Tag: science

Chang’e-5 ascender sent to crash on Moon

8:37 am

The new colonial movement: Even as the Chang’e-5 orbiter/return capsule awaits its window for leaving lunar orbit, Chinese engineers have separated the ascender capsule that brought the samples from the surface and sent it to crash on the Moon.

This decision makes sense, as lunar orbits tend to be unstable, and to leave the ascender there after the orbiter and return capsule leave could make it a piece of uncontrollable space junk threatening future missions.

The engine burn that will send the orbiter/return capsule back to Earth is expected early December 12th, with the return capsule landing in China on December 16th.

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Terby Crater and its drainages into Mars’ basement

1:59 pm

Channels in Terby Crater on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! Over the past few years, in my endless rummaging through the archive of high resolution images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) I have posted a lot of photos of meandering channels of all kinds, most of which evoke to Earth eyes canyons eroded by flowing water. (This September 2020 cool image is just one of the more recent examples.)

Today’s cool image is another example, but in this case it is only a very small part of a very large drainage basin that is more than a hundred miles across and extends at least that far southward into the basement of Mars, Hellas Basin, the place on Mars with the lowest elevation.

The photo to the right, rotated and reduced to post here, was taken on September 12, 2020 by the high resolution camera on MRO. I normally wouldn’t post the whole image, but to crop it would mean you wouldn’t get the sense of extensive nature of this drainage. Downhill is to the south. The channel apparently passes through three or four stages. First, its northernmost section is in a wide canyon, the floor of which resembles glacial debris (though with a latitude of 27 degrees south this is a bit too close to the equator for ice). More likely we are looking at wind-blown sand and dunes being pulled downhill in the floor of the canyon.

This first canyon is also actually a gap in the rim of a 13-mile-wide unnamed crater. See this MRO context camera image for a wider view.

Next, the drainage becomes a series of meandering small interweaving channels, resembling the channels often seen in beach mud as the tide goes out.

Finally, the channels head into a gap to fall over a sloping cliff into lower terrain.

Nor these stages entirely linked. The first glacial-like stage exiting the gap in the crater appears to drain to the southeast, while the second seems to emanate from what appears to be a very faint small crater now partly buried. Both head south toward the gap, but the path of the eastward drainage appears less obvious. Some of it flowed westward to join the meandering channels but some also appears to work its way south more to the east.

This one image shows a lot of channels, but it is only a very small slice of this whole drainage system. In fact, we are looking here at only one strip of the interior slope of the northern rim of 108-mile-wide Terby Crater.

The overview map below gives the larger context. Terby Crater sits on the northern border of Hellas Basin, which in itself extends another 1,500 miles to the south. From this point the drop in elevation into Hellas is almost four miles.
» Read more

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Chang’e-5 sample capsule docks with return vehicle in lunar orbit

8:37 pm

According to the official Chinese state-run press Chang’e-5’s capsule containing samples from the Moon has successfully rendezvoused and docked with its return vehicle in lunar orbit, the first time an unmanned craft has done such a thing autonomously.

The news report at this point provides no other details, other than to state that the return capsule and orbiter will next separate from the ascent capsule and “wait for the right time to return to Earth.” Earlier reports had suggested an arrival on Earth around December 16, which would suggest an exit from lunar orbit in about a week.

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Hayabusa-2’s samples from Ryugu land in Australia

2:07 pm

The return capsule carrying the asteroid samples grabbed by Hayabusa-2 from Ryugu successfully parachuted down in the outback of Australia today.

Officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, confirmed shortly after 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) that the Hayabusa 2’s nearly 16-inch (40-centimeter) sample carrier landed in Australia. Touchdown likely occurred several minutes earlier.

Recovery teams dispatched via helicopter began hunting for the 35-pound (16-kilogram) capsule using estimates of its landing site derived from a radio beacon signal. Mission managers expected it could take several hours to find the capsule and recover it. The landing occurred before dawn in Australia.

Since the article above was posted the capsule was located, and it was found much quicker than first expected.

This was the second sample return mission by the Japanese. The first, Hayabusa-1, successfully returned its capsule in 2010, but because of many technical problems during the mission it only brought back a few microscopic samples. In fact, the technical problems were so bad it was really a miracle the capsule came back at all.

Hayabusa-2 however has been a complete success, showing that they learned from the first mission and applied those lessons to the second.

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LRO snaps picture of Chang’e-5 on Moon

8:52 am

Chang'e-5 on the Moon, taken by LRO
Click for full image.

The science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) late yesterday released an image taken of Chang’e-5 on the surface of the Moon. The image to the right, reduced to post here, is that photo.

China’s Chang’e 5 sample return spacecraft made a safe touchdown on the lunar surface at 10:11 EST (15:11 UTC) 01 December 2020. LRO passed over the site the following day and acquired an off-nadir (13° slew) image showing the lander centered within a triangle of craters.

The LROC team computed the coordinates of the lander to be 43.0576° N, 308.0839°E, –2570 m elevation, with an estimated accuracy of plus-or-minus 20 meters.

If all goes well, the return capsule, which lifted off from the Moon yesterday, will dock with the return vehicle in orbiter later today.

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Ice-filled crater on Mars?

12:13 pm

Crater in southern mid-latitudes
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Time for another of the many cool images from Mars that suggest the presence of buried glacial ice. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows an unnamed crater in the cratered southern highlands of Mars at about 44 degrees south latitude. Taken on October 2, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the crater sits at the very southernmost point of the Tharsis Bulge where the Red Planet’s four more distinctive giant volcanoes are located.

The crater is also in the middle of the 30 to 60 degree mid-latitude bands where scientists have detected many features that suggest glaciers, including a large number of craters that appear to have ice filling their interior.

Does the material in this crater’s floor suggest eroding and sublimating ice to you? It does to me. The second image below zooms in at full resolution at the north-south trench and the strange patterned terrain to its east.
» Read more

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Hubble captures 20-year fading of planetary nebula

9:10 am

The fading of the Stingray Nebula
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Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have now tracked the spectacular fading of the Stingray Nebula, which when it was discovered in the mid-1990s was labeled the youngest such object ever found.

Astronomers have caught a rare look at a rapidly fading shroud of gas around an aging star. Archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the nebula Hen 3-1357, nicknamed the Stingray nebula, has faded precipitously over just the past two decades. Witnessing such a swift rate of change in a planetary nebula is exceeding rare, say researchers.

Images captured by Hubble in 2016, when compared to Hubble images taken in 1996, show a nebula that has drastically dimmed in brightness and changed shape. Bright blue fluorescent tendrils and filaments of gas toward the center of the nebula have all but disappeared, and the wavy edges that earned this nebula its aquatic-themed name are virtually gone. The young nebula no longer pops against the black velvet background of the vast universe.

Astronomers have found that the central star had been heating precipitiously in the late 20th century, from 40K to 108K degrees Fahrenheit. Since then it has begun to cool. They think that flash of heat, caused by what they think was short period of helium fusion, caused the planetary nebula to brighten, and now fade.

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Trump administration asks Senate to remove SLS requirement for Europa Clipper

8:55 am

The Trump administration has requested the Senate to change the language in its NASA spending bill to remove its requirement that Europa Clipper be launched on SLS.

NASA wants the option to launch the Europa probe using commercial rockets, such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. It also says that there are technical reasons that make using SLS problematic, and worse, the agency simply does not have enough SLS rockets to fly its planned (but unfunded) manned Artemis missions and also launch Europa Clipper.

The House has already removed that requirement in its version of the bill. The Senate has not, probably because the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), is a big fan of SLS (much of it built in his state), and has acted for years to pump money into that project.

If the requirement is not removed, Europa Clipper’s launch will likely be delayed by several years, and cost $1.5 billion more.

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First sunspot image from Inouye Solar Telescope

8:42 am

Sunspot image taken by Inouye Solar Telescope
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The science team for the new Inouye Solar Telescope, now in the final phase of construction, has released the telescope’s first high resolution sunspot image.

The image is to the right, reduced to post here, and was taken almost a year ago, on January 28, 2020.

“The sunspot image achieves a spatial resolution about 2.5 times higher than ever previously achieved, showing magnetic structures as small as 20 kilometers on the surface of the sun,” said [Dr. Thomas Rimmele, the associate director at NSF’s National Solar Observatory (NSO)].

The image reveals striking details of the sunspot’s structure as seen at the Sun’s surface. The streaky appearance of hot and cool gas spidering out from the darker center is the result of sculpting by a convergence of intense magnetic fields and hot gasses boiling up from below.

…This sunspot image, measuring about 10,000 miles across, is just a tiny part of the Sun. However, the sunspot is large enough that Earth could comfortably fit inside.

The start of official telescope operations is set to begin in ’21, and had been delayed because of the Wuhan flu panic. Construction had begun in ’13.

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Aram Chaos: Illustrating the puzzle of Mars

11:20 am

Aram Chaos
Click for full image.

The geological history of Mars is incredibly complex, and we really don’t know much about it. What we do know right now is based on a limited number of tiny fragments of a much larger story, with those fragments allowing scientists to only make educated guesses on how they fit together.

Many of those guesses will certainly turn out right. Just as many will turn out wrong. At this moment in our exploration of the Red Planet we can only grasp at straws while always keeping an open mind, as later data is surely going to change any conclusions we presently have.

The photo to the right is a good illustration of this struggle. Rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, it was taken on September 27, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what at first glance looks like a stream of white frost or ice descending down a canyon to the south.

That first impression however is entirely wrong. When I asked Chris Okubo of the U.S. Geological Survey, who requested this image from MRO, what it was, he explained,

The white material is not frost. Instead, these are sedimentary rocks comprised primarily of sulfates. The texture to me suggests these are lithified dunes.

Lithified merely means that the dunes have hardened into rock. Sulfates are a salt formed from sulfuric acid, and are on Mars often linked to some complex mineralogy. If you stood there the colors would be white and red, quite beautiful. As Okubo explained,

The sulfates are white to tan in color, but there would also be a lot of red/brown Mars dust on top of it. It would be similar to walking around some of the playas in the desert southwest.

Though these white sulfate deposits have their root in sulfuric acid, Okubo added that they “are in the form of minerals similar to gypsum and so they would be safe to touch.”

What is going on here? As is usually the case, we need to first take a wider view to get some context.
» Read more

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Study: Canada’s nationalized health killed nearly 1,500 Canadians waiting fruitlessly for treatment

11:07 am

Coming to your U.S. health plan soon! A new study has found that almost 1,500 Canadians died in 2018-19 waiting for a life-saving operation, sometimes years, because that nation’s national health system could not serve them.

The survey was also incomplete, covering only about half of Canada’s health system, which means the numbers are almost certainly higher. More significant, the Wuhan panic has made the situation worse.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, there has been a drastic decline in potentially life-saving treatments being conducted by hospitals. According to figures from the Ontario Ministry of Health, between March 15 to September 29, treatments for breast cancer and prostate cancer have gone down 29% and 25% respectively. On average, the province has reported a total of 21% fewer cancer treatments in total.

Surgeries on children were also heavily impacted by the pandemic after reporting a decline of nearly 60%. In comparison, in 2019, 28,844 surgeries were performed on children, while in 2020 there were only 11,230.

But we need to save one life from COVID! One life! It doesn’t matter if thousands of others die from other illnesses, saving people from COVID comes first!

Hat tip Phill Oltmann.

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New Gaia data release tracks distance and motion of 1.8 billion stars

10:49 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today released the third round of data from its Gaia satellite, designed to measure precisely the distance and motion of billions of nearby stars.

Gaia EDR3 contains detailed information on more than 1.8 billion sources, detected by the Gaia spacecraft. This represents an increase of more than 100 million sources over the previous data release (Gaia DR2), which was made public in April 2018. Gaia EDR3 also contains colour information for around 1.5 billion sources, an increase of about 200 million sources over Gaia DR2. As well as including more sources, the general accuracy and precision of the measurements has also improved.

This release also included the following discoveries:

  • The Milky Way’s outer regions beyond the Sun contain two populations of stars, one slowly dropping towards the galaxy’s plane, the second flying away quickly.
  • The first precise measure of the solar system’s orbit in the Milky Way
  • A more complete census of all stars within 100 parsecs of the Sun
  • A better map of the interaction between the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way, which also showed that the cloud does have a spiral structure

This precise data will take decades to digest, as past research has been based on only rough distance and motion estimates. Having precise data will change our approximation of each object’s brightness, which will also change much of what we assume about it.

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First images from Chang’e-5 on the Moon

2:01 pm

Panorama of Chang'e-5 landing site
Click for full image.

The new colonial movement: China’s state-run press has now released several images taken by Chang’e-5 on the lunar surface, including movies showing the landing and the ongoing digging operations.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is part of a fisheye panorama of the entire landing site. I have cropped it to show only the central part. Except for the distant mountain, the terrain is very flat, which is not surprising as this is the Ocean of Storms mare.

Note however how deep the landing pad is pressed into the ground. This gives a sense of the dust layer that covers the surface.

The link above, as well as this link, show additional images as well as the two movies.

Take off is next, followed by the autonomous rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit with the craft that will bring the sample capsule back to Earth sometime around December 16.

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Sagging cliffs on Mars

11:20 am

Sagging escarpment on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! On Mars things change, but not like on Earth because the atmosphere is not as thick and there is no flowing water. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, gives a good example of that slow change. The image was taken on August 29, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows the high escarpment that in this one place separates the planet’s southern cratered highlands from the transition zone down to northern lowland plains.

In this spot that escarpment, approximately 4,000 feet high, shows signs of avalanches and sagging. In the upper steep section, I point to what looks like a dust avalanche that wiped the slope clear of rough terrain as it rolled downhill. At the bottom of the cliff a large section has separated away. Since this cliff is located at 28 degrees north latitude and is in the midst of the chaos terrain regions I like to dub glacier country, it is very possible that this large section is actually buried glacial ice that in shifting down slope cracked, separating the lower section from the upper.

This particular location is east of an area dubbed Nilosyrtis Mensae (where there is a lot of evidence of glaciers and frozen ice), and about 650 miles north of Jezero Crater, where the rover Perseverance will land on February 18, 2021.

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Change’-5 successfully gets sample from drilling

9:02 am

The new colonial movement: According to the state-run Chinese press, Chang’e-5 has successfully obtained its first lunar sample from a 2-meter deep drilled hole.

After making a successful soft landing at 11:00 p.m. BJT on Tuesday, the lander started rolling out its solar panel wings and unlocking some of the payloads onboard to prepare for sample collection.

The lander first drilled a 2-meter-deep hole, digging out soil, and sealed it up at 4:53 a.m. on Wednesday [today]. Next, it will use its robotic arms to scoop up more samples from the lunar surface for backup.

If all goes right, they will collect a second sample from the surface using a scoop, and then the ascent capsule will take off tomorrow. It will then rendezvous and dock with the orbiter and return capsule.

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A spray of Martian meteorites

12:27 pm

A spray of small secondary impacts
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Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on October 26, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is what the camera team calls a “terrain sample,” meaning it was not specifically requested by a researcher but was instead chosen by the camera team because they need to regularly take images to maintain the camera’s temperature. When they do this, they try to pick a location that hasn’t been photographed in high resolution previously, and that might have some interesting features. Sometimes the photo is boring. Sometimes they hit pay dirt.

In this case, the photo captured an small impact crater, about 1,300 feet across, surrounded by a spray of secondary impacts. The color portion of the image shows what I suspect are dust devil tracks cutting across a surface that, because of its blue tint, is either rough or has frost or ice within it. At 48 degrees north latitude, the possibility of the latter is high, especially because this location is northwest of the Erebus mountains, where SpaceX has its prime Starship candidate landing zone and where scientists suspect ice is readily available very close to the surface. The overview map below shows this context.
» Read more

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LRO looks at Yutu-2

9:40 am

Yutu-2's travels on the Moon through October 2020
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The new colonial movement: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team today released an update of the travels of China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover, presently operating on the far side of the Moon.

The photo to the right, reduced and annotated to post here, shows the rover’s present position, having traveled about 1,650 feet to the northwest in the 22 months since landing. The goal, according to Yutu-2’s science team, is to get the rover beyond the present ejecta field of debris thrown from a large impact to the north, and reach a basalt covered region about a mile away. At the pace they are setting, about 100 feet per lunar day, it is going to take them about another three years to get there. Whether the rover will last that long is the question, but I suspect they are hopeful, based on the almost two years of operations so far.

If you go to the link you can also see a short movie showing month-by-month where the rover ended up when it shut down for each long lunar night.

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Chang’e-5 lands on Moon

9:09 am

The new colonial movement: According to official Chinese reports, Chang’e-5 has successfully soft-landed on the Moon in preparation for its gathering of samples to bring back to Earth.

The Chang’e 5 lander began final descent at 09:58 EST (14:58 UTC) with an expected touchdown 15 minutes later at 10:13 EST (15:13 UTC).

All broadcasts of the event were abruptly stopped just before the landing burn was to begin — throwing the mission into question with CCTV in China at first saying landing coverage would resume at 21:00 EST — an 11 hour delay to the landing. Minutes later, official sources — via social media — proclaimed a successful landing.

Blocking a broadcast like this is very typical of totalitarian governments, and totalitarian societies. Think about that the next time Youtube or Google or Facebook or Twitter or an American university silences speech they don’t like.

As for the lander, all other news reports that I have so far found provide no further details. It appears that all we know comes from a single sentence announcement of success from the Chinese press.

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Chang’e-5 now in lunar orbit

8:31 am

The new colonial movement: China’s lunar sample return probe Chang’e-5 has now entered in lunar orbit, with its landing to occur in three days.

Over the next week, the probe, composed of four parts – the orbiter, lander, ascender and Earth re-entry module – will perform multiple complicated tasks on a tight schedule.

The four parts will separate into two pairs. The lander and ascender will head to the moon and collect samples, while the orbiter and Earth re-entry module will continue to fly around the moon and adjust to a designated orbit, getting ready for the docking with the ascender.

The landing operation is expected in three days. Once touched down on the lunar surface, the lander will collect two kilograms of lunar sample.

The plan once on the surface is to gather a sample from the surface as well as from a six-foot deep core sample.

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Eroded and possibly wet Lohse Crater

2:51 pm

Gully flow near central peak of Lohse Crater on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! Today we take a look at one particular 100-mile-wide crater, Lohse Crater, located in the southern cratered highlands on Mars. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, focuses in on one of the many eroding gullies found in the mountainous region surrounding the crater’s central peak. Taken on August 20, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), the full image is centered on that central peak, just off the south edge of this cropped section. This new image is part of a long monitoring campaign, begun in 2007, of this central peak region. For more than six Martian years, scientists have been tracking the numerous gullies found throughout the central peak region to see if there have been any changes.

I focused on this specific gully because I think it illustrates well why planetary scientists are monitoring these gullies. Whatever flowed down from the cliff on the left hit the material on the right hard enough and fast enough to imprint a curve into the material on the crater floor. Moreover, it does not appear to have simply been a landslide, for several reasons. First, the cliff does not appear cut back at the flow’s head, as you would expect if a section had broken off. Second, the material in the flow does not look like debris from an avalanche. In fact, there does not appear to be very much debris in the gully at all.

Third, and most important, the flow appears to originate at the cliff base, kind of what you’d expect if there was seepage coming out of a layer in that cliff face. Kind of what you’d expect on Earth, at a spring!

Was that flow water? This is the big question. Lohse Crater is significant in that it was one of the first locations on Mars [pdf] spotted by Mars Global Surveyor in the late 1990s where gullies were found suggesting some form of regular erosion possibly caused by flowing water. As this 2005 paper then concluded,
» Read more

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Orbit of pristine comet in outer solar system is shifting inward

10:43 am

The orbit of a pristine comet that until now has kept it in the outer solar system, where it never got warm enough shed any material, is now shifting inward to join what is dubbed the Jupiter-family of comets, whose orbits are generally within that of Jupiter.

Although it has likely lost some supervolatile ices such as carbon dioxide ice (also known as dry ice) in the outer solar system beyond Jupiter, it is unlikely to have ever been in the inner solar system (where Earth, the other rocky planets, and [Jupiter-family comets] orbit), which is warm enough for water ice to sublime (‘evaporate’ from solid to gas),” Steckloff said. “This means that [Comet 2019] LD2 is a pristine comet, and presents a unique opportunity to observe how pristine [Jupiter-family comets] behave as their water ice begins to sublime for the first time and drive comet activity. Moreover, this transition is likely to finish in only 40 years from now, which is a blink of an eye for astronomy. This means that people alive today will be able to follow this object all the way through its transition into the [Jupiter-family] population.”

In 2019, when 2019 L2 was first identified, it was thought to be an asteroid that had suddenly become active, like a comet. Astronomers soon realized this was a mistake, that it was a comet whose orbit was being changed by its interaction with Jupiter.

The new data refines this conclusion, and confirms that observations of 2019 L2 will provide a lot of information about the make-up of the early solar system. More important, the comet’s orbit will allow for many observations, over a long period of time, unlike most comets that zip around the Sun in a year or so and then are gone.

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Giant wind eddies in the sands of Mars

12:13 pm

Wind eddies on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was photographed by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on August 5, 2020. It shows a cluster of the crescent-shaped gullies, apparently carved from desert sand by the prevailing winds.

Those prevailing winds here are from the southwest to the northeast. As the wind blows the sand to the east, it hits a more solid object, such as a mountain buried in the sand, which forces the wind and the blown sand to go around, much as water passes a boulder in river rapids. That solid object also causes an eddy to form at its face, the wind forced downward and then around and up, carving out the gullies by lifting the sand at the base of that solid object. The result are these crescent gullies, dubbed blow-outs.

The overview map helps explain why there is so much sand here, enough apparently to bury whole mountains.
» Read more

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New data makes past nova too bright, but not bright enough to be supernova

9:21 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers, using new data from the Gemini North ground-based telescope, have found that a star that brightened in 1670 and was labeled a nova is much farther away than previously thought, which means that 1670 eruption was far too powerful for a nova, but not powerful enough to make it a supernova.

By measuring both the speed of the nebula’s expansion and how much the outermost wisps had moved during the last ten years, and accounting for the tilt of the nebula on the night sky, which had been estimated earlier by others, the team determined that CK Vulpeculae lies approximately 10,000 light-years distant from the Sun — about five times as far away as previously thought. That implies that the 1670 explosion was far brighter, releasing roughly 25 times more energy than previously estimated [4]. This much larger estimate of the amount of energy released means that whatever event caused the sudden appearance of CK Vulpeculae in 1670 was far more violent than a simple nova.

“In terms of energy released, our finding places CK Vulpeculae roughly midway between a nova and a supernova,” commented Evans. “[T]he cause — or causes — of the outbursts of this intermediate class of objects remain unknown. I think we all know what CK Vulpeculae isn’t, but no one knows what it is.”

Recent research has also suggested that the cause of the eruption was not from the interaction of a binary system with one normal star and a white dwarf, as believed for decades, but possibly a binary system with a brown dwarf, or a red giant star, or two normal stars. All are remain possible, none however have been confirmed.

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Glacial eddies on Mars?

12:24 pm

Glacial eddies on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on August 15, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a truly strange bunch of blocks beside a clean flow neatly organized in almost straight parallel lines.

What is going on? This location is at 38 degrees south latitude, a latitude where scientists have found a lot of features that resemble water ice glaciers, generally protected from sublimating away by a thin layer of dust and debris.

A first guess is that the smooth glacial flow at the lower right is disturbing the glacial material next to it, causing it to rip apart and break up. At the same time, the hollowed look of these glacial blocks suggests that the ice below that protective debris layer is also slowly sublimating away, causing the surface to sink.

The wider shot below helps confirm this impression.
» Read more

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Study: Asymptomatic and secondary infected individuals do not infect others

1:00 pm

A new study published in the journal Nature has found that people who are either asymptomatic or undergoing a secondary illness of COVID-19 are simply not infectious, and don’t give the virus to others.

In other words, it appears that the only time people can infect others is when they have the virus for the first time, and only when they are symptomatic. Lock downs and the use of masks by the healthy accomplish nothing. All you need to do is quarantine the symptomatic patient, as human societies have been doing for centuries and centuries.

To once again emphasize this point, wearing masks if you are healthy and not sick protects no one. Social distancing if you are not sick protects no one. Shutting down businesses, such as reducing capacities at restaurants so they can’t make a profit, protects no one. Curfews protect no one.

When you see someone on a hiking trail, it is not necessary to run ten feet off the trail, put a mask on, and bow your head away in fear and terror of that other person. That they are on the trail guarantees they are not sick. They can’t infect you. And that you are there also means you can’t infect them.

Burn the mask. Smile. Live like a human again. And most of all, stop being afraid all the time.

This very long quote from the study’s discussion section, with the important points highlighted, makes these conclusions very clear:
» Read more

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Curiosity data suggests the occurrence of mega floods in Gale Crater

3:30 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using Curiosity data a team of scientists are now suggesting that some of the features the rover has seen were created during mega flood within Gale Crater, and this data also requires a rethinking of the present theories of the crater’s geological history.

This case includes the occurrence of giant wave-shaped features in sedimentary layers of Gale crater, often called “megaripples” or antidunes that are about 30-feet high and spaced about 450 feet apart, according to lead author Ezat Heydari, a professor of physics at Jackson State University.

The antidunes are indicative of flowing megafloods at the bottom of Mars’ Gale Crater about 4 billion years ago, which are identical to the features formed by melting ice on Earth about 2 million years ago, Heydari said.

The most likely cause of the Mars flooding was the melting of ice from heat generated by a large impact, which released carbon dioxide and methane from the planet’s frozen reservoirs. The water vapor and release of gases combined to produce a short period of warm and wet conditions on the red planet.

The press release above focuses on the catastrophic floods, but the research paper itself is really much more focused on the need to rethink present hypotheses for explaining the observed geology in Gale Crater. This report notes that they are finding patches of material that could not have been laid down as seen, based on those past theories, and proposes the catastrophic flood event as a possible solution.

In reading the paper however it is evident that even this new hypothesis is based on a limited amount of data, and thus can have holes punched in it as well. This is not to say that the paper is invalid, only that it must be taken with some skepticism. The data being obtained at Gale Crater simply incomplete. Curiosity is following only one path, and has not even left the foothills of Mount Sharp. In order to gain a wider and fuller understanding geologists need to study the entire crater floor, as well as the geology on the mountain.

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India’s first mission to Venus delayed a year

10:19 am

The new colonial movement: During a NASA planetary science conference on November 10th, an official of India’s space agency ISRO revealed that they have been forced to delay their first mission to Venus, dubbed Shukrayaan, till 2024.

T. Maria Antonita of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) detailed the status of the mission to scientists drafting a new 10-year plan for NASA’s planetary science program. Shukrayaan will be India’s first mission to Venus and will study the planet for more than four years.

ISRO was aiming for a mid-2023 launch when it released its call for instruments in 2018, but Antonita told members of the National Academies’ decadal survey planning committee last week that pandemic-related delays have pushed Shukrayaan’s target launch date to December 2024 with a mid-2026 backup date (optimal launch windows for reaching Venus occur roughly 19 months apart).

It appears they are using this extra time to consider a larger launch rocket, which would allow them to increase the orbiter’s capabilities.

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Frost on a Martian hillside

3:02 pm

Frost on Martian hillside
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on August 27, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a flat-topped mesa in an enclosed canyon dubbed Sisyphi Cavi in the high southern latitudes of Mars during the spring.

Notice the white spots in the gullies on the southern-facing slopes? From what I can gather from a bit of research, these indicate the presence of carbon dioxide frost. It was spring at this location when the photo was taken. At that time, the thin seasonal mantle of dry ice that covers Mars’ the polar regions south to 60 degrees latitude in the winter is sublimating away. This would explain why the frost is only present in the south-facing slopes. Since this is in the southern hemisphere, the south-facing slopes get much less sunlight, and would sublimate away later.

The photo was taken as part of a monitoring program to study this sublimation process. According to this abstract:

Superposition of channel features over and/or through the defrosting CO2 snowpack shows that the channels are active at the present day and probably have fluid flows every spring during the annual defrosting. In itself, this is a significant observation as active fluid flows of any nature have not yet been proven on Mars. However, the ambient temperature at the time of gully activity appears to require a role for CO2 in the formation of the channels, rather than water.

In other words, the coming and going of this dry ice frost each Martian year, in conjunction with the underground water ice also found here, appears to be causing erosion that then creates of the gullies themselves. More details from the abstract in this paper:
» Read more

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ESA completes new parachute test for its 2022 Mars rover

9:58 pm

On November 9, 2020 the European Space Agency finally conducted the high altitude parachute test of the landing system for its 2022 Mars rover Rosalind Franklin that had been planned for March but had been delayed due to the Wuhan flu panic.

The timeline of the latest test, including extraction and deceleration, went exactly to plan. However, four tears in the canopy of the first main parachute and one in the second main parachute were found after recovery. The damage seemed to happen at the onset of the inflation, with the descent otherwise occurring nominally.

The team are now analysing the test data to determine further improvements for the next tests. Planning is underway for future tests in the first half of next year, to ‘qualify’ the complete parachute system ready for launch in September 2022.

Overall they consider the test a success, though the damage issues must be solved before the ’22 launch. Based on this test it also appears that the ESA made a very wise choice delaying the mission from launch this year, as its parachute system was clearly not ready.

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