Space Spin

Kepler Mission Manager update, March 10, 2010

Space Spin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:23:10 +0000

The Kepler spacecraft has been performing well since the Safe Mode event of Feb. 2, 2010. Engineers on the anomaly response team are continuing to analyze the telemetry from the event to develop root cause and mitigations.

Several mitigations are under consideration and are being prepared for implementation. The mitigations should minimize impact to science activities, should a similar event occur that caused the Feb. 2, 2010 Safe Mode entry.

HiRISE images for March 10, 2010

Space Spin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:17:34 +0000

The following new captioned and spotlight images taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft are now available:

At the Summit of Arsia Mons Volcano
Like the other major shield volcanoes on Mars, Arsia Mons has a caldera (large volcanic crater) at its summit.
Northern Hemisphere Gullies with Layers
This observation shows northern hemisphere gullies on a layered crater wall.
Candidate Landing Site in Possible Salt Playa
This image covers part of a candidate landing site that appears to be a shallow depression with a deposit perhaps consisting of chlorides, like table salt.
Cerberus Fossae East of the Head of Athabasca Valles
This image shows part of Cerberus Fossae, a long system of extensional (normal) faults arranged in trough-bounding (graben-bounding) pairs. Cerberus Fossae served as the source of a large volcanic eruption that draped Athabasca Valles in lava.
A Burst of Spring
In the winter a layer of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) covers the north polar sand dunes. In the spring the sublimation of the ice (going directly from ice to gas) causes a host of uniquely Martian phenomena.

Biggest, deepest crater exposes hidden, ancient Moon

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:20:41 +0000

Shortly after the Moon formed, an asteroid smacked into its southern hemisphere and gouged out a truly enormous crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, almost 1,500 miles across and more than five miles deep.

"This is the biggest, deepest crater on the Moon -- an abyss that could engulf the United States from the East Coast through Texas," said Noah Petro of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The impact punched into the layers of the lunar crust, scattering that material across the Moon and into space. The tremendous heat of the impact also melted part of the floor of the crater, turning it into a sea of molten rock.

Is that Saturn's moon Titan or Utah?

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:03:47 +0000

Planetary scientists have been puzzling for years over the honeycomb patterns and flat valleys with squiggly edges evident in radar images of Saturn's moon Titan.

Now, working with a "volunteer researcher" who has put his own spin on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, they have found some recognizable analogies to a type of spectacular terrain on Earth known as karst topography.

Lava likely made river-like channel on Mars

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:51:11 +0000

Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars.

These results were presented at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Jacob Bleacher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Whether channels on Mars were formed by water or by lava has been debated for years, and the outcome is thought to influence the likelihood of finding life there.

Turning up the heat: Finding out how well the Webb telescope's sunshield will perform

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:31:55 +0000

Keeping an infrared telescope at very cold operating temperatures isn't an option, it's an absolute necessity. For the James Webb Space Telescope to see the traces of infrared light generated by stars and galaxies billions of light years away, it must be kept at cryogenic temperatures of under 50 Kelvin (-370°F).

Otherwise, sunlight would warm the telescope and this heat from the telescope itself will swamp the very faint astronomical signals, effectively blinding the telescope's eye. The job of the huge, five-layer sunshield is to keep that from happening.

Herschel-HIFI unveils precursors of life-enabling molecules in Orion Nebula

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:21:30 +0000

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy.

This detailed spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) - one of Herschel's three innovative instruments - demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

Mars dunes: On the move?

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:11:02 +0000

New studies of ripples and dunes shaped by the winds on Mars testify to variability on that planet, identifying at least one place where ripples are actively migrating and another where the ripples have been stationary for 100,000 years or more.

Patterns of dunes and the smaller ripples present some of the more visually striking landforms photographed by cameras orbiting Mars. Investigations of whether they are moving go back more than a decade.

Bully galaxy rules the neighbourhood

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:57:34 +0000

In general, galaxies can be thought of as "social" -- hanging out in groups and frequently interacting.

However, this recent Hubble Space Telescope image highlights how some galaxies appear to be hungry loners. These cosmic oddities have set astronomers on the "case of the missing neighbour galaxies".

Winds of change: How black holes may shape galaxies

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:50:51 +0000

New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory provide evidence for powerful winds blowing away from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. This discovery indicates that "average" supermassive black holes may play an important role in the evolution of the galaxies in which they reside.

For years, astronomers have known that a supermassive black hole grows in parallel with its host galaxy. And, it has long been suspected that material blown away from a black hole - as opposed to the fraction of material that falls into it -- alters the evolution of its host galaxy.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter speeds past data milestone

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:42:32 +0000

NASA's newest Mars orbiter, completing its fourth year at the Red Planet this week, has just passed a data-volume milestone unimaginable a generation ago and still difficult to fathom: 100 terabits.

That 100 trillion bits of information is more data than in 35 hours of uncompressed high-definition video. It's also more than three times the amount of data from all other deep-space missions combined -- not just the ones to Mars, but every mission that has flown past the orbit of Earth's moon.

Radar map of buried martian ice adds to climate record

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:39:20 +0000

Extensive radar mapping of the middle-latitude region of northern Mars shows that thick masses of buried ice are quite common beneath protective coverings of rubble.

The ability of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to continue charting the locations of these hidden glaciers and ice-filled valleys -- first confirmed by radar two years ago -- adds clues about how these deposits may have been left as remnants when regional ice sheets retreated.

Fermi probes 'dragons' of the gamma-ray sky

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:32:41 +0000

One of the pleasures of perusing ancient maps is locating regions so poorly explored that mapmakers warned of dragons and sea monsters. Now, astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope find themselves in the same situation as cartographers of old.

A new study of the ever-present fog of gamma rays from sources outside our galaxy shows that less than a third of the emission arises from what astronomers once considered the most likely suspects -- black-hole-powered jets from active galaxies.

Mini-SAR finds ice deposits at moon's north pole; Additional evidence of water activity on moon

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:21:59 +0000

Using data from a NASA radar that flew aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists have detected ice deposits near the moon's north pole. NASA's Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, found more than 40 small craters with water ice.

The craters range in size from 1 to 9 miles (2 to15 km) in diameter. Although the total amount of ice depends on its thickness in each crater, it's estimated there could be at least 1.3 trillion pounds (600 million metric tons) of water ice.

Mars Odyssey still hears nothing from Phoenix

Space Spin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:03:27 +0000

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander showed no sign during February that it has revived itself after the northern Mars winter. NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will check again in early April.

The solar-powered Phoenix lander operated for two months longer than its planned three-month mission in the Martian arctic in 2008. It was not designed to withstand winter conditions.