Pluto and beyond, Space Science, Space Systems

New Horizons: A better view of Pluto + Studying Pluto’s pickup ions

July 9, 2015 TopSpacer

The images of Pluto from the New Horizons probe get better day by day. Here is the latest:

A ‘Heart’ from Pluto as Flyby Begins

After a more than nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to Pluto, it’s showtime for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, as the flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway.

In the early morning hours of July 8, mission scientists received this new view of Pluto—the most detailed yet returned by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard New Horizons. The image was taken on July 7, when the spacecraft was just under 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, and is the first to be received since the July 4 anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode.

This view is centered roughly on the area that will be seen close-up during New Horizons’ July 14 closest approach. This side of Pluto is dominated by three broad regions of varying brightness. Most prominent are an elongated dark feature at the equator, informally known as “the whale,” and a large heart-shaped bright area measuring some 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) across on the right. Above those features is a polar region that is intermediate in brightness.

“The next time we see this part of Pluto at closest approach, a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today,” said Jeff Moore, Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team leader of NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It will be incredible!”

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A scientist in the New Horizons mission, Matt Hill, writes about what plasma science can tell us about Pluto : Science Shorts: A space physicist’s view of Pluto – New Horizons –

Yes, but why would a space physicist study Pluto?

After all, at Pluto we don’t have much to go on. We don’t expect a significant magnetic field, since we don’t believe there is a molten metal core, but mounting evidence demonstrates that the atmosphere of Pluto is large (if tenuous by Earthly standards) and releasing a significant, steady rate of material. These neutrally charged, Plutonian gas particles from its atmosphere are expected to interact with the impinging, highly charged solar wind and solar photons resulting in freshly charged “pickup ions” that, depending on their kinetic energy, are detectable by the Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) time-of-flight mass spectrometer on board New Horizons.

These pickup ions can help tell us about the rate at which Pluto loses its atmosphere, but also Pluto’s production of these pickup ions provides us with the opportunity to study the pickup ions themselves at the moment of their creation. The physics of how they are accelerated and transported is not well understood (although there are many theories). So when New Horizons races through Pluto’s atmosphere and PEPSSI detects the ions there, I will be looking out for pickup ions and hoping to learn how the pickup ions get their energy and how they exit the Pluto system. Only a little more patience is needed—it all happens next month!

Astronomy

ESO: Huge gamma-ray bursts linked to super magnetized neutron stars

July 8, 2015 TopSpacer

A new report from ESO (European Southern Observatory):

Biggest Explosions in the Universe Powered by Strongest Magnets
Some long-duration gamma-ray bursts are driven by magnetars

Observations from ESO’s La Silla and Paranal Observatories in Chile have for the first time demonstrated a link between a very long-lasting burst of gamma rays and an unusually bright supernova explosion. The results show that the supernova was not driven by radioactive decay, as expected, but was instead powered by the decaying super-strong magnetic fields around an exotic object called a magnetar. The results will appear in the journal Nature on 9 July 2015.

This artist’s impression shows a supernova and associated gamma-ray burst driven by a rapidly spinning neutron star with a very strong magnetic field — an exotic object known as a magnetar. Observations from ESO’s La Silla and Paranal Observatories in Chile have for the first time demonstrated a link between a very long-lasting burst of gamma rays and an unusually bright supernova explosion. The results show that the supernova following the burst GRB 111209A was not driven by radioactive decay, as expected, but was instead powered by the decaying super-strong magnetic fields around a magnetar.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are one of the outcomes associated with the biggest explosions to have taken place since the Big Bang. They are detected by orbiting telescopes that are sensitive to this type of high-energy radiation, which cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, and then observed at longer wavelengths by other telescopes both in space and on the ground.

GRBs usually only last a few seconds, but in very rare cases the gamma rays continue for hours [1]. One such ultra-long duration GRB was picked up by the Swift satellite on 9 December 2011 and named GRB 111209A. It was both one of the longest and brightest GRBs ever observed.

As the afterglow from this burst faded it was studied using both the GROND instrument on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla and also with the X-shooter instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal. The clear signature of a supernova, later named SN 2011kl, was found. This is the first time that a supernova has been found to be associated with an ultra-long GRB [2].

The lead author of the new paper, Jochen Greiner from the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany explains:

“Since a long-duration gamma-ray burst is produced only once every 10 000–100 000 supernovae, the star that exploded must be somehow special. Astronomers had assumed that these GRBs came from very massive stars — about 50 times the mass of the Sun — and that they signalled the formation of a black hole. But now our new observations of the supernova SN 2011kl, found after the GRB 111209A, are changing this paradigm for ultra-long duration GRBs.”

In the favoured scenario of a massive star collapse (sometimes known as a collapsar) the week-long burst of optical/infrared emission from the supernova is expected to come from the decay of radioactive nickel-56 formed in the explosion [3]. But in the case of GRB 111209A the combined GROND and VLT observations showed unambiguously for the first time that this could not be the case [4]. Other suggestions were also ruled out [5].

The only explanation that fitted the observations of the supernova following GRB 111209A was that it was being powered by a magnetar — a tiny neutron star spinning hundreds of times per second and possessing a magnetic field much stronger than normal neutron stars, which are also known as radio pulsars [6]. Magnetars are thought to be the most strongly magnetised objects in the known Universe. This is the first time that such an unambiguous connection between a supernova and a magnetar has been possible.

Paolo Mazzali, co-author of the study, reflects on the significance of the new findings:

“The new results provide good evidence for an unexpected relation between GRBs, very bright supernovae and magnetars. Some of these connections were already suspected on theoretical grounds for some years, but linking everything together is an exciting new development.”

“The case of SN 2011kl/GRB 111209A forces us to consider an alternative to the collapsar scenario. This finding brings us much closer to a new and clearer picture of the workings of GRBs,” concludes Jochen Greiner.

Solar Sci-Fi, Space Settlement

“Transmissions from Colony One” – radio drama enters third season

July 8, 2015 TopSpacer

Check out the online science fiction series – Transmissions from Colony One – now entering in its third season. The program is a radio drama

set in the near-future of 2057. Twenty years prior, United States President Richard Thorpe (R-CO) announced the start of a “New Dawn,” a global attitude shift toward widespread space exploration. Technological advents such as fusion energy, worldwide high-speed railway systems, and internet speeds faster than ever envisioned laid the groundwork for an economic explosion, but it lacked a platform on which to occur. Thorpe gave the world an outlet for its immense wealth, asking people across the world to simply look up for humanity’s future.

In the twenty years since, the world has changed drastically. MECTI (Mars Exploration, Colonization and Terraformation Initiative) was established with the goal of starting a permanent human presence on Mars. This meant using fusion-propelled rocketry, the construction of a massive space elevator to make transportation from the surface of Earth to low orbit more cost and energy-efficient, and the creation of a mammoth space station that would dwarf today’s International Space Station. All of these things needed to be done in order for MECTI to work. Now, twenty years after the birth of MECTI, the first crew, MECTI-1, is about to land on the surface of Mars, in the flat expansive region of Amazonis Planitia. This will be the first manned mission to the surface of Mars, and the first of thousands of MECTI manned missions to the Red Planet.

Transmissions From Colony One chronicles the on-board recordings of MECTI-1 as the international crew of sixteen (eight men, eight women) conduct their mission…

The characters are portrayed by a big Cast of actors.

The Episodes can be heard individually or combined for each season:

* Complete Season One:

* Complete Season Two:

The episodes are also available in a Youtube collection.

Here is a the trailer for Season One and the first episode:

Activism, Education, Multiple media

RocketSTEM Magazine – July 2015: “Kerbal, New Horizons, Al Worden, Lunar Rover & More”

July 8, 2015 TopSpacer

Check out the latest issue of RocketSTEM‘s magazine: Issue #12 • July 2015 – RocketSTEM

68 pages of inspiration await!
Kerbal, New Horizons, Al Worden, Lunar Rover & More

Space is hard. The past nine months have been difficult ones for rocketry. Multiple failures of Russian launch vehicles, the loss of SpaceShipOne during a test flight, the Antares rocket with the Orb-3 mission falling back to the launch pad in a fireball, and most recently, the disintegration of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

In this issue of RocketSTEM we bring you both success and failure. The success of the previously untested Lunar Rover sent to the Moon that carried the Apollo 15 astronauts further than any moonwalker before. And, of course, the failures of the above mentioned rocket launches.

But rather than tell you how hard it is to build and launch a spacecraft, we invite you to try for yourself. Kerbal Space Program is a game that is simple enough for a kid, yet advanced enough for engineers at NASA, JPL, and SpaceX to enjoy playing it too.

Download the game and run your own space agency. Just don’t be discouraged when your first rocket explodes upon launch.