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Tag: NASA

  • NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Goes into Safe Mode

    NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Goes into Safe Mode

    While being monitored by NASA’s shutdown-inhibited skeleton crew, the Jupiter-bound spacecraft Juno emerged from Earth’s shadow in safe mode on Wednesday, which indicates that there’s a problem. The issue presented itself as the craft used Earth as a gravity slingshot, in its trek to the outer solar system. Still, NASA mission control says that the probe is still on track to make it to Jupiter in 2016.

    Juno project manager Rick Nybakken, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, “we believe we are on track as planned to Jupiter,” while discussing the $1.1 billion mission. Engineers are continuing to diagnose why Juno went into safe mode. The craft can still communicate with ground control, but some if its functionality is offline. Avid Windows users are likely aware of the limitations of a different type of safe mode. It sucks. But there is a way to get sound.

    There isn’t yet a rocket powerful enough to propel an object to make a direct flight to the outer solar system, so Earth has long been used as a sort of a gravitational springboard – the Galileo spacecraft circled Earth twice in the 1990’s, before launching itself out to Jupiter, which lies 484 million miles from the sun.

    Juno was launched in 2011, and traveled around Mars at 78,000 mph, before looping back around Earth, getting as near as 350 miles above the coast of South Africa, which boosted its speed to 87,000 mph. The added momentum is enough to make it beyond the asteroid belt to Jupiter.

    Juno will become one of a long line of spacecraft that have entered the outer solar system since the 1970’s, including the Voyagers, Pioneers, Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini and the New Horizons, which are moving toward Pluto.

    The unexpected safe mode issue has caused a “moderate level of concern,” according to Nybakken. Though NASA hasn’t been updating its website or tweeting, essential crew haven’t been furloughed, and all missions continue to operate.

    Earlier this week, NASA’s latest spacecraft, LADEE, was sent into into orbit around the moon.

    Juno intends to move closer to Jupiter than previous spacecraft, orbiting the planet for at least a year, while studying its cloud-covered atmosphere and interior, to get a better idea how the giant planet formed.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons.

  • Here’s Some Footage Of That NASA-Funded 3D Pizza Printer

    Here’s Some Footage Of That NASA-Funded 3D Pizza Printer

    Back in May, NASA announced that it was working with Systems & Materials Research on a 3D printer that could make food. The idea was that astronauts on long trips could print their food instead of having to eat from a tube. The initial goal was to have the 3D printer make a pizza, and now we know it has achieved that goal.

    KXAN, a local NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas, made a trip to the local SXSW Eco conference to see the future of sustainability. What they found was Systems & Materials Research showing off their 3D food printer that makes little pizzas using nothing but powdered ingredients and water.

    So, wait, how does this all work? The news report doesn’t go into detail, but previous reports from the makers have shown us that it combines water and oil with the powdered ingredients before sending what could be classified as “food goop” onto a heated tray. The tray then heats the dough, sauce and cheese substances to create a miniature cheese pizza.

    As the report notes, Systems & Materials Research have yet to receive FDA clearance for their 3D printed pizzas. Until then, it can’t serve the food to the general public. When it does, however, expect the first review to not be very flattering.

    [h/t: 3ders]
    [Image: kxan/YouTube]

  • LADEE Set In Lunar Orbit, Regardless of Shutdown

    LADEE Set In Lunar Orbit, Regardless of Shutdown

    Regardless of the government shutdown keeping a lot of NASA’s workers at home, the agency was still able to put its LADEE moon probe into lunar orbit.

    The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, took off from Cape Caneveral, Florida, on September 6, on the back of a small rocket. Incidentally, a frog photobombed coverage of the launch. The craft was placed into a highly elliptical earth orbit. After travelling around earth three times, it was in position to activate the braking rocket, and fell into the orbit of the moon.

    With the government shutdown in effect, 97% of NASA’s 18,000 employees have been furloughed. Though, LADEE’s flight controllers were still clocking in, monitoring the tricky maneuver which put the probe into moon orbit, according to deputy project scientist Greg Delory, of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

    Over the next couple of weeks, LADEE’s orbit will be adjusted, until it ends up 155 miles above the surface, the best vantage for studying gases surrounding the moon, as well as to search for electrically charged dust rising from the lunar surface. Delory adds that the government shutdown is not likely to affect a LADEE laser communication demonstration set for the end of the month.


    Last week, NASA reactivated furloughed workers who were on the new Mars orbiter project, set to launch November 18th. Necessary personnel have also been kept on to monitor NASA’s communications satellites and various space probes.


    Perhaps some day down the line, a sequel to George Clooney’s “Gravity” will appear on Lifetime, with astronauts being adrift in space because mission control has all been furloughed. NASA’s LADEE page is presently offline due to the shutdown.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons.

  • Saturn Moon Titan Has Something Earth Needs

    Saturn Moon Titan Has Something Earth Needs

    Our solar system seems to be shrinking. Planning on moving to Mars? The idea sounded crazy in the past; however, recent strides show that this may become a reality within the near future.

    Now evidence has surfaced that a moon within our solar system has more in common with Earth than what may have been originally thought.

    One of Saturn’s moons, Titan, was recently discovered to contain a necessary component in the creation of plastic used on Earth. While orbiting Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft noted that Titan’s atmosphere contains propylene, which is an ingredient in developing plastic needed on earth. Car bumpers, storage containers, eating utensils, and many other items all require propylene.

    The discovery was made by NASA prior to the government shutdown through Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument. The spacecraft has been in Saturn’s orbit since 2004, and will continue to orbit the planet until 2017.

    Michael Flasar, who serves as the principal CIRS investigator, released a statement where he explained why the discovery was difficult to make, proving the competency of the program.

    “This measurement was very difficult to make because propylene’s weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals. This success boosts our confidence that we will find still more chemicals long hidden in Titan’s atmosphere,” Michael Flaser said.

    The following is a NASA radar image that Cassini captured depicting two moons “kissing” each other on the surface of Titan. The title of the image is referred to as “Titan’s Kissing Lakes” to substantiate the obvious depiction.

    Conor Nixon, who is a NASA planetary scientist, served as the lead author of the research paper that explained this discovery of Titan’s atmosphere. He shared the news with the September 30th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    “This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene. That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom, that’s polypropylene,” Conor Nixon said.

    The following video provides more information about Saturn’s moon, Titan, and the connection between Titan’s atmosphere and that of earth’s atmosphere.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqyR_NfTw9s

    [Images Via Wikimedia Commons/ Titan’s Globe Image Kissing Lakes Image Both Courtesy of NASA]

  • Clouds Mapped on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

    Clouds Mapped on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

    Though much of the agency is preparing to shut down, NASA this week announced that astronomers have mapped the clouds of a planet outside our own solar system. Using the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have created a cloud map of Kepler-7b, a Jupiter-like planet that orbits around the star Kepler-7.

    Though Kepler-7b has less than half the mass of Jupiter, the planet is nearly 50% larger than our local large gas giant. NASA researchers gazed at Kepler-7b for years to determine that the planet has high clouds on its western hemisphere and little cloud cover on its eastern side. A new paper on the findings is set to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    “By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution ‘map’ of this giant, gaseous planet,” said Brice-Olivier Demory, lead author of the paper and an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We wouldn’t expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds.”

    Astronomers using the Kepler telescope were able to determine that Kepler-7b had a bright spot on its western side. A follow-up with the Spitzer telescope revealed that the planet was too cool for the bright spot to be heat, meaning it came from light reflected from Kepler-7. NASA believes the technique might help researchers in the future examine the atmospheres of other exoplanets closer in make-up to Earth.

    “With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away,” said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics at NASA. “We’re at a point now in exoplanet science where we are moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them.”

  • NASA 3D Printer Flying to ISS in 2014

    NASA 3D Printer Flying to ISS in 2014

    Despite vast cuts to NASA’s budget over the past several years, the space agency still seems to be able to push beyond the boundaries of reality and make science fiction science fact.

    Just last week, the Mars Curiosity rover was able to find evidence of water on the Red Planet. Now, NASA has announced that it will send a 3D printer to the International Space Station in 2014.

    The thought behind the project is to avert any potential disasters that could happen in space due to limited resources: “Imagine an astronaut needing to make a life-or-death repair on the International Space Station. Rather than hoping that the necessary parts and tools are on the station already, what if the parts could be 3D printed when they needed them?” stated Aaron Kemmer, the chief-executive of Made in Space, the technology start-up that has been chosen to lead development for the project.

    3D printing, more formally known as additive manufacturing, works by layering material (right now the most popular being forms of plastic polymers) on top of itself in different patterns, leading to the formation of 3D, solid objects.

    Mike Chen, the co-founder of Made in Space, explained why being able to print objects in space is much more advantageous than making them here in Earth and then shipping them out of the atmosphere: “Everything that you launch is going to have to withstand up to 9Gs in the rocket and crazy vibrations. Things in space are vastly over-engineered, really, for the first 8 minutes of its existence. Think about what you can do now that you have 3D printing capabilities on orbit. For the first time, we’ll be able to design things for space that don’t ever have to exist in a gravity environment.”

    The biggest challenge facing the Made in Space currently, however, is exactly how to make a printer that will operate correctly in outer-space. The team needs to find solutions to such problems as not having enough power and containing fumes that are given off as a by-product of the 3D printing process.

    If the team is successful, though, averting crises in space will be much easier. So far this year, astronauts in the ISS have had to repair a coolant leak, attempt repairs to a broken solar-panel, and abort a space-walk due to the astronaut’s helmet filling with water. These issues would be much easier to handle if any tool or part the astronauts needed was able to be at their disposal in a matter of minutes, instead of waiting for Earth to send them the parts or improvising, like the 1970 Apollo 13 crew had to.

    The team at Made in Space, despite current technological limitations, still has huge aspirations: “We’re going to build a Death Star. Then it’s all going to be over,” stated Jason Dunne, chief technology officer.

    If one had to choose between zombie apocalypse or death by Death Star as an end to the Earth, the decision would be nigh impossible. Please make this a reality, Made in Space. For all us nerds/geeks/fan-people. Please.

    Image via YouTube

  • Government Shutdown: What to Expect

    Government Shutdown: What to Expect

    Since Congress was unable to agree on the fiscal near-future, it’s looking likely that the government will grind to a screeching halt.

    As complex as the process is, and as unpredictable as it may be (Congress may reach a last-minute agreement unbeknownst to the public), government programs have begun to identify areas that need to remain in operation. Any workers not responsible for life or property will keep working, but will not be paid until the shutdown is resolved.

    CNN Money reported a large series of updates today about the potential effects of the government shutdown:

    •Military service members will see a paycheck delay, although all active-duty military and reserve personnel will remain working.
    •Temporary duty travel will be canceled unless its related to the war in Afghanistan or connected to the safety of life, protection of property, or maintaining foreign relations.
    •Families of service members who died in the line of duty will not receive benefits until the shutdown is resolved.
    •Essential civilian defense personnel will keep working, but non-essential personnel will be furloughed without pay unless their salary isn’t funded by appropriations.
    •Museums and zoos run by the federal government will be closed, and tourists will be turned away.
    •The housing department will be furloughed; thus, FHA loans may be delayed.
    •The Department of Housing and Urban Development will furlough 96 percent of its workforce.
    •Employees whose jobs are not funded by federal appropriations will keep working, alongside presidential appointees.
    •The Federal Courts will remain open for approximately 10 business days; all proceedings and deadlines will remain unaffected unless otherwise indicated.
    •The Department of Justice will furlough 15 percent of its workforce.
    •The Department of Health and Human Services will furlough 52 percent of its workforce; hardest hit will be the Administration for Children and Families, the Administration for Community Living and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
    •The Center for Disease Control will maintain a minimal amount of staff required to oversee outbreak investigations, protect lab samples and staff the 24/7 emergency operations center.
    •The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will continue to implement the Affordable Healthcare Act (popularly known as Obamacare) and that Medicare will largely remain uninterrupted.
    •Chemical spill investigations will be halted, as the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board will furlough 37 of 40 staff members.
    •NASA will keep enough employees on to verify the safety of crews on the International Space Station and continue in-progress satellite missions. All other NASA activity will virtually cease.

    In addition, USA Today has a fantastic Q-and-A session regarding the shutdown, which you can check out here.

    [Image via an 11-second HD YouTube video of the Capitol Building]

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Examines Sandstone Pebbles

    Mars Rover Curiosity Examines Sandstone Pebbles

    Two weeks ago, NASA announced that Mars rover Curiosity had reached the first of five waypoints along its months-long drive to a Martian mountain named Mount Sharp. Researchers were hoping to investigate rocks in the area for comparison to those already seen by the rover. Today, NASA announced that their observations were fruitful, as the rocks at the waypoint seem to have been formed by flowing water.

    “We examined pebbly sandstone deposited by water flowing over the surface, and veins or fractures in the rock,” said Dawn Sumner, a Curiosity science team member at the University of California at Davis. “We know the veins are younger than the sandstone because they cut through it, but they appear to be filled with grains like the sandstone.”

    NASA has nicknamed the waypoint area “Darwin,” and it is located around one-fifth of the way along Curiosity’s current route. It is the first of five planned waypoints on the journey. Curiosity spent around four days examining rocks in the area with the instruments located on its arm. The rover finished its Darwin examination on Sunday and set off once again, traveling a relatively conservative 75 feet toward Mount Sharp.

    The new observations back up those the rover found in Yellowknife Bay, where Curiosity spent the first half of 2013. The rover’s mission to determine whether Mars ever had conditions suitable for basic life has already been completed.

    “We want to understand the history of water in Gale Crater,” said Sumner. “Did the water flow that deposited the pebbly sandstone at Waypoint 1 occur at about the same time as the water flow at Yellowknife Bay? If the same fluid flow produced the veins here and the veins at Yellowknife Bay, you would expect the veins to have the same composition. We see that the veins are different, so we know the history is complicated. We use these observations to piece together the long-term history.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • NASA: Deep Impact Spacecraft Officially Dead

    NASA: Deep Impact Spacecraft Officially Dead

    Earlier this month, NASA revealed that its scientists and engineers were still attempting to contact the Deep Impact spacecraft. Contact with the probe was lost in early August, and researchers now believe Deep Impact suffered a software glitch, causing its computers to constantly reboot. With the spacecraft unable to control its attitude, NASA’s attempts to contact the probe were made harder.

    This weekend NASA announced that its attempts to contact Deep Impact have ceased. The mission has officially been ended after one month without contact with the spacecraft. The agency believes that the same error which made it difficult to determine the position of the probe’s radio antenna also prevented the craft’s solar array from pointing toward the sun. Without solar power, Deep Impact’s battery and propulsion systems may have become frozen.

    “Despite this unexpected final curtain call, Deep Impact already achieved much more than ever was envisioned,” said Lindley Johnson, the Discovery program executive at NASA Headquarters. “Deep Impact has completely overturned what we thought we knew about comets and also provided a treasure trove of additional planetary science that will be the source data of research for years to come.”

    Deep Impact was launched in January 2005 on a mission to study the comet Tempel 1. In July 2005 the spacecraft deployed a probe that hit the comet, allowing researchers to examine material from the inside of the comet. After completing its primary mission, Deep Impact logged around 4.7 billion miles in the solar system, traveling to study the comets Hartley 2, C/2009 P1, and ISON.

    “Six months after launch, this spacecraft had already completed its planned mission to study comet Tempel 1,” said Tim Larson, Deep Impact project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “But the science team kept finding interesting things to do, and through the ingenuity of our mission team and navigators and support of NASA’s Discovery Program, this spacecraft kept it up for more than eight years, producing amazing results all along the way.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Has No Methane, Reports Curiosity Rover

    Mars Has No Methane, Reports Curiosity Rover

    Based on recent reports sent back by the Curiosity rover on Mars, scientists have come to the conclusion that Mars most certainly does not have any martian cows, or any other organic organisms for that matter.

    The Curiosity rover landed on Mars in October of 2012, and from then until June made 6 different analyses of the atmosphere. The goal was to hopefully find the presence of methane. On Earth, methane is produced by almost all living organisms. (Especially cows, hence the earlier lame attempt at a joke.) Thus, if Curiosity would have found presence of methane on Mars, proof of life existing on Mars would have almost undeniable.

    Scientists were looking for methane due to earlier reports from observations here on Earth in 2003 that there were huge plumes of the gas in Mars’s atmosphere. When building Curiosity, scientists made sure to equip it with the best methane detector available to man – the Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS). This device can search for methane through 2 different means: One laser looks exclusively for the spectral lines of methane, and the other can detect methane, water, carbon, and oxygen. Because of the sophistication of the equipment, scientists are 95% sure that there are no methane producing organisms on the planet.

    Despite those overwhelming statistics, the findings do not completely dissolve hope for life on Mars. While scientists still have no real answers for the discrepancies between the methane readings from Earth and the ones made by the Curiosity rover, they are still holding out hope for life on the red planet: “If it had found methane, that would have been killer. Yes, it’s disappointing in that we didn’t get a pony for Christmas. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t ponies out there,” stated Dr. Zurbin, president of the nonprofit Mars Society. (But once again, we definitely know there are no cows.)

    Even Curiosity herself (Are rovers called girls like cars?) has not given up hope for life on Mars:

    So where to search next? Considering scientists have had no luck searching the surface of the planet for life-forms, the next stop seems to be underground. All evidence points to the fact that Mars was once a hot and wet planet (Now would be the time for an inappropriate joke about red-heads, but I’ll let that one slide). If there is no water on the surface, odds are that there is some below the surface. Also, the equipment Curiosity has to measure methane levels is about the best money can buy, but that doesn’t mean it is perfect. The readings could be wrong. And if they are, there is still hope for Martian cows.

    Image via Twitter

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Doesn’t Find Methane in Martian Air

    Mars Rover Curiosity Doesn’t Find Methane in Martian Air

    Mars rover Curiosity was sent to Mars with a primary mission to discover if the red planet’s environment was ever suitable for life as we known it. As part of that mission, the rover has been analyzing Martian materials, searching for methane – a hydrocarbon that could be a sign of life. Initial chemical analyses on Mars soil samples failed to find any Methane, and the rover moved on to testing the planet’s atmosphere.

    From October 2012 to this summer (on Earth), Curiosity analyzed the Martian atmosphere on six separate occasions. Today, NASA definitively stated that Curiosity’s Tunable Laser Spectrometer has failed to find significant concentrations of methane in the Martian atmosphere. The agency estimates there is less than 1.3 parts per billion of Methane in Mars’ atmosphere. This conflicts with previous research that had found evidence for the compound on Mars, estimating up to 45 parts per billion in the planet’s atmosphere.

    “It would have been exciting to find methane, but we have high confidence in our measurements, and the progress in expanding knowledge is what’s really important,” said Chris Webster, lead author of a paper on the findings published today in the journal Science Express. “We measured repeatedly from Martian spring to late summer, but with no detection of methane.”

    Methane can sometimes be a by-product of biological processes, which is why high estimates of methane on Mars excited researchers. Curiosity’s findings could be seen as a disappointment, but Mars researchers are trying their best not to be dour.

    “This important result will help direct our efforts to examine the possibility of life on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for Mars exploration at NASA. “It reduces the probability of current methane-producing Martian microbes, but this addresses only one type of microbial metabolism. As we know, there are many types of terrestrial microbes that don’t generate methane.”

    (Image courtesy NASA)

  • Orbital Sciences Sends its First Commercial Cargo Ship to ISS

    Orbital Sciences Sends its First Commercial Cargo Ship to ISS

    The AP reported yesterday that the Orbital Sciences Corporation successfully launched a rocket from the eastern shore of Virginia. The occasion was marked, as most occasions are, by a tweet:

    OSC’s Cygnus capsule is bound for NASA’s International Space Station with 1300 pounds of food, clothes, and other goodies including a chocolate stash for astronaut Karen Nyberg.

    Following some tests, Cygnus will be expected to dock with the ISS on Sunday. NASA’s associate administrator Robert Lightfoot said of the occasion that “If you needed more tangible proof that this is a new era of exploration, it’s right here, right now in Virginia.”

    David W. Thompson, the president and CEO of OSC, said “We are very pleased with the early operations of the COTS demonstration mission… The Cygnus spacecraft appears to be fully healthy and operating as expected during this early phase of its mission… There is clearly still a lot of work in front of us, but the mission looks like it is off to a great start.”

    The successful launch makes OSC the second business to ship goods into space by rocket. Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, has been delivering supplies to NASA under contract for over a year now. SpaceX bases their launches out of California.

    After about 30 days of being attached to the ISS, Cygnus will be filled with refuse and sent to break up upon reentry to the atmosphere, as all Russian, Japanese, and European supply craft end up — trash bins for astronauts. The executive vice-president of OSC, Frank Culbertson, said of the process that “We categorize it as disposable cargo… Others may call it trash.”

    This first mission is just a test; if all goes as planned, a second Cygnus capsule will be launched in December. The second launch would be the first operational mission under OSC’s $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

    If you want to check out OSC’s press release regarding the launch, it’s located here.

    [Image via a YouTube video of a previous launch by Orbital Sciences]

  • Robot Snakes May Soon be Sent to Mars

    Robot Snakes May Soon be Sent to Mars

    The Mars Curiosity Rover has been on Mars for a little over one year now, and much has been learned during this time. One of the main things that has been learned is that maneuvering on the rocky, red planet is rough. NASA has previously lost one Mars rover, Spirit, because it got stuck in the sand.

    Norway’s SINTEF Research Institute, backed by a $85,000 grant from the European Space Agency (ESA), has proposed a solution to the locomotion issue on Mars. Their inspiration? Snakes. “Biological snakes can climb rocks and slide through small holes. Imagine if you could have a snake trained to find people in fallen down buildings,” stated Aksel Transeth, a senior research scientist at SINTEF.

    Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University (the college that brought us this crazy robotic snake), added more insight as to why a snake rover would be beneficial towards the mission on Mars: “The snake robot could travel to cliffs and look underneath overhangs. It could find a crevasse, crawl down it and extract a sample, which itself could tell us how Mars evolved as a planet.”

    Apparently, a snake robot could be the best thing that happened to Mars since Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, SINTEF does not plan for the snake robot to act alone on the Red Planet: “We are looking at several alternatives to enable a rover and a robot to work together. Since the rover has a powerful energy source, it can provide the snake robot with power through a cable extending between the rover and the robot. If the robot had to use its own batteries, it would run out of power and we would lose it,” stated Transeth.

    Currently, the team at SINTEF is still debating how the partnership between rover and snake would best be implemented: “One option is to make the robot into one of the vehicle’s arms, with the ability to disconnect and reconnect itself, so that it can be lowered to the ground, where it can crawl about independently.” Being able to have some form of independence would be the most advantageous implementation of the snake, seeing as mobility is the main issue the team is trying to solve with this innovation. Pål Liljebäck, a fellow research at SINTEF, added that “The connection between the robot and the rover also means that the snake robot will be able to assist the vehicle if the latter gets stuck.” This would ensure that a situation similar to the one that happened with NASA’s Spirit would not occur again.

    All of this news leaves just one question: Why in the world did we cut funding to NASA? If we hadn’t, we could all be riding super-awesome mechanical snakes everywhere, much like Paul learns to do in Dune (Except these worms weren’t mechanical….But, they were on a planet similar to Mars.)

    Image via YouTube

  • NASA Still Trying to Contact Lost Deep Impact Spacecraft

    NASA Still Trying to Contact Lost Deep Impact Spacecraft

    NASA today provided a brief update about the Deep Impact spacecraft, which the agency has lost contact with. NASA scientists and engineers are still attempting to contact the probe, but have had no success.

    Just over one month ago, on August 8, NASA lost contact with the Deep Impact spacecraft. The agency now believes that the probe’s software has glitched, and that its computers are currently rebooting themselves over and over.

    Deep Impact was launched in early 2005 on a mission to study comets. The spacecraft has traveled nearly 4.7 billion miles since that time. Deep Impact arrived at the comet Tempel 1 during the summer following its launch, successfully launching an probe that hit the comet. In the years since, the spacecraft has helped researchers observe the Hartley 2, C/2009 P1, and ISON comets.

    With Deep Impact’s computers now unavailable, NASA believes the spacecraft has no way to control its thrusters. Unable to control the probe’s attitude, researchers cannot be sure of the position of the craft’s antennas – making the task of contacting it that much harder. The lack of control also means the spacecraft’s solar array may not be pointed toward the sun, raising concerns about how much power Deep Impact still has.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA’s Voyager 1 Enters Interstellar Space

    NASA’s Voyager 1 Enters Interstellar Space

    NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has left our solar system, to become the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. New data shows that the craft is presently traveling through plasma, the ionized gas that makes up the space between stars, roughly 12 billion miles from the sun.

    NASA reports that the probe had entered the plasma region about a year ago, though is in a transitional area, to where the effects of our sun are still present. Ed Stone, a Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, says, “now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind’s historic leap into interstellar space. The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we’ve all been asking, ‘Are we there yet?’ Yes, we are.”

    The Voyager craft doesn’t have a plasma sensor, so scientists had to get creative in order to figure out what sort of environment it was in. In March, 2012, the sun emitted a burst of solar wind and magnetic fields called a coronal mass ejection, giving scientists what they’d needed to get a general idea of the craft’s position. It took 13 months for this burst to hit Voyager, and on April 9, the probe’s plasma wave instrument showed the density of the plasma in the space it was in – about 40 times more dense that what was previously gauged in the outer layer of the heliosphere.

    The analysis of the new data was conducted by the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, led by Don Gurnett. “We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data – they showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble,” Gurnett said, adding, “clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma.”

    When Voyager 1 was launched decades ago, it’s primary objective was to obtain detailed images from the Jovian and Saturnian systems, which was accomplished in 1980. Presently, the nuclear-powered craft is traveling at about 11 miles per second, and likely won’t be able to power any of its instruments by 2025. The craft is loaded with a gold-plated disc full of audio and visual information, in case any sentient beings from other planets come across it. The disc includes pictures of earth and earthlings, various sounds including whale calls and baby cries, and music by Mozart and Chuck Berry. The scientific information included also kindly gives aliens pointers on how to more easily defeat us.

    Image courtesy of Wikimeida Commons.

  • Frog Photobomb During NASA Launch

    Frog Photobomb During NASA Launch

    One would think that after NASA launched LADEE on Saturday, most of the talk would be about the potential this exploratory mission has. While that’s true to a degree, the thing getting the bulk of the attention from the launch right now is a frog that was unfortunate enough to get a little too close to the rocket. The incident was captured on camera, making for one of the greatest photobombs of all time.

    The photo below was posted on the NASA website with the caption, “A still camera on a sound trigger captured this intriguing photo of an airborne frog as NASA’s LADEE spacecraft lifts off from Pad 0B at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The photo team confirms the frog is real and was captured in a single frame by one of the remote cameras used to photograph the launch. The condition of the frog, however, is uncertain.”

    (image)

    After the initial amusement, shock and (maybe) a little bit of sadness for the photobombing frog, many are wondering just how the frog got up that high. According to Universe Today, the rocket’s launch pad has a “pool for the high-volume water deluge system that activates during launches to protect the pad from damage and for noise suppression, and likely there was a (formerly) damp, cool place that was a nice spot for a frog to hang out.”

    Hopefully none of the frog’s other amphibian buddies were hanging around during the launch. Otherwise, they were certainly in for the shock of their lives. Check out some comments from Twitter users on the frog photobomb below.

    Images via NASA/Chris Perry and YouTube

  • Voyager 1 Officially Left The Solar System One Year Ago

    Voyager 1 Officially Left The Solar System One Year Ago

    Last year, the Voyager 1 spacecraft entered a new region at the edge of our solar system. The stellar winds around the probe changed dramatically, though the magnetic field surrounding it was left unchanged. NASA researchers referred to this region as a “magnetic highway,” where charged particles can pass into and out of the sun’s heliosphere.

    The discovery ignited debate among researchers about how we might determine whether Voyager had left the solar system. NASA maintained that the probe had not yet hit interstellar space, preferring to wait until Voyager broke free of the sun’s magnetic field. Other researchers argued that the spacecraft was already out, stating that intriguing magnetic field readings could be due to a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection.

    Today, NASA finally announced that Voyager 1 is the first human-created object to leave our solar system. The agency conceded that the probe entered interstellar around one year ago on August 25, 2012 when particle density readings shifted dramatically. The determination was made based on a new analysis of Voyager data conducted by researchers at the University of Iowa. The new data was published today in the journal Science.

    “Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind’s historic leap into interstellar space,” said Ed Stone, a Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology. “The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we’ve all been asking — ‘Are we there yet?’ Yes, we are.”

    The new report shows that Voyager 1 is now surrounded by a dense cloud of plasma that researchers expected to find in interstellar space. Though the Voyager probe has no plasma sensor, researchers were able to use a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun to estimate the plasma density. The CME left the sun in March of 2012 and traveled 13 months to reach Voyager, vibrating its plasma wave instrument.

    “We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data — they showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble,” said Don Gurnett, lead author on the paper and head of the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa. “Clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Mars Rover Curiosity Reaches ‘Panorama Point’

    Mars Rover Curiosity Reaches ‘Panorama Point’

    For around two months now, Mars rover Curiosity has been on a months-long journey to a Martian mountain named Mount Sharp. There, NASA researchers hope the mountain’s multiple exposed layers will shed light on the red planet’s past.

    Today, NASA announced that Curiosity has reached the first big milestone of its 5.3-mile drive. The rover has reached a planned waypoint scientists are calling “Panorama Point.” From there, the rover can see exposed bedrock that researchers will be examining for several days.

    Panorama Point is the first of five such waypoints planned for Curiosity’s drive to Mount Sharp. The rover drove 464 feet on September 5, nearly reaching its temporary destination. That drive was yet another one-day driving record for the rover. Part of the long drive was navigated by Curiosity itself using its autonomous navigation systems, which were activated only weeks ago.

    Curiosity team members are currently evaluating pictures taken by the rover to select various rocks to examine in the coming days. They intend to learn how Martian rocks change between the rover’s first large research site and the base of Mount Sharp.

    “We want to know how the rocks at Yellowknife Bay are related to what we’ll see at Mount Sharp,” said John Grotzinger, a Mars Science Laboratory project scientist. “That’s what we intend to get from the waypoints between them. We’ll use them to stitch together a timeline – which layers are older, which are younger.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

  • Moon Mission Launch: NASA’s LADEE, A Success

    Moon Mission Launch: NASA’s LADEE, A Success

    Yesterday, NASA launched a new moon probe, which has the technical name of Lunar Atmospheric Environment Explorer (LADEE). It was launched late on Friday night, September 6, and lived up to all of the hype and then more. The probe was launched from the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. It is always quite a sight to see something being launched into space, but objects like this one continue to be more impressive and advanced, each time they are built.

    This new probe is scheduled to observe the atmosphere of Earth’s natural satellite for around 160 days, according to International Business Times. While the launch was viewed as a success, the space agency did note a technical issue after the spacecraft had separated from the launch vehicle.

    Just hours after the launch, officials announced that the spacecraft’s reaction wheels had unexpectedly shut down, says NBC News. The reaction wheels are used to position and stabilize LADEE, and were turned on as it was spinnig too fast after separating from the Minotaur V Rocket. The team behind LADEE’s production will analyze the spacecraft as part of a routine checkout and NASA could spend more time in order to figure out what caused the incident to happen.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtB0tl5vYrY

    LADEE, which is only the size of a small car, is expected to reach the moon on October 6. A couple of the main goal’s of LADEE’s are to finally learn the composition of the Moon’s delicate atmosphere, and how it might change over time. Another unsolved puzzle is whether dust actually levitates from the Moon’s surface. A thorough understanding of these characteristics will address long-standing unknowns, allowing scientists to understand other planetary bodies as well, according to NASA. The mission is divided into missions phases, which include Launch, Ascent, Activation and Checkout, Phasing Orbits, Lunar Orbit Insertion, Commissioning, Science, and Decommissioning.

    The spacecraft is supposed to take 30 days to reach the Moon and will perform its lunar atmosphere and dust mission for approximately 100 days. It will also test a new laser communications system that NASA has described as being like a new type of interplanetary internet.

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  • NASA’s NuSTAR Finds Its First 10 Supermassive Black Holes

    NASA’s NuSTAR Finds Its First 10 Supermassive Black Holes

    Astronomers this week announced that NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has spotted its first 10 supermassive black holes. NuSTAR, an X-ray space telescope, was launched in June 2012 on a mission to conduct surveys for supermassive black holes (those billions of times more massive than our sun) and supernova remnants. A new paper, published in the Astrophysical Journal, describes how these first black holes were found by accident, in images taken of other likely black hole candidates.

    “We found the black holes serendipitously,” said David Alexander lead author of the paper and an astronomer at Durham University. “We were looking at known targets and spotted the black holes in the background of the images.”

    These black holes are the first of what astronomers hope are hundreds to be found by NuSTAR in the coming years. The telescope is able to pick up the high-energy X-ray light that are given off by galaxies containing supermassive black holes. Finding these objects will help researchers determine several questions, such as how many supermassive black holes there are in the universe, and whether they may be the source of the observed cosmic X-ray background.

    “We are getting closer to solving a mystery that began in 1962,” said Alexander. “Back then, astronomers had noted a diffuse X-ray glow in the background of our sky but were unsure of its origin. Now, we know that distant supermassive black holes are sources of this light, but we need NuSTAR to help further detect and understand the black hole populations.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Massive Storm Kicked Up Water Ice On Saturn

    Massive Storm Kicked Up Water Ice On Saturn

    Saturn has been known to erupt in storms from time to time. Though not as active as Jupiter, the weather in Saturn’s atmosphere has been known to form large swirling vortexes. Now, in one of the largest storms ever observed on the planet, astronomers have spotted signs of water ice.

    The storm in question occurred on Saturn in 2010, and is the same one researchers determined was so large that it wrapped around the planet and ran into itself. New research on the storm shows that the storm was so large that it brought water ice from deep in the planet’s atmosphere to the surface. The observations were made by NASA’s Cassini probe, which observed the storm with infrared instruments. They have been published this week in the journal Icarus.

    “We think this huge thunderstorm is driving these cloud particles upward, sort of like a volcano bringing up material from the depths and making it visible from outside the atmosphere,” said Lawrence Sromovsky, lead author of the paper and a planetary scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The upper haze is so optically thick that it is only in the stormy regions where the haze is penetrated by powerful updrafts that you can see evidence for the ammonia ice and the water ice. Those storm particles have an infrared color signature that is very different from the haze particles in the surrounding atmosphere.”

    Sromovsky and his colleagues found signatures for water and ammonia ice among the Cassini data, as well as a third unconfirmed substance they believe to be ammonium hydrosulfide. This supports current theories about Saturn’s atmosphere, which scientists believe to be composed of distinct layers. Water clouds are believed to reside at a layer more than 100 miles deep within Saturn. The observed ice could have come from this layer, frozen as it was churned upward by the storm.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)