Category Archives: Space Science

Mars, Space Science

Mars: Insight news conferences + Mars 2020 landing target + Soft landslides

NASA TV will webcast two programs today about the upcoming touch down of the Insight lander on Mars: NASA Live: InSight Mars Landing | NASA 

NASA’s InSight lander is scheduled to touch down on Mars at approximately 3 p.m. EST, Monday, Nov. 26. NASA TV live coverage of the InSight Mars landing will begin at 2 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. UTC). Upcoming briefings:

Wednesday, Nov. 21, 1 p.m. EST: InSight Mars Lander news conference: Mission engineering overview.
Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2 p.m. EST: InSight Mars Lander news conference: Mission science overview

It will take about 8 minutes for signals from Insight to reach earth during its descent through the atmosphere and the touch down on the surface. Here’s an item about the communications systems that allow for ground controllers to know what happened : How NASA Will Know When InSight Touches Down – NASA JPL

 

Insight landing sequence: Credits: Emily Lakdawalla for The Planetary Society

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The Mars 2020 Rover, which is similar in design and capabilities to the Curiosity rover, now knows where it will land: NASA Announces Landing Site for Mars 2020 Rover – NASA JPL

This Mars map depicts the final four locations under consideration for the landing site of Mars 2020. The topographic map of Mars was created by the Mars Orbital Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on board the robot Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft. MOLA measured heights on Mars by precisely determining the time it took for a low power laser beam to bounce off the surface. Image Credit: NASA/MGS/MOLA Science Team. Larger view

Speaking of Curiosity, here is a recent update on its activities: Curiosity on the Move Again | NASA.

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Bob Zimmerman examines an image taken of the Martian surface and highlights what is similar and different between geologic processes on Mars versus on the Earth: The soft landslides of Mars | Behind The Black

The light gravity of Mars, combined with different materials, a lot of dust, and a geological history different from Earth, produces events that — though reminiscent of similar geological events on Earth — are definitely not the same.

Landslide in Southern Mid-Latitude Crater – HiRISE

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Telescopes and Binoculars at Amazon

Gas giants Saturn, Jupiter, et al, Multiple media, Space Science

New images and video from Juno at Jupiter

More cool views of Jupiter via Juno images enhanced by citizen scientists:

** Jupiter in the Rearview Mirror | Mission Juno

In the final minutes of a recent close flyby of Jupiter, NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a departing view of the planet’s swirling southern hemisphere. This color-enhanced image was taken at 7:13 p.m. PDT on Sept. 6, 2018 (10:13 p.m. EDT) as the spacecraft performed its 15th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 55,600 miles (89,500 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, above a southern latitude of approximately 75 degrees.  Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt

** Juno’s Perijove-15 Jupiter Flyby, Reconstructed in 125-Fold Time-Lapse – Gerald Eichstädt

From the caption:

Early on September 07, 2018, UTC, NASA’s Juno probe successfully performed her Perijove-15 Jupiter flyby. Like during most of the recent Jupiter flybys, good contact to Earth and incremented storage allowed taking close-up images of good quality.

The movie is a reconstruction of the 112 minutes between 2018-09-07T00:30:00.000 and 2018-09-07T02:22:00.000 in 125-fold time-lapse.
It is based on 25 of the JunoCam images taken, and on spacecraft trajectory data provided via SPICE kernel files.

In steps of five real-time seconds, one still images of the movie has been rendered from at least one suitable raw image. This resulted in short scenes, usually of a few seconds. Playing with 25 images per second results in 125-fold time-lapse.

** Let Me See What Spring Is Like On Jupiter And Mars – Moshe16

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Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

 

Asteroids & Comets, Space Science, Space Systems

Video: Hayabusa-2 deploys MASCOT lander onto asteroid Ryuga

The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft continues its deployment of remote-control systems onto the asteroid Ryuga (see earlier posting here about deployment of two micro-rovers). On Wednesday the spacecraft released the MASCOT (Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout) lander, which was built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the French Space Agency (CNES).

MASCOT has four primary scientific tools to study the surface of the small asteroid:

  • MicrOmega – a hyperspectral infrared microscope to analyze the mineralogical properties of the surface materials.
  • MASCAM – “a multispectral wide field camera to provide geological images of the asteroid”.
  • MARA – a radiometer “to determine the surface temperature and the thermal inertia of the asteroid”.
  • MASMAG – a magnetometer, which measures magnetic field strength.

This video previewed the MASCOT mission, which lasted about 17 hours before its batteries ran out:

Artist’s view of the deployment of MASCOT:

“Left: Illustration of MASCOT separating from Hayabusa2. Right: Illustration of MASCOT landing on the surface of Ryugu. (Image credit: JAXA)”

The target area for the MASCOT “landing”:

“MASCOT landing site candidate region (light blue area). Since MASCOT is expected to bounce several times after first touching down, a reasonably wide region is selected. (Image credit: JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu, AIST, CNES, DLR). “

See also

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Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

 

Space Music, Space Science

Space Music: The Planets at 100 + A new suite of Planets for 2018

On the 100th anniversary of the debut of Gustav Holst’s Planets Suite, Brian Cox compares the actual planets to their personas in the music: Brian Cox on Holst’s Planets then and now – The Guardian

When The Planets was completed in 1916, little was known about the physical nature of the worlds represented musically by Gustav Holst, and he didn’t care. His focus was on the planets as metaphors for different facets of the psyche; War, Peace, Jollity, Old Age, Messenger, Magician and Mystic. Indeed, Holst wrote parts of the work as stand-alone pieces and co-opted them later.

Today we have visited all the planets and our discoveries have replaced their ancient astrological characters. At first sight, this new knowledge might appear to jar with Holst’s work, but this would be a superficial conclusion to draw. The planets have histories far richer than Holst could have imagined and reality delivers more powerful metaphors than myth. Set against what we now know, Holst’s work catalyses new ideas and generates powerful intellectual challenges which enrich and inform important debates in progress today, as art with depth can and perhaps must do.

Here is one orchestral rendition of the Suite:

A review of each planet: ‘The Planets’ at 100: A listener’s guide to Holst’s solar system | MPR News

A music project has created a new 21st Century version of the Planets suite: The Planets 2018 – Ligeti Quartet – SOUND UK

The idea to reimagine The Planets using modern science came from the young British composer Samuel Bordoli who, along with producers Sound UK, paired up each musician with a planet and a mentor and asked them each to write a five-minute piece for string quartet. Titled The Planets 2018, the results are to be performed by the Ligeti Quartet in planetariums across the country from Saturday.

The timing is neat. Not only does the first concert mark 100 years to the day that Holst first debuted his Planets suite, but Greenwich – where the planetarium tour begins – is the location where astronomers conclusively disproved Lowell’s claim of a Martian army building waterways 33.5 million miles away.

 

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Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

Asteroids & Comets, Space Science, Space Systems

The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft deployed two rovers onto the asteroid Ryugu

On Friday the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 has successfully placed two mini-rovers named MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1B onto the near earth asteroid Ryugu, which is about 1 kilometer (0.6 mi) in diameter:  They Made It! Japan’s Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land on Asteroid Ryugu.

Hayabusa-2 came within 55 meters of the surface of the asteroid to release the rovers. The spacecraft then moved back about 20 km from the surface. The rovers will explore the surface by short jumps or hops from one spot to another.

Here is a sampling of postings on Tweeter as the spacecraft approached the asteroid and then deployed the rovers: Tweets  by HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) | Twitter:

 

 

The ambitious mission is really just getting started:

  • The larger rover MASCOT will be deployed to the surface in October.
  • The mini-hopper MINERVA-II2 will be deployed in 2019.
  • Samples of the asteroid will be returned to earth in 2020.

Find more images from the spacecraft at Navigation Images from the MINERVA-Ⅱ1 deployment operation | Galleries | JAXA HAYABUSA2 PROJECT.

Animations of the mission events and technologies:

A press conference on the event:

 

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