Tag: science

Martian glaciers flowing off interior walls of Renaudot Crater

12:57 pm

Overview map

Cool image time! In the March 1st image release from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) were two pictures covering sections of the interior rim of 40-mile-wide Renaudot Crater, located in the northern lowland plains of Mars north of the region I dub Mars’ glacier country.

The map to the right provides the context. The two red boxes in Renaudot Crater show the location of the two images below, with the first being the one to the left. Located at about 42 degrees north latitude, we should expect to see evidence of ice and glacial features here, and that is exactly what both photos show.
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South Korea’s leader announces his nation’s goals in space

2:53 pm

The new colonial movement: Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president since 2017, on March 25th gave his first speech focused on his nation’s goals in space, outlining plans to encourage private enterprise as well as achieving an unmanned mission to the Moon by 2030.

His speech listed three main programs. First, they are developing their own home-built rocket, dubbed the KSLV-2, which they hope to launch on its first orbital test flight by October of this year.

Second, he touted a project to send a probe to the asteroid Apophis in 2029. I described this probe in my November 2020 report on a science conference focused entirely on Apophis. If all goes well, they hope to have the probe fly in formation with the asteroid as it makes its close approach that year.

Third, he committed his nation to landing an unmanned lander on the Moon by the end of this decade. (Sound familiar?)

While much of this was the typical photo-op stuff that politicians love, designed mostly to enhance their public image, Moon did make it clear their goals are also to foster a new private aerospace industry that would compete in the emerging new space market.

Moon underscored the role of the private sector in enhancing Korea’s space development capabilities. To that end, he said, the government will step up efforts to build an “innovative industrial ecosystem that nurtures global space companies such as SpaceX.”

Another issue he put forth was strengthening international competitiveness of made-in-Korea satellite systems, in the lead-up to the introduction of 6G wireless networks, self-driving vehicles, and other products and services enabled or enhanced by satellites.

All-in-all, it is actually surprising that up to now South Korea has not made its presence felt in space. This announcement suggests they now intend to change that.

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Baffling ridges on Mars

1:01 pm

Baffling ridges on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is one of my “what the heck?” photos. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here and taken on September 3, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), shows a strange dune field of many parallel long dunes, cross-cut by larger ridges.

Are the larger ridges dunes? Or are they some form of volcanic or tectonic ridge, which is also very typical of this region, called Tempe Terra and located in the transition zone between the southern cratered highlands and the northern lowland plains?

Or are they eskers, ridges frequently found in places that were once covered by glaciers? At 35 degrees north latitude, it would not be surprising to see glacial features here, but as far as I can tell, the full image has no obvious such features.
» Read more

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Radar images of Apophis during its March close approach of Earth

9:45 am

Apophis as seen by radar March 9, 2021
Click for full image.

Using two radar dishes, Green Bank in West Virginia and Goldstone in California, astronomers were able to produce radar images of the asteroid Apophis during its most recent close fly-by of Earth on March 10th.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows Apophis on March 9th. If you go to the full image you can also see the March 10th and 11th images, which appear to show the asteroid in different orientations as it rotated.

These images represent radar observations of asteroid 99942 Apophis on March 8, 9, and 10, 2021, as it made its last close approach before its 2029 Earth encounter that will see the object pass our planet by less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). The 70-meter radio antenna at the Deep Space Network’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California, and the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia used radar to precisely track Apophis’ motion. At the time of these observations, Apophis was about 10.6 million miles (17 million kilometers) from Earth, and each pixel has a resolution of 127 feet (38.75 meters).

The data obtained has firmly removed any chance Apophis will impact the Earth in the next 100 years. However, it still could hit us late in the 22nd century.

These observations were originally planned to also include data from the Arecibo Observatory, but that telescope was destroyed in December when its instrument platform collapsed. If it had been operational, these radar images would have had much better resolution.

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Ice-filled crater in Mars’ glacier country

2:06 pm

Crater filled with ice
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here and taken on January 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), provides us a perfect example of the kind of glacial feature that scientists find routinely in the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands on Mars. In this case the crater is in the northern reaches of a chaos region dubbed Nilosyrtis Mensae, the easternmost mensae region of what I dub glacier country on Mars.

When first identified scientists named this concentric crater fill, a purposely vague term that is only descriptive because they then did not know what it was made of, though they had their suspicions that it was buried glacial ice. Since then radar data has routinely confirmed that there is ice in such filled craters, making this particular glacial feature one of the most prevalent in those mid-latitude bands.

You can see a quite similar ice-filled crater, also in Nilosyrtis, in an earlier post from October 2020. While that earlier crater was on the southern edge of Nilosyrtis, today’s crater is about 300 miles almost due north, near the region’s northern fringe. In between are lots of similar glacial features, sometimes in craters, sometimes flowing off the slopes of mesas, and sometimes flow features in the open canyons between.

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Mars’ polar ice canyons are young and the source for mid-latitude ice

9:40 am

Mars' north pole icecap
Mars’ north polar ice cap.

Scientists have now proposed that the giant ice canyons seen at the edges of Mars’ polar ice caps are very young and are also the source of the water that sublimates away when the planet’s rotational tilt (its obliquity) is high, to fall as snow in the mid-latitudes where it forms the glaciers and ice sheets we now find there.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, shows the entire north pole ice cape on the left, with its spiral canyons. The two inserts on the bottom show for scale Hawaii’s Big Island and the Grand Canyon. From the release:

“Erosion formed a huge ice canyon system, and that erosion is a source of the long-known mid-latitude mantles on Mars,” said Rodriguez, lead author of “North polar trough formation due to in‑situ erosion as a source of young ice in mid‑latitudinal mantles on Mars” that appears in Nature Scientific Reports.

The troughs are arranged in a vast spiral pattern covering an area the size of Texas. We find that their growth lateral to katabatic wind (wind that carries high-density colder air from a higher elevation down a slope) directions produced widespread simple intersections, from which the highly complex spiral arrangement emerged, Rodriguez said. “The spiral pattern seen in the troughs is basically an erosional byproduct,” he said. “As the pits grow and intersect over a pre-existing dome-shaped polar cap, the spiral pattern emerges.

“It has long been proposed that sublimation of water ice from the north polar cap during high-obliquity cycles was an essential source of the planet’s mid-latitude icy plains. Our finding identifies the troughs as direct evidence of those sublimation phases,” Rodriguez said.

These spiral trough features formed very recently, in geologic terms: between a few million and 50,000 years ago, Rodriguez said.

This hypothesis, if true, is very important in understanding the long term geological history of Mars. The present theory is that when the obliquity rises to as high of 60 degrees, compared to today’s 25 degrees (similar to Earth’s), the mid-latitudes are colder than the poles, and the ice at the poles then migrates to the mid-latitudes. This paper gives us the place at the poles where the icecap shrinks as that ice sublimates away.

Knowing that these polar canyons are young and the source of the mid-latitude ice scientists can now begin to write the geological history of the polar ice caps themselves. They can also use this information to maybe determine whether the caps are presently in a steady state, as now believed, or growing or shrinking.

The youth of these canyons also suggests that any mid-latitude ice from them is also young, and thus more likely pure water unpoisoned by the toxic perchlorates found in many places on the Martian surface. It will thus be easier to obtain pure drinkable water from them.

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The 1st image of a black hole’s magnetic field

8:54 am

The magnetic field lines of a black hole

Using the data from the first image of a black hole, obtained in 2019, scientists have now extracted evidence of the magnetic field lines near the event horizon, and from this produced the first image of such lines.

The image to the left, reduced to post here, shows the spiraling magnetic field lines against the bright event horizon ring.

As the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team describes today in a pair of papers in Astrophysical Journal, the new picture uses the same data as in the original image, produced from a series of observations in 2017 of the supermassive black hole at the core of nearby galaxy M87, using the combined collecting power of eight radio observatories across the world. To extract the polarization information, the data have gone through many months of additional analysis.

The scientists also note that the orientation of the field lines might eventually help explain the jets being thrown from its poles.

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Layers upon layers of Martian volcanic ash

2:05 pm

Layers upon layers of Martian volcanic ash
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image provides I think a hint at the vast amount of time that has passed on Mars, allowing uncounted major events to occur which each lay down a bit of the geological history, a history that is now piled up on the surface so deeply that it will take decades of research to untangle it.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 23, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the layered nature of the Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars (about the land area of India) and thought by some to be the source of most of the dust across the entire red planet.
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Scientists: Mars is losing water seasonally through its atmosphere

9:38 am

The uncertainty of science: Two new studies using data Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter and Mars Express orbiters have found that Mars is losing water seasonally through its atmosphere.

The studies also found that global dust storms accelerate the process.

Anna and colleagues found that water vapour remained confined to below 60 km when Mars was far from the Sun but extended up to 90 km in altitude when Mars was closest to the Sun. Across a full orbit, the distance between the Sun and the Red Planet ranges from 207 million to 249 million km.

Near the Sun, the warmer temperatures and more intensive circulation in the atmosphere prevented water from freezing out at a certain altitude. “Then, the upper atmosphere becomes moistened and saturated with water, explaining why water escape rates speed up during this season – water is carried higher, aiding its escape to space,” adds Anna.

In years when Mars experienced a global dust storm the upper atmosphere became even wetter, accumulating water in excess at altitudes of over 80 km.

But wait, didn’t planetary scientists just announce that Mars hasn’t lost its water through the atmosphere, but instead lost it when it became chemical trapped in the planet’s soil? Yup, they did, but that was a model based on new ground data. This new result is based on atmospheric data.

Or to put it another way, the model was incomplete. While it could be true that a large bulk of Mars’ water is trapped chemically in the ground, that is not proven, only hypothesized. What has been proven, and is now confirmed by these two studies, is that, depending on weather and season, the water of Mars does leak into its upper atmosphere where it can escape into space, never to return.

What remains unknown is how much water escaped into space, and when. Moreover, the ground-based model could still be right, even if it is true that Mars is losing water through its atmosphere. At the moment the data is too incomplete to answer these questions with any certainty.

Meanwhile, this press release once again gives the false impression that the only water left on Mars is at its poles (and in this case, only the south pole). This is not accurate, based on numerous studies finding evidence of buried ice and glaciers everywhere on the planet down to the 30th latitude, in both the north and south hemispheres. Mars might have far less water now than it did billions of years ago, but it still has plenty, and that water is not found only at the poles.

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A data-based broad look at the entire COVID epidemic, one year later

2:24 pm

The Scream by Edvard Munch
The Scream by Edvard Munch

One year ago I posted an essay entitled COVID-19: the unwarranted panic. At that time we had just begun a “15-day-lockdown” to slow the spread of the virus, a lockdown that has ended up lasting a year with literally no signs of ending, even though vaccines for the coronavirus are now available and are being administrated widely to millions.

In that essay I reviewed four early science studies that provided some solid initial data about the coronavirus, all of which strongly suggested that it was not the plague many government healthy officials at that time were proclaiming it to be. Instead, these studies showed that it was only a threat to the elderly sick, that it was relatively harmless to a young population, and that the death rate was low, likely well below 1% and possibly very comparable to the flu.

These data strongly suggested to me that lockdowns, social distancing, masks, and restrictions on the freedom of the healthy and young were all a bad idea. Better to follow the traditional response to past such epidemics in which you quarantine the sick, protect the vulnerable (the elderly), and allow everyone else to go about their lives as normal.

We did not do this, however. Instead, as a society we chose in the past year to do the exact oppose, imposing strict lockdowns, mandating social distancing and mask use everywhere, while quarantining the healthy. We did this based on the worst scenarios and models put forth by health officials, who firmly believed COVID-19 was far worse than any past epidemic, and required a new, radical, and much harsher response.

I now want to ask, one year later: Whose conclusions about the seriousness of COVID-19 were more accurate? Was it just another type of flu, though maybe somewhat worse, as I posited, or was it the deadly pestilence predicted by the world’s health authorities?
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Twisted and tilted bedrock in Martian crater

11:36 am

tilted strata in Martin Crater
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated cropped, and reduced to post here, is only a small example of the strangely tilted and twisted strata in the central peak region of 38-mile-wide Martin Crater on Mars. The full image shows more.

The picture was taken on January 12, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The section I’ve cropped out shows a series of stratified strata that are are not only significantly tipped from the horizontal, but have also been bent and deformed.

The crater itself is located about 260 miles south of Valles Marineris, as shown on the overview map below.
» Read more

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Perseverance dumps debris shield in preparation for Ingenuity deployment

8:59 am

Dumped debris shield under Perseverance
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On March 21st the Perseverance engineering team released the debris shield that had been attached to the bottom of the rover to protect the Ingenuity helicopter during its journey to Mars, and thus began the deployment process for releasing the helicopter itself.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows that debris shield on the ground. The rover will next drive away from this spot and find the flat area where the helicopter will be placed on the ground for its April flight.

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Yutu-2 & Chang’e-4 complete 28th lunar day on Moon

8:42 am

The new colonial movement: China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 and its lander Chang’e-4 have successfully completed their 28th lunar day on the far side of the Moon, and have been placed in hibernation for the long lunar night.

According to this article from China’s state-run press, Yutu-2 has now traveled 683 meters (2,241 feet) since its landing. In the past two lunar days the rover has traveled about 180 feet, continuing its journey to the northwest away from Chang’e-5. Their pace continues to be about 80 to 100 feet per lunar day.

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A visit to Cydonia on Mars

1:00 pm

Strange geology in Cydonia on Mars
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Cool image time! The Cydonia region on Mars, located at around 30-40 degrees north latitude in the northern lowland plains just beyond the transition zone up to the southern cratered highlands, is well known to many on Earth because it was here that the Viking-1 orbiter took a picture of a mesa that, because of the sun angle, made its shadows resemble a face. Thus was born the “Face on Mars” that consumed the shallow-minded among us — and thus the culture, media, and Hollywood — absurdly for decades, until Mars Global Surveyor took the first high resolution image and proved without doubt what was really obvious from the beginning, that it was nothing more than a mesa.

Cydonia however remains a very intriguing region of Mars, mostly because it is home to a lot of strange geology, as shown by the photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here. Taken on January 16, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows some of that strange and inexplicable geology.

While Cydonia is inside that 30-60 degree latitude band where MRO has imaged numerous glacial-type features, I do not know if many such features have been found there. Except for the pits and depressions in the photo’s lower right — which suggest decay in an ice sheet — little else at first glance in the picture clearly invokes any of the obvious glacial features one comes to expect. There appear to be what might be lobate flows in the image’s center going from the west to the east, but if they are glacial, they are so decayed to as leave much doubt.

The overview image below shows where Cydonia is on Mars, and helps explain partly what is found here.
» Read more

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Volcanic badlands on Mars

2:17 pm

Volcanic badlands on Mars
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 29, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a particularly ugly region of rough terrain located about 900 miles to the southwest of the giant volcano Arsia Mons, the southernmost of the chain of three giant volcanoes between Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris. The picture sits inside the floor of a very old and degraded 185-mile-wide crater dubbed Koval’sky.

The section I cropped out was picked at random, because the entire full image looked like this. Though only a handful of images have been taken of the floor of Koval’sky Crater by MRO’s high resolution camera, all show similar rough terrain. In June 2017 the MRO science team posted one of those few such photos with the following caption:
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NASA confident Webb will launch in October

9:36 am

In a briefing held yesterday, NASA officials — in summarizing the status of the James Webb Space Telescope — stated they were presently confident that its launch will take place in October this year, as presently planned.

[Eric Smith, JWST program scientist> said the program is dealing with one new technical issue. Two communications transponders suffered separate problems during testing in January. Engineers have tracked down the problems with the two units and started repairs this week. “Those boxes will be back in time for us to make our planned shipping date,” he said.

That issue, he acknowledged, will use some of the remaining schedule margin. “The plan right now is that we’ll get them back in time so that we don’t have to use all of it,” he said. “That’s the main thing that we’re watching regarding the margin.”

If launched in October, Webb will only be a decade behind schedule and a mere 20 times over budget, having been initially proposed to launch in 2011 for a cost of $500 million. Instead, it will cost about $10 billion.

The article also notes that the Biden administration might change the telescope’s name because Webb as a bureaucrat early in his career apparently publicly opposed homosexual rights. Such opinions can no longer be allowed, and anyone who has them must be blackballed as quickly as possible.

No matter. Webb was merely NASA’s administrator through almost its entire first decade, leading the agency in its triumph over the Soviets in the race to the Moon. Such achievements cannot be honored as they illustrate the past greatness of America. Moreover, Webb was a white man, and this makes him totally unqualified to receive any laurels. Today’s modern America hates itself and all white men.

The article also notes a variety of issues that will cause more delays of the new big astronomy boondoggle at NASA, the Roman Space Telescope. They say its launch will likely be delayed to 2026 because of the Wuhan flu panic. I predict this is only a foretaste. Expect many more delays and budget overruns, probably pushing its launch into the 2030s.

But no matter. What is really important is that this new boondoggle is named for a woman!

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SpaceX narrows Mars landing site for Starship to four prime locations

11:19 pm

The prime and secondary Martian landing sites for Starship

Capitalism in space: During this week’s 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, one poster [pdf] caught my eye as something significant. It was titled “SpaceX Starship Landing Sites on Mars.” The map to the right is figure 1 from that poster, annotated slightly by me based my earlier stories about SpaceX’s use of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to research potential Martian landing sites for its Starship spacecraft. The stars indicate MRO images, most of which were described and linked to in my last major post about this SpaceX effort in November 2019.

The red spots covering some stars are the big story: SpaceX has narrowed its choice for its Starship landing site to four prime locations (indicated by the bright red spots) and three backup locations (indicated by the dark red spots). The images under the red spots numbered 2, 4, and 6 were linked to in my November 2019 post. The images under red spots marked by a “D” are earlier images taken by MRO when SpaceX was researching a potential Dragon landing site. The images under red spots labeled 1P and MRO are subsequent images taken by MRO since November 2019, with the 1P image previously linked to in a post in April 2020 entitled “The icy Phlegra Mountains: Mars’ future second city.”

The poster outlined why the prime candidate sites — PM1, EM16, AP1, and AP9 — were favored. For example, PM-1 in the Phlegra Mountains “…has the lowest latitude and elevation of the group, a clear association with LDAs [lobate debris aprons that resemble glacial features], well developed polygons, and has the highest SWIM [Subsurface Water Ice Mapping] score for geomorphic indicators of ice.”

EM 16 “…has a clear association with an LDA with nearby brain terrain and the strongest radar return for shallow ice and the highest combined SWIM score.”

AP1 “…appears to be the safest site and has a moderate combined SWIM score for ice.”

AP9 “…has the thickest ice from radar returns and geomorphology indicating shallow ice. It has the highest combined SWIM score for ice, but appears slightly rocky and rough.”

Below the fold are images, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, of the four primary landing sites, as well as links to the full images of all four plus the three back-up sites (AP8, EM15, and PM7).
» Read more

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The changing seasons of Saturn

1:58 pm

Saturn changing
Click for full image.

Images of Saturn taken by the Hubble Space Telescope since 2018 now reveal the slow seasonal changes to the gas giant’s atmosphere during its lengthy year, twenty-nine Earth years long.

The Hubble data show that from 2018 to 2020 the equator got 5 to 10 percent brighter, and the winds changed slightly. In 2018, winds measured near the equator were about 1,000 miles per hour (roughly 1,600 kilometers per hour), higher than those measured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during 2004-2009, when they were about 800 miles per hour (roughly 1,300 kilometers per hour). In 2019 and 2020 they decreased back to the Cassini speeds. Saturn’s winds also vary with altitude, so the change in measured speeds could possibly mean the clouds in 2018 were around 37 miles (about 60 kilometers) deeper than those measured during the Cassini mission. Further observations are needed to tell which is happening.

The photo above shows Saturn’s northern hemisphere in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Note how the darker region at the pole grows with time.

This data supplements the data obtained by Cassini when it was in orbit around Saturn, and is presently the best information we can get since the Cassini mission ended.

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A drainage channel on Mars

12:01 pm

A drainage channel on Mars
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Today’s cool image from Mars highlights what is probably the biggest geological conundrum the red planet presents for planetary scientists. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on February 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Though I have cropped it, I have cropped out very little, because the entire meandering drainage valley is its most interesting feature, and that takes up almost the entire image.

The photo was simply labeled by the camera team a “terrain sample northwest of Sytinskaya Crater”, so I suspect this was taken not in connection with any specific research but because they must use the camera at a regular intervals to maintain its temperature, and when they have gaps in their schedule they try to pick spots of interest in areas that have not had many high resolution photos taken. In this case however I suspect the location choice was very far from random, as they clearly wanted to capture this drainage system, in its entirety.

I called this merely a drainage channel without indicating what caused the channel, be it liquid water, ice, or wind, because in this case that is a main question. At first glance an Earthman will immediately suspect water, which is what scientists supposed for the last half century. The problem with that conclusion is that the Martian atmosphere is too cold and thin for liquid water to exist on its surface, and though there seems to be plenty of evidence that liquid water once existed there, no scientist has yet come up with a completely accepted climate model that allows for such conditions in anytime in Mars’ past.

The rover Opportunity found that some channels it explored might have been carved by wind, though to our human eyes it seems unlikely that a meandering tributary system such as this could have been carved by wind. The possibility however must not be dismissed out of hand, since Mars is an alien planet and alien things (to Earth) happen there.

The overview map below might provide some context.
» Read more

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What it sounds like when Perseverance moves

8:41 am

NASA has released audio recorded by one of Perseverance’s microphones as the rover completed one of its earliest drives.

NASA released two versions of the audio — one 90-second file edited and processed to filter out background noise, and another 16-minute clip with raw, unfiltered sound.

…Perseverance recorded the sounds during a 90-foot (27.3-meter) drive March 7, according to NASA. The rover’s top speed is a little less than 0.1 mph, or about 152 meters per hour.

The longer, raw audio clip includes a high-pitched scratching noise. The origin of the sound remains a mystery. “Perseverance’s engineering team continues to evaluate the source of the scratching noise, which may either be electromagnetic interference from one of the rover’s electronics boxes or interactions between the mobility system and the Martian surface,” NASA said in a statement. “The EDL microphone was not intended for surface operations and had limited testing in this configuration before launch.”

You can hear the recordings at the link.

In addition, the science team has picked the location where Perseverance will deploy the Ingenuity helicopter. A briefing will be held next week on March 23rd to outline the schedule for its test flight, now set for sometime in early April.

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Quakes on Mars as seen by InSight

3:14 pm

Martian quake map as seen by InSight

After completing its first full Martian year on the surface of the Red Planet, the scientists for the lander InSight today gave a report [pdf] of their results at this year’s annual 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, normally held in Texas but being done virtually this year out of terror of the coronavirus.

All told the lander’s seismometer has, as of just a few days ago, detected just over 500 quakes. The map to the right, showing the most distinct quakes and their locations, was adapted from a different presentation [pdf] at the conference. The numbers indicate the sols after landing when these quakes were detected.

This is essentially the region on Mars that I call volcano country. Some of the lava flood plains here are the youngest on Mars. To the east just beyond the edge of the map is the Tharsis Bulge, which holds Olympus Mons and the string of three giant volcanoes to its east. South of Cereberus Fossae but north of the yellow-colored cratered highlands is the vast Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars.

The quakes suggest they are occurring as large blocks shift along faults, creating fissures and cracks that geologists call grabens. The long fissures of Cereberus Fossae are considered an example of grabens, so this activity suggests that shifting is still going on in the region.

In addition to outlining the location of the detected volcanoes, the presentation today summarized these other discoveries made by InSight about Mars’ interior structure:

  • The crust of Mars has likely two or three layers either 12 or 24 miles thick, with a total thickness no more than 45 miles. This is much thinner than most scientists had expected.
  • The mantle layer below the crust is estimated at about 250 to 375 miles thick, with a temperature between 1,600 to 1,700 degrees Kelvin. While quite hot, this is a cooler mantle than expected.
  • The core of Mars is somewhere between 1,100 to 1,300 miles in diameter, with a outer layer made of liquid. These results are at the high end of pre-mission expectations.

As already admitted, it was noted that the heat sensor experiment will not be able to provide the interior temperature of Mars, as its digging mole was unable to dig into the ground the 9 to 15 feet planned.

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Scallops of Martian ice

11:19 am

Scallops of Martian ice
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was yesterday’s captioned image from the MRO science team. From the caption, written by Shane Byrne of the Lunar and Planetary Lab University of Arizona,

About a third of Mars has water ice just below the dusty surface. Figuring out exactly where is vital for future human explorers. One of the ways scientists do this is to look for landforms that only occur when this buried ice is present. These scallops are one of those diagnostic landforms.

A layer of clean ice lies just below the surface in this image. As the ice ablates away in some spots the surface dust collapses into the hole that’s left. These holes grow into the scallops visible here as more and more ice is lost.

You can see those holes near the top of the scallop’s slopes.
» Read more

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New hypothesis: Mars didn’t lose water, it got trapped chemically in its crust

9:03 am

Using data from the many orbiters, landers, and rovers sent to Mars, scientists yesterday proposed a new model for the loss of water on Mars, suggesting that instead of escaping through its thin atmosphere it was instead chemically trapped in the planet’s crust.

New data challenges the long-held theory that all of Mars’s water escaped into space

Billions of years ago, the Red Planet was far more blue; according to evidence still found on the surface, abundant water flowed across Mars and forming pools, lakes, and deep oceans. The question, then, is where did all that water go?

The answer: nowhere. According to new research from Caltech and JPL, a significant portion of Mars’s water—between 30 and 99 percent—is trapped within minerals in the planet’s crust. The research challenges the current theory that the Red Planet’s water escaped into space.

First, this is only a model. It proves nothing, and carries many assumptions based on our limited knowledge. We mustn’t accept it at face value.

Second, the first sentence quoted above from this Caltech press release is an example of a trick the scientists have played that our ignorant press has fallen far. What the press release implies superficially is that Mars is now a barren dry place, with little water. Researchers (and readers of Behind the Black) know however that this description is not accurate, that the planet apparently has a lot of water still, only that it is confined as buried ice to latitudes above 30 degrees. Only the equatorial regions appear dry, but not the rest of the planet.

Regardless, this new hypothesis is important if true, as it will help provide an explanation for the Red Planet’s entire geological and climatic history. It might even help solve the mystery of the liquid water that appears to have once existed there, on a planet whose atmosphere is too thin and cold to allow for such a thing.

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A cracking Martian glacier?

12:21 pm

A cracking Martian glacier?
Click for entire image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on December 4, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

I have cropped it to show at full resolution the area that contains what the scientists apparently consider the most interesting feature in this image, which they have labeled as “pits forming lines.” These are the vertical cracks and strings of holes that can be seen in this glacier-like flow. In addition, you can see that the cracking is not just vertical, but also extends out in horizontal directions, though the widest cracks are all vertical.

The next image below, which is a lower resolution crop of the full photo, shows a wider view to provide a better picture of the glacier itself.
» Read more

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Hubble’s wide field camera returns to operation

1:39 pm

Though the Hubble Space Telescope returned to science operations on March 12th after going into safe mode, its wide field camera did not.

Engineers however now report that they have successfully restored the camera to operations as well. The reason for the delayed restoration exemplifies Hubble’s aging status.

Analysis showed that voltage levels in WFC3 power supplies have slowly decreased over time as their electronics aged. The electronics experience colder temperatures when the hardware is turned off in safe mode. This factor coupled with the power the instrument components draw as they are turned back on contributed to the small voltage fluctuation that suspended WFC3 recovery operations. Further detailed analysis indicated that it would be safe to slightly reduce the low voltage limit to avoid a future suspend, and it would be safe to recover the instrument to its science state.

The instrument has now been safely recovered. Standard calibration of the instrument and other pre-observation activities will be conducted this week.

All the telescope’s equipment has been adjusted in recent years to deal with the varying ages of its instruments and its main structure. For example, this wide field camera was installed during the last shuttle serving mission in 2009, and is therefore one of Hubble’s newest components. It however is now more than a decade old, and thus needs careful handling to function properly.

Other components are far older, such as the primary motor to open and close the telescope’s “lens cap”. That failed during this safe mode, forcing engineers to switch to a back up motor to control the cap. Whether they can recover that primary motor is presently unclear, though unlikely.

Expect more such issues in the coming years.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: 30,000 videos banned by YouTube for stating COVID conclusions that disagree with health authorities

1:04 pm

BANNED!

They’re coming for you next: Google’s YouTube has now blacklisted more than 30,000 videos simply because they stated conclusions relating to COVID-19 vaccines that either contradicted or challenged opinions or conclusions held by the World Health Organization or other governmental health authorities.

The headline is only listing the videos removed by YouTube because they state conclusions relating to various coronavirus vaccines that YouTube disagrees with. It turns out this is only the tip of the iceberg.
» Read more

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How the blobby craters on Mars help map the planet’s existing accessible water

2:45 pm

Distorted blobby crater rim in Utopia Planitia
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image on the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, is part of a series of cool images that have repeatedly shown the blobby and squishy look of crater impact sites in the Martian northern lowland plain dubbed Utopia Planitia. Taken on January 2, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows the southeast rim of a very distorted crater that appears filled with glacial material and is also surrounded by an apron of smooth material.

At 42 degrees north latitude, it is somewhat expected to find evidence of glacial-like features in such a crater. Moreover, throughout the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude band in Utopia Planitia are found numerous such blobby craters (other examples found here, here, and here), all suggesting that the impact occurred on a flat plain with a layer of water ice close to the surface. The heat of the impact melted that ice layer. In such a circumstance, the crater rims were easily deformed because as liquid water (for a short time) it could flow into any number of shapes.

At least that’s my theory. According to Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Arizona,

The exact processes that create the patterns are still debated. The flattened/degraded rims are not necessarily related to this morphology, as such craters can have sharp rims, so they may relate to post-impact modification.

In other words, later erosion after the crater formed could have rounded the rim and maybe even distorted it from a circle.

Regardless, the processes that made this crater rim look as it does were clearly widespread, as shown in the wider view below, provided by the context camera on MRO.
» Read more

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Hubble about to resume science operations even with new issues

9:14 am

Engineers have fixed the computer software issue that caused the Hubble Space Telescope to go into safe mode this week, and are preparing it to return to full science operations.

It appears the problem was caused by a software upgrade that caused a conflict.

More serious however was this problem, which could have damaged the telescope beyond repair had it had been randomly pointed at the Sun during safe mode.

In entering safe mode on Sunday, however, the team discovered that the aperture door located at the top of the telescope failed to automatically close. This door is a safeguard designed to keep the Sun’s damaging light and heat out of the telescope’s interior, protecting its sensitive instruments and their surroundings. It serves as a safety net if Hubble accidently points in the direction of the Sun due to an error or hardware problem.

…The team has looked at spacecraft engineering data, run various tests, and verified that the door did indeed remain open despite the commands and power being sent to close it. Additional attempts to move the door by sending commands from the ground to its primary motor also failed to make the door move. However, the same commands sent from the ground to its backup motor did indicate movement, and that motor is now set as the primary motor. The team is looking at options to further reduce any associated risk.

It appears the primary motor that moves the door has failed. Fortunately there is a backup motor, but this is just one more item where the telescope has lost redundancy. We are very lucky that during safe mode the telescope didn’t end up pointing at the Sun, even for a very short time, for that would have ended Hubble’s operation for good. I suspect the safe mode software includes protections against that occurrence, but the possibility nonetheless existed.

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Curiosity faces the mountains

11:48 am

A cropped section from Perseverance's 1st panorama
A cropped section from Perserverance’s 1st panorama.
Click for full image.

Though the present excitement over the spectacular images and sounds coming down from Perseverance is certainly warranted, what must be understood is that this rover is presently only at the beginning of its journey, and is thus sitting on relatively boring terrain, from a merely visual perspective. The scientists might be excited, but to the general public, all we really are seeing is a flat dusty desert with some scattered rocks on the floor. In the far distance can be seen some hills and mountains (Jezero Crater’s rim), but they are very far away.

Curiosity, which the press and the public has largely forgotten about, is actually just beginning what will likely be the most breath-taking part of its journey. As I noted in my last rover update last week, Curiosity is now at the very base of Mount Sharp, and is about to enter the mountain’s canyons and initial slopes. For its past eight-plus years of roving it has been on the flat floor of Gale Crater, followed by some weaving among the smallest foothills of Mount Sharp. The views have been intriguing and exciting from a research perspective, but hardly breath-taking from a picture-taking point of view.

That is now changing. The picture below, taken by Curiosity just this week, gives us a taste of what is to come.
» Read more

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A proposal to rebuild Arecibo as a better radio telescope

9:47 am

Even as the National Science Foundation (NSF) proceeds with the disassembly of the destroyed Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, some astronomers are proposing that a new radio telescope be built in its place, with a new design that will not require the instrument platform floating above a single dish.

Here’s the idea as outlined in a white paper circulated by Roshi and his colleagues: The Next Generation Arecibo Telescope would pack hundreds, maybe even more than 1,000 smaller radio dishes into the same space now occupied by the single 305-meter dish. Those smaller antennas would combine forces to act like a single larger telescope (no suspended instrument platform required).

Ideally, those dishes would be on a single, tiltable platform to access more of the sky from the Arecibo site; it’s possible multiple platforms could do the same.

The revamped telescope would have twice the sky coverage of the legacy dish, 500 times the field of view in individual images, at least double the sensitivity, and five times the radar power.

The cost for this new radio telescope is presently estimated to be about half a billion. Considering that the NSF didn’t have the money to operate the old Arecibo telescope, which was why it wasn’t properly maintained and collapsed, I doubt it has the cash to build this replacement. Congress, which likes printing money it doesn’t have, might step in and fund it, but if so that will only add to the national debt that is certainly going to cause the bankruptcy of the nation at some point in the future, a point that is getting closer and closer with each new trillion that Congress nonchalantly spends, on almost a monthly schedule.

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