Mars Flyover

From the highest volcano to the deepest canyon, from impact craters to ancient river beds and lava flows, this showcase of images from ESA’s Mars Express takes you on an unforgettable journey across the Red Planet.

Mars Express was launched on 2 June 2003 and arrived at Mars six-and-a-half months later. It has since orbited the planet nearly 12 500 times, providing scientists with unprecedented images and data collected by its suite of scientific instruments.

The data have been used to create an almost global digital topographic model of the surface, providing a unique visualisation and enabling researchers to acquire new and surprising information about the evolution of the Red Planet.

The images in this movie were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera and the video was released by the DLR German Aerospace Center as part of the ten years of Mars Express celebrations in June 2013. The music has been created by Stephan Elgner of DLR’s Mars Express planetary cartography team. DLR developed and is operating the stereo camera.

The Sun's Eruption

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona. 

On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain. 

Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface. 

The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.
Music: "Thunderbolt" by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of artist.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at:http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11168

Silicon Brains To Oversee Satellites

A beautiful and expensive sight: upwards of €6 million-worth of silicon wafers, crammed with the complex integrated circuits that sit at the heart of each and every ESA mission. Years of meticulous design work went into these tiny brains, empowering satellites with intelligence. 

The image shows a collection of six silicon wafers that contain some 14 different chip designs developed by several European companies during the last eight years with ESA’s financial and technical support. 

Each of these 20 cm-diameter wafers contains between 30 and 80 replicas of each chip, each one carrying up to about 10 million transistors or basic circuit switches.

To save money on the high cost of fabrication, various chips designed by different companies and destined for multiple ESA projects are crammed onto the same silicon wafers, etched into place at specialised semiconductor manufacturing  plants or ‘fabs’, in this case LFoundry (formerly Atmel) in France.

Once manufactured, the chips, still on the wafer, are tested. The wafers are then chopped up. They become ready for use when placed inside protective packages – just like standard terrestrial microprocessors – and undergo final quality tests.

Through little metal pins or balls sticking out of their packages these miniature brains are then connected to other circuit elements – such as sensors, actuators, memory or power systems – used across the satellite.

To save the time and money needed to develop complex chips like these, ESA’s Microelectronics section maintains a catalogue of chip designs, known as Intellectual Property (IP) cores, available to European industry through ESA licence. 

Think of these IP cores as the tiniest mission ‘building blocks’: specialised designs to perform particular tasks in space, laid down within a microchip.

These IP cores range from single ‘simpler’ functions such as decoding signals from Earth to control the satellite to highly complex computer tasks such as operating a complete spacecraft.

The latter is achieved for example by the SCOC-3 ‘spacecraft controller on a chip’ developed by ESA and Astrium, which itself combines more than 20 different IP cores from other sources, seen at the bottom of the image.

SCOC3 on silicon wafer

Once manufactured, the chips, still on the wafer, are tested. The wafers are then chopped up. They become ready for use when placed inside protective packages – just like standard terrestrial microprocessors – to undergo final quality tests.

Through little metal pins or balls sticking out of their packages these miniature brains are then connected to other circuit elements – such as sensors, actuators, memory or power systems – used across the satellite.

To save the time and money needed to develop complex chips like these, ESA’s Microelectronics section maintains a catalogue of chip designs, known as Intellectual Property (IP) cores, freely available to European industry.

Think of these IP cores as the tiniest mission ‘building blocks’: specialised designs to perform particular tasks in space, laid down within a microchip.

These IP cores range from single ‘simpler’ functions such as decoding signals from Earth to control the satellite to highly complex computer tasks such as operating a complete spacecraft.

The latter is achieved for example by the SCOC3 ‘spacecraft controller on a chip’ developed by ESA and Astrium, which itself combines more than 20 different IP cores from other sources, seen at the bottom of the image.

Each IP core is coded in a ‘hardware description language’ that can then guide the manufacturing process. Today’s state-of-the-art minimum sizes of integrated circuit tracks are measured in tens of nanometres.

Via: "ESA"

The Robot That'll Extract Water From The Moon

The RASSOR robot climbs a hill during a recent test at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA)

One of the biggest challenges of space travel has very little to do with the traveling itself, and more to do with everything that happens afterward. How will humans sustain themselves if we send them back to the moon (and, as planned, to Mars)? Food, even freeze-dried, is heavy. Water, too. Maintenance is expensive, in every sense of the word. So if manned space travel is to become a long-term reality, we'll need to find ways to cultivate the places and planets we visit: to mine their soil for nutrients, to find the water hidden in their depths, to generate the air that will make everything else possible.

NASA has an idea for doing all that, and it takes the form -- as so many innovative ideas seem to these days -- of a robot. 

Meet ... the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot -- RASSOR, for short. The robot (pronounced as "razor") is an excavator device, designed to extract (yes) water, (yes) ice, and (yes) fuel from the soil of the moon. And from the soil of similarly dusty bodies (like, say, Mars). NASA is envisioning that RASSOR, currently in development in prototype form, will not only perform the Greek-fable-meets-rocket-science-reality task of getting water from rocks; it will also take the remaining dust and convert the chemicals it contains into two things crucial to astronauts: air for breathing, and fuel for moving. "The robot," NASA says, "would be the feeder for a lunar resource processing plant, a level of industry never before tried anywhere besides Earth."

With a pair of drums positioned on arms, the RASSOR can take on a number of different shapes to accomplish its work. (NASA)

So. How do you design a device that can do all that work? How do you create an automaton that is rover and water filtration center and power plant all rolled in one rolling vehicle? One obvious challenge is mass. On the one hand, the robot in question has to be light enough to feasibly fly on a rocket. (It takes about $4,000, NASA says, to send a single pound of payload into space.) On the other hand, though, the machine has to be heavy enough to operate in less gravity than that offered by Earth. (In the moon's case: less than 20 percent of that gravity.) It also has to be generally substantial enough to dig into soil without tipping over, and to operate -- like its fellow lunar and Martian rovers -- as a kind of multi-purpose machine.

The RASSOR can climb over large obstacles, like the boulders that are strewn on the moon. To test that ability on Earth, engineers used a stepping stool to challenge the robot. (NASA)

The current prototype has solved many of those problems by applying its multi-purpose intentions to multi-purpose design. The drums that the machine will use to gather soil double as legs -- which can, in turn, help the robot to navigate dusty terrain. (They also allow the 100-pound, 2.5-foot-tall device to dig effectively, since one of those drums can act as a grip to balance the robot as it does its work.) Though the current design has given the RASSOR a tank-like shape, with tracks to balance the robot as it roves other worlds, NASA is considering replacing that base with wheels -- which would make the next RASSOR iteration a little more Martian-rover-like than the current one. But the modular capability, ostensibly, would be a constant.

So: a shape-shifting, water-mining spacebot! If you, like I, would like to see what the final version of this could look like, you don't have long to wait. NASA is expecting that the RASSOR 2 -- the next generation of the spunky little power plant -- will begin testing in early 2014.

Via: "The Atlantic"

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field In 3D

I've recently discovered an animation that was rendered using the measured redshift of all 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.

I've written a short script that leads you through a quick history of both deep field images and this video ends with a fly-through of the Ultra Deep Field.

Every galaxy in the image is in its proper distance as viewed from the telescope line of sight.

As if this image wasn't amazing enough.

Animation Credit:

Hubble Cosmological Redshift Animation Courtesy:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/28/video/b/

Mike Gallis

http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/Phys_anim.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6G2Z6iD-9M

Music Used in this video was purchased from stockmusic.net and belongs to the Spirit Legends Collection.

The tunes I used were:

Voice Redo B
Voice in the Dark

Link to demos:

http://www.stockmusic.net/index.cfm/page/main.collectionDetails/collectionId/67

NASA's Inflatable Space Station Room

Image courtesy of Bigelow Aerospace

A new deal between NASA and a commercial spaceflight company to add a privately built module to the International Space Station could lead to future uses of the novel space technology beyond low-Earth orbit, space agency and company officials say.

NASA will pay $17.8 million to Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas to build an inflatable module, test it and prep it for flight. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is to be launched around the summer of 2015.

The space agency and Bigelow officials provided details of the contract in a Las Vegas briefing today (Jan. 16).

The new inflatable BEAM will be launched to the International Space Station by a Falcon 9 rocket built by another private spaceflight company, California-based SpaceX. The module will be cocooned inside the unpressurized cargo hold of SpaceX's Dragon capsule atop the Falcon 9. NASA has already purchased the launch of the SpaceX Falcon under a separate Commercial Resupply Services contract.

The module will be installed on an open berth of the station's Node 3 connecting module using a robotic arm. Once it is attached, the inflatable room will be activated by station astronauts, adding to the volume of orbiting laboratory.

SEE ALSO: Photos: Bigelow's Inflatable Space Station Idea

An Inflatable Space Room

The module is cylindrical, weighs roughly 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms) and is about 13 feet (4 meters) long and 10.5 feet (3.2 m) wide.

Bigelow Aerospace's founder and president is Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas-based general contractor, real estate tycoon, hotel businessman and developer. Since 1999, his company has been focused on creating affordable inflatable space habitats for national space agencies and corporate clients.

In 2006 and 2007 the firm launched orbiting prototypes of its expandable habitat technology, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Work is ongoing within Bigelow Aerospace on BA 330 modules, structures that offer 12,000 cubic feet (330 cubic meters) of internal space.

Michael Gold, director of Washington, D.C., operations and business growth for Bigelow Aerospace LLC, based in Chevy Chase, Md., said: "With Genesis 1 and 2, Bigelow Aerospace showed the world that it can achieve escape velocity from high costs. We're going to do this again with the BEAM, bringing both innovation and a vital demonstration of affordability to the crown jewel of NASA's human spaceflight program, the International Space Station."

A Technology Test

At this time, NASA's planned use of the BEAM is for technology demonstration, to validate experimental expandable habitat technology and let the space agency become more familiar with it, Gold told SPACE.com in an exclusive interview.

"I'm told the BEAM will be acoustically the quietest location aboard the station, due to the non-metallic nature of the structure," he said.

NASA's interest in the module for the International Space Station was first reported on SPACE.com by this reporter in January 2011 — so why the long glide path, some two years, for the project to become a reality?

In actuality, the program "moved forward with relative alacrity," Gold responded.

"The ISS is the pinnacle of the human spaceflight program. NASA went through a thorough amount of analysis prior to agreeing about BEAM … Analysis and study does take time," Gold said. "It demonstrates the attention and commitment to safety and quality that both NASA and Bigelow Aerospace have."

BEAM Bonus in Space

For Bigelow, there is another bonus from having BEAM  attached to the space station: the chance to generate more business.

"Many in the foreign community perceive NASA as the gold star. I can think of no stronger statement relative to NASA's confidence both in Bigelow Aerospace and expandable habitat technology than their desire to place BEAM aboard the ISS," Gold said. "That speaks volumes not just domestically, but possibly more importantly, overseas as well. I think that any sovereign client or potential clientele should be paying attention to this."

Gold said the private entrepreneurial firm is pleased to be working with NASA to further validate the promise and benefits of expandable habitat technology – and not only in low-Earth orbit, but beyond.

Beyond BEAM, Bigelow Aerospace is "moving aggressively" on the larger BA 330 module, "dedicating a great deal of resources" to expeditiously push forward an expandable habitat of that size.

According to the Bigelow Aerospace website, the BA 330 can function as an independent space station, and several BA 330 habitats can be connected together in a modular fashion to create an even larger and more capable orbital space complex.

Robert Bigelow and his team have extensively blueprinted concepts for their expandable habitats to be used at other destinations.

"Expandable habitats are an enabling technology that will make the dream of robust beyond-LEO human space exploration a reality," Gold said. "Regardless of the ultimate destination, be it L2 [Lagrange Point 2], the surface of the moon or even a historic mission to Mars, the large volumes provided by Bigelow Aerospace systems, combined with enhanced protection from radiation and physical debris, make habitats such as the BA 330 an essential part of any realistic beyond-LEO architecture."

Gold said he knows Capitol Hill wants to see a robust beyond-LEO human space exploration strategy, but that new funding will be hard to come by.

"The BA 330 and expandable habitats will not just offer enhanced protection from radiation and micrometeorites, but protect future astronauts from a much more dangerous threat …lack of funding," Gold concluded.

Via: "Mashable"

NASA's Next Flagship Space Telescope

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope — the notoriously over-budget new space observatory slated to launch in 2018 — is on time and still within its new budget, the project's chief said Wednesday (Jan. 9).

“Our budget still stands and the schedule remains the same,” Eric Smith, the space telescope's program director, told astronomers here at a town hall meeting during the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Smith also outlined the future of the James Webb Space Telescope program in 2013 and With an $8.8 billion dollar price tag, JWST is destined to be one of the largest and most expensive projects in NASA history. Set to replace the venerable Hubble Space Telescope once it is launched, JWST will take infrared images of distant galaxies, probing the cosmos for hints and signals left behind from the Big Bang.

Of the four science instruments responsible for investigating those mysteries aboard the spacecraft, two were delivered to NASA in 2012. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) — the instrument responsible for taking “Hubble-like” images of distant galaxies, comets and other heavenly bodies — was sent last year by the European consortium that built it. [Photos: The James Webb Space Telescope]

The Canadian Space Agency has also delivered its instrument: the Fine Guidance Sensor/Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS) that will also take high-quality images of other bodies in space.

NASA is still awaiting two more contributions: the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) from Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona, and the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) from the European Space Agency, which is still in its early testing phases. Both instruments measure light on the infrared spectrum. All of the science instruments are set to be integrated by the end of 2013, officials say.

The telescope's tennis court-size sunshield is in the early stages of testing as well. The sunshield itself is too large to launch in an unfurled state, creating a unique problem for JWST scientists to solve. Instead of launching the telescope with the sunshield in place, NASA is planning to unroll the shield once the craft is in orbit. At one-third of the way complete, NASA scientists are now starting to practice rolling and unrolling the shield to see how it might unfurl in space after launch.

Once all four instruments are finished, researchers will combine them to test JWST as one cohesive unit. While final testing on the ground should begin in 2015, simulation testing using Optimal Trajectories by Implicit Simulation — a space telescope tester that mimics the temperature and environment of a space telescope in Earth’s orbit — won’t start until 2017, a year before launch.

JWST is also going to investigate a few objects a little closer to home.

Mike Brown, an astronomer from Caltech, detailed a few of the more promising applications for JWST within the solar system. Planetary scientists have been interested in understanding what composes comets, protoplanets and other mysterious space objects. 

JWST’s sensitive instruments should be able to deliver some information as to what elements created rocky and icy objects in the outer solar system, Brown said at the town hall meeting.

NASA officials, meanwhile, are hopeful that the JWST's predecessor — the iconic Hubble Space Telescope — will still be functioning by the time the new observatory launches. This week, agency officials said the 23-year-old Hubble telescope could potentially last through 2018, allowing for some overlap with the JWST mission that would be a boon for astronomers.

Via: "Live Science"

Asteroid Discovery From 1980 - 2010

Video Created by Scott Manley, this is a view of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones. 

The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system. 

Earth Crossers are Red

Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow

All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths. 

The scale of the video at 1080P resolution is roughly 1million kilometers per pixel, and each second of video corresponds to 60 days.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects, scientific estimates suggest that there are about a billion asteroids larger than 100metres (about the size of a football field) .

Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/elgb/astorb.htm­l

Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic:http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifo... - they're awesome guys, give them some love.

Check out todays asteroid map athttp://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map....
Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley. 

If you are needing a higher quality video or images for a specific purposes - education, news or just eye candy I can supply them on a case by case basis.

NGC 6712 Losing Stars Into The Milky Way Halo

An artistic impression of the orbit of the globular cluster NGC 6712 in the Milky Way. 

Due to gravitational disruption, this cluster continuously loses stars, in particular light ones. 

This process is enhanced when it passes through the central plane in which most of the Galaxy's stars and nebulae are located. 

The cluster emerges in a less dense state after such a passage. The stars that are lost move on in orbits similar to that of the cluster and populate the halo of the Milky Way.

Via: "The European Southern Observatory"

Dark Lightning

Researchers studying thunderstorms have made a surprising discovery:

The lightning we see with our eyes has a dark competitor that discharges storm clouds and flings antimatter into space. 

Astrophysicists and meteorologists are scrambling to understand "dark lightning."

NASA Starts Work On Real Star Trek Warp Drive

"Perhaps a Star Trek experience within our lifetime is not such a remote possibility." These are the words of Dr. Harold "Sonny" White, the Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate. Dr. White and his colleagues don't just believe a real life warp drive is theoretically possible; they've already started the work to create one.

Searching For Warp Bubbles

The answer lies precisely in those laws of physics. Dr. White and other physicists have found loopholes in some mathematical equations—loopholes that indicate that warping the space-time fabric is indeed possible.

Working at NASA Eagleworks—a skunkworks operation deep at NASA's Johnson Space Center—Dr. White's team is trying to find proof of those loopholes. They have "initiated an interferometer test bed that will try to generate and detect a microscopic instance of a little warp bubble" using an instrument called the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer.

It may sound like a small thing now, but the implications of the research huge. In his own words:

Although this is just a tiny instance of the phenomena, it will be existence proof for the idea of perturbing space time-a "Chicago pile" moment, as it were. Recall that December of 1942 saw the first demonstration of a controlled nuclear reaction that generated a whopping half watt. This existence proof was followed by the activation of a ~ four megawatt reactor in November of 1943. Existence proof for the practical application of a scientific idea can be a tipping point for technology development.

By creating one of these warp bubbles, the spaceship's engine will compress the space ahead and expand the space behind, moving it to another place without actually moving, and carrying none of the adverse effects of other travel methods. According to Dr. White, "by harnessing the physics of cosmic inflation, future spaceships crafted to satisfy the laws of these mathematical equations may actually be able to get somewhere unthinkably fast—and without adverse effects."

He says that, if everything is confirmed in these practical experiments, we would be able to create an engine that will get us to Alpha Centauri "in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth." The time will be the same in the spaceship and on Earth, he claims, and there will not be "tidal forces inside the bubble, no undue issues, and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn the field on, everybody doesn't go slamming against the bulkhead, which would be a very short and sad trip."

There was only one problem with all this: where does the energy come from? While we knew that warp drives were theoretically possible, physicists have always argued that they would require a ball of exotic matter the size of Jupiter to power it. Clearly, that was not practical. But thankfully, Dr. White has found a solution that changes the game completely.

The Eagleworks team has discovered that the energy requirements are much lower than previously thought. If they optimize the warp bubble thickness and "oscillate its intensity to reduce the stiffness of space time," they would be able to reduce the amount of fuel to manageable amount: instead of a Jupiter-sized ball of exotic matter, you will only need 500 kilograms to "send a 10-meter bubble (32.8 feet) at an effective velocity of 10c."

Ten c! That's ten times the speed of light, people (remember, the ship itself would not go faster than the speed of light. But effectively it will seem like it does).

That means that we would be able to visit Gliese 581g—a planet similar to Earth 20 light years away from our planet—in two years. Two years is nothing. It took Magellan three years to circumnavigate around our home planet—from August 1519 to September 1522. A four year roundtrip to see a planet like Earth is completely doable. And there are even closer destinations where we can send robots or astronauts.

The important thing is that there is now a door open to a different kind of exploration. That, like Dr. White says, "perhaps a Star Trek experience within our lifetime is not such a remote possibility." We may be witnessing the very beginning of a new age of space exploration, one that would finally take us from our pale blue dot back to where we belong.

Via: "Gizmodo"

Navigating The Cosmos With Space GPS

Image via: DiscoveryMagazine.com

Spacecraft could one day navigate through the cosmos using a particular type of dead star as a kind of GPS.

German scientists are developing a technique that allows for very precise positioning anywhere in space by picking up X-ray signals from pulsars.

These dense, burnt-out stars rotate rapidly, sweeping their emission across the cosmos at rates that are so stable they rival atomic clock performance.

This timing property is perfect for interstellar navigation, says the team.

If a spacecraft carried the means to detect the pulses, it could compare their arrival times with those predicted at a reference location. This would enable the craft to determine its position to an accuracy of just five kilometres anywhere in the galaxy.

"The principle is so simple that it will definitely have applications," said Prof Werner Becker from the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching.

"These pulsars are everywhere in the Universe and their flashing is so predictable that it makes such an approach really straightforward," he told BBC News.

The proposed technique is very similar to that employed in the popular Global Positioning System, which broadcasts timing signals to the user from a constellation of satellites in orbit.

Currently, mission controllers wanting to work out the position of their spacecraft deep in the Solar System will study the differences in time radio communications take to travel to and from the satellite. It is a complex process and requires several antennas dotted across the Earth.

It is also a technique that is far from precise, and the errors increase the further away the probe moves.

For the most distant spacecraft still in operation - Nasa's Voyager probes, which are now approaching the very edge of the Solar System, some 18 billion km away - the errors associated with their positions are on the order of several hundred km.

Even for a probe at the reasonably short separation of Mars, the positioning uncertainty can be about 10km.

"It becomes possible with the development of lightweight X-ray mirrors," said Prof Becker.

"These are on the way for the next generation of X-ray telescopes. Current mirrors have a 100 times more weight and would be completely unusable.

"In 15-20 years, the new mirrors will be standard and our device will be ready to be built."

The scientist believes his navigation solution will certainly find use on Solar System probes, providing autonomous navigation for interplanetary missions and perhaps for future manned ventures to Mars where high performance systems will be an absolute requirement for safety reasons.

Via: "The BBC"

NASA's Dawn Mission

A Voyage To The Origins Of The Solar System

Narrated by Leonard Nimoy

In 1996, science writer John Horgan published a book called The End of Science in which he claimed that we had learned all we could know about the natural world. And in 2008, Wired magazine devoted an issue to, you guessed it, “The End of Science.” Snappy, grandiose titles may sell copy, but it’s also the case that each time someone or other declares the end of something massive—science, history, war, and periodically, the world–we can look back and be astonished at the hubris. It now seems that there are frontiers we are just beginning to explore, and they are the frontiers of our evolutionary beginnings. While biophysicists like Peter Hoffmann chart the boundaries between life and nonlife at the molecular level, NASA scientists explore the outer reaches to discover what Leonard Nimoy, narrator of the video above, calls “the very beginning of us.”

It’s a little wonky at times, but the short film above is nonetheless a fascinating overview of NASA’s Dawn mission, a spacecraft designed to collect data from the asteroid belt. The ship itself is a marvel. Outfitted with massive solar panel wings that can power it for years, Dawn converts xenon gas into plasma, which it propels from its engine at speeds up to 78,000 miles per hour (or 21 miles per second) for maximum acceleration. In fact, Dawn is the fastest ship NASA has ever launched. Even at top speeds, Dawn required four years to reach its first stop, the asteroid Vesta, the brightest asteroid in the solar system and the only one visible to the naked eye. Departing Earth in 2007, the ship reached Vesta in July of 2011 and departed last September for the asteroid Ceres, which it will reach in February of 2015.

These two asteroids are part of what is called the “protoplanetary disk,” a once-chaotic ring of dust and gas that began to coalesce into our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. One NASA scientist above describes the asteroid belt as the “boneyard” of deep space—remains from the earliest epochs of time. Dawn’s mission isn’t just a foray to uncharted space; it’s also a journey billions years into the past, into the origins of our solar system.

Via: "Open Culture"

How We Will Terraform Mars

Image via: NationalGeographic.com

NASA's latest Mars rover, Curiosity, is currently its way to Mars, on a mission to explore whether life could exist there. If we're going to colonize Mars — and some scientists say we must — it's likely that we'll start by terraforming. Terraforming, or planetary engineering, is the process of altering the climate of a planet to be more hospitable to life and human exploration. Of all the bodies in the solar system, Mars is by far the best candidate. Here's how that would work.

Mars' geological history is divided into three ages, which are from oldest to youngest theNoachian, the Hesperian and theAmazonian. The Noachian epoch, ranging from about 4.1 to about 3.7 billion years ago, is characterized by heavy asteroid bombardment and abundant surface water. This is the so-called "warm, wet" period. TheHesperian, ranging from 3.7 to somewhere between 1.7 and 3.0 billion years ago, is characterized by heavy volcanic activity and massive water flow. The Hesperian was an intermediate age between the warm wetNoachian and the the cold, dry Amazonian, which is the Mars we know today as being not the kind of place to raise a kid.

The Building Blocks Of A New Environment
So the good news is that much of the material we need to give Mars a thicker, warmer atmosphere are still present on its surface and buried in its regolith. Despite these promising circumstances, however, it's clear that one does not simply walk into terraforming Mars. In his definitive text,Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments, Martyn Fogg laid out five critical challenges:

1. The surface temperature must be raised
2. The atmospheric pressure must be increased
3. The chemical composition of the atmosphere must be changed
4. The surface must be made wet
5. The surface flux of UV radiation must be reduced

Fogg suggests that the engineering of the Martian environment will proceed through ecopoisis, a term coined by Robert Haynes for the process of making a planet more hospitable for primitive microbial life, to something approaching full terraforming, in which the climate of Mars will more closely resemble that of Earth's.

The most promising approach to dealing with the first two items is to reverse the runaway freezeout of the Martian atmosphere by initiating a runaway greenhouse effect. Current atmospheric pressure on Mars is between 6 and 7 millibars at low elevations. That's less than 1% of Earth's pressure at sea level. The inventory of frozen carbon dioxide remaining on the Martian surface is estimated to be between one hundred and one thousand millibars, with a good deal of it existing frozen on the surface at the poles and the rest underground in the regolithic permafrost. Increasing atmospheric pressure and temperature is a matter of warming the poles to the point where they sublimate into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, being a greenhouse gas, will retain more of the sun's heat and promote the melting of yet more carbon dioxide out of the planetary regolith, which will retain more heat and promote further degassing. This concept of creating a runaway greenhouse effect to release Mars' reserves of frozen carbon dioxide has become known as "the standard paradigm" of Martian ecopoiesis.

Image by Dane Spangler

Jumpstarting A Greenhouse Effect

Okay, so how do we warm up the Martian poles? Several approaches have been suggested, from spreading dark material on the poles to lower their albedo, to industrial ice farming to good old fashioned thermonuclear detonations. In Technological Requirements For Terraforming Mars, Chris McKay and Robert Zubrin suggest a more elegant scheme: orbital mirrors. Constructed in high orbit above Mars, the mirrors would reflect sunlight back onto Martian surface. In McKay and Zubrin's model, the mirrors would not exactly orbit Mars. Rather, they would reside directly above Mars' night side, held in place by a balance of forces between Mars' gravity and the solar light pressure. The orbital mirror plan has the advantage of continually introducing extra heat into the Martian climate long after the poles have sublimated. Even in the later stages of terraforming, Mars' distance from the sun will make the increased insolation from the orbital mirrors desirable.

Another key to stabilizing Mars atmosphere is the activation of its hydrosphere. Water promotesecopoiesis not only by providing a vital element for life, but also stabilizing the climate. Water retains heat and reduces the drastic swings in temperature over the diurnal cycle and water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas which will help hold thermal energy in the atmosphere.

Current models suggest that there are large quantities of water stored in permafrost aquifers. Release of this water will require a good deal more energy than will be required for the release of carbon dioxide. Nuclear mining, even with high-yield devices, would produce far too much fallout. Another approach to releasing Martian water is controlled asteroid impact, simulating the hydrosphere-promoting bombardment of the Noachian epoch. This would require a great deal of energy, however, and would be very difficult to control with any precision. Zubrin and McKay suggest that the orbital mirrors used to melt the poles could be refocused on smaller areas of the permafrost. Water melted out of the southern highland permafrost would be directed into the northern lowlands and into the Hellas basin in the south to create shallow planetary seas.

Image by Stephan Martiniere

Making The Air Breathable

These alterations to the Martian climate would go a far way to making Mars more habitable for microbial life and more easily explorable by humans, but the remaining challenges of reducing UV flux and making the atmosphere breathable will require considerably more time and effort. Mars' thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide would block a good deal of the incoming UV radiation, but carbon dioxide does not significantly block UV radiation in the 190 nm to 300 nm range. Current UV flux on Mars is about 6 Watts per square meter, which would be enough to kill most organisms. The plan here would be to introduce highly UV resistant lifeforms, such as lichen, directly on the surface or to grow cyanobacteria in soil which would protect the organisms from UV, and in mats on the newly formed seas, with layers of dead cells protecting the living cells beneath. These organisms would release oxygen which would slowly build to breathable levels and would form ozone in the upper atmosphere, which would reduce the harmful 190-300 nm UV flux. These organisms would also provide nutrients to help build the Martian soil up to the point where it could support more complex plants.

The difficulty with this biogenic approach to ozone formation is that Mars simply doesn't have enough nitrogen to support large scale life. Atmospheric nitrogen is at trace levels. Contrast this with Earth where 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen. Nitrogen is an essential element for life and its scarcity on Mars presents a serious challenge to ecopoiesis. Unlike carbon dioxide, which disappeared both into carbonates and frozen carbon dioxide ice, Mars' nitrogen is pretty much all stored in mineral form as nitrates in the regolith, which means that the energy required to free Mars' reserves of nitrogen will be massive. It may be possible to introduce significant atmospheric nitrogen from extraplanetary sources, such as ammonia rich asteroids. One especially fun idea would be to introduce large quantities of nitrous oxide (yup, WhipIt good!), which is a powerful greenhouse gas and would help warm the planet. Unfortunately, N2O photodisassociates rapidly in the presence of UV. But once we get that ozone up and running, it's party time on Mars!

Another problem with making the Martian atmosphere breathable is that even with adequate levels of oxygen, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide above 5% are lethal to humans. If the inventory of CO2 turns out to be on the low end of the estimated range, Fogg suggests a more modest approach to CO2 release than the standard paradigm coupled with the rapid introduction of nitrogen. This process would be slower in generating initial ecopoiesis but would leave Mars with an atmosphere that would be more conducive to full terraforming.

Finally, if we cannot restart Mars' volcanoes or otherwise promote geological demineralization of bound volatiles, a terraformed Mars will have to be maintained with constant re-introduction of volatile elements and restoration of the atmosphere lost to the solar wind. But since the loss of atmosphere to space and to mineralization would take place over centuries, we might have time for some more radical planetary engineering, such at the construction of deep moholes to release gas trapped in the Martian crust and even the construction of an artificial moon to provide tidal force to reactivate Mars' geological process.

It may, however, be ultimately impossible to fine tune Mars' climate to support human life as we know it today. In the centuries it takes for us to get to this point, it might just be easier to engineer humans to tolerate the conditions that we can produce on Mars. As Kim Stanley Robinson pointed out in his Mars Trilogy, humans do not just terraform Mars, Mars aeroforms us.

For more information on the exploration and terraforming of Mars, check out The Mars Society.

References:
[1] Fogg, Martyn J. (1995). Terraforming: Engineering Planetary Environments. SAE International, Warrendale, PA. ISBN 1560916095.

[2] Carr, Michael H. (1996). Water on Mars. Oxford University Press, Inc, New York, NY 10016 ISBN 0195099389

[3] Raeburn, Paul & Golombek, Matt (1998). Uncovering The Secrets of the Red Planet. The National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C. ISBN0792273737.

[4] Zubrin, Robert M. & McKay, Christopher P. (1997). Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 50, 83. Accessed 2009-06-09.

[5] Robinson, Stanley (1993). Red Mars. Bantam Books, New York, NY 10036 ISBN 0553560735

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