Archive for the ‘Space News’ Category
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August 9th, 2014
What’s on the menu for Mars? Outside the HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) mission on the slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano. Cornell and the University of Hawaii at Manoa have been engaged in defining food needs for space travelers, a project funded by NASA’s Human Research Program.
Credit: Sian Proctor
Don’t tell anybody. There may be a secret sauce to cooking in space.
Cornell researchers have taken to the air to better understand the effectiveness of a specially constructed space galley – one designed to be used on the Moon as well as Mars.
Making use of the microgravity-producing “G-Force 1” space simulator plane the team tossed tofu and shredded potatoes into pans of sizzling oil and recorded the resulting oil splatters as the plane climbed and dove in parabolic paths.
Each cycle created a brief period of partial weightlessness, simulating the conditions astronauts would face during extended stays on the Moon’s one-sixth gravity or Mars’ one-third the gravity of Earth.
The work is dedicated to better appreciate cooking 101 on other worlds.
Splatter patterns
A specially constructed space galley was jointly designed by the Cornell team with Susana Carranza of Makel Engineering in Chico, Calif.
Postdoctoral research associate Apollo Arquiza shows what the galley (kitchen) looks like in the zero gravity G-Force 1 space simulator plane.
Courtesy: Cornell
The experimenters positioned strips of paper inside the galley fume hood and dyed the oil bright red to help them see and collect splatter patterns. Under reduced gravity conditions, the food settled more slowly into the pan, and more oil appeared to fall outside of it. The oil droplets also traveled a greater distance from the pan than under Earth conditions.That data is being analyzed to measure the particles’ size distribution and distance traveled.
Results will be used to create computer models that could be extrapolated to inform the design of future terrestrial and extraterrestrial cooking technology.
From left, Cornell researcher Bryan Caldwell, Makel Engineering researcher Susana Carranza and Cornell researcher Apollo Arquiza conduct low gravity cooking experiments aboard the G-Force 1 space simulator plane.
Courtesy: Cornell
Menu fatigue
“Understanding oil spatter in reduced gravity is a big step toward designing safe and convenient cooking facilities for future space colonies,” said associate professor Jean Hunter in Cornell’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering.
Apollo Arquiza and Bryan Caldwell, postdoctoral research associates in the lab, were also key ingredients in devising the research onboard the G-Force 1.
On the flight itself, they were aided by experts at the NASA Reduced Gravity Research Program, including astronaut Cady Coleman and Sarah Gonzales ’96, program coordinator with the Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program.
Incorporating design elements from submarine galleys and chemical fume hoods used in labs, Arquiza and Carranza created an enclosed unit with activated charcoal filters and a fan that sucks in air from the front and draws particles away from the cook.
The team had just 30 seconds to complete each experiment once a parabola began, Arquiza said in a Cornell story authored by Stacy Shackford, a writer for the College of Agriculture and Life Science.
The project is part of a larger investigation by Hunter’s lab into scientific and social aspects of food in space, including a simulated Mars mission in Hawaii to test resource use, menu fatigue and the benefits of home cooking in an enclosed environment, and a bed rest study to test the effects of simulated weightlessness on smell and taste perception.
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Credit: ESA
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft has pulled up to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko – and what an eye-full!
You might enjoy these comet comments from Chris Lewicki, President and Chief Asteroid Miner at Planetary Resources, Inc.:
What is the difference between a comet and asteroid, after all?
Some comets are believed to be as much as 50% water – dirty snowballs so to speak – and what we’re seeing today at 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is what a comet looks like without all that water vapor in the way.
Credit: ESA
Comets generally have very eccentric orbits, and spend most of their time in the outer Solar System, having the innards baked out as they make their passages around the sun.
Asteroid orbits are less extreme, so we don’t tend to see their behavior change in time, but it is possible that some asteroids could be extinct comets, waiting for their reserves of ancient water to be discovered.
I’m excited to learn what comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko has to teach, and there will certainly be surprises.
This mission may help us understand more about the makeup and resources on small Solar System bodies.
Credit: ESA
Credit: ESA
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft was launched in 2004 and will arrive at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on August 6 – a 10 year long voyage.
It will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the Sun, and deploy a lander to its surface.
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.
Image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM
After completing a complex series of nine orbital maneuvers since the end of hibernation on January 20, Rosetta is finally in position to rendezvous with the comet.
A timeline of the most crucial steps leading to Rosetta’s arrival at its target comet on Wednesday includes: Orbit entry on August 6, triggered by a small but crucial thruster firing lasting 6 minutes 26 seconds.
That burn will start at 09:00 GMT (11:00 CEST). The commands were uploaded during the night of August 4.
This burn will tip Rosetta into the first leg of a series of three-legged triangular paths about the comet. The legs will be about 100 km long and it will take Rosetta between three and four days to complete each one.
Main Control Room at ESOC, ESA’s operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
Credit: ESA-J.Mai
Mission operations and science teams at ESA and scientists from multiple countries will be following progress closely.
Tune in to a Livestream of arrival activities starting August 6 at 08:00UTC.
Go to: http://rosetta.esa.int
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The message from those steering NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is that sandy Martian valleys are in the rover’s near future!
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has just crossed one stretch of rocks hazardous to its wheels and may soon reach rocks different from any it has examined so far.
As it approaches the second anniversary of its landing on Mars –10:32 p.m. PDT, Aug. 5, 2012 — the rover is also approaching its first close look at bedrock that is part of Mount Sharp, the layered mountain in the middle of Mars’ Gale Crater.
Damage to Curiosity’s aluminum wheels from driving across similar terrain last year prompted a change in route planning to skirt such rock-studded terrain wherever feasible.
The main map here shows the assortment of landforms near the location of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover as the rover’s second anniversary of landing on Mars nears.
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Curiosity spent much of July 2014 crossing an upland area called “Zabriskie Plateau,” where embedded, sharp rocks presented hazards for the rover’s wheels.
An artistic conception of the early Earth, showing a surface pummeled by large impacts, resulting in extrusion of deep-seated magma onto the surface. At the same time, distal portion of the surface could have retained liquid water.
Artwork by Simone Marchi
New research suggests that asteroidal collisions not only severely altered the geology of the “Hadean Earth” (meaning hell-like), but likely played a major role in the subsequent evolution of life on Earth as well.
That Hadean period is pegged at roughly 4.0 to 4.5 billion years ago.
In the very beginning of Earth’s formation, the first 500 million years, that Hadean epoch is a less well-known period. It was assumed that it was wildly hot and volcanic and everything was covered with magma – completely unlike the present day.
Large collisions as late as about four billion years ago may have repeatedly boiled away existing oceans into steamy atmospheres.
How big and how frequent were those incoming bombardments, and what were their effects on the surface of the Earth?
According to Elkins-Tanton, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University (ASU), the new research is attempting to bridge that time from the last giant accretionary impact that largely completed the Earth and produced our moon, to today’s current state of affairs – plate tectonics and a habitable surface.
Rate of impactors
Researchers found that on average, Hadean Earth could have been hit by one to four impactors that were more than 600 miles wide and capable of global sterilization, and by three to seven impactors more than 300 miles wide and capable of global ocean vaporization.
“Prior to approximately four billion years ago, no large region of Earth’s surface could have survived untouched by impacts and their effects,” says Simone Marchi of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute at the Southwest Research Institute. “The new picture of the Hadean Earth emerging from this work has important implications for its habitability,” the scientist noted in an ASU press statement.
“During this time, the lag between major collisions was long enough to allow intervals of more clement conditions, at least on a local scale,” says Marchi. “Any life emerging during the Hadean eon was likely resistant to high temperatures, and could have survived such a violent period in Earth’s history by thriving in niches deep underground or in the ocean’s crust.”
An international team of scientists published their findings in the July 31, 2014 issue of Nature.
Go to:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v511/n7511/full/nature13539.html
NOTE: While there, give a listen to a related audio presentation by Simone Marchi that discusses the new bombardment model of the early Earth. It’s located on the right side of the web page.
The nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimernko as seen from a distance of 1950 kilometers on July 29th, 2014.
One pixel corresponds to approximately 37 meters. The bright neck region between the comet’s head and body is becoming more and more distinct.
Credit:
ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
New imagery of the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimernko as the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft pulls in closer to the target.According to a press statement from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany), the Imagery confirms the collar-like appearance of the neck region which presents itself brighter than most parts of the comet’s body and head. The reason for this feature is still subject to discussion. Possible explanations range from differences in material or grain size to topological effects.
Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.
Rosetta will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the Sun, and deploy a lander to its surface.
Credit: NASA/JPL
Fireworks at Mars – there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work and worry about an upcoming cometary encounter. Here’s my take on the situation via Space.com:
NASA Prepping Mars Probes, Rovers for Close Comet Flyby
By Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist
July 31, 2014 07:35am ET
http://www.space.com/26690-mars-comet-flyby-spacecraft-preparation.html
Full Moon…full of Earth fossils?
Credit: NASA/JPL
New research suggests that it is possible that terrestrial rocks ejected from the Earth by giant impacts from space — and which then strike the Moon — may successfully transfer terrestrial fossils to the Moon.
The results were obtained from hypervelocity impact experiments which fired fossilized diatoms frozen in ice into water targets. Diatoms are unicellular, photosynthesizing algae encased in a shell of silica, called the frustule. They readily make recognizable fossils.
After the shots, the material recovered from the target water was inspected for diatom fossils.
Nine shots were carried out at various speeds, corresponding to mean peak pressures. In all cases, fragmented fossilized diatoms were recovered, but both the mean and the maximum fragment size decreased with increasing impact speed and hence peak pressure.
The upshot of the research is that it adds to “a growing body of work that demonstrates that material of interest regarding the origin and distribution of life in the Solar System can survive impacts,” the researchers suggest.
Results from a high speed test shot. Large area images are shown in (a–c) and include whole diatoms fossils. Close up images of smaller fragments of diatom fossils are shown in (d–f).
Credit: Mark Burchell, et al, the Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, School of Physical Sciences, Canterbury, Kent/UK
While there have been suggestions by others that the Moon is a good place to look for terrestrial meteorites which contain fossils, the new findings demonstrate that this is indeed viable.
This intriguing research is detailed in the paper “Survival of fossils under extreme shocks induced by hypervelocity impacts,” carried in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, a journal devoted to a specific area of the mathematical, physical and engineering sciences.
The research was done by University of Kent physicists, led by Mark Burchell at the Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, School of Physical Sciences, Canterbury, Kent, in the United Kingdom.
The full research paper can be accessed by going to:
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/2023/20130190.full
Credit: JPL
Europa harbors a global ocean covered by an ice shell. Indeed, that large reservoir of liquid water has long enchanted planetary scientists with the possibility that the moon is also a harbor for life.
On one hand, NASA does place high programmatic priority on this prospect to further the potential for a future lander mission to Europa.
Concept of a Europa lander.
Credit: University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics.
In fact, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission concept would conduct remote reconnaissance of the moon and help identify possible landing sites for a subsequent Europa lander mission.
On the other hand, current data does not provide sufficient information to identify landing sites and design a landing system capable of safely reaching the surface.
Wanted: compelling sites
So the call from NASA is out on how best to characterize scientifically compelling sites, and hazards for a potential future landed mission to Europa.
Next month, NASA will be hosting a meeting to help galvanize scientists to investigate a Europa mission.
One group that’s up and running to get to Europa is the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics.
Last year, the Texas team designed a NASA mission concept to search for life on Europa. They developed a part of the mission scenario that would use sound waves to study the moon’s icy shell, deep ocean and possible shallow lakes.
As envisioned in the University of Texas at Austin’s study, a Europa lander would have a series of seismometers embedded in its six legs. That would allow mission scientists to measure the thickness of the moon’s all-encompassing ice shell, study the flexing and cracking of the ice in response to tidal forces, model the exchange of chemicals between the moon’s surface and the deep ocean and potentially confirm the existence of lakes embedded in the ice shell.
This information would help scientists determine where the best habitats for life might exist within the moon.
Using imagery from the NASA Galileo mission to Jupiter, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found evidence for large lakes of water embedded near the surface of Europa’s ice shell – spots that might provide a comfy habitat for life.
“If one day humans send a robotic lander to the surface of Europa, we need to know what to look for and what tools it should carry,” said Robert Pappalardo at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.
Collage of Galileo images of Jupiter’s icy Europa.
Credit: JPL/Univ. of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics
“There is still a lot of preparation that is needed before we could land on Europa,” Pappalardo said, “but studies like these will help us to focus on the technologies required to get us there, and on the data needed to help us scout out possible landing locations.”The university’s work was conducted with Europa study funds from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
Artist Representation of ANGELS Observing the AFSPC-4 Delta-4 Upper Stage Several Hundred Kilometers above GEO.
Credit: Air Force/AFRL
The Air Force launched two operational satellites and one experimental satellite into near-geosynchronous Earth orbit on July 28 atop a Delta 4 booster lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The AFSPC-4 mission, according to Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James: “These operational and experimental systems will enhance the nation’s ability to monitor and assess events regarding our military and commercial systems. In essence, they will create a space neighborhood watch capability.”
The two operational satellites are part of the recently declassified Air Force Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, or GSSAP.
Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space (ANGELS)
Credit: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
ANGELS: clearer picture
The experimental satellite program is known as Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space, or ANGELS, is led by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate headquartered at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
The ANGELS program examines techniques for providing a clearer picture of the environment around our vital space assets.
Modest but safe distance
The vehicle will begin experiments approximately 30 miles (50 kilometers) away from the upper stage and cautiously progress over several months to tests within several kilometers.
The Air Force will use the results to evolve the ability of future systems to responsively perform SSA from a “modest but safe distance,” according to the AFRL.
Preparing the experimental ANGELS for launch.
Credit: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)
The current ANGELS program began in 2007.
The ANGELS spacecraft was lofted as a secondary payload on the AFSPC-4 mission, and it has 1 year of experiments planned.
