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Tag: NASA

  • Near-Earth Asteroid Imaged by NASA

    Near-Earth Asteroid Imaged by NASA

    NASA scientists announced today that they have created multiple radar images showing the near-Earth asteroid named 2007 PA8. The images were generated using data collected from the 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California on October 28 through October 30. During that time, the asteroid ranged from 10 million kilometers (6.5 million miles) to only 9 million kilometers (5.6 million miles) from Earth.

    NASA states that 2007 PA8 is an elongated, irregularly shaped object about 1.6 kilometers (one mile) wide. The asteroid also has ridges and, “perhaps,” craters. The data also suggests that the object rotates very slowly, taking three to four days for a full rotation.

    2007 PA8 was chosen, scientists said, because of its size and proximity to Earth at its closest approach. On the morning of November 5 the asteroid was only 6.5 million kilometers (4 million miles) from Earth, which is around 17 times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

    Much like this week’s announcement of the Hergenrother comet break-up, NASA assuaged fears by stating that the trajectory of 2007 PA8 is well understood, and that this month’s approach was the asteroid’s closest Earth flyby for at least the next 200 years. The object was tracked and characterized by the Near-Earth Object Observations Program, or “Spaceguard.” The program uses ground and space telescopes to detect, track, and characterize asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. It then plots their orbits to determine whether they could be “potentially hazardous” to Earth.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Gemini)

  • NASA Spots Comet Breaking Up in the Inner-Solar System

    Astronomers following the progress of the Hergenrother comet through the inner-solar system are now reporting that the comet is breaking up. Over the past few weeks the comet has been generating “outbursts” of dusty material, and now the object’s nucleus has split apart.

    “Comet Hergenrother is splitting apart,” said Rachel Stevenson, a post-doctoral fellow at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Using the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s (NOAO) Gemini North Telescope on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, we have resolved that the nucleus of the comet has separated into at least four distinct pieces resulting in a large increase in dust material in its coma.”

    The fragmentation of the comet’s nucleus was first detected on October 26 by a team of astronomers at the Remanzacco Observatory in Haleakala, Hawaii using the Faulkes Telescope North. It was also imaged by the WIYN telescope group at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

    The breakup means more material to reflect sunlight, making the comet’s coma significantly brighter. The object can be seen through a large telescope, and is currently between the constellations Andromeda and Lacerta.

    “The comet fragments are considerably fainter than the nucleus,” said James Bauer, the deputy principal investigator for NASA’s NEOWISE mission. “This is suggestive of chunks of material being ejected from the surface.”

    NASA emphasized in its statement that neither the comet, nor its fragments pose a threat to the Earth.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/NOAO/Gemini)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Reveals Loss of Mars’ Atmosphere

    NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity is now helping scientists understand how much of its original atmosphere the red planet may have lost. The data could help researchers predict whether Mars was ever habitable.

    Using its on-board Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments, Curiosity has analyzed samples of the Martian atmosphere during its weeks stationed at the “Rocknest” site. NASA states that its findings show the loss of the atmosphere has been a significant factor in the evolution of the planet.

    More specifically, the samples show a 5% increase in the heavier isotopes of carbon in atmospheric carbon dioxide compared to estimates of what the ratio would have been when Mars formed. This suggests to NASA researchers that the top of the Martian atmosphere may have been lost, depleting lighter isotopes. The findings match previous estimates of the composition of the atmosphere made from studies of meteorites from Mars, and more investigation into the loss of the upper atmosphere will be undertaken by NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) in 2014.

    “With these first atmospheric measurements we already can see the power of having a complex chemical laboratory like SAM on the surface of Mars,” said Paul Mahaffy, SAM Principal Investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Both atmospheric and solid sample analyses are crucial for understanding Mars’ habitability.”

    Curiosity project scientists were also hoping to find evidence of methane gas on Mars, but found little to none. The compound is a chemical precursor for carbon-based life. The rover’s Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS), pictured above, provided the most sensitive measurement for Methane yet and placed an upper limit of a few parts methane per billion parts Martian atmosphere, with a large enough error range for the amount to possibly be zero.

    “Methane is clearly not an abundant gas at the Gale Crater site, if it is there at all,” said Chris Webster, SAM TLS lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “At this point in the mission we’re just excited to be searching for it. “While we determine upper limits on low values, atmospheric variability in the Martian atmosphere could yet hold surprises for us.”

    Curiosity’s SAM is is set to analyze the chemical composition of its first sample of Martian soil in the coming weeks. Researchers will be looking for organic compounds that could suggest past environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

  • Asteroid Belts Could Determine Earth-Like Potential, Study Suggests

    A new study shows that planets like Earth could be rare if they depend on asteroid belts of a specific mass range. Researchers suggested that the size and location of a solar system’s asteroid belt could determine whether complex life can evolve on an Earth-like planet.

    “Our study shows that only a tiny fraction of planetary systems observed to date seem to have giant planets in the right location to produce an asteroid belt of the appropriate size, offering the potential for life on a nearby rocky planet,” said Rebecca Martin, study co-author and a NASA Sagan fellow at the University of Colorado. “Our study suggests that our solar system may be rather special.”

    The study was based on an analysis of theoretical models and archival observations, including infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope. It suggests that Jupiter’s gravity prevented the material in our asteroid belt from forming into a planet, and that material from the asteroid belt colliding with Earth provided extinction events crucial for speeding up the evolution of life.

    “To have such ideal conditions you need a giant planet like Jupiter that is just outside the asteroid belt [and] that migrated a little bit, but not through the belt,” said Mario Livio, study co-author and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “If a large planet like Jupiter migrates through the belt, it would scatter the material. If, on the other hand, a large planet did not migrate at all, that, too, is not good because the asteroid belt would be too massive. There would be so much bombardment from asteroids that life may never evolve.”

    Martin and Livio tested models of accretion discs around young stars to calculate the “snow line” where material such as ice can remain intact. They cross-referenced their calculations with data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope, and then looked at observations of 520 giant planets found outside of our solar system. They found that only 19 of the giant planets are outside of the snow line, and that less than 4% of the observed systems may have a “compact” asteroid belt such as ours.

    “Based on our scenario, we should concentrate our efforts to look for complex life in systems that have a giant planet outside of the snow line,” said Livio.

  • Saturn’s Titan Caught “Glowing in the Dark” by NASA’s Cassini

    NASA this week announced that it has photographed Saturn’s moon Titan “glowing in the dark.” The images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft while Titan was behind Saturn, in eclipse from the sun. They show a visible glow emanating from both the top of titan’s atmosphere and from deep in its atmosphere. The glow is only a millionth of a watt, and was detected using long exposure photographs.

    “It turns out that Titan glows in the dark – though very dimly,” said Robert West, lead author of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and a Cassini imaging team scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s a little like a neon sign, where electrons generated by electrical power bang into neon atoms and cause them to glow. Here we’re looking at light emitted when charged particles bang into nitrogen molecules in Titan’s atmosphere.”

    Scientists had already studies the phenomenon, known as an airglow, which is caused when atoms and molecules are excited by ultraviolet sunlight or electrically charged particles. In Titan’s case, the airglow is from Titan’s nitrogen molecules, which were excited by X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the sun. What has surprised scientists is the glow coming from deeper in Titan’s atmosphere.

    “This is exciting because we’ve never seen this at Titan before,” said West. “It tells us that we don’t know all there is to know about Titan and makes it even more mysterious.”

    The current guess as to the deep-atmosphere glow is that it’s being caused by deeper-penetrating cosmic rays or by light emitted by a chemical reaction deep in the atmosphere.

    Scientists are interested in the glow because they are studying the chemical reactions that form the heavy molecules that make up Titan’s haze of organic chemicals. “This kind of work helps us understand what kind of organic chemistry could have existed on an early Earth,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)

  • Angry Birds and NASA Detail Mars Rover Curiosity’s Mission

    Anyone who has played Angry Birds Space knows that the game contains a satellite that links to a NASA mobile web page that educates kids on the effects of microgravity and that Angry Birds celebrated the landing of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover with Mars-themed levels in Angry Birds space. What may not be known is that NASA and Rovio, the developers of Angry Birds, have teamed up to provide educational programming about space on the web. Just this month, Rovio also announced that it has teamed up with CERN to teach Finnish children about physics through Angry Birds Playground.

    Today, Rovio expanded its relationship with NASA by releasing several videos geared towards educating people about the basics of the Curiosity Mars rover mission. The videos cover several aspects of the Curiosity project: It’s landing in Gale Crater, what researchers are hoping to find on the surface of Mars, how the rover is controlled from so far away, and the scientific instruments the rover is carrying with it. Researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory provide firsthand knowledge of the project, including Entry, Descent, and Landing Lead Adam Steltzner; Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada; Rover Driver Vandi Verma Tompkins; and the famously mowhawked Flight Director Bobak Ferdowsi.

    The videos are obviously geared toward children, and are sure to be used in science classrooms across the U.S. Still, the information provided should be fascinating to everyone, especially those who haven’t been keeping up with the weekly news and discoveries coming from Curiosity.

  • NASA’s Dawn Discovers ‘Young’ Surface on Asteroid

    NASA announced today that data from its Dawn probe show the giant asteroid Vesta is constantly “stirring” its surface, presenting a “young” appearance. The type of weathering that occurs on airless bodies, such as the moon, does not alter Vesta’s surface in the same way.

    Specifically, objects such as asteroids and the moon accumulate tiny metallic particles containing iron, which dulls their “fluffy” outer layer. Researchers using data from Dawn’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIR) found no accumulation of the particles on Vesta.

    “Getting up close and familiar with Vesta has reset our thinking about the character of the uppermost soils of airless bodies,” said Carle Pieters, lead author of one of two Vesta studies published today in the journal Nature and a Dawn team member at Brown University. “Vesta ‘dirt’ is very clean, well mixed and highly mobile.”

    When Vesta was first photographed, researchers were puzzled by its light and dark splotches. The brightness range on the asteroid is among the largest observed on rocky bodies in the solar system.

    NASA stated that “bright rays” of young features on Vesta degrade rapidly into the background soil, mixed by continual small impacts. Also, Vesta’s unusually steep topography means landslides mix the surface as well.

    The dark spots, which were originally thought to be the result of volcanic activity or high-speed impacts, have now been shown to be carbon-rich material from meteoroids. Researchers estimate, based on the amount of darkening, that around 300 asteroids with diameters between 0.6 to 6 miles likely hit Vesta in the past 3.5 billion years.

    “This perpetual contamination of Vesta with material native to elsewhere in the solar system is a dramatic example of an apparently common process that changes many solar system objects,” said Tom McCord, lead author of the other study and a Dawn team member at Bear Fight Institute. “Earth likely got the ingredients for life – organics and water – this way.”

    NASA’s Dawn probe was launched in September 2007 and entered orbit around Vesta in July 2011. Dawn left its orbit around Vesta last month and is currently on course for the dwarf planet Ceres.

  • Mars Rover Curiosity’s First Mineralogy Analysis Shows Basaltic-Like Soil

    NASA today announced the results of Mars rover Curiosity’s initial analysis of the soil it has been scooping now for weeks. The results show that the Martian soil around the “Rocknest” area resembles weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii. These findings come from a small sample that was placed into Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin).

    “We had many previous inferences and discussions about the mineralogy of Martian soil,” said David Blake, principal investigator for CheMin at the NASA Ames Research Center. “Our quantitative results provide refined and in some cases new identifications of the minerals in this first X-ray diffraction analysis on Mars.”

    An image of the X-ray diffraction created from the CheMin data can be seen above. This method is the most accurate identification of minerals on Mars to date. The identification of minerals is “crucial” to Curiosity’s goal of assessing past environmental conditions on the red planet, and specifically whether the rover’s landing site once had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

    “Our team is elated with these first results from our instrument,” said Blake. “They heighten our anticipation for future CheMin analyses in the months and miles ahead for Curiosity.”

    This first sample was sieved for particles larger than the width of a human hair and has two components: the dust distributed all over Mars by dust storms and sand of local origin. NASA stated that the sample represents more modern processes on Mars, where the rocks the rover investigated weeks ago are billions of years old.

    “Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy,” said David Bish, CheMin co-investigator at Indiana University. “We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass.

    “So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment. The ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Still Scooping Away

    Mars rover Curiosity continued to sample soil at the dusty “Rocknest” location on Mars this week. The rover has been stationed at the site for nearly one Earth month.

    The rover this week used its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to take photos of the rocks surrounding it. The rock above was photographed by MAHLI from three slightly different positions to obtain 3-D data that can be used to plan future examinations. The rock is located near Curiosity’s front left wheel and has been named “Et-Then” after an island in the Great Slave Lake, Canada. Meanwhile, the rover continued to vibrate Martian soil to scrub the internal surfaces of its sample processing chambers.

    Last week the rover placed soil material from its fourth scoop onto its observation tray for researchers to assess the movement of the sample in response to the vibrations caused by the rover’s sample-delivery and sample-processing activities. It also placed a portion of the scoop into its Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument for analysis of its mineral composition, the second such sample to be analyzed using the CheMin.

    In addition to the soil samples, Curiosity continues to measure its surroundings using a variety of tools. A sample of the Martian atmosphere was analyzed by the Sample Analysis at Mars’ (SAM) Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer and environmental conditions around Rocknest are being monitored by the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) and the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD).

    (Photo courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • NASA Develops a 3-D Imaging Radar For Oil Spills

    NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researchers have developed a method of using a specialized 3-D imaging radar to “characterize” the oil in oil spills. This represents the first time it has been demonstrated that such a radar system can be used to distinguish thin films, such as oil sheen, from from thick oil emulsions.

    The technique was developed in part in 2010, during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Researchers used the JPL-developed Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperature Radar (UAVSAR) to collect radar imagery (such as that seen above) over the main slick of the BP spill on three deployments between June 2010 and July 2012. A NASA C-20A piloted aircraft was used to transport the UAVSAR, which was mounted in a pod beneath the aircraft.

    “Our research demonstrates the tremendous potential of UAVSAR to automate the classification of oil in a slick and mitigate the effects of future oil spill tragedies,” said Cathleen Jones, a researcher at JPL. “Such information can help spill incidence response commanders direct cleanup operations, such as the mechanical recovery of oil, to the areas of thick oil that would have the most damaging environmental impacts.”

    Current oil classification techniques rely on visual surveys from experts. Remote sensing with UAVSAR can cover larger areas and is available at night or during poor weather conditions when visual surveys are not an option.

    The UAVSAR categorizes an oil slick by detecting variations in the roughness of its surface and for a thick slick it measures the changes in electrical conductivity of its surface layer. NASA states that UAVSAR “sees” oil spills at sea as a radar-dark area against the rougher ocean surface because most of the radar energy hitting a smoother surface is deflected away from the radar antenna.

    In June 2010, the UAVSAR collected data over an area of more than 46,330 square miles along the Gulf Coast. The data showed researchers that, at the time, much of the main oil slick from the BP spill was made up of thick emulsions of oil and seawater.

    “We knew we were going to detect the extent of the spill,” said Ben Holt, another researcher at JPL. “But we had this great new instrument, so we wanted to see how it would work in this extreme situation, and it turned out to be really unique and valuable, beyond all previous radar results for spills.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA Tracks Saturn’s Atmosphere Following “Massive” Storm

    NASA today announced that the aftermath of a rare massive storm on Saturn has caused “record-setting disturbances” in the planet’s upper atmosphere. The disturbances are now coming long after visible signs of the storm, which were first detected in December 2010, have abated.

    NASA’s Cassini spacecraft (which just celebrated its birthday by finding a “hot cross bun” on Titan) detected a discharge from Saturn that raised the temperature in Saturn’s stratosphere to 150 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. At the same time, researchers at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center detected a “huge” increase in ethylene gas, which “isn’t typically observed on Saturn.” A study covering the findings will be published in the November 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

    “This temperature spike is so extreme it’s almost unbelievable, especially in this part of Saturn’s atmosphere, which typically is very stable,” said Brigette Hesman, the study’s lead author and an astronomer at the University of Maryland. “To get a temperature change of the same scale on Earth, you’d be going from the depths of winter in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the height of summer in the Mojave Desert.”

    Hesman stated that the ethylene spike peaked with “100 times more of the gas than scientists thought possible for Saturn.” The origin of the gas remains a mystery, though researchers have ruled out a deep-atmosphere reservoir of the gas.

    This is the first time a large storm on Saturn has been observed by an orbiting spacecraft, and the first one that has been measured at infrared wavelengths, using Cassini’s infrared spectrometer. NASA stated that the storm grew large enough to blanket North America north-to-south and wrap around the Earth “many times.” Such giant storms occur on Saturn about every 30 Earth years, or a little over one Saturn Year.

  • NASA May Have Found the Source of the Sky’s Mysterious Infrared Glow

    NASA today announced that the mystery of the blotchy pattern of infrared light seen across the entire sky may finally be solved. According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the light comes from isolated stars that lie beyond the edges of galaxies. The starts are currently thought to have once been a part of galaxies, but were then flung out as the result of chaotic galaxy collisions or mergers.

    “The infrared background glow in our sky has been a huge mystery,” said Asantha Cooray, lead author of the study and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Irvine. “We have new evidence this light is from the stars that linger between galaxies. Individually, the stars are too faint to be seen, but we think we are seeing their collective glow.”

    The study looked at data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope. Researchers looked at Bootes field, a large portion of the sky covering an arc equivalent to 50 full Earth moons. Data from the Spitzer was recently used to determine a more accurate measurement of the Hubble constant.

    “We looked at the Bootes field with Spitzer for 250 hours,” said co-author Daniel Stern of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Studying the faint infrared background was one of the core goals of our survey, and we carefully designed the observations in order to directly address the important, challenging question of what causes the background glow.”

    A previous study, led by Alexander Kashlinsky and published in June of this year, came to a different conclusion on the Spitzer data. That study proposed that the infrared glow comes from the first stars to form in the universe. According to NASA, this new study used less sensitive observations than the Kashlinsky study, but analyzed a larger pattern of the infrared glow due to its larger scale.

    Though more research is needed, NASA stated that the new study refutes the early star hypothesis for the infrared glow. It shows that the light pattern of the glow is not consistent with current theories and computer simulations of the first stars and galaxies. NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch sometime around 2018, may be able to confirm the new orphaned star hypothesis.

    “The keen infrared vision of the James Webb Telescope will be able to see some of the earliest stars and galaxies directly, as well as the stray stars lurking between the outskirts of nearby galaxies,” said Eric Smith, JWST’s deputy program manager. “The mystery objects making up the background infrared light may finally be exposed.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA Spots Milky Way Black Hole “Flare-Up”

    NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has taken its first images of the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy and caught it in the middle of a “flare-up.”

    “We got lucky to have captured an outburst from the black hole during our observing campaign,” said Fiona Harrison, the mission’s principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology. “These data will help us better understand the gentle giant at the heart of our galaxy and why it sometimes flares up for a few hours and then returns to slumber.”

    These results come from two days in July when NuSTAR and other observatories observed Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), a compact radio source at the center of the Milky Way galaxy where observations have shown a black hole resides. According to NASA, Sgr A* is “quiet” compared to the black holes at the centers of other galaxies. Instead of taking in large amounts of the matter surrounding it, Sgr A* is thought to only take in only a little or none.

    “Astronomers have long speculated that the black hole’s ‘snacking’ should produce copious hard X-rays, but NuSTAR is the first telescope with sufficient sensitivity to actually detect them,” said NuSTAR team member Chuck Hailey of Columbia University.

    According to NASA, the NuSTAR is the only telescope capable of taking focused images of the highest-energy X-rays. The telescope is NASA’s newest X-ray telescope and was launched back on June 13, 2012. NASA states that these new observations will help researchers understand the physics of how black holes “snack” and grow.

    The other telescopes used in the observations were the W.M. Keck Observatory at the top of Muana Kea in Hawaii, which took infrared images, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which uses lower-energy X-ray observations and was recently used to determine that our galaxy is surrounded by a halo of hot gas.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Takes a Fourth Scoop

    NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity took its fourth scoop of Martian soil over the weekend and yesterday was issued commands to place a bit of the sample into the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. Another sieved portion of the scoop was to be placed into Curiosity’s observation tray.

    The rest of the sample will be vibrated in Curiosity’s sample processing chambers to scrub its internal surfaces. This is a cleaning process that was also performed with the rover’s first and second scoops. A later scoop will be the first to be placed into Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to determine its chemical composition.

    Last week, Curiosity’s third scoop became the first delivered to the CheMin instrument. That instrument is to determine the mineral composition of the soil the rover has been sampling.

    For over two weeks now, Curiosity has been stationed on a dusty patch of soil NASA has dubbed “Rocknest.” In addition to testing and implementing its soil-sampling abilities, the rover has been using its other on-board tools to survey the surrounding area. It is taking photos of the landscape using its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) and Mast Camera (Mastcam), while also monitoring Martian environmental conditions with its Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), and Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instruments.

    The photo above shows the result of 30 laser blasts Curiosity fired into a nearby drift of Martian sand (named “Crestaurum” by NASA) over the weekend. It then used its spectrometers to examine the chemical elements present in the drift. The rover fired its laser over a distance of 8 feet, 10 inches and the pit created is about one-eighth of an inch across.

    (Photo courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGN/CNRS)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity’s Third Scoop Being Analyzed

    Earlier this week, NASA announced that Mars rover Curiosity had taken its third scoop of Martian soil. Based on a previously announced plan, the third scoop was to be the first sample analyzed by Curiosity’s on-board equipment.

    Today NASA announced that a sample of Martian soil has successfully been placed into the rover’s Chemistry and Minerology (CheMin) instrument and is being analyzed. The instrument is now determining the mineral composition of the sample.

    “We are crossing a significant threshold for this mission by using CheMin on its first sample,” said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist. “This instrument gives us a more definitive mineral-identifying method than ever before used on Mars: X-ray diffraction. Confidently identifying minerals is important because minerals record the environmental conditions under which they form.”

    NASA stated that the sample placed in the CheMin instrument was a sieved portion of the total sample and consisted of about as much material as a baby aspirin.

    Curiosity has been stationed for over two weeks on a patch of dusty Martian soil NASA dubbed “Rocknest.” During that time, the rover vibrated two scoops of soil to scrub the internal surfaces of its sample processing chambers of any residual Earth particles. This cleaning method will be repeated before a future sample is placed in the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, which will determine its chemical composition.

    The soil sampling was delayed last week when a bright piece of material was spotted in a photo of the rover’s first scoop. The material was later determined by researchers to be a small bit of plastic that was possibly jarred loose from the Mars lander during its landing sequence. On subsequent scoops different small, bright particles were spotted and determined to be native Martian material.

    “We plan to learn more both about the spacecraft material and about the smaller, bright particles,” said Richard Cook, Curiosity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We will finish determining whether the spacecraft material warrants concern during future operations. The native Mars particles become fodder for the mission’s scientific studies.”

  • Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Seeing Big Changes

    Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Seeing Big Changes

    The results of a paper on Jupiter’s atmosphere were released by NASA today, and it appears that big changes are happening for the solar system’s biggest planet. Among the roiling clouds covering Jupiter, belts of the atmosphere are changing color, hotspots are vanishing or reappearing, and clouds are gathering.

    Glenn Orton, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his colleagues from around the world took infrared images and maps of Jupiter from 2009 to 2012, then compared them with high-quality visible light images from the amateur astronomy community. During that time the team saw fading and darkening of a brown-colored belt called the South Equatorial Belt and the thickening of deeper cloud decks. They also observed the disappearance and reappearance of blue-gray “hotspots” along the southern edge of the North Equatorial Belt that reveal radiation emerging from deep in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

    “The changes we’re seeing in Jupiter are global in scale,” Orton said. “We’ve seen some of these before, but never with modern instrumentation to clue us in on what’s going on. Other changes haven’t been seen in decades, and some regions have never been in the state they’re appearing in now. At the same time, we’ve never seen so many things striking Jupiter. Right now, we’re trying to figure out why this is all happening.”

    NASA announced last month that Jupiter has been suffering more impacts over the last four years than ever previously recorded, and released an amateur astronomer’s image of a recent meteoroid impact.

    The results from Orton’s Jupiter observations were presented by Orton today at the 44th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Other interesting findings revealed at the meeting include the hot cross bun on Titan, the four-star planet, and the color of Trojans orbiting Jupiter.

    (Image courtesy NASA/IRTF/JPL-Caltech/NAOJ/A. Wesley/A. Kazemoto/C. Go)

  • Cassini Finds “Hot Cross Bun” on Titan, Celebrates Its Birthday

    NASA‘s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft celebrated its 15th birthday yesterday and it’s still sending back results from Saturn.

    The Cassini spacecraft was launched on October 15, 1997 and has logged more than 3.8 billion miles of space travel in the time since. The craft has flown by Venus twice and visited Jupiter on the way to Saturn, where it has been for the last eight years. During its time in orbit around Saturn, Cassini has woven a complicated path to visit many of Saturn’s 60-plus moons.

    “As Cassini conducts the most in-depth survey of a giant planet to date, the spacecraft has been flying the most complex gravity-assisted trajectory ever attempted,” said Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Each flyby of Titan, for example, is like threading the eye of the needle. And we’ve done it 87 times so far, with accuracies generally within about one mile [1.6 kilometers], and all controlled from Earth about one billion miles [1.5 billion kilometers] away.”

    According to NASA, Cassini has sent back around 444 GB of data, including over 300,000 images. More than 2,500 reports based on Cassini data have been published in scientific journals. Water ice and organic particles have been found on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and hydrocarbon-filled lakes have been spotted on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

    Speaking of Titan, even now Cassini is providing a wealth of scientific data. Today at the 44th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, scientists announced that radar images from the spacecraft (seen above) have revealed an “hot cross bun” feature on the surface of Titan. The circular feature, which resembles a similar feature on Venus, is compared to the way the surface of a bun will lift and crack when baked. Researchers believe a similar process involving heat, and possibly rising magma, has caused the feature on Titan.

    “The ‘hot cross bun’ is a type of feature we have not seen before on Titan, showing that Titan keeps surprising us even after eight years of observations from Cassini,” said Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team scientist based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The ‘bun’ may be the result of what is known on Earth as a laccolith, an intrusion formed by magma pushing up from below. The Henry Mountains of Utah are well-known examples of this geologic phenomenon.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI)

  • Four-Star Planet Discovered by Planet Hunter Volunteers

    Volunteers for the Planet Hunter project have discovered a planet that is part of a four-star system. The planet, named PH1, orbits a pair of stars that is itself orbited by a more distant pair of stars.

    The Planet Hunter project is a citizen science project that collaborates with Yale University and other organizations to cull through the light curves taken by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft. Planet Hunters search the data for the brief dip in brightness that occurs when a planet passes in front of its star.

    NASA announced this week that a Yale-led team of astronomers has confirmed the discovery of this circumbinary planet in a four star system. According to NASA, only six planets are known to orbit binary stars, though none of them are orbited by distant binary stars.

    “I celebrate this discovery as a milestone for the Planet Hunters team: discovering their first exoplanet lurking in the Kepler data,” said Natalie Batalha, Kepler scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “I celebrate this discovery for the wow-factor of a planet in a four-star system. Most importantly, I celebrate this discovery as the fruit of exemplary human cooperation — cooperation between scientists and citizens who give of themselves for the love of stars, knowledge and exploration.”

    PH1 is slightly larger than Neptune and is thought to be a gas giant. It orbits its stars every 137 Earth days.

    A research paper on the phenomenon was presented this week at the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. It has also been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

    Earlier this year NASA announced that Kepler had found a planet orbiting a binary star. Like Tatooine.

    (Photo courtesy Haven Giguere/Yale)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Takes a Third Scoop of Martian Soil

    NASA has announced that Mars rover Curiosity will take its third scoop of Martian soil sometime today. While this may be the third scoop for the rover, it’s the first one that will be placed into its on-board equipment for analysis.

    Last week, Curiosity took its first scoop from the “Rocknest” site, where it has been for over a week. It then began to shake the soil to scrub the internal surfaces of its sample-processing chamber of any residual particles from Earth. The sampling process was interrupted briefly by the spotting of a small, bright object that researchers at the time assessed as a piece of plastic debris from the Martian lander that was jostled loose during landing.

    Over the weekend, Curiosity took a second scoop and repeated the shaking process. However, the second scoop also found more bright material, some of which is embedded in the Martian soil. The new assessment holds that the particles are native to Mars, and the Curiosity team will take a third scoop for testing.

    The plan for this third scoop is to place a portion of the sample into Curiosity’s observation tray, and another portion into its chemistry and mineralogy (CheMin) instrument to determine its mineral composition composition. In the near future, a fourth scoop will be placed into the rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to determine its chemical composition. Meanwhile, Curiosity’s other instruments will be more closely investigating the bright particles.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Jovian Trojan Asteroids’ Secrets Uncovered by NASA’s WISE

    NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) may have been decommissioned last year, but the data it has provided is continuing to reveal clues about our solar system.

    NASA today announced that researchers using data from WISE have discovered a bit more about the mysterious asteroids called Jovian Trojans. The Trojans orbit the sun on the same path as Jupiter and travel in “packs,” with one group orbiting ahead of Jupiter, and one trailing behind.

    The observations of the WISE data by the NEOWISE team (the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission) show that the Trojans are made up of dark, reddish rocks and have a matte, non-reflective surface. Also shown is that the leading pack of Trojans outnumbers the pack that trails Jupiter. In addition, scientists have been able to determine that the packs are “strikingly” similar to each other and do not include any objects from elsewhere in the solar system. The Trojans do not resemble asteroids from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or objects from the Kuiper belt on the outskirts of the system.

    “Jupiter and Saturn are in calm, stable orbits today, but in their past, they rumbled around and disrupted any asteroids that were in orbit with these planets,” said Tommy Grav, a WISE scientist from the Planetary Science Institute. “Later, Jupiter re-captured the Trojan asteroids, but we don’t know where they came from. Our results suggest they may have been captured locally. If so, that’s exciting because it means these asteroids could be made of primordial material from this particular part of the solar system, something we don’t know much about.”

    The NEOWISE team has analyzed the colors and classified 400 Trojans so far. Grav stated that the Trojans are D-type asteroids, which are dark burgundy, though some are C- and P-type grey-bluish asteroids.

    “More research is needed, but it’s possible we are looking at some of the oldest material known in the solar system,” said Grav.

    These results were presented today at the 44th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Two studies outlining the results have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Finds Surprises on Mars

    Just after the Mars rover Curiosity completed its first scoop of Martian soil, project leaders halted the testing process when a small piece of unknown junk was found in one of the pictures.

    It turns out the refuse is harmless, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory this week resumed the soil testing process, which involved vibrating the sample “vigorously” to clean the surfaces of Curiosity’s sample-processing chambers. NASA stated that the bright object found on the ground is thought to be a type of plastic wrapping material that could possibly have fallen onto Curiosity during the Mars Science Laboratory’s descent toward Mars.

    Meanwhile, researchers on Earth have analyzed the data obtained by the rover last month when it stopped to examine a football-sized rock named Jake Matijevic. It was the first rock that Curiosity analyzed using its Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS). The results, which revealed the chemical composition of the rock, were surprising to the rover team.

    “This rock is a close match in chemical composition to an unusual but well-known type of igneous rock found in many volcanic provinces on Earth,” said Edward Stolper, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology. “With only one Martian rock of this type, it is difficult to know whether the same processes were involved, but it is a reasonable place to start thinking about its origin.”

    NASA stated that similar rocks on Earth are formed beneath the planet’s crust, in the mantle. They form from “crystallization of relatively water-rich magma at elevated pressure.”

    “Jake is kind of an odd Martian rock,” said Ralf Gellert, APXS principal investigator and assistant professor at the University of Guelph. “It’s high in elements consistent with the mineral feldspar, and low in magnesium and iron.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)