Space.com. “I chatted with [third author] Shinsuke Uno on the usage of meteorological satellites for astronomy, found Betelgeuse is in the field of view of Himawari-8 and realized that maybe the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse could be investigated.”

Himawari-8 has been positioned 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth’s equator since 2015 to study weather and natural disasters (including the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcano on Jan. 15). Although the satellite is up there to image Earth every 10 minutes, the edges of its images include stars.

Taniguchi and his colleagues were able to see Betelgeuse in images taken throughout Himawari-8’s lifetime and measured its brightness roughly every 1.7 days between January 2017 and June 2021.

The scientists were lucky that the star’s unexpected dimming happened to occur during this time period. The image above is Figure 1 from their paper (which you can read here).

They note that their observations appeared to confirm the theory that the dimming was caused by a dust cloud crossing in front of the star, not the theory that it was caused by a dark spot on the star’s surface. Moreover, their data suggests that dust was relatively close to the star, and could even been created by a burst from the star.

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Webb to release first science images July 12th

9:41 am

The science team for the James Webb Space Telescope announced today that the first infrared science images from the telescope will be released on July 12, 2022.

The first images package of materials will highlight the science themes that inspired the mission and will be the focus of its work: the early universe, the evolution of galaxies through time, the lifecycle of stars, and other worlds. All of Webb’s commissioning data – the data taken while aligning the telescope and preparing the instruments – will also be made publicly available.

In many ways this first release will likely mirror the first release of images from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, after its serious focus problem had been solved. Then, the science team and NASA picked images for the press conference that, to them, would pass what they called the “grandmother test,” whereby an ordinary person not familiar with space objects would still instantly recognize the object imaged.

The result of that criteria was that some of Hubble’s best ground-breaking first images were not included, such as its first sharp picture of the exploding star Eta Carinae. While the images shown were beautiful, they did not immediately demonstrate what Hubble was going to accomplish. The Eta Carinae picture did however.

Hopefully this time the scientists will be more daring, and have a greater respect for the general public, and include some infrared images that are not familiar to non-scientists. It is such data that is almost always the most exciting.

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