Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category

 

 

NASA’s Curiosity rover is in the early hours of performing Sol 1801 duties.

As the robot moves forward to ascend Vera Rubin Ridge, new imagery is helping scientists better understand how the ridge formed.

 

NASA is blueprinting its beyond Mars 2020 rover plans, focusing on returning samples from the Red Planet.

In a “Review of Progress Toward Implementing the Decadal Survey Vision and Voyages for Planetary Sciences” briefing yesterday at the J. Erik Jonsson Woods Hole Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator detailed some Mars sample return thinking.

 

 

Note:

Also, go to my earlier story that gives you the “inside scoop” on Mars sample return:

https://www.leonarddavid.com/sampling-mars-grab-and-go-back-to-earth/

China card

Interestingly, now infused on the NASA overview chart is China’s Mars plans of Red Planet exploration, including an orbiter, lander and sample return. Then there’s the missing-in-powerpoint projection of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Dragon landings.

Presently on the table are two NASA concepts that leverage Mars program legacy system capabilities to shoot back to Earth specimens of the Red Planet: a Propulsive Platform Lander and a Skycrane-Delivered Platform.

Here are a few briefing charts from Zurbuchen’s presentation on the NASA Mars exploration program.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) used its LROC imaging system to look back at Earth and snag imagery during the Great American Solar Eclipse on August 21.

As LRO crossed the lunar south pole heading north at 3,579 miles per hour (1600 meters per second, the shadow of the Moon was racing across the United States at 1,500 miles per hour (670 meters per second).

A few minutes later, LRO began a slow 180° turn to look back at the Earth and capture an image of the eclipse very near the spot of maximum length of totality.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera’s (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera began scanning the Earth at 18:25:30 UTC and completed the image 18 seconds later (UTC is 4 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, or 7 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time).

Typical day on Moon

“While all of Monday’s thrill was in experiencing the shadow of the Moon sweep across us on Earth, on the Moon this was just another typical day,” said Mark Robinson of Arizona State University, and principal investigator of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.

“The lunar nearside was one week into its two-week night, while the Sun shone on the farside in the middle of its two-week day. For the Moon, and the LRO spacecraft observing the Moon, the real excitement is during a lunar eclipse when the shadow of the Earth sweeps across the Moon.”

 

Temperature drop

Robinson added that during the eclipse, the lunar surface temperatures drop rapidly and LRO’s thermal imager, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer, can learn about the material properties of the lunar rocks and soils by studying their temperature just after the lights abruptly go out.

“Though for the LRO spacecraft itself, the Earth’s shadow means that most of the other instruments must be powered down because of the lack of power coming from the solar panels,” Robinson pointed out.

Launched on June 18, 2009, LRO has collected a treasure trove of data about the Moon with its seven powerful instruments. LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

 

 

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now closing out Sol 1799 duties.

The robot drove some 76 feet (23.3 meters) over the weekend bringing the robot even closer to the area it will ascend Vera Rubin Ridge.

“We have reached the point in the traverse where we are no longer headed east along the ridge, but instead are turning to the south where orbital data show the ridge has slopes shallow enough for Curiosity to climb,” reports Abigail Fraeman, a planetary geologist at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Charge of the batteries

Curiosity acquired Mastcam and ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) images of the ridge in the weekend plan, including a last “official” approach imaging mosaic.

“These images continue to show very interesting, fine scale sedimentary structures that hold the secrets of how the lower ridge layers were deposited,” Fraeman notes.

One of the big challenges putting a new plan together was making sure the observations researchers wanted didn’t leave the rover’s batteries too drained at the end of the plan.

“We keep careful track of the expected state of charge of the batteries because we want to make sure they will last a long time, and because we want to have enough power available going into the next sol’s plan,” Fraeman points out. “Getting everything to fit inside power guidelines was challenging today in part because late autumn has come to Gale Crater. Colder temperatures mean we have to run heaters for longer, which takes more energy.”

 

Two sol script

A two sol plan has been scripted, starting off on Sol 1800 with contact science, including Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) observations of an interesting eroded Murray formation rock target named “Bauneg Beg.”

Following the contact science, Curiosity is to make ChemCam LIBS [laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy] observations of targets “Bucklin Rock” and “Gilkey Harbor,” and then take a 12×1 Mastcam right eye mosaic that will cover the area directly in front of the rover. Bucklin Rock looks similar to Bauneg Bag, and Gilkey Harbor is a dark, smooth rock.

Southward ho

“After our morning science, Curiosity will drive south towards Vera Rubin Ridge,” Fraeman adds.

“After the drive on sol 1801, Curiosity will do some untargeted remote sensing, including collecting some data from the ChemCam calibration targets, and taking a Navcam suprahorizon movie, performing a dust devil search, and looking at the Sun to assess the amount of dust in the atmosphere (a tau measurement),” Fraeman concludes.

A humanoid robot that can be used for future Mars exploration has been operated from the International Space Station (ISS).

On August 25, Italian ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli remote-controlled the “Rollin’ Justin” robot, research work underway at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR).

Delegate duties

The effort is designed to demonstrate from Mars orbit that astronauts can dispatch a robot to different positions on the planet without actually having to land and visit the site.

Instead, the astronaut-driver would monitor the process and send instructions that lay out the sequence of tasks to the robot. Activities that would be dangerous for astronauts can also be delegated to the robot.

The long-term objective of the project is to enable human/robot collaboration to colonize distant worlds.

Servicing a solar farm

During the experiment, a tablet-PC was used to send instructions to the robot at the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany from the ISS.

The Justin robot was then left to its own devices in the completion of various tasks and was required to use artificial intelligence to decide how individual work stages needed to be completed.

In the first experiment in the series, ISS crewmate Nespoli ordered Rollin’ Justin to service a solar farm set up specifically in the laboratory in Oberpfaffenhofen to check the condition of several solar panels and to repair any faults.

 High-performance, local intelligence

This research is on-going, enabled by the SUPVIS (Supervisory Control) Justin experiment, which is being carried out as part of the Multi-Purpose End-to-End Robotic Operation Network (Meteron) in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA).

“In the SUPVIS Justin experiment, we are laying the foundation for cooperation between astronauts and intelligent, humanoid robots in the colonization of distant planets and moons,” says Alin Albu-Schäffer, director of the DLR Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in a press statement. “The robots are equipped with high-performance local intelligence, so the astronaut only needs a tablet-PC to instruct the robot in the performance of complex activities.”

Adds DLR research team leader, Neal Lii: “We intend to use this project to cross new frontiers and to transform robots into true co-workers for a variety of tasks in aerospace. In the long term, this should ease the strain on astronauts in the area of planetary exploration.”

 

I am delighted to announce that I’ll be talking at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, an event being held Saturday, October 7, 2017, 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM.

My talk is being staged at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery at the Museum of Flight – the largest independent, non-profit air and space museum in the world, housing over 175 aircraft and spacecraft, tens of thousands of artifacts, millions of rare photographs, and dozens of exhibits and experiences.

Reception, lecture, book signing

Come join me for an evening reception, lecture and book signing and discussion about my book, Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet. It is the companion book to the National Geographic six-part MARS series with Ron Howard, whose foreword opens the book with work now underway as the MARS television production is readying its second season.

I’ll offer the latest news on Mars exploration, the potential for use of the Moon as testing ground to enable the reach for the Red Planet, as well as the prospects and problems of settlement of humans on Mars.

Information

For ticket details, go to:

https://www.museumofflight.org/Plan-Your-Visit/Calendar-of-Events/3464/mars-our-future-on-the-red-planet/

For general information about the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, go to:

https://www.museumofflight.org/

 

 

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is now performing Sol 1798 science duties.

In newly released data from Curiosity, scientists report a potential history of hydrothermal activity at Gale Crater on the Red Planet, a finding that broadens the variety of habitable conditions once present there.

The new study has been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The new measurements come from the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on Curiosity.

Zinc and germanium

According to an AGU statement on the group’s “Blogosphere,” researchers found concentrations of the elements zinc and germanium to be 10 to 100 times greater in sedimentary rocks in Gale Crater compared to the typical Martian crust.

Zinc and germanium tend to be enriched together in high temperature fluids and often occur together on Earth in hydrothermal deposits containing sulfur. The elevated concentrations of zinc and germanium in Gale Crater can potentially be explained by hydrothermal activity that occurred in the region, the new research suggests.

Evidence preserved?

“Extreme thermal environments on Earth are home to a diverse array of microbial life adapted to these conditions, and these organisms may have been some of the first to evolve on Earth,” notes the AGU.

Now with potential evidence for hydrothermal conditions once present inside or near Gale Crater, Curiosity’s mission takes another step toward determining if there were favorable environmental conditions for microbial life on Mars, explains Jeff Berger, a geologist at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada and lead author of the new study.

Hydrothermal deposits are more likely to preserve evidence of microbial life or its precursors, according to Berger. “You have heat and chemical gradients…conditions favorable for the genesis and persistence life,” he said.

 

New road map

A new Curiosity traverse map has been released, indicating the route driven by the robot through Sol 1796 (August 25, 2017).

Numbering of the dots along the line indicate the sol number of each drive. North is up.

The scale bar is 1 kilometer (~0.62 mile).

 

 

 

Total odometry

From Sol 1795 to Sol 1796, Curiosity had driven a straight line distance of about 56.12 feet (17.11 meters), bringing the rover’s total odometry for the mission that began in August 2012 to 10.72 miles (17.26 kilometers).

The base image from the map is from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera (HiRISE) in NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources

The new AGU-published research “Zinc and germanium in the sedimentary rocks of Gale Crater on Mars indicate hydrothermal enrichment followed by diagenetic fractionation” is available at:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017JE005290/abstract

 

There’s a biological battle brewing involving life on Mars, decades-old Viking Mars data, projected return to Earth of Martian samples, as well as future robotic looks for life on ocean-worlds.

At the nexus of the debate is whether or not planetary protection rules are stifling our exploratory space missions.

Loosen restrictions?

For example, in the August 11 issue of Science, staff writer Paul Voosen wrote about the fear of microbial taint that curbs Mars explorers.

In summary, the Science story explains: “In the coming years, NASA’s Curiosity rover will pass rocks on Mars that, seen from orbit, seem to host mysteriously intermittent dark streaks – perhaps marking seasonal water seeps that could host martian life. But NASA’s planetary protection office, charged with keeping earthly microbes from colonizing other bodies, has said it may nix a visit. It fears that Curiosity could contaminate this so-called special region because the rover was not fully sterilized before launch.”

The Science article summary explains that “many planetary scientists, however, believe that now is the time to loosen restrictions on visiting these areas, before human exploration contaminates the planet. And, after years of stasis, the planetary protection office seems primed for a shakeup, thanks to an internal move and potential change in leadership, along with outside review of its policies by independent scientists.”

Upcoming article

Stepping into the astrobiological discussion is an upcoming commentary next week in the journal Astrobiology by Alberto G. Fairén, a visiting scientist at Cornell University. It reportedly questions the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR)-imposed and NASA-accepted requirement for sterilization of spacecraft landing on Mars.

That prospect and the Science article has stirred up the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR), issuing an August 20 statement titled: “Veteran Astrobiologists Criticize Article Calling for Relief of Anti-Contamination Requirements for the Return Mars Sample Mission.”

This retort is led by Gilbert Levin, experimenter on the Viking Labeled Release Life Detection Experiment – one experiment among a package of devices that landed on Mars in 1976 via two Viking landers. Levin is now an adjunct professor at Arizona State University.

 

Strong evidence for Mars life?

“The contention is made that the extreme unlikeliness that Earth microorganisms could survive on Mars makes spacecraft sterilization unnecessary, and imposes a high cost on such missions,” the ICAMSR statement explains.

It continues, noting that the Science magazine article points to the Viking Mars landers as an example of the high cost of spacecraft sterilization.

That article “neglects to say that the Viking Labeled Release (LR) experiment found strong evidence for extant microbial life on the surface of Mars,” the ICAMSR statement points out. “The results were not accepted by NASA, because Viking failed to find organic matter in the Martian material…and in the 41 years since Viking, NASA has rejected all proposals for further life detection experiments to confirm or deny the LR findings. Moreover, none of the attempts to duplicate the LR results has succeeded.”

Cavalier return of Mars samples

Other landers since Viking have found organic matter on Mars, adds the ICAMSR statement, supporting the contention that the Viking LR detected life.

Therefore, continues the ICAMSR statement, a small chance that life exists on Mars “should prohibit a cavalier return of Mars material to Earth because of the horrendous damage to Earth’s biosphere potential Martian microorganisms might do if they were pathogenic.”

All that said, Levin and Patricia Straat, co-experimenter on the Viking Labeled Release Life Detection Experiment, now retired, argue for the “classical dictate of science: when an experiment produces a new result, repeat that experiment to check its validity, and, if it proves true, expand the experiment to gain new facts.”

Note that both Levin and Straat are science advisors for the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR), but have no financial interest in ICAMSR.

Other worlds

Another biological shoe to drop is whether the exploration of other worlds beyond Mars is also being inhibited by too stringent of planetary protection rules – such as investigating Europa, a moon of Jupiter, or Saturn’s Enceladus?

Earlier this year, at the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) held in Mesa, Arizona, Brent Sherwood, a program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was lead author of a paper noting that the planetary-protection requirement governing future ocean-worlds exploration missions limits to one in ten thousand the probability that a single viable Earth organism will enter an alien liquid water reservoir.

“This 10-4 requirement, enforceable under international treaty, binds NASA,” the paper explains. “Many aspects of projects intended to explore Europa, Enceladus, and other potentially habitable ocean worlds revolve around this single requirement. Thus, it is important both to understand its origin and periodically to revisit the assumptions behind it.”

To view the Science article, go to:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6351/535

Go to the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR) at:

http://www.icamsr.org/news.html

Also, go to The overprotection of Mars commentary in Nature Geoscience by Alberto G. Fairén and Dirk Schulze-Makuch at:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n7/full/ngeo1866.html

 

It’s crowded out there…

With origins in the Oort Cloud – a group of icy bodies beginning roughly 300 billion kilometers away from the Sun – have periods of thousands or even millions of years.

A team of astronomers report that large, distant comets are more common than previously thought. In fact, the researchers found that about seven times more long-period comets measuring at least one kilometer across exist than previously thought.

NEOWISE data

Using data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) space telescope mission, the elusive long period comet population has been studied.

Using NEOWISE, an eight month survey indicated that the number of long-period comets passing within 1.5 AU (1.5 times the distance from the Sun to Earth) is a factor of several higher than previous estimates, while Jupiter family comets are within the previous range of estimates of a few thousand down to sizes near 1.3 km in diameter.

Higher than expected

“The number of long-period comets seen in the NEOWISE was higher than expected from previous estimates, which means that there are seven times more Oort Cloud objects around our solar system than Dutch astronomer Jan Oort predicted in 1950,” said study participant, Tommy Grav of the Tucson, Arizona-based Planetary Science Institute in a press statement.

The Oort Cloud is thought to be a population of small icy bodies spherically distributed on the outermost edge of our Solar System. They are too distant to be observed by current telescopes.

These icy bodies can be disturbed by passing stars, galactic tides, or collisions, causing them to be perturbed inwards where they appear as long-period comets.

NASA has a long tradition of interacting closely with and inviting advice from the scientific community, which is integral to the culture of its scientific programs.

In a newly published monograph, Science Advice to NASA: Conflict, Consensus, Partnership, Leadership, the author, Joseph Alexander, looks at two main sources of scientific advice: the NASA Advisory Committee structure and the National Academy of Sciences’ Space Studies Board.

As a former executive director of the latter organization, Joe Alexander is well-positioned to flesh out this subject from its roots in NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to the mid-2010s.

Useful lessons

Alexander’s assessments of NASA’s interactions with outside scientific advisors provide useful lessons for research managers, decision makers, and scientists.

Lastly, the author discusses the recurring characteristics of notably successful advisory activities and provides a glimpse of what past experience might imply for the future of scientific advice at NASA.

For your free download of this informative e-Book, go to:

https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/science_advice_to_nasa