Monthly Archives: May 2018

Mars, Space Science

NASA adds a helicopter to the 2020 Mars Rover mission

NASA will include a helicopter on the  Mars 2020 rover mission:

Mars Helicopter to Fly on NASA’s Next Red Planet Rover Mission 

NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars.

The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.

“NASA has a proud history of firsts,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars.”

U.S. Rep. John Culberson of Texas echoed Bridenstine’s appreciation of the impact of American firsts on the future of exploration and discovery.

“It’s fitting that the United States of America is the first nation in history to fly the first heavier-than-air craft on another world,” Culberson said. “This exciting and visionary achievement will inspire young people all over the United States to become scientists and engineers, paving the way for even greater discoveries in the future.”

Started in August 2013 as a technology development project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Mars Helicopter had to prove that big things could come in small packages. The result of the team’s four years of design, testing and redesign weighs in at little under four pounds (1.8 kilograms). Its fuselage is about the size of a softball, and its twin, counter-rotating blades will bite into the thin Martian atmosphere at almost 3,000 rpm – about 10 times the rate of a helicopter on Earth.

“Exploring the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars Helicopter exemplifies a successful marriage of science and technology innovation and is a unique opportunity to advance Mars exploration for the future,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. “After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world.”

The helicopter also contains built-in capabilities needed for operation at Mars, including solar cells to charge its lithium-ion batteries, and a heating mechanism to keep it warm through the cold Martian nights. But before the helicopter can fly at Mars it has to get there. It will do so attached to the belly pan of the Mars 2020 rover.

“The altitude record for a helicopter flying here on Earth is about 40,000 feet. The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it’s already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up,” said Mimi Aung, Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL. “To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be.”

Once the rover is on the planet’s surface, a suitable location will be found to deploy the helicopter down from the vehicle and place it onto the ground. The rover then will be driven away from the helicopter to a safe distance from which it will relay commands. After its batteries are charged and a myriad of tests are performed, controllers on Earth will command the Mars Helicopter to take its first autonomous flight into history.

NASA’s Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“We don’t have a pilot and Earth will be several light minutes away, so there is no way to joystick this mission in real time,” said Aung. “Instead, we have an autonomous capability that will be able to receive and interpret commands from the ground, and then fly the mission on its own.”

The full 30-day flight test campaign will include up to five flights of incrementally farther flight distances, up to a few hundred meters, and longer durations as long as 90 seconds, over a period. On its first flight, the helicopter will make a short vertical climb to 10 feet (3 meters), where it will hover for about 30 seconds.

As a technology demonstration, the Mars Helicopter is considered a high-risk, high-reward project. If it does not work, the Mars 2020 mission will not be impacted. If it does work, helicopters may have a real future as low-flying scouts and aerial vehicles to access locations not reachable by ground travel.

“The ability to see clearly what lies beyond the next hill is crucial for future explorers,” said Zurbuchen. “We already have great views of Mars from the surface as well as from orbit. With the added dimension of a bird’s-eye view from a ‘marscopter,’ we can only imagine what future missions will achieve.”

Mars 2020 will launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, and is expected to reach Mars in February 2021.

Animation of Mars helicopter and Mars 2020 rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-CalTech

The rover will conduct geological assessments of its landing site on Mars, determine the habitability of the environment, search for signs of ancient Martian life, and assess natural resources and hazards for future human explorers. Scientists will use the instruments aboard the rover to identify and collect samples of rock and soil, encase them in sealed tubes, and leave them on the planet’s surface for potential return to Earth on a future Mars mission.

The Mars 2020 Project at JPL in Pasadena, California, manages rover development for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.

For more information about NASA’s Mars missions, go to: https://www.nasa.gov/mars

Science and Technology

Sci-Tech Videos: Uber Elevate Summit 2018 – Latest on eVTOL flying taxi technology

Uber Elevate is Uber’s program to support development of electric powered flying taxis that take off and land vertically. The second Uber Elevate Summit was held this week in Los Angeles and companies from around the world presented the status and plans for the vehicles. Infrastructure, regulatory issues, battery technology, electric power supply, and other issues surrounding such services were discussed.

Here are videos of the presentations on the first day. See the schedule for a list of the session.

Here is a video from Uber showing a generic version of the service they would like to provide to urban customers:

** Here is a video of the talk given by Aurora Flight Sciences Founder & CEO John Langford on how “Aurora is building the certifiable autonomous systems that will enable all of tomorrow’s intelligent aircraft – of any shape”:

** Bell Helicopter presented their concept for an air taxi, though their video shows only the interior of their design:

** Pipistrel introduced a new eVTOL design at the event – At 2nd UBER elevate summit Pipistrel reveals new eVTOL Concept and strategic partnership with Elan

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Science and Technology

Sci-Tech videos: A sprinkling of 21st Century technologies

** Boston Dynamics – “Getting some air, Atlas?”

** Boston Dynamics – “SpotMini Autonomous Navigation:

SpotMini autonomously navigates a specified route through an office and lab facility. Before the test, the robot is manually driven through the space so it can build a map of the space using visual data from cameras mounted on the front, back and sides of the robot. During the autonomous run, SpotMini uses data from the cameras to localize itself in the map and to detect and avoid obstacles. Once the operator presses ‘GO’ at the beginning of the video, the robot is on its own. Total walk time for this route is just over 6 minutes. (The QR codes visible in the video are used to measure performance, not for navigation.)

** General Fusion – “Inside a General Fusion Power Plant”

General Fusion’s magnetized target fusion (MTF) approach uses compression to heat hydrogen plasma fuel to the 150 million degree Celsius temperatures required to release energy from fusion. This energy is then captured in the liquid metal lining the walls of the chamber, allowing it to be converted to electricity.  This approach draws on new technologies such as additive manufacturing and high speed electronics to remove the traditional barriers to commercial fusion energy, opening a pathway to clean energy, everywhere, forever.

** EHang – “EHang Egret’s 1374 drones dancing over the City Wall of Xi’an, achieving the Guinness World Records”

https://youtu.be/4mHDDG3FCjs

** Tesla 2018

** 3Dhome.org – “3D Printed Homes for the Developing World”

** NanoRacks – “CubeSat Deployer Program-1 releasing satellites from the ISS”

** Gran Telescopio CANARIAS –  “Meet the Giant – A night at the 10.4m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS”

** Nature Video – “CRISPR: Gene editing and beyond”

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Astronomy, Space films and videos, Space Science

Video: “In Saturn’s Rings” shows space exploration at its most spectacular

The new documentary film In Saturn’s Rings, narrated by LeVar Burton, shows striking scenes of space travel and exploration using only actual images observed with telescopes, space probes, and astronaut cameras. No computer generated artists’ creations are included but techniques developed by Ken Burns and Walt Disney give 3-D impressions of objects like Saturn and its rings. The super high-resolution film will be available on “Giant Screen, IMAX, Fulldome Planetariums“. Check out the trailer for the film:

From the caption:

In Saturn’s Rings is a groundbreaking giant-screen movie adventure that takes audiences on a space exploration journey of the mind, heart, and spirit, from the Big Bang to the awe-inspiring rings of Saturn.

Narrated by LeVar Burton, In Saturn’s Rings is created entirely of more than 7.5 million stunning images of Earth, the Milky Way, and the Saturn taken by Hubble, Cassini, and other NASA space telescopes looking deep into the past.

The film is made with 2D multiplane parallax techniques developed by Walt Disney combined with Ken Burns technique to avoid using any type of camera projection, 3D models, visual FX, texture maps etc. We also feature some high resolution time lapse photography.

Visit insaturnsrings.com to learn more about how this film was made, screening and release info and more. 

Trailer music is custom version of track from Neumann Films.

Updates on when and where the film will be shown are available at In Saturn’s Rings (@InSaturnsRings) | Twitter

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Asteroids & Comets, Astronomy

ESO: “Exiled Asteroid Discovered in Outer Reaches of Solar System”

The latest news from ESO (European Southern Observatory):

Exiled Asteroid Discovered in Outer Reaches of Solar System

This artist’s impression shows the exiled asteroid 2004 EW95, the first carbon-rich asteroid confirmed to exist in the Kuiper Belt and a relic of the primordial Solar System. This curious object likely formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and must have been transported billions of kilometres from its origin to its current home in the Kuiper Belt. [Larger images]
An international team of astronomers has used ESO telescopes to investigate a relic of the primordial Solar System. The team found that the unusual Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 is a carbon-rich asteroid, the first of its kind to be confirmed in the cold outer reaches of the Solar System. This curious object likely formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has been flung billions of kilometres from its origin to its current home in the Kuiper Belt.

The early days of our Solar System were a tempestuous time. Theoretical models of this period predict that after the gas giants formed they rampaged through the Solar System, ejecting small rocky bodies from the inner Solar System to far-flung orbits at great distances from the Sun [1]. In particular, these models suggest that the Kuiper Belt — a cold region beyond the orbit of Neptune — should contain a small fraction of rocky bodies from the inner Solar System, such as carbon-rich asteroids, referred to as carbonaceous asteroids [2].

Now, a recent paper has presented evidence for the first reliably-observed carbonaceous asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, providing strong support for these theoretical models of our Solar System’s troubled youth. After painstaking measurements from multiple instruments at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), a small team of astronomers led by Tom Seccull of Queen’s University Belfast in the UK was able to measure the composition of the anomalous Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95, and thus determine that it is a carbonaceous asteroid. This suggests that it originally formed in the inner Solar System and must have since migrated outwards [3].

An international team of astronomers has used ESO telescopes to investigate a relic of the primordial Solar System. The team found that the unusual Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 is a carbon-rich asteroid, the first of its kind to be confirmed in the cold outer reaches of the Solar System. The red line in this image shows the orbit of 2004 EW95, with the orbits of other Solar System bodies shown in green for comparison. [Larger images]
The peculiar nature of 2004 EW95 first came to light during routine observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope by Wesley Fraser, an astronomer from Queen’s University Belfast who was also a member of the team behind this discovery. The asteroid’s reflectance spectrum — the specific pattern of wavelengths of light reflected from an object — was different to that of similar small Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), which typically have uninteresting, featureless spectra that reveal little information about their composition.

“The reflectance spectrum of 2004 EW95 was clearly distinct from the other observed outer Solar System objects,” explains lead author Seccull. “It looked enough of a weirdo for us to take a closer look.”

The team observed 2004 EW95 with the X-Shooter and FORS2 instruments on the VLT. The sensitivity of these spectrographs allowed the team to obtain more detailed measurements of the pattern of light reflected from the asteroid and thus infer its composition.

However, even with the impressive light-collecting power of the VLT, 2004 EW95 was still difficult to observe. Though the object is 300 kilometres across, it is currently a colossal four billion kilometres from Earth, making gathering data from its dark, carbon-rich surface a demanding scientific challenge.

“It’s like observing a giant mountain of coal against the pitch-black canvas of the night sky,”

says co-author Thomas Puzia from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

“Not only is 2004 EW95 moving, it’s also very faint,” adds Seccull. “We had to use a pretty advanced data processing technique to get as much out of the data as possible.”

Two features of the object’s spectra were particularly eye-catching and corresponded to the presence of ferric oxides and phyllosilicates. The presence of these materials had never before been confirmed in a KBO, and they strongly suggest that 2004 EW95 formed in the inner Solar System.

Seccull concludes:

“Given 2004 EW95’s  present-day abode in the icy outer reaches of the Solar System, this implies that it has been flung out into its present orbit by a migratory planet in the early days of the Solar System.”

[ Olivier Hainaut, an ESO astronomer who was not part of the team, comments, ]

“While there have been previous reports of other ‘atypical’ Kuiper Belt Object spectra, none were confirmed to this level of quality,” … “The discovery of a carbonaceous asteroid in the Kuiper Belt is a key verification of one of the fundamental predictions of dynamical models of the early Solar System.”

Notes

[1] Current dynamical models of the evolution of the early Solar System, such as the grand tack hypothesis and the Nice model, predict that the giant planets migrated first inward and then outward, disrupting and scattering objects from the inner Solar System. As a consequence, a small percentage of rocky asteroids are expected to have been ejected into orbits in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper belt.

[2] Carbonaceous asteroids are those containing the element carbon or its various compounds. Carbonaceous — or C-type — asteroids can be identified by their dark surfaces, caused by the presence of carbon molecules.

[3] Other inner Solar System objects have previously been detected in the outer reaches of the Solar System, but this is the first carbonaceous asteroid to be found far from home in the Kuiper Belt.

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