Photos of Nature, Nature Photography Across The Universe. All about Nature, Love, Travel, Beautiful Photo, Landscape, Sunset, Summer, Mountains, Flowers, Photographer, Wallpaper, Portrait, Photo, what is the Universe
Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe
Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lander will deliver a laser communications terminal built by ATLAS to the Moon. Image Credit: Astrobotic
ATLAS Space Operations Inc., a company specializing in cloud-based satellite management and control services, has announced that it will test the first-ever laser communications terminal on the lunar surface. The company has recently signed a contract with Astrobotic Technology Inc., which could see their system fly to the Moon in late 2019.
The terminal, under development by ATLAS, is expected to establish the world’s first laser communication link from the lunar surface. This could mark a significant breakthrough in terms of laser communications for planetary missions.
It is hoped this new system could serve to revolutionize deep space communications. Photo Credit: Mark Usciak / SpaceFlight Insider
“Our main goal is to demonstrate the viability of a commercial laser communications capability from the lunar surface. This is a stepping-stone to establishing a permanent infrastructure in support of future lunar activity,” Dan Carey, Director of Marketing at ATLAS Space Operations, told SpaceFlight Insider.
The terminal, which will be sent to the Moon on board Astrobotic’s Peregrine Lander, will carry out first the crucial tests for the development of this potentially ground-breaking technology. This hardware is intended to be a baseline for ATLAS’ future interplanetary communications technology. Carey noted that the tests on lunar surface will allow us to “learn the hard lessons closer to home, on the Moon, before venturing beyond.”
By sending its payload to the Moon ATLAS also aims to provide a platform for the public to access a virtual lunar experience. With this technology and lunar capability, the company would be able to provide the rest of humanity an experience that previously has been reserved for an elite class of explorers.
“Organizations like NASA and MIT/Lincoln Labs are the ones who have developed the revolutionary technology. ATLAS is taking that technology and commercializing it for the advancement of human interest in space. Our company was founded on the ideal of making space accessible to all,” Carey said.
The laser communications terminal is expected to weigh less than 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and will consume less than 60 W for up to 1.0 Gbps of data transfer to Earth. The ground segment of this system will be comprised of Earth Observation Stations, part of the International Laser Ranging Service adapted for this mission, and other commercially-available ground terminal technology previously used for laser communications.
For ATLAS’ management, the partnership with Astrobotic is considered to be key to showcase its capabilities. Moreover, both companies share the same vision of space exploration and look forward to a long-lasting collaboration.
“Astrobotic is progressive and forward thinking. Our companies share a common goal in advancing human interest in lunar and interplanetary exploration. We aim to make the ‘heavens’ more available and affordable than ever before to all who have similar interests,” Carey concluded.
A diagram of two protons colliding inside the LHCb experiment.
Credit: CERN
For decades physicists have sought signs of misbehaving particles — evidence of subtle cracks in the "Standard Model:" of particle physics, the dominant theory describing the most fundamental building blocks of our universe. Although the Standard Model has proved strikingly accurate, scientists have long known some adjustments will be needed. Now, as a recent review paper in Nature documents, experimenters have started seeing suggestions of particles flouting the theory — but they're not quite the violations theorists were looking for.
The evidence comes from electrons and their more massive cousins, muons and tau leptons. According to the Standard Model, these three particles should behave like differently sized but otherwise identical triplets. But three experiments have produced growing evidence — including results announced in just the last few months — that the particles react differently to some as-yet mysterious influence. The findings are not yet conclusive, but if they hold up, "it would be a complete revolution," says California Institute of Technology theorist Mark Wise.
Tantalizing Signs
A shake-up in the Standard Model would be huge. This theory has formed the bedrock of particle physics research since it was fleshed out in the late 20th century. It carves the universe into twelve elementary particles that make up all matter, plus 'force-carrier' particles that transmit the fundamental forces of nature. (For instance, particles exert electrical or magnetic forces by exchanging transient photons.) Despite its successes, however, the Standard Model predicts nothing that would explain gravity or the dark matter thought to invisibly inhabit space. To marry particle physics with these larger-scale observations, theorists have proposed all manner of "new physics" — matter or forces beyond the Standard Model's menagerie. But most experiments have stubbornly upheld the theory with impressive fidelity, finding no evidence of the hypothesized particles or forces. [What the Higgs Is Going on with Mass?]
Since 2012, though, signs of particle misbehavior have started emerging from a less-explored corner of the Standard Model: a pattern called "lepton universality." Here "lepton" refers to the class of particles including electrons, muons and taus. The Standard Model predicts these three species should commune with one another and other particles in exactly the same way except for differences attributable to their unique masses — a commonality of behavior that accounts for the second term in lepton universality.
The first lepton surprise showed up in results announced in 2012 from the BaBar experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif. BaBar’s particle accelerator rammed together electrons and their antimatter equivalents, known as positrons. The collisions produced many composite particles that were heavy but unstable: They acted like absurdly radioactive uranium atoms, lasting just fractions of a nanosecond before decaying into smaller and smaller particles. The final products spewed out into the accelerator's detectors, allowing scientists to reconstruct the chain of particle decays. If the Standard Model is right, two of the types of decays examined by the BaBar team should produce taus just 25 to 30 percent as often as electrons, which are lighter and thus easier to make. But that is not what the team saw. Taus were far more common than they should have been, hinting at a difference between taus and electrons beyond their masses.
BaBar's result was just the beginning. Two other experiments, the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and the Belle experiment at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Japan, studied the same decays and published similar results in 2015. Belle, like BaBar, collides electrons and positrons. But LHCb collides protons with other protons at much higher energies, and uses different methods to detect the products. Those differences make it harder to wave away the results as experimental mistakes, bolstering the prospect that the anomaly is real.
Furthermore, LHCb has also found signs of lepton universality violation in another type of lepton-producing decay, and several months ago it announced possible deviations in yet a fourth decay type. Just last month it reported a similar disparity between electrons and muons (rather than taus) in a related decay. All these converging lines of evidence make an increasingly compelling case that something is systematically fishy. "If [the deviations] turn out to be real," says BaBar spokesperson and University of Victoria professor Michael Roney, "it would be kind of weird if they weren't related."
A Revolution — If It's Real
If the various leptons really behave differently, the only explanation would be some previously unrecognized force. Under the Standard Model, larger particles decay into leptons (and other products) via the "weak force," the same force that causes radioactive decay. But the weak force treats all leptons equally. If more taus are coming out than the weak force should produce, then some unknown force, associated with some undiscovered attendant force-carrier particle, must be breaking down the larger particles in a way that favors taus. Finding such a force would be as fundamental as the discovery of electromagnetism, albeit with much less effect on our daily lives. "It does actually constitute, with little exaggeration, a revolution in physics," says Hassan Jawahery, a University of Maryland, College Park, physicist and a member of the LHCb collaboration.
Because the implications would be so dramatic, physicists will demand overwhelming evidence — a burden the experimenters are well aware of. Greg Ciezarek, lead author on the Nature review and a postdoctoral researcher at Nikhef National Institute for Subatomic Physics in Amsterdam, says lepton universality violations "would be in the territory of making extraordinary claims," which, as the adage goes, require extraordinary evidence. Roney sums up the skepticism: "You don't bet against the Standard Model."
The evidence to date is not insubstantial. Combining all the data, the probability that the tau/electron deviations are just statistical flukes now stands at about one in 10,000. For any everyday question, that would more than suffice. But particle physicists are a skeptical bunch; the community will not consider a discovery confirmed until there's just a one-in-3.5-million chance of a false alarm. As some "chronologically more advanced" scientists can attest, they’ve been burned before, says Zoltan Ligeti, a professor of theoretical physics at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "We have seen similar fluctuations in the past that have come and gone."
The evidence is even harder to swallow given how far lepton universality is from theorists' expectations of where cracks in the Standard Model might show up. "There's sort of a story line that the theorists tell," Wise says, and "this isn't in the story line." What's worse, the proposed explanations for the leptons' behavior seem ad hoc and unsatisfying. "The kind of models that can fit the…anomalies don't really do anything else at first sight," Ligeti says. "For example, they don't get you any closer to understanding what dark matter might be."
Still, he adds, "nature tells us how nature is." Physicists are increasingly taking note of the violations' continued persistence, and proposing new theoretical explanations. Experimentalists and theorists alike are also looking to reduce existing measurements' uncertainties. Ultimately, the biggest revelations will come when LHCb and the next version of Belle produce more data. Physicists are optimistic that within about five years not only will we know whether the effect is real, we will have an explanation for it. "If there is a new [force-carrier] particle," says Svjetlana Fajfer, a theorist at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, "[it] should have a mass in reach of LHC," meaning the collider should be able to produce and identify such a particle. For some theorists, that testability is a big draw. "That makes it actually exciting, because if I do something, it can be proven right or wrong," Ligeti says. "One way or another, the case will become clear."
Aspiring astronauts can now pretend to float on the International Space Station (ISS), thanks to Google. The company worked with astronauts on the orbiting complex to provide a Google Street View of the space station, from its science labs to its beautiful Earth-facing Cupola window.
Thomas Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut who helped collect the images earlier this year, said in a blog post that the experience of capturing the tour "describes the feeling of being in space" better than words or a picture can. But there were limitations to collecting the data. For one, astronauts float in space, so the imagery of the ISS couldn't be captured the same way as other Google Street View locations.
NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama worked with Google to create a "gravity-free method of collecting the imagery," Pesquet said in the blog post. These methods included using DSLR cameras and other equipment already available at the space station. An extended video provides an additional look at how the view came together. (Pesquet didn't specify the other equipment in the blog post.) [The International Space Station: Inside and Out (Infographic)]
"I collected still photos in space, that were sent down to Earth where they were stitched together to create panoramic 360 degree imagery of the ISS," Pesquet wrote.
"We did a lot of troubleshooting before collecting the final imagery that you see today in Street View," he added.
"The ISS has technical equipment on all surfaces, with lots of cables and a complicated layout with modules shooting off in all directions — left, right, up, down," Pesquet wrote. "And it's a busy place, with six crew members [at the time] carrying out research and maintenance activities 12 hours a day. There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work."
The International Space Station's U.S. laboratory module as seen through Google Street View.
Credit: Google Street View
The tour is the first Google Street View captured in space, and it features annotations that pop up to explain additional information about each module, such as how astronauts stay physically fit or the kinds of food they eat.
The International Space Station's Cupola observation module as seen through Google Street View.
Credit: Google Street View
The ISS has been occupied continuously since November 2000. It generally houses three to six crewmembers, who split their days between science and maintenance activities. Crewmembers currently "commute" to space on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but within the next few years, commercial spacecraft from SpaceX and Boeing will ferry astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011.
Sonequa Martin-Green plays Micheal Burnham in the new CBS show "Star Trek: Discovery."
Credit: CBS
SAN DIEGO — With the "Star Trek" franchise now well into its 51st year, and a new TV series set to debut this fall, it's clear the iconic science fiction epic is definitely living long and prospering. But according to the authors of a book series chronicling the history of Star Trek, that wasn't always the case.
Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross are the authors of the two-volume book series called "The Fifty Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years," (Thomas Dunne Books, 2016), based on hundreds of interviews with people who witnessed the five-decade saga. They spoke Friday (July 20) here at Comic-Con International in San Diego on panel hosted by TV producer and lifelong Star Trek fan Scott Mantz. [More from SDCC: The 'Star Trek: Discovery' Cast Is Full of Trek Fans]
"We're going to talk about where [Star Trek is] going but first we gotta talk about where it started," Mantz said, kicking off a discussion about a few of the many instances when the "Star Trek" universe might have fallen into oblivion, and what fans can expect from the upcoming TV series, "Star Trek: Discovery" when it debuts on Sept. 24.
While the original "Star Trek" series is now a modern classic, it's fate was uncertain for most of its run, according to the authors. And its enduring success had a lot to do with Paramount Studio's decision to syndicate it, and that was thanks to Richard Block who worked for Kaiser Broadcasting in 1969 when the show was airing.
"He just kept pushing and pushing, and finally on a napkin in a bar they made a deal to syndicate 'Star Trek' on a couple of stations," Gross said. "They put it on, and it started winning the timeslot against the news. And everyone's looking around saying 'Star Trek's beating the news?' And they started bulk airing it five nights a week and blowing everything away."
The late popularity of the series kicked off the creation of the Star Trek movies starting in the late 1970s. But there were a few "Star Trek" projects in the mid-1970s that never came to fruition, including a reboot of the TV series and a movie called "Star Trek: Planet of the Titans," with an extremely complicated and bizarre plot with a scope similar to "2001: A Space Odyssey," according to Altman.
"They had hugely great people involved … it was going to be expensive, it was going to have an A-list director," Altman said. There were even rumors that Robert Redford's had been suggested to play Kirk. But the movie was planned as a one-off, not part of a series like the movies that were ultimately made, and wouldn't have spawned the "Star Trek" we know today.
Panel moderator Scott Mantz (left) with Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross (right) at Comic-Con International in 2017.
Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com
The Future of "Star Trek"
This fall, CBS will debut a new TV series, "Star Trek: Discovery." The show takes place before the events of the original series. [What Makes a Star Trek Fan (Slideshow)]
The first episode of the show will air on CBS, but all subsequent episodes will only be available on the network's online viewing platform, CBS All Access, which requires a subscription fee. Altman said many fans had decried the additional cost, but Altman said he thinks it's a good thing.
"'Star Trek' has had good demographics but never great ratings. And I think by CBS having [the show] on [the network's] own platform, it will ensure the longevity of the show," Altman said. "So whether 'Star Trek: Discovery' is amazing and fantastic, or just mediocre, it will be ensured a long life because it's on the platform. I also think they wouldn't spend the kind of money they are spending if it weren't for this platform … and it is quite a lot of money. They spared no expense."
"Star Trek: Discovery" will also be serialized (meaning the episodes won't stand alone — they will have an overarching story such that viewers will have to watch the entire series in order to understand what's going on). That decision has been met with some skepticism by fans, the panelists said, because only one of the five previous live-action "Star Trek" TV shows attempted to do this (the rest were done in a "stand alone" format, in which viewers could watch any episode and not require any additional information to understand the plot).
Serialized shows are extremely common in the modern television landscape, perhaps largely because people don't have to watch the shows on live TV, but can instead watch them online and don't have to worry about missing an episode. The TV series "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" did incorporate serialized plotlines and was "way, way ahead of its time" in that regard, according to Altman.
Because "Discovery" takes place before the events of the original series, the creators must deal with the difficult challenge of making the show look older than the original series, but also look good in 2017. And even though the show takes place in the past in the "Star Trek" universe, it is supposed to take place in the 23rd century (so, the future for those of us in the real world). Along with that tricky balancing act is the fact that many fans may come into the show with certain expectations about which elements from the original series should be included in the new show, right down to thinks like the design of the ship and the crew uniforms.
"There's a danger of doing fan service when you go backwards, because everyone's going to have expectations of what they think should be or what they saw in their mind. And if any show is about going forward it's 'Star Trek," Altman said. "I think that for too long Star Trek has imitated itself. I'd really love to see what the future of Star Trek looks like because we've kind of got stuck in this temporal loop where we're just exploring the same eras over and over again."
Mantz, the die-hard Trek fan, said, "I love fan service! Bring on the fan service!"
"[But] you need new fans," Gross countered.
"But at the end of the day, what's the most important thing about 'Star Trek'? It's the vision. It's the optimism," Altman said. "It's believing that we can be a better people, that we are striving to be better. The respect for science, the respect for each other, the lack of xenophobia, all the things we don't have right now in our society that need to come back."
With the world facing increased warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, intense weather events and other global disasters, scientists are exploring ways to re-engineer the planet to counter the effects of global warming.
In the most recent issue of the journal Science, published online Thursday (July 20), two researchers provided perspective on two geoengineering methods that could reduce the so-called greenhouse effect, under which gases and clouds in Earth's atmosphere trap the sun's heat. Both schemes could contribute to a cooler climate, but they are not without risks. And as both researchers made clear, neither idea addresses the rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere that is primarily to blamefor global warming and higher levels of oceanic acid. This acidity is killing the coral reefs that shelter marine life and support the fish that humans eat.
Ulrike Lohmann and Blaž Gasparini, both researchers at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Scienceat ETH Zurich inSwitzerland, proposed a counterintuitive plan: Seed the upper atmosphere with tiny particles of desert dust to reduce cirrus clouds. These are the wispy, nearly invisible clouds that form at high altitudes. Unlike fat, billowy clouds that reflect sunlight, these clouds trap heat energy radiating up from Earth out into space.
"If cirrus clouds behave like a blanket around the Earth, you're trying to get rid of that blanket," Lohmann, a professor of experimental atmospheric physics at ETH Zurich, told Live Science.
Thinning the clouds
Seeding the atmosphere with dust would paradoxically thin out cirrus clouds, Lohman said. Under normal circumstances, the atmosphere at altitudes of about 16,000 to 40,000 feet (4,800 to 12,200 meters) is full of tiny particles. Some are solid particles like mineral dust, and some are liquid aerosols, such assulfuric acid. The liquid aerosols freeze instantly and create ice crystals that form long-lasting cirrus clouds.
Cirrus thinning changes this dynamic, Lohman said. The idea, Lohmann said, is to inject solid particles, like desert dust, into the atmosphere at spots slightly lower than where cirrus clouds would naturally form. The quantity of dust introduced would be far less than the number of particles that exist higher up. This part is key, because fewer particles will attract more water vapor, creating larger crystals. As the ice crystals grow to larger and heavier, they would and fall as precipitation, and depending on the conditions would evaporate before reaching the ground.
Ideally, the method would be applied to locations most susceptible to cirrus cloud formation, Lohmann said — geographical latitudes above 60 degrees, including the Arctic, where temperature increases from CO2 are the greatest.
The researchers' computer models have shown that if done correctly, cirrus thinning could reduce global temperatures by 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C), Lohmann said. But if done incorrectly, the activity could produce cirrus clouds where none existed before, contributing to the very problem it's meant to solve, she added.
Risky business
The risk of doing more harm than good is a concern, said Ulrike Niemeier, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, and her colleague Simone Tilmes, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Niemeier and Tilmes published a separate commentary in this week's issue of the journal Science that discusses a geoengineering method called stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM).
SAM involves injecting sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere to increase the reflectivity of Earth's atmosphere. Computer models have shown that SAM could reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the planet's surface. The effect would resemble that of ash clouds that linger after volcanic eruptions, which have been shown to lower global temperatures, the researchers wrote.
But the science behind SAM is in its very early stages, and the technologies to deploy it are not developed, the researchers added.
"It was our intention to say that [geoengineering] is not something that we should have in the back of our minds as the main solution," Niemeier told Live Science.
Niemeier and Tilmes wrote that different computer models consistently identify side effects to SAM. For example, reducing incoming solar radiation also reduces evaporation, which in turn reduces precipitation, and that can slow the hydrological cycle, particularly in the tropics, the authors wrote. Less rainfall could increase droughts that are already devastating parts of the world.
Although computer models tend to agree that it’s best to inject the aerosols into the stratosphere above the tropics or subtropics, and that the aerosols would disperse globally, the models differ on the extent of injection required for a given level of cooling, the authors wrote.
"Most current Earth-system models do not adequately capture important interactions, such as the coupling between stratospheric aerosols, chemistry, radiation and climate. They cannot, therefore, simulate the full impact of the interventions," Niemeier and Tilmes wrote.
Complicated solutions
Even if scientists could figure out a precise method, the economics are mind-boggling. Using SAM to bring down global temperatures just 2 degrees F (1 degree C), to preindustrial levels, would require injection amounts equivalent to one volcanic eruption per year the size of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo blast in the Philippines — the largest volcanic eruption in the last 100 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The cost of dispersing that much content artificially would cost $20 billionper year and require 6,700 aircraft flights per day over 160 years, the researchers wrote.
No single method can solve the climate change problem as a whole, either, they said.
"Any geoengineering method we know of can only offset part of the global warming that we have," Lohmann said.
And no method designed to cool the planet deals with the gases in the atmosphere that are the sources of the problem and are contributing to increasing levels of acid in the oceans, the researchers said.
"It doesn't get at the heart of the problem," Lohmann said. "The ocean acidification is ongoing."
If society decides to undertake any geoengineering method, she said, this action should be accompanied by large efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Niemeier said emission reductions should be the primary focus. "We are quite critical about [geoengineering], and we want people to be aware it would be a difficult."
The Moon has more water than previously thought, and it’s deep below the lunar surface. A new study suggests that water is widespread beyond the poles, where it was already known to exist, although scientists don’t know exactly how much water is there. The discovery has consequences for future missions to the Moon.
Scientists analyzed lunar rock samples that contain tiny, water-trapping beads of glass; these beads formed when magma erupted from the Moon’s interior billions of years ago, trapping water inside them. The scientists then looked at satellite data collected by an Indian lunar orbiter to check where these water-trapping glass beads are. The results, published today in Nature Geoscience, show that there are widespread “hot...
Watching the Aurora From Orbit: Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA shared photos and time-lapse video of a glowing green aurora seen from his vantage point 250 miles up, aboard the International Space Station. This aurora photo was taken on June 26, 2017.
Since the Apollo program wrapped up in the early 1970s, people all around the world have dreamed of the day when we might return to the Moon, and stay there. And in recent years, however, that actual proposals for a lunar settlement have begun to take shape. As a result, a great deal of attention and research has been focused on whether or not the Moon has indigenous sources of water.
Thanks to missions like Chandrayaan-1 and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), scientists know that there are vast amounts of surface ice on the Moon. However, according to a new study, researchers from Brown University have found evidence of widespread water within volcanic deposits on the lunar surface. These findings could indicate that there are also vast sources of water within the Moon’s interior.
For their study – titled “Remote Detection of Widespread Indigenous Water in Lunar Pyroclastic Deposits” – Brown researchers Ralph E. Milliken and Shuai Li combined satellite data with new thermal profiles to search for signs of water away from the polar regions. In so doing, they addressed a long-standing theory about the likelihood of water in the Moon’s interior, as well as the predominant theory of how the Moon formed.
Lunar Crater as imaged by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper. Credit: SRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/Brown Univ.
As noted, scientists have known for years that there are large amounts of frozen water in the Moon’s polar regions. At the same time, however, scientists have held that the Moon’s interior must have depleted of water and other volatile compounds billions of years ago. This was based on the widely-accepted hypothesis that the Moon formed after a Mars-sized object (named Theia) collided with Earth and threw up a considerable amount of debris.
Essentially, scientists believed that it was unlikely that any hydrogen – necessary to form water – could have survived the heat of this impact. However, as of a decade ago, new scientific findings began to emerge that cast doubt on this. The first was a 2008 study, where a team of researches (led by Alberto Saal of Brown University) detected trace amounts of water in samples of volcanic glass that were bought back by the Apollo 15 and Apollo 17 missions.
This was followed by a 2011 study (also from Brown University) that indicated how crystalline structures within those beads contained as much water as some basalt mineral deposits here on Earth. These findings were particularly significant, in that they suggested that parts of the Moon’s mantle could contain as much water as Earth’s. The question though was whether these findings represented the norm, or an anomaly.
“The key question is whether those Apollo samples represent the bulk conditions of the lunar interior or instead represent unusual or perhaps anomalous water-rich regions within an otherwise ‘dry’ mantle. By looking at the orbital data, we can examine the large pyroclastic deposits on the Moon that were never sampled by the Apollo or Luna missions. The fact that nearly all of them exhibit signatures of water suggests that the Apollo samples are not anomalous, so it may be that the bulk interior of the Moon is wet.”
A false colour composite of the distribution of water and hydroxyl molecules over the lunar surface. Credit: ISRO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Brown Univ/USGS
To resolve this, Milliken and Li consulted orbital data to examine lunar volcanic deposits for signs of water. Basically, orbiters use spectrometers to bounce light off the surfaces of planets and astronomical bodies to see which wavelengths of light are absorbed and which are reflected. This data is therefore able to determine what compounds and minerals are present based on the absorption lines detected.
Using this technique to look for signs of water in lunar volcanic deposits (aka. pyroclastic deposits), however, was a rather difficult task. During the day, the lunar surface heats up, especially in the latitudes where volcanic deposits are located. As Milliken explained, spectronomers will therefore pick up thermal energy in addition to chemical signatures which this can throw off the readings:
“That thermally emitted radiation happens at the same wavelengths that we need to use to look for water. So in order to say with any confidence that water is present, we first need to account for and remove the thermally emitted component.”
To correct for this, Milliken and Li constructed a detailed temperature profile of the areas of the Moon they were examining. They then examined surface data collected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, the spectrographic imager that was part of India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission. They then compared this thermally-corrected surface data to the measurements conducted on the samples returned from the Apollo missions.
Colored areas indicate elevated water content compared with surrounding terrains. Yellows and reds indicate the richest water content. Credit: Milliken lab/Brown University
What they found was that areas of the Moon’s surface that had been previously mapped showed evidence of water in nearly all the large pyroclastic deposits. This included the deposits that were near the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites where the lunar samples were obtained. From this, they determined that these samples were not anomalous in nature, and that water is distributed across the lunar surface.
What’s more, these findings could indicate that the Moon’s mantle is water-rich as well. Beyond being good news for future lunar missions, and the construction of a lunar settlement, these results could lead to a rethinking of how the Moon formed. This research was part of Shuai Li’s – a recent graduate of the University of Brown and the lead author on the study – Ph.D thesis. As he said of the study’s findings:
“The growing evidence for water inside the Moon suggest that water did somehow survive, or that it was brought in shortly after the impact by asteroids or comets before the Moon had completely solidified. The exact origin of water in the lunar interior is still a big question.
What’s more, Li indicated that lunar water that is located in volcanic deposits could be a boon for future lunar missions. “Other studies have suggested the presence of water ice in shadowed regions at the lunar poles, but the pyroclastic deposits are at locations that may be easier to access,” he said. “Anything that helps save future lunar explorers from having to bring lots of water from home is a big step forward, and our results suggest a new alternative.”
The blue areas show locations on the Moon’s south pole where water ice is likely to exist. Credit: NASA/GSFC
Between NASA, the ESA, Roscosmos, the ISRO and the China National Space Administration (CNSA), there are no shortage of plans to explore the Moon in the future, not to mention establishing a permanent base there. Knowing there’s abundant surface water (and maybe more in the interior as well) is therefore very good news. This water could be used to create hydrazine fuel, which would significantly reduce the costs of individual missions to the Moon.
It also makes the idea of a stopover base on the Moon, where ships traveling deeper into space could refuel and resupply – a move which would shave billions off of deep-space missions. An abundant source of local water could also ensure a ready supply of drinking and irrigation water for future lunar outposts. This would also reduce costs by ensuring that not all supplies would need to be shipped from Earth.
On top of all that, the ability to conduct experiments into how plants grow in reduced gravity would yield valuable information that could be used for long-term missions to Mars and other Solar bodies. It could therefore be said, without a trace of exaggeration, that water on the Moon is the key to future space missions.
This new, detailed global mosaic color map of Pluto is based on a series of three color filter images obtained by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera aboard New Horizons during the NASA spacecraft’s close flyby of Pluto in July 2015. The mosaic shows how Pluto’s large-scale color patterns extend beyond the hemisphere facing New Horizons at closest approach, which were imaged at the highest resolution. North is up; Pluto’s equator roughly bisects the band of dark red terrains running across the lower third of the map. Pluto’s giant, informally named Sputnik Planitia glacier – the left half of Pluto’s signature “heart” feature – is at the center of this map. Note: Click on the image to view in the highest resolution. Image & Caption Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Using actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, mission scientists have created flyover movies that offer spectacular new perspectives of the many unusual features that were discovered and which have reshaped our views of the Pluto system – from a vantage point even closer than the spacecraft itself.
This dramatic Pluto flyover begins over the highlands to the southwest of the great expanse of nitrogen ice plain informally named Sputnik Planitia. The viewer first passes over the western margin of Sputnik, where it borders the dark, cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula, with the blocky mountain ranges located within the plains seen on the right. The tour moves north past the rugged and fractured highlands of Voyager Terra and then turns southward over Pioneer Terra – which exhibits deep and wide pits – before concluding over the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa in the far east of the encounter hemisphere.
Digital mapping and rendering were performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.
With the Sun sitting between Earth and Mars, called a solar conjunction, NASA will suspend communications with its explorers at the Red Planet for nearly two weeks. Image Credit: NASA / JPL
For more than twenty years, NASA has had explorers surveying the Red Planet. Dutifully, the stalwart robotic travelers have followed commands beamed from their Earth-bound handlers and returned gigabytes of information of their Martian observations.
However, for a few days every 26 months, communication from Earth to Mars takes a Sun-induced break. Beginning July 22, 2017, and lasting through August 1, 2017, NASA will avoid sending commands to its Mars-based craft.
Animation of a Mars Solar Conjunction. Animation Credit: NASA / JPL
The Sun giveth, the Sun taketh away
While the Sun provides life-supporting energy to Earth and supplies power to solar panels on spacecraft, its highly ionized corona holds a significant potential to disrupt data transmission when it sits between the two planets. Although the two planets won’t be directly obscured by the Sun, the far-reaching effects of its outer layer can still induce data loss.
“Out of caution, we won’t talk to our Mars assets during that period because we expect significant degradation in the communication link, and we don’t want to take a chance that one of our spacecraft would act on a corrupted command,” stated Chad Edwards, manager of the Mars Relay Network Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in a release issued by the agency.
Though commands won’t be sent to Mars during the conjunction window, telemetry will still be sent to Earth. Should data loss occur, the robotic craft can be instructed to repeat its transmission once clear of solar interference.
This command black-out period extends for two days both before and after a solar conjunction event.
Able to work independently
Even though no commands will be sent to Mars during the conjunction, NASA’s rovers and orbiting spacecraft will still have work to do. In fact, engineers have been preparing the explorers far ahead to ensure observations run unabated.
“The vehicles will stay active, carrying out commands sent in advance,” stated JPL’s Mars Program Chief Engineer, Hoppy Price.
While the agency’s two active rovers – Curiosity and Opportunity – will be conducting pre-programmed investigations, they will remain stationary during the blackout.
Although the lack of communications may sound worrisome, all of the orbiters/rovers have already endured at least one Mars Solar Conjunction. Indeed, the Mars Odyssey orbiter will be undergoing its eighth conjunction, while Opportunity holds the surface record at just one less than its orbiting cousin.
“All of these spacecraft are now veterans of conjunction. We know what to expect,” concluded Edwards.
Curiosity will remain stationary during the blackout period, but will still conduct investigations. Image Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS
ESA’s Asteroid Impact Mission is joined by two triple-unit CubeSats to observe the impact of the NASA-led Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) probe with the secondary Didymos asteroid, planned for late 2022. Image & Caption Credit: ESA / ScienceOffice.org
While there is currently no imminent asteroid threat and none of the known near-Earth objects (NEOs) is on collision course with our planet, humanity should be prepared for the worst. With that thought in mind, NASA and ESA are developing the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission; its main goal is to demonstrate the kinetic impact technique that could change the motion of a potentially hazardous asteroid.
The AIDA mission will consist of two spacecraft sent to the binary asteroid called 65803 Didymos. Built by ESA, the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) will be launched in October 2020 and is expected to be injected into the orbit of the larger asteroid. NASA’s contribution to this endeavor, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), will be launched into space nearly one year later and slated to crash into the smaller asteroid in October 2022. AIM will be just in place to observe the impact and study its aftermath.
“This mission, in partnership with ESA and NASA, will allow us to validate the technology of the kinetic impactor and also to improve our understanding of threatening asteroids,” Patrick Michel, AIM/AIDA investigator at the Côte d’Azur Observatory (OCA), told Astrowatch.net.
LEFT: Artist’s rendering of ESA’s desk-sized Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM). Image Credit: ESA – Science Office. RIGHT: Artist’s rendering of NASA’s Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA
Therefore, the mission would be essential for the most one of the most important asteroid deflection technology – the kinetic impactor. In particular, AIDA will demonstrate the feasibility of this technique based on the data gathered by observing DART’s crash into Didymos’ moon with a velocity of about six km/s. AIM will orbit the asteroid in order to perform detailed before-and-after observations of the structure of the space rock itself, as well as its orbit, to thoroughly characterize the kinetic impact and the consequences.
“To make sure a technique is valid and that we know how to use it, we need a test. Otherwise, we can talk, but it will remain on paper and we cannot guarantee anything. And this is why we still push for the AIDA space mission to happen,” Michel said.
He noted that the success of AIDA will have many implications for planetary defense, science, and asteroid mining because the knowledge needed for these three aims is essentially the same. According to Michel, it will prove that asteroids are the only natural risk that we can predict and prevent by making the necessary steps.
“AIDA, if done, will accomplish the step that will allow us to tell the future generations: we did our duty, we have now a validated tool to prevent the risk! And it will also come with science and technology returns, which contributes to [inspiring] young generations,” Michel noted.
The AIM spacecraft is still in its conceptual phase. When it comes to DART, the probe was recently moved by NASA from concept development to preliminary design phase.
Artist’s impression of a 200-megawatt VASIMR spacecraft. Images Credit: Ad Astra Rocket Company
In Arthur C. Clarke’s classic science fiction novels and movies 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two, the spaceships Discovery and Alexei Leonov make interplanetary journeys using plasma drives. Nuclear reactors heat hydrogen or ammonia to a plasma state that’s energetic enough to provide thrust.
An electric power source ionizes hydrogen, deuterium, or helium fuel into a plasma by stripping away electrons. Magnetic fields then direct the charged gas in the proper direction to provide thrust.
“A rocket engine is a canister holding high-pressure gas,” Chang Diaz explained. “When you open a hole at one end, the gas squirts out and the rocket goes the other way. The hotter the stuff in the canister, the higher the speed it escapes and the faster the rocket goes. But if it’s too hot, it melts the canister.”
The VASIMR engine is different, Chang Diaz explained, because of the fuel’s electrical charge: “When gas gets above 10,000 [kelvins], it changes to plasma – an electrically charged soup of particles. And these particles can be held together by a magnetic field. The magnetic field becomes the canister, and there is no limit to how hot you can make the plasma.”
Chang Diaz has pointed out that hydrogen would be an advantageous fuel for the VASIMR engine because the spacecraft would not have to lift off carrying all the fuel it needs for the journey.
VASIMR® System. Image Credit: Ad Astra Rocket Company
“We’re likely to find hydrogen pretty much anywhere we go in the Solar System,” he said.
A spacecraft using conventional chemical rockets would take eight months to get to Mars during opposition. However, the VASIMR engine would make the journey in as little as 39 days.
Chang Diaz explained: “Remember, you are accelerating the first half of the journey – the other half you’re slowing, so you will reach Mars but not pass it. The top speed with respect to the Sun would be about 32 miles per second [or 51.5 km/s]. But that requires a nuclear power source to heat the plasma to the proper temperature.”
The use of nuclear power in space is not without its controversy. In 1997, there was widespread public concern when NASA’s Cassini probe, which carried a plutonium battery, made a flyby of Earth to perform a gravity assist. Although NASA denied that the risk to the public, should an accident occur, was no greater than that posed every day by other sources of radiation, some scientists, including the popular theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, disagreed.
In April 1970, the Atomic Energy Commission was deeply concerned about the return of Apollo 13 to Earth. Where an Apollo mission would usually leave the lunar module’s descent stage on the Moon, the unsuccessful Apollo 13 dropped its lunar module Aquarius, with its plutonium-powered scientific experiments, into the ocean, raising concerns about radioactive contamination.
Elon Musk, CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), is skeptical about the viability of the VASIMR engine. One reason is the concern about radioactive debris falling to Earth in the event of an accident.
Musk is also skeptical that the VASIMR engine would be a significant improvement over chemical rockets, stating: “So people like Franklin – basically it’s a very interesting ion engine he’s got there, but it requires a big nuclear reactor. The ion engine is going to help a little bit, but not a lot in the absence of a big nuclear reactor.” Musk also points out that the big nuclear reactor would add a lot of weight to a rocket.
Chang Diaz dismisses the concerns about nuclear reactors in space, stating: “People are afraid of nuclear power. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima – it is a little misunderstood. But if humans are truly going to explore space, we eventually will have to come to grips with the concept.”
Another vocal critic of the VASIMR engine is Robert Zubrin, president of The Mars Society, who designed the Mars Direct plan to colonize Mars and wrote the popular book The Case For Mars. He has gone as far as to call the VASIMR engine a “hoax”.
Zubrin wrote in SpaceNews: “To achieve his much-repeated claim that VASIMR could enable a 39-day one-way transit to Mars, Chang Diaz posits a nuclear reactor system with a power of 200,000 kilowatts and a power-to-mass ratio of 1,000 watts per kilogram. In fact, the largest space nuclear reactor ever built, the Soviet[-era] Topaz, had a power of 10 kilowatts and a power-to-mass ratio of 10 watts per kilogram. There is thus no basis whatsoever for believing in the feasibility of Chang Diaz’s fantasy power system.”
Chang Diaz, however, says in his paper: “Assuming advanced technologies [emphasis added] that reduce the total specific mass to less than 2 kg/kW, trip times of less than 60 days will be possible with 200 MW of electrical power. One-way trips to Mars lasting less than 39 days are even conceivable using 200 MW of power if technological advances allow the specific mass to be reduced to near or below 1 kg/kW.”
LEFT: Artist’s rendition of a lunar tug with 200 kW solar powered VASIMR®. RIGHT: Artist’s rendition of a human mission to Mars with 10 MW NEP-VASIMR®. Images Credit: Ad Astra Rocket Company
In other words, Chang Diaz is allowing for further developments that would enable such a reactor.
Zubrin, however, stated: “[T]he fact that the [Obama] administration is not making an effort to develop a space nuclear reactor of any kind, let alone the gigantic super-advanced one needed for the VASIMR hyper drive, demonstrates that the program is being conducted on false premises.”
Whether the VASIMR engine is viable or not, in 2015, NASA awarded Chang Diaz’s firm – Ad Astra Rocket Company™ – a three-year, $9 million contract. Up to now, the VASIMR engine has fired at fifty kilowatts for one minute – still a long way from Chang Diaz’s goal of 200 megawatts.
In its current form, the VASIMR engine uses argon for fuel. The first stage of the rocket heats the argon to plasma and injects it into the booster. There, a radio frequency excites the ions in a process called ion cyclotron resonance heating. As they pick up energy, they are spun into a stream of superheated plasma and accelerated out the back of the rocket.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — In development for more than ten years, the Dream Chaser space plane is one step closer to flight. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has signed a contract with United Launch Alliance (ULA) to send the spacecraft to orbit.
“ULA is pleased to partner with Sierra Nevada Corporation to launch its Dream Chaser cargo system to the International Space Station in less than three years,” said Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of Human and Commercial Systems via a release issued by ULA. “We recognize the importance of on time and reliable transportation of crew and cargo to Station and are honored the Atlas V was selected to continue to launch cargo resupply missions for NASA.”
The contract calls for two Atlas V 552 flights that will boost the Dream Chaser to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of Sierra Nevada’s Cargo Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) contract with NASA.
The Dream Chaser is currently in testing at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center near Edwards Air Force Base in California. The craft underwent its first ground tow to verify how the vehicle would behave during taxi operations upon returning from space. Additional tests at Armstrong are planned including glide flights dropped from a helicopter. According to SNC the software on the test vehicle is the operational version that will be used for the orbital vehicles.
The first Atlas V flight of Dream Chaser is currently slated to occur in 2020, launching from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. The flight will use an Atlas 552 with a dual engine Centaur upper stage. The second flight is scheduled for 2021. The Atlas V was chosen as the launch vehicle in part for its Category 3 certification from NASA (the designation identifies that it may be used for NASA’s most complex and critical missions).
“SNC recognizes the proven reliability of the Atlas V rocket and its availability and schedule performance makes it the right choice for the first two flights of the Dream Chaser,” said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of SNC’s Space Systems. “ULA is an important player in the market and we appreciate their history and continued contributions to space flights and are pleased to support the aerospace community in Colorado and Alabama,” added Sirangelo.
The Dream Chaser was originally part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program but was not selected during the Commercial Crew transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of the program. Those missions were instead awarded to SpaceX for their Crewed Dragon and Boeing for their CST-100 Starliner capsule.
Dream Chaser is a lifting body design that returns via a runway instead of the more traditional parachute landings of SpaceX and Boeing. The cargo version of the Dream Chaser is designed to carry both pressurized and unpressurized cargo to and from the ISS with return and disposal services.
This illustration shows the average brown dwarf is much smaller than our Sun and low-mass stars and only slightly larger than the planet Jupiter. Image & Caption Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Sometimes in science, when you search for one thing, you end up finding something completely different. Such is the case with the search for the thus far elusive Planet Nine and the citizen scientists who ended up finding a brown dwarf instead.
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a NASA-funded project sponsored by Zooniverse, and is the group under whose auspices the discovery was made just weeks after its official launch on February 15, 2017. The launch date, which also happened to coincide with the 87th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto, was a tip of the hat to the methodology that is being used to look for the hypothesized planet along with other dim rogue worlds in the far distant outer reaches of the Solar System and beyond.
The newly discovered brown dwarf WISEA J110125.95+540052.8 appears as a moving dot (indicated by the circle) in this animated flipbook from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project. Image & Caption Credit: NASA / WISE
The search for Planet Nine, also called Planet X by some, has led to several new discoveries, including this brown dwarf designated WISEA 1101+5400.
“We realized we could do a much better job identifying Planet 9 if we opened the search to the public,” said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead researcher for the Backyard Worlds project. “Along the way, we’re hoping to find thousands of interesting brown dwarfs.”
WISEA 1101+5400 (full name WISEA J110125.95+540052.8) was found with the critical assistance of four citizen scientists, one of whom is Rosa Castro, a therapist, who is credited with nearly 100 classifications as a part of this project.
Backyard Worlds, along with the majority of the other projects under the umbrella of Zooniverse, relies heavily on citizen scientists to sort through huge volumes of data for things that stand out to them. In this case, the project provides participant individuals with “flipbooks” – animated collections of time-lapsed images of the same part of space – to review, noting any visible changes in the position or brightness of the pixels within the series of images.
The flipbooks are a collection of the data that was gathered by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) which was launched into space on December 14, 2009.
Originally designed to observe cold objects, as well as those that emit light in the infrared portion of the spectrum (long wavelengths) such as brown dwarfs, WISE was deactivated in 2011 after depleting its source of frozen hydrogen that was needed to cool the sensors, and then reactivated in 2013 as NEOWISE to search for near-Earth objects, or NEOs, which tend to be cold, dark objects easier to locate in the infrared spectrum.
The data that the WISE and NEOWISE missions gathered of the entire sky provides one of the best chances of locating the enigmatic Planet 9 because it may already have been caught in those images. It takes human eyes to be able to look through the noise filled images and be able to recognize these objects, though.
There are a vast number of images, more images than a small team of researchers alone could process in a lifetime, which is why the Backyard Worlds project was created and opened up to the public. What started out as a small group of individuals has grown significantly in the five months it has been in operation. Currently, there are several hundred (or more) citizen scientists looking through the flipbooks for additional objects.
So, what’s the deal with WISEA 1101+5400? WISEA1101+5400 isn’t exactly local with a location approximately 34 parsecs (111 light-years) from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. The object is a brown dwarf classified as a spectral T5.5, meaning that its size and mass are too low to sustain fusion as a star and that its temperature runs between 900–1,500 K (630–1,230 °C / 1,160–2,240 °F).
Artist’s rendition of a T-class brown dwarf. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Researchers took images of the spectra (light) from the object and found that it was nearly identical to other T dwarfs, containing specific amounts of water, methane, iron hydride, potassium, and molecular hydrogen. If the object were cooler or hotter, the amounts and variety of these molecules in the spectral analysis would be different.
The spectrum of WISEA 1101+5400 in black with another T5.5 brown dwarf in red. Image Credit: Kuchner et al.
In fact, WISEA 1101+5400 is pretty average as far as T dwarfs go. What isn’t average is who and how it was discovered. It’s unlikely that Rosa Castro, Dan Caselden, or the two other citizen scientists involved with the discovery, had set out to find this cold distant object, but find it they did, and just six days after the start of the project.
Even with WISEA 1101+5400 averageness, the researchers are excited. Kuchner hopes that with enough time and interest, they will be able to locate super small, super-cold brown dwarfs called Y-dwarfs, some of which may be lurking far closer to us than we realize.
“They’re so faint that it takes quite a bit of work to pull them from the images, that’s where Kuchner’s project will help immensely,” said Adam Burgasser at the University of California San Diego. “Anytime you get a diverse set of people looking at the data, they’ll bring unique perspectives that can lead to unexpected discoveries.”
It’s interesting to note that this isn’t the only discovery that Backyard Worlds has made. There are currently 117 additional brown dwarf candidates being vetted all from this citizen science driven project, and Kuchner expects that the Backyard Worlds effort will continue for several years to come allowing more volunteers to get involved.
“I am not a professional. I’m just an amateur astronomer appreciating the night sky,” said Rosa Castro. “If I see something odd, I’ll admire and enjoy it.”
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a collaboration between NASA, UC Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arizona State University, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and Zooniverse – a collaboration of scientists, software developers, and educators who collectively develop and manage citizen science projects on the Internet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, manages the NEOWISE mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
