Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Space Seed: How To Spread Earth’s Life Across The Universe

Space Seed: How To Spread Earth’s Life Across The Universe:

A 'Blue Marble' image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite - Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface taken on January 4, 2012. Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring.

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring.
Earth’s lifespan for life is finite. In about five billion years, our Sun will transform into a red giant and make our planet uninhabitable, to put it lightly, as our closest star gets bigger and swallows up Mercury and Venus. But perhaps there is a way to help our life colonize other spots in the universe.

One researcher’s vision would see microbes from our planet being sent to distant planetary systems in formation and seeding the area with exports from Earth.

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Moon-Forming Crash Left A ‘Signal’ In Planet Earth

Moon-Forming Crash Left A ‘Signal’ In Planet Earth:

The Moon sets above the Continental Divide in Colorado from 86,000 feet. Taken June 27, 2013 on a meteorological balloon launched from Boulder, Colorado. Credit and copyright: Patrick Cullis.

The Moon sets above the Continental Divide in Colorado from 86,000 feet. Taken June 27, 2013 on a meteorological balloon launched from Boulder, Colorado. Credit and copyright: Patrick Cullis.
What physical evidence exists of a huge collision that formed our Moon and nearly blew the Earth apart, about 4.5 billion years ago? This is the leading theory for how the Moon came to be, but given it happened so long ago the physical evidence is scarce.

Readers may recall the story from last week talking about how oxygen in Moon rocks shows evidence of this crash. This week, there’s a new study  from the same conference that focuses on the other side of the puzzle piece: what can we see on planet Earth? Turns out there might be a “signal” showing us the way.

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Mystery Solved? Why There are No Lunar ‘Seas’ On The Far Side Of The Moon

Mystery Solved? Why There are No Lunar ‘Seas’ On The Far Side Of The Moon:

Composite image of the far side of the moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. Credit: NASA

Composite image of the far side of the moon taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. Credit: NASA
In these days of daily image releases from Saturn, Mars, the Moon and other spots in the universe, it’s hard to remember just how exciting it was back in the 1950s and 1960s when a few images trickled out to the world at the time. Perhaps one of the biggest early surprises was how jagged and cragged the back side of the moon looked. Where were the lunar “seas” that we are familiar with on the Earth-facing side of the moon?

About 55 years after the first Soviet images of the farside were sent to Earth, a team of researchers led by graduate astrophysics student Arpita Roy (at Penn State University) may have an explanation.

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Surprise! The Earth And Moon May Be 60 Million Years Older Than We Thought

Surprise! The Earth And Moon May Be 60 Million Years Older Than We Thought:

Distance Between the Earth and Moon

The Earth rising over the Moon’s surface, as seen from Apollo 8
Wondering why a new research team says the Earth and the Moon is 60 million years older than previously believed? Well, it’s a gas. It has to do with the proportion of different gas types that have stuck around since the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Since Earth had no solid surface at the time, traditional geology doesn’t really work — there’s no rock layers to examine, for example. So while the geologists caution we’ll likely never know for sure when the Earth came together, a new dating method for the gases show it was earlier than believed, they said.

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The Sun Pops Off Two X-Class Solar Flares in One Day

The Sun Pops Off Two X-Class Solar Flares in One Day:

A solar flare bursts off the left limb of the sun in this image captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 10, 2014, at 7:41 a.m. EDT. This is classified as an X2.2 flare, shown in a blend of two wavelengths of light: 171 and 131 angstroms, colorized in gold and red, respectively. Image Credit: NASA/SDO/Goddard/Wiessinger.

A solar flare bursts off the left limb of the sun in this image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 10, 2014, at 7:41 a.m. EDT. This is classified as an X2.2 flare, shown in a blend of two wavelengths of light: 171 and 131 angstroms, colorized in gold and red, respectively. Image Credit: NASA/SDO/Goddard/Wiessinger.
In only a little over an hour, the Sun released two X-class solar flares today. The first occurred at 11:42 UTC (7:42 a.m. EDT) and the second blasted out at 12:52 UTC (8:52 a.m. EDT) on June 10, 2014. According to SpaceWeather.com, forecasters were expecting an X-class flare today, but not two…and certainly not from region of the Sun where the flares originated. Solar scientists have been keeping an eye on sunspot regions AR2080 and AR2085, especially since they are now directly facing Earth, and those two sunspots have ‘delta-class’ magnetic fields that harbor energy for X-flares.

But the active region on the Sun that actually produced the flares was AR2087, which just appeared “around the corner” on the southeastern limb of the Sun. The first flare was a X2.2-flare and the second was an X1.5-flare.

See the image of #2 below from the Solar Dynamics Observatory:

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ALMA Sheds New Light on ‘Dark’ Gamma-ray Bursts

ALMA Sheds New Light on ‘Dark’ Gamma-ray Bursts:

An artist’s conception of the environment around GRB 020819B based on ALMA observations. Image Credit: NAOJ

An artist’s conception of the environment around GRB 020819B based on ALMA observations. Image Credit: NAOJ
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) represent the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, sending out as much energy in a matter of seconds as our Sun will give off during its entire 10-billion-year lifespan.

These powerful explosions are thought to be triggered when dying stars collapse into jet-spewing black holes. Yet no one has ever witnessed a GRB directly. Instead astronomers are left to study their fading light.

But some GRBs mysteriously seem to have no afterglow. Now, observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are shedding light on these so-called dark bursts.(...)
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Too WISE to be Fooled by Dust: Over 300 New Star Clusters Discovered

Too WISE to be Fooled by Dust: Over 300 New Star Clusters Discovered:



A new study by a team of Brazilian astronomers details the discovery of some 300+ star clusters using the WISE space telescope (image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA).
Brazilian astronomers have discovered some 300+ star clusters that were largely overlooked owing to sizable obscuration by dust.  The astronomers, from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, used data obtained by NASA’s WISE (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope to detect the clusters.

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“Carbon Copy” Spacecraft Ready to Track Global Carbon Dioxide

“Carbon Copy” Spacecraft Ready to Track Global Carbon Dioxide:

Artist's rendering of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2, one of five new NASA Earth science missions set to launch in 2014, and one of three managed by JPL. Image Credit:  NASA-JPL/Caltech

Artist’s conception of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2, one of five new NASA Earth science missions set to launch in 2014, and one of three managed by JPL. Image Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech
On February 24, 2009, the launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) mission — designed to study the global fate of carbon dioxide — resulted in failure. Shortly after launch, the rocket nose didn’t separate as expected, and the satellite could not be released.

But now, a carbon copy of the original mission, called OCO-2 is slated to launch on July 1, 2014.

The original failure ended in “heartbreak. The entire mission was lost. We didn’t even have one problem to solve,” said OCO-2 Project Manager Ralph Basilio in a press conference earlier today. “On behalf of the entire team that worked on the original OCO mission, we’re excited about this opportunity … to finally be able to complete some unfinished business.”(...)
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NASA’s Saucer-Shaped Mars Vehicle Idea Loses Flight Test ‘Window’ Due To Weather

NASA’s Saucer-Shaped Mars Vehicle Idea Loses Flight Test ‘Window’ Due To Weather:

Artist's impression of NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Artist’s impression of NASA’s Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA has lost its reserved time at a range in Hawaii to test a saucer-shaped vehicle that one day could help spacecraft get on the Red Planet safely.

The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) was supposed to take to the air this month, but bad weather means that officials won’t get to test the vehicle’s flight and landing abilities before their range time expires tomorrow (Saturday).

(...)
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Hubble Hubba: Stars Are Being Born Around A Black Hole In Galaxy’s Center

Hubble Hubba: Stars Are Being Born Around A Black Hole In Galaxy’s Center:

Hubble Space Telescope picture of galaxy NGC 3081. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; acknowledgement: R. Buta (University of Alabama)

Hubble Space Telescope picture of galaxy NGC 3081. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; acknowledgement: R. Buta (University of Alabama)
Let’s just casually look at this image of a galaxy 86 million light-years away from us. In the center of this incredible image is a bright loop that you can see surrounding the heart of the galaxy. That is where stars are being born, say the scientists behind this new Hubble Space Telescope image.

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An Ocean On Pluto’s Moon? Hopeful Scientists Will Keep An Eye Out For Cracks

An Ocean On Pluto’s Moon? Hopeful Scientists Will Keep An Eye Out For Cracks:

Artist impression of Pluto and Charon (NASA)

Artist impression of Pluto and Charon (NASA)
It’s a lot of speculation right now, but the buzz in a new NASA study is Pluto’s largest moon (Charon) could have a cracked surface.

If the New Horizons mission catches these cracks when it whizzes by in 2015, this could hint at an ocean underneath the lunar surface — just like what we talk about with Europa (near Jupiter) and Enceladus (near Saturn). But don’t get too excited — it’s also possible Charon had an ocean, but it froze out over time.

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‘Weird’ Dust Ring Baffles In Cloud That Will Give Birth To Giant Stars

‘Weird’ Dust Ring Baffles In Cloud That Will Give Birth To Giant Stars:

A picture of NGC 7538 from data taken by the Herschel Space Observatory. Credit:  ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Whitman College

A picture of NGC 7538 from data taken by the Herschel Space Observatory. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Whitman College
Long after telescopes cease operating, their bounty of scientific data continues to amaze. Here’s an example of that: this Herschel Space Telescope image of this dust and gas cloud about 8,000 light-years away.

The examination of NGC 7358 revealed a “weird” dusty ring in the cloud — nobody quite knows how it got there — as well as a baker’s dozen of huge dust clumps that could one day form gigantic stars.

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New Recipe For Saturn’s Orangey Moon Titan Is ‘Aromatic’ And Hazy

New Recipe For Saturn’s Orangey Moon Titan Is ‘Aromatic’ And Hazy:

A fish-eye view of Titan's surface from the European Space Agency's Huygens lander in January 2005. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

A fish-eye view of Titan’s surface from the European Space Agency’s Huygens lander in January 2005. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
What’s in all that browny orangey stuff in the atmosphere around Titan? It’s a question that scientists have been trying to answer concerning Saturn’s moon for decades (Carl Sagan was among them). That’s because it’s hard to reverse-engineer the recipe.

There are hundreds of thousands of hydrocarbons (hydrogen and carbon molecules) that could form the compounds in the atmosphere along with nitriles (nitrogen-abundant chemicals). But scientists are hoping that their new recipe gets a bit closer to understanding how the atmosphere works.

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Gaia Space Telescope Team Battles ‘Stray Light’ Problems At Start Of Mission

Gaia Space Telescope Team Battles ‘Stray Light’ Problems At Start Of Mission:

Artist's conception of the Gaia telescope backdropped by a photograph of the Milky Way taken at the European Southern Observatory. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier

Artist’s conception of the Gaia telescope backdropped by a photograph of the Milky Way taken at the European Southern Observatory. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier
Europe’s powerful Milky Way mapper is facing some problems as controllers ready the Gaia telescope for operations. It turns out that there is “stray light” bleeding into the telescope, which will affect how well it can see the stars around it. Also, the telescope optics are also not transmitting as efficiently as the design predicted.

Controllers emphasize the light problem would only affect the faintest visible stars, and that tests are ongoing to minimize the impact on the mission. Still, there will be some effect on how well Gaia can map the stars around it due to this issue.

(...)
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Watch the Rise and Fall of a Towering Inferno on the Sun

Watch the Rise and Fall of a Towering Inferno on the Sun:

A solar prominence imaged on May 27, 2014. Earth and Moon are shown to scale at the bottom. (NASA/SDO)

A solar prominence imaged on May 27, 2014. Earth and Moon are shown to scale at the bottom. (Credit: NASA/SDO. Edited by J. Major.)
Caught on camera by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a prominence blazes hundreds of thousands of miles out from the Sun’s surface (i.e., photosphere) on May 27, 2014. The image above, seen in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, shows a brief snapshot of the event with the column of solar plasma stretching nearly as far as the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Watch a video of the event below:

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Where To Go After Pluto? Hubble Seeks The Next Target For New Horizons

Where To Go After Pluto? Hubble Seeks The Next Target For New Horizons:

Artist's impression of New Horizons' encounter with Pluto and Charon. Credit: NASA/Thierry Lombry

Artist’s impression of New Horizons’ encounter with Pluto and Charon. Credit: NASA/Thierry Lombry
It’s going to be a really busy summer for the New Horizons team. While they’re checking out the newly awakened spacecraft to make sure it’s working properly for its close encounter with Pluto next year, NASA is already thinking about where to put it next: possibly towards a Kuiper Belt Object!

So now the Hubble Space Telescope (in Earth orbit) is scoping out icy objects beyond Pluto. Luckily for us, one of the team members — Alex Parker, a planetary astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, provided an entertaining livetweet of the process — even through a power failure.

(...)
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Mercury’s Hot Flow Revealed by MESSENGER

Mercury’s Hot Flow Revealed by MESSENGER:

A hot flow anomaly, or HFA, has been identified around Mercury (Credit: NASA/Duberstein)

A hot flow anomaly, or HFA, has been identified around Mercury (Credit: NASA/Duberstein)
Our Sun is constantly sending a hot stream of charged atomic particles out into space in all directions. Pouring out from holes in the Sun’s corona, this solar wind flows through the Solar System at speeds of over 400 km/s (that’s 893,000 mph). When it encounters magnetic fields, like those generated by planets, the flow of particles is deflected into a bow shock — but not necessarily in a uniform fashion. Turbulence can occur just like in air flows on Earth, and “space weather” results.

One of the more curious effects is a regional reversal of the flow of solar wind particles. Called a “hot flow anomaly,” or HFA, these energetic phenomena occur almost daily in Earth’s magnetic field, as well as on Jupiter and Saturn, and even on Mars and Venus where the magnetic fields are weak (but there are still planets blocking the stream of charged particles.)

Not to be left out in the cold, Mercury is now known to display HFAs, which have been detected for the first time by the MESSENGER spacecraft.

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What Will Rosetta’s Comet Look Like? How Artists Over The Years Pictured It

What Will Rosetta’s Comet Look Like? How Artists Over The Years Pictured It:

Artist's impression (from 2002) of the Philae lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA / AOES Medialab

Artist’s impression (from 2002) of the Philae lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA / AOES Medialab
Comets are notoriously hard to predict — just ask those people on Comet ISON watch late in 2013. So as Rosetta approaches its cometary target, no one really knows what the comet will look like from up close. Yes, there are pictures of other cometary nuclei (most famously, Halley’s Comet) but this one could look completely different.

Several artists have taken a stab at imagining what Rosetta will see when it gets close to the comet in August, and what Philae will touch on when it reaches the surface in November. You can see their work throughout this article.

Meanwhile, the European Space Agency just issued an update on what they can see of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from half a million km away — the comet is quieter, they said.

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See This Orange Smudge? This Could Be NASA’s Target For The Asteroid Mission

See This Orange Smudge? This Could Be NASA’s Target For The Asteroid Mission:

An image of asteroid 2011 MD -- a candidate for a potential future mission to an asteroid -- taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in February 2014. The exposure took 20 hours to accomplish and was done in infrared light. Credit: NASA

An image of asteroid 2011 MD — a candidate for a potential future mission to an asteroid — taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in February 2014. The exposure took 20 hours to accomplish and was done in infrared light. Credit: NASA
In the center of the image above is an orange smudge. It may not look like much to the untrained eye, but to NASA it represents potential. It’s a candidate asteroid target for a mission the agency badly wants to happen, even though nobody knows for sure yet if things will line up for humans to visit there one day.

This is a picture of asteroid 2011 MD taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. It’s about 6 meters (20 feet) across and appears to have a low density, the agency said in a statement. While NASA is still looking for other candidates for its asteroid initiative, the agency added this would be the sort of asteroid it’s looking to visit.

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Powerful Starbursts in Dwarf Galaxies Helped Shape the Early Universe, a New Study Suggests

Powerful Starbursts in Dwarf Galaxies Helped Shape the Early Universe, a New Study Suggests:

GOODS field containing distant dwarf galaxies forming stars at an incredible rate. Image Credit: ESO

GOODS field containing distant dwarf galaxies forming stars at an incredible rate. Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope
Massive galaxies in the early Universe formed stars at a much faster clip than they do today — creating the equivalent of a thousand new suns per year. This rate reached its peak 3 billion years after the Big Bang, and by 6 billion years, galaxies had created most of their stars.

New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show that even dwarf galaxies — the small, low mass clusters of several billion stars — produced stars at a rapid rate, playing a bigger role than expected in the early history of the Universe.(...)
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Mountains Soar Above the Appalachians in this Dramatic NASA Photo

Mountains Soar Above the Appalachians in this Dramatic NASA Photo:

Giant storm clouds swirl over North Carolina (Credit: NASA / Stu Broce)

Giant storm clouds swirl over North Carolina (Credit: NASA / Stu Broce)
Except these are mountains made of water, not rock! Taken from an altitude of 65,000 feet, the image above shows enormous storm cells swirling high over the mountains of western North Carolina on May 23, 2014. It was captured from one of NASA’s high-altitide ER-2 aircraft during a field research flight as part of the Integrated Precipitation and Hydrology Experiment (IPHEx) campaign.

The photo was NASA’s Image of the Day for June 19, 2014.

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How to Find Your Way Around the Milky Way This Summer

How to Find Your Way Around the Milky Way This Summer:

The band of the Milky Way stretches from Cygnus (left) to the Sagittarius in this wide-angle, guided photo. Credit: Bob King

The band of the Milky Way stretches from Cygnus (left) to Sagittarius in this wide-angle, guided photo. For skywatchers in mid-northern latitudes, the summer Milky Way is the richest, brightest portion of the galaxy. Faint strips of airglow appear at lower left. Credit: Bob King
Look east on a dark June night and you’ll get a face full of stars. Billions of them. With the moon now out of the sky for a couple weeks, the summer Milky Way is putting on a grand show. Some of its members are brilliant like Vega, Deneb and Altair in the Summer Triangle, but most are so far away their weak light blends into a hazy, luminous band that stretches the sky from northeast to southwest. Ever wonder just where in the galaxy you’re looking on a summer night? Down which spiral arm your gaze takes you? (...)
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Supermassive Black Hole Shows Strange Gas Movements

Supermassive Black Hole Shows Strange Gas Movements:

A Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5548. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA. Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin

A Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 5548. Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA. Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin
Sometimes it takes a second look — or even more — at an astronomical object to understand what’s going on. This is what happened after astronomers obtained this image of NGC 5548 using the Hubble Space Telescope in 2013. While crunching the data, they saw some gas moving around the galaxy in a way that they did not understand.

From the supermassive black hole embedded in the galaxy’s heart, the researchers detected gas moving outward quite quickly — blocking about 90% of the X-rays being emitted from the black hole, a common feature of objects of this type. So, astronomers marshalled a bunch of telescopes to figure out the answer.

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A New Mantra: Follow the Methane — May Advance Search for Extraterrestrial Life

A New Mantra: Follow the Methane — May Advance Search for Extraterrestrial Life:

Extrasolar planet HD189733b rises from behind its star. Is there methane on this planet? Image Credit: ESA

Extrasolar planet HD189733b rises from behind its star. The new work presented here shows this planet has 20 times more methane than previously thought. Image Credit: ESA
The search for life is largely limited to the search for water. We look for exoplanets at the correct distances from their stars for water to flow freely on their surfaces, and even scan radiofrequencies in the “water hole” between the 1,420 MHz emission line of neutral hydrogen and the 1,666 MHz hydroxyl line.

When it comes to extraterrestrial life, our mantra has always been to “follow the water.” But now, it seems, astronomers are turning their eyes away from water and toward methane — the simplest organic molecule, also widely accepted to be a sign of potential life.

Astronomers at the University College London (UCL) and the University of New South Wales have created a powerful new methane-based tool to detect extraterrestrial life, more accurately than ever before.(...)
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India’s 1st Mars Mission Celebrates 100 Days and 100 Million Kilometers from Mars Orbit Insertion Firing – Cruising Right behind NASA’s MAVEN

India’s 1st Mars Mission Celebrates 100 Days and 100 Million Kilometers from Mars Orbit Insertion Firing – Cruising Right behind NASA’s MAVEN:

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) marked 100 days from Mars on June 16, 2014 and the Mars Orbit Insertion engine firing when it arrives at the Red Planet on Sept 24, 2014 after its 10 month interplanetary journey.  Credit ISRO

India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) marked 100 days from Mars on June 16, 2014 and the Mars Orbit Insertion engine firing when it arrives at the Red Planet on September 24, 2014 after its 10 month interplanetary journey. Credit ISRO
India’s inaugural voyager to the Red Planet, the Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM, has just celebrated 100 days and 100 million kilometers out from Mars on June 16, until the crucial Mars Orbital Insertion (MOI) engine firing that will culminate in a historic rendezvous on September 24, 2014.

MOM is cruising right behind NASA’s MAVEN orbiter which celebrated 100 days out from Mars on Friday the 13th of June. MAVEN arrives about 48 hours ahead of MOM on September 21, 2014. (...)
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