Tag: science

Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander separates from its propulsion module; Luna-25 in lunar orbit

9:08 am


Click for interactive map.

The two probes aiming to land in the high southern latitudes of the Moon in the next week are now both in lunar orbit and preparing for their planned landings.

First India’s Chandrayaan-3: With its propulsion module having completed the job of getting Chandrayaan-3 from Earth to lunar orbit, the Vikram lander today separated from that module in preparation for firing its own engines on August 23, 2023 and landing on the Moon.

Vikram needs to make several orbital adjustments before that landing attempt.

Second, Russia’s Luna-25 probe entered lunar orbit yesterday, where it will spend the next few days making its own orbital adjustments before attempting its landing on August 21st.

Vikram carries a small rover, Pragyan. Luna-25 is only a lander, though it has a scoop and will do analysis of the lunar soil below it. Neither is landing “near the south pole”, as most news sources are saying. They are landing at latitudes comparable to landing in the Arctic on Earth, on the northern coast of Alaska. As such, neither will find out anything about the question of remnant ice in south pole’s permanently shadowed regions.

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An avalanche in the West Virginia of Mars

11:53 am

An avalanche in the West Virginia of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

I have cropped it to focus on this one hill, about 900 feet high (though the elevation data from MRO is somewhat uncertain at this resolution), because of that major landslide on its northern slopes. At some point in the past a major piece of the exposed bedrock at the top broke off and slide about halfway down the mountain, almost as a unit, settling on the alluvial fill that comprises the bottom half of the hill’s flanks.

The bedrock surrounding the peak is also of interest because of its gullies, all of which were created by downward flowing material. Was it ice? Water? Sand? Or maybe a combination of two or three? If water or ice was involved it was a very long time ago, as this location is in the dry equatorial regions of Mars. There is little known near-surface ice here.
» Read more

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Scientists discover in Alaska the largest dinosaur track site in U.S.

9:51 am

New dinosaur track site in Alaska
Click for original image.

Paleontologists have discovered in Alaska a new dinosaur track site that appears to contain numerous exposed tracks on what is now a series of vertical walls covering an area larger than a football field.

The picture to the right shows the entire site. The darker flat walls that appear to be dimpled are the track sites, with the dimples the actual tracks.

Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks made the discovery following a seven-hour hike into the Denali National Park and Preserve, and it is now the home of the largest known single dinosaur track site in the US state.

Like a geological triple-decker (or more) sandwich, the 20-story-high structure, pushed vertical due to tectonic plate convergence, reveals a cliff face of layer upon layer of preserved prints throughout time. “It’s not just one level of rock with tracks on it,” said Dustin Stewart, the paper’s lead author and a former UAF graduate student. “It is a sequence through time. Up until now, Denali had other track sites that are known, but nothing of this magnitude.”

The scientists think these now vertical walls, when horizontal in the past, marked a major water-hole location visited by numerous dinosaurs and other species.

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Chandrayaan-3 reaches final lunar orbit for landing

9:12 am


Click for interactive map.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft completed its final lunar orbital engine burn today, placing it in the correct orbit to release the lander Vikram, carrying the Pragyan rover.

The release is scheduled for tomorrow, with the landing targeting August 23, 2023. This will be India’s second attempt to softland an unmanned probe on the Moon. The Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2 failed in 2019 during its final engine burn above the surface, crashing thereafter. Engineers at India’s space agency ISRO spent several years upgrading that lander to better insure this new attempt would succeed.

The lander has been given more ability to manoeuvre during the descent, the mission allows for a bigger 4 km x 2.4 km area for landing, more sensors have been added, one of the thrusters has been removed, and the legs of the lander have been made sturdier to allow for landing even at slightly higher velocity. More solar panels have also been added to ensure that the mission can go on even if the lander does not face the sun. More tests to see the capability of the lander in different situations were carried out to make Chandrayaan-3 more resilient.

Both Vikram and Russia’s Luna-25 lander, scheduled for touchdown on August 21, will land in the high southern latitudes of the Moon, at about 70 degrees. They are not going to the Moon’s south pole, as many news reports claim.

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The impact that almost cracked Mars open

12:40 pm

An irregular pit chain on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label an “irregular pit chain,” made up of a series of depressions scattered along a line that extends more than sixty miles to the northeast and to the southwest, beyond the edges of this high resolution close-up.

The chain likely indicates the existence of a fault line, or crack that created a void underground in which surface material is sinking. What makes this crack or fault line significant is how it and other similar fissures or cracks map across the Martian surface, extending for thousands of miles far beyond this particular pit chain and covering almost half the planet. In aggregate they imply the occurrence of past geological events so stupendous they are difficult to comprehend.
» Read more

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Ingenuity’s 55th flight completed

9:57 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

The Ingenuity engineering team today updated the helicopter’s flight log, showing that the 55th flight occurred on August 12, 2023, one day later than originally planned, and flew 881 feet for 143 seconds, 61 feet and 9 seconds longer than planned.

The overview map above shows the present locations of both Perseverance and Ingenuity. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s new position, while the blue dot marks where Perseverance presently sits in Jezero Crater. Based on this map, the main goal of the flight was apparently to fly Ingenuity over a route that Perseverance will likely use to return to its planned route, as indicated by the red dotted line.

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Webb confirms galaxy as one of the earliest known in the universe

9:27 am

The uncertainty of science: Using the spectroscopic instrument on the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have confirmed that one of the first galaxies found by Webb, dubbed Maisie’s Galaxy after the daughter of one scientist, is one of the earliest known in the universe, existing only 390 million years after when cosmologies say the Big Bang happened.

The data also showed that another one of these early galaxies spotted by Webb did not exist 250 million years after the Big Bang, but one billion years after, a date that better fits the theories about the early universe, based on the nature of this galaxy.

It turns out that hot gas in CEERS-93316 was emitting so much light in a few narrow frequency bands associated with oxygen and hydrogen that it made the galaxy appear much bluer than it really was. That blue cast mimicked the signature Finkelstein and others expected to see in very early galaxies. This is due to a quirk of the photometric method that happens only for objects with redshifts of about 4.9. Finkelstein says this was a case of bad luck. “This was a kind of weird case,” Finkelstein said. “Of the many tens of high redshift candidates that have been observed spectroscopically, this is the only instance of the true redshift being much less than our initial guess.”

Not only does this galaxy appear unnaturally blue, it also is much brighter than our current models predict for galaxies that formed so early in the universe. “It would have been really challenging to explain how the universe could create such a massive galaxy so soon,” Finkelstein said. “So, I think this was probably always the most likely outcome, because it was so extreme, so bright, at such an apparent high redshift.”

This science team is presently using Webb’s spectroscope to study ten early galaxies in order to better determine their age. Expect more results momentarily.

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Intuitive Machines sets mid-November launch date for its Nova-C lunar lander

9:16 am


Click for interactive map.

Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that the launch of its lunar lander, Nova-C, is now targeting a November 15-20, 2023 window, lifting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The yellow dot on the map to the right indicates the landing site, Malapert A, in the southern latitudes of the Moon. The white cross indicates the south pole.

The lander had originally planned to launch in 2021, but delays in construction pushed the launch back two years. A second company, Astrobotics, has its own lander, Peregrine, that though also delayed two years, has been ready to launch since early this year. It won’t launch until the end of this year at the earliest, however, due to delays in readying its rocket, ULA’s Vulcan on its first flight.

Both India’s Chandrayaan-3 and Russia’s Luna-3 are right now on their way to the Moon, with each planning a landing next week.

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China makes available to the international community Chang’e-5’s lunar samples

9:52 am

China on August 2, 2023 announced that it is now allowing scientists from all nations to apply for access to the lunar samples brought back to Earth by its 2020 Chang’e-5 mission to the Moon.

The announcement outlined very specific rules for the loan of the samples, including requirements that if any part of a sample needs to be destroyed to study it that action be videotaped in detail. Samples loaned for research are for one year periods only, though this can be extended.

The rules also allow two month loans for the use of samples in public display, such as at a museum.

In both cases China will closely supervise the research and retain the right to recall the samples at any time if it doesn’t approve of what the borrower is doing.

U.S. law forbids our government officials or agencies from working with China, so don’t expect NASA or its scientists to apply for these samples. However, the law doesn’t apply to independent scientists, though serious state department regulations would apply. I therefore doubt many American scientists will apply for any samples. It would carry too many risks to their other research.

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Chandrayaan-3 completes next-to-last orbital maneuver before releasing Vikram lander

9:31 am


Click for interactive map.

According to India’s ISRO space agency, its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft has successfully completed the next-to-last orbital maneuver burn before releasing Vikram lander, lowering the spacecraft’s orbit around the Moon to 150 by 177 kilometers.

Today’s maneuver can be considered the second last vital maneuver. The one that takes place on August 16, will set the course for the Vikram lander.

Based on how today’s and August 16’s manoeuvres are executed, ISRO will get to decide where the Vikram lander touches down, among three predesignated spots on the Moon’s surface.

It had been my understanding that the landing zone was as indicated by the red dot on the map to the right. It might be instead that was only one of three potential landing sites. If so, I will update the map when more data is released.

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The flat and mostly featureless flood lava plains of Mars

2:39 pm

The flat and mostly featureless lava plains 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 July 3, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Dubbed a “terrain sample” by the camera team, it was likely taken not as part of any scientist’s specific research program but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When the camera team needs to do this they try to pick something of interest that is below during that gap.

In this case MRO was over the vast flood lava plains of Mars where for many hundreds of miles the only features are small variations produced from different overlapping lava flood events. The layers of lava in this region in fact appear so thick that there are relatively few places where the older topography still sticks up through the lava. In the case of this picture, the ridges might indicate such buried topography, but they also might simply be dikes of lava, pushed up through fissures from underground.
» Read more

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Scientists: Saturn has rainstorms of ammonia lasting hundreds of years

11:31 am

Using radio telescope data of Saturn scientists now believe that the big storm first detected in 2011 produced rainstorms of ammonia which are expected to last hundreds of years.

As reported in the new study, de Pater, Li and UC Berkeley graduate student Chris Moeckel found something surprising in the radio emissions from the planet: anomalies in the concentration of ammonia gas in the atmosphere, which they connected to the past occurrences of megastorms in the planet’s northern hemisphere.

According to the team, the concentration of ammonia is lower at midaltitudes, just below the uppermost ammonia-ice cloud layer, but has become enriched at lower altitudes, 100 to 200 kilometers deeper in the atmosphere. They believe that the ammonia is being transported from the upper to the lower atmosphere via the processes of precipitation and reevaporation. What’s more, that effect can last for hundreds of years. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Saturn has an ammonia cycle similar to the water cycle on Earth.

Need I add that this study carries great uncertainties, and that the amount of data about Saturn’s interior and atmosphere is sparse, at best?

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Russia launches Luna-25 to the Moon

5:20 pm


Click for interactive map.

After almost two decades of development, Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch Luna-25, its first lander to the Moon since the 1970s.

The link is cued to the live stream, just prior to launch. It will take several days to get to the Moon and enter orbit, make some orbital adjustments, then land in Boguslawsky crater, as shown on the map to the right. It is likely its landing will occur before India’s Chandrayaan-3 lands on August 23rd but not certain, depending on the adjustments needed in lunar orbit. Both could even land on the same day.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

54 SpaceX
33 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 62 to 33, and the entire world combined 62 to 55, while SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world (excluding American companies) 54 to 55.

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The icy mountains close to where SpaceX hopes to land Starship on Mars

11:26 am

The icy mountains near Starship's landing site on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 25, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled as showing “flow features” by the scientists, it gives us a nice example of many of the different types of glacial and near-surface ice features seen routinely in the Martian latitudes above 30 degrees, especially in the northern hemisphere.

First there is the apron around the mound. Its layering suggests the many cycles that Mars’ climate has undergone as its rotational tilt swung back and forth from as low as 11 to as much as 60 degrees (it is presently at 25 degrees).

The mound, with those two depressions at its peak, suggests the possibility that it is some form of ice/mud volcano, similar to the suspected ice/mud volcanoes routinely seen in the northern lowland plains of Utopia Basin.
» Read more

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Astronomers: Binary system creates tidal waves on star’s surface 3x larger than our own Sun

9:32 am

Tidal waves on star's surface

Based on computer simulations, astronomers believe that the monthly light changes in a binary star system are partly caused by gigantic tidal waves on the surface of the system’s larger star, waves that are three times higher than the diameter of our own Sun.

The larger star in the system is nearly 35 times the mass of the Sun and, together with its smaller companion star, is officially designated MACHO 80.7443.1718 — not because of any stellar brawn, but because the system’s brightness changes were first recorded by the MACHO Project in the 1990s, which sought signs of dark matter in our galaxy.

Most heartbeat stars vary in brightness only by about 0.1%, but MACHO 80.7443.1718 jumped out to astronomers because of its unprecedentedly dramatic brightness swings, up and down by 20%. “We don’t know of any other heartbeat star that varies this wildly,” says MacLeod.

To unravel the mystery, MacLeod created a computer model of MACHO 80.7443.1718. His model captured how the interacting gravity of the two stars generates massive tides in the bigger star. The resulting tidal waves rise to about a fifth of the behemoth star’s radius, which equates to waves about as tall as three Suns stacked on top of each other, or roughly 2.7 million miles high.

The image on the right is a screen capture from the computer simulation. The bulges on the right side of the larger star are the hypothesized tidal waves.

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Martian craters or volcanoes?

11:52 am

Martian craters or volcanoes?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on June 30, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The scientists label these features “cones” because many of the depressions sit on top of a mound or hill, suggesting some form of volcanic feature, either from erupting lava, ice, or mud.

Yet, are they volcanoes? Some or even many could instead be impact craters, created when a asteroid broke up during infall, creating a spray of bolides. Erosion of surrounding terrain can create what scientists call pedestal craters, but if all these craters were from an impact than all would either be pedestal craters, or not. Instead, we have a mix of some craters above and others level with the terrain.
» Read more

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South Korea’s KARI space agency releases new images taken by its Danuri lunar orbiter

10:02 am

To celebrate the anniversary of its launch, South Korea’s KARI space agency today released new images taken by its Danuri lunar orbiter.

Images include views of Reiner Gamma, a so-called swirl, which features a localized magnetic field and marks a bright spot within the Oceanus Procellarum region. Another shows shadows inside Amundsen Crater, close to the lunar south pole and a potential landing site for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which is slated to put astronauts on the moon in late 2025.

Another southern feature captured by Danuri is Drygalski Crater, showing the central peak inside the impact crater.

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Scientists repeat fusion power experiment that produced more energy than spent

10:03 am

For the second time ever, scientists have successfully produced more energy from a fusion power experiment than they spent running the experiment.

Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun, but until December no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes — a condition also known as ignition.

Researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who achieved ignition for the first time last year, repeated the breakthrough in an experiment on July 30 that produced a higher energy output than in December, according to three people with knowledge of the preliminary results.

Before you start buying stock in fusion power or believe the glowing praises coming from politicians and government bureaucrats, be warned: This experiment, which cost billions, was only able to produce enough power to run a household iron for about an hour. It will likely take many more billions and decades more of research to scale it up to a viable power system that has any hope of being practical.

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Ingenuity completes 54th flight, a short hop after previous flight ended prematurely

9:45 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

According to the Ingenuity engineering team, Ingenuity has successfully completed its 54th flight on Mars, a short 25 second hop up and down that was done to try to figure out why the previous flight previous flight, #53, had ended prematurely.

Flight 53 was planned as a 136-second scouting flight dedicated to collecting imagery of the planet’s surface for the Perseverance Mars rover science team. The complicated flight profile included flying north 666 feet (203 meters) at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and a speed of 5.6 mph (2.5 meters per second), then descending vertically to 8 feet (2.5 meters), where it would hover and obtain imagery of a rocky outcrop. Ingenuity would then climb straight up to 33 feet (10 meters) to allow its hazard divert system to initiate before descending vertically to touch down.

Instead, the helicopter executed the first half of its autonomous journey, flying north at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) for 466 feet (142 meters). Then a flight-contingency program was triggered, and Ingenuity automatically landed. The total flight time was 74 seconds.

This explains why, after the 53rd flight, the engineering team had not immediately added that flight to the helicopter’s flight log. That log is now updated to include both the 53rd and 54th flights, but the data from the 53rd flight was held back until after the 54th flight was completed.

The green dot in the overview map above shows Ingenuity’s present position, only a few feet to the west from its previous position shown here. The blue dot indicates Perseverance’s present position. The red dotted line indicates the planned route of the rover.

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Curiosity under the shadow of a Martian mountain

12:18 pm

Panorama showing Kukenan on August 8, 2023
Click for full resolution. For original images, go here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map

Another cool image to start the week! The panorama above was created using two navigation images taken by Curiosity on August 8, 2023. It looks almost due west at the dramatic western wall of 400-foot-high Kukenan butte.

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present location. The yellow lines indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama above. The red dotted line indicates the rover’s planned route.

Recently JPL issued a press release touting the efforts of its engineers to overcome the very steep and rocky terrain that Curiosity is presently traversing, an effort that I have documented repeated in the past few months (see posts here and here). They had been trying to send Curiosity straight up the mountain, to no success, and finally decided to do what every hiker and trail-maker does routinely, do back and forth switchbacks to reduce the grade per step.

In June they headed slowly uphill going east. In July they turned back and worked their way uphill going west, heading back to the Jau crater complex to get a quick look at these craters, then turned again in August to head back east, slowly working uphill along the contour lines. As they do this the rover is moving closer and closer to Kukenan, the largest butte so far studied in the foothills of Mount Sharp.

This panorama is one of the best illustrations of the very complex geological history of Mars. Each layer signals a past cycle in Mars’ very cyclic history, created because of the red planet’s wide swings of rotational tilt over time. Once underground, these layers have become exposed because erosion over the eons has slowly removed the material that once buried it, leaving the butte behind.

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