Category Archives: Space sciences roundup

Review of news regarding astronomy, exoplanets, planetary sciences, and any other science regarding space.

Space sciences roundup

Space sciences roundup – April.22.2020

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):

Mars

** NASA’s Perseverance rover in final preparations for launch to Mars in July:

With 13 weeks to go before the launch period of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opens, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On April 8, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed a crucial mass properties test of the rover.

Precision mass properties measurements are essential to a safe landing on Mars because they help ensure that the spacecraft travels accurately throughout its trip to the Red Planet – from launch through its entry, descent and landing.

On April 6, the meticulous three-day process began with Perseverance being lifted onto the rover turnover fixture. The team then slowly rotated the rover around its x-axis – an imaginary line that extends through the rover from its tail to its front – to determine its center of gravity (the point at which weight is evenly dispersed on all sides) relative to that axis.

** Perseverance’s helicopter has been attached:

** China to launch lander/rover to Mars in July:

** UAE Hope orbiter ready for shipment to Japan for launch to Mars:

If all goes smoothly this summer, three new spacecraft will launch toward the Red Planet, including the Arab world’s first interplanetary probe, dubbed Hope Mars Mission.

Construction on that spacecraft wrapped up earlier this year in the United Arab Emirates in preparation for its July launch. The launch will come less than a year after another major milestone for the country: In September 2019 its first spaceflyer, Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and spent a week living and working on the International Space Station.

“The Hope Probe project carries the hopes and ambitions of the Emirati nation and the aspirations of the Arab and Islamic people for a brighter future,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai, said in a statement. “We seek to send a message of peace and hope to the world, and envision a glorious future in which knowledge and scientific expertise are freely shared between nations.”

The final component added to the UAE Hope spacecraft was a plaque enscribed with, “The power of hope shortens the distance between the earth and the sky.” Credits: UAE

** Leonard David updates on Curiosity rover’s rovings:

** Tour more sites on the marvelous Martian surface with Bob Zimmerman

Astronomy

** The Space Show – Fri, 04/03/2020 – Dr. David Kipping discussed “his research [on] using Earth as a giant telescope from a far distance from Earth”.

Sun

** The latest on the sunspot count:

… the overall paucity of sunspots over the last year has continued, with March having only two sunspots, as indicated by the SILSO graph to the right. Both spots had magnetic polarities linking them to upcoming solar maximum, not the older now fading cycle.

Since June 2019 the Sun has averaged between one or two sunspots per month, with the number of spots linked to the new cycle steadily increasing over time. Though the numbers remain tiny, far lower than seen during the last solar minimum — considered the deepest and longest in a century — the new cycle sunspots strongly suggest we will have a solar maximum in the next five years, rather than experience a grand minimum with no sunspots for decades.

The new NOAA graph also makes it very easy to compare today’s minimum with all past minimums. A quick scan shows that we had similar blank stretches during the 1810, 1823, and 1912 minimums. In both centuries we saw two consecutive weak maximums linked to these deep minimums. All this suggests to me that the next maximum will be weak too. Some scientists agree, with some not discounting the possibility of a grand minimum.

Moon

** Chang’e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover continue operations during 17th lunar day:

The lander and rover of the Chang’e-4 probe have resumed work for the 17th lunar day on the far side of the moon after “sleeping” during the extremely cold night.

The lander woke up at 1:24 p.m. Friday (Beijing time), and the rover awoke at 8:57 p.m. Thursday. Both are in normal working order, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

The Chang’e-4 probe, launched on Dec. 8, 2018, made the first-ever soft landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3, 2019.

A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is the same length. The Chang’e-4 probe, switching to dormant mode during the lunar night due to the lack of solar power, has survived about 470 Earth days on the moon.

The rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, has worked much longer than its three-month design life, becoming the longest-working lunar rover on the moon.

Later this year, China plans to send a mission to the Moon to gather a sample of the surface and bring it back to earth: China wants a piece of the moon. Here’s how it plans to handle lunar samples. – Space.com

China’s Chang’e 5 robotic moon mission is scheduled to launch later this year. That venture represents the third phase of China’s Chang’e lunar exploration program: returning samples from the moon.

The reported candidate landing region for Chang’e 5 is the Rümker region, located in the northern Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”). The area is geologically complex and known for its volcanic activity.

The Chang’e 5 mission has four main parts: an orbiter, ascender, lander and Earth reentry module, which will contain up to 4.4 lbs. (2 kilograms) of lunar surface and subsurface samples.

** Impactor made a hole-in-one on the Moon when it hit on top another crater:

Messier A crater, located in Mare Fecunditatis, presents an interesting puzzle. The main crater is beautifully preserved, with a solidified pond of impact melt resting in its floor. But there is another impact crater beneath and just to the west of Messier A. This more subdued and degraded impact crater clearly formed first.

Solar System

** BepiColombo made a return fly-by of Earth on April 10th to boost its trip to Mercury. The European/Japanese spacecraft sent images it made of Earth during the return.

Launched in 2018, BepiColombo is on a seven-year journey to the smallest and innermost planet orbiting the Sun, which holds important clues about the formation and evolution of the entire Solar System.

Today’s operation is the first of nine flybys which, together with the onboard solar propulsion system, will help the spacecraft reach its target orbit around Mercury. The next two flybys will take place at Venus and further six at Mercury itself.

While the manoeuvre took advantage of Earth’s gravity to adjust the path of the spacecraft and did not require any active operations, such as firing thrusters, it included 34 critical minutes shortly after BepiColombo’s closest approach to our planet, when the spacecraft flew across the shadow of Earth.

** Asteroids and Comets

** OSIRIS-REx practices collecting a sample of the surface of the asteroid Bennu. One Step Closer to Touching Asteroid Bennu – OSIRIS-REx Mission. On April 14th,

…NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performed the first practice run of its sample collection sequence, reaching an approximate altitude of 246 feet (75 meters) over site Nightingale before executing a back-away burn from the asteroid. Nightingale, OSIRIS-REx’s primary sample collection site, is located within a crater in Bennu’s northern hemisphere.

The four-hour Checkpoint rehearsal took the spacecraft through the first two of the sampling sequence’s four maneuvers: the orbit departure burn and the Checkpoint burn. Checkpoint is so named because it is the location where the spacecraft autonomously checks its position and velocity before adjusting its trajectory down toward the location of the event’s third maneuver.

Four hours after departing its 0.6-mile (1-km) safe-home orbit, the spacecraft performed the Checkpoint maneuver at an approximate altitude of 410 feet (125 meters) above Bennu’s surface. From there, the spacecraft continued to descend for another nine minutes on a trajectory toward – but not reaching – the location of the sampling event’s third maneuver, the “Matchpoint” burn. Upon reaching an altitude of approximately 246 ft (75 m) – the closest the spacecraft has ever been to Bennu – OSIRIS-REx performed a back-away burn to complete the rehearsal.

During the rehearsal, the spacecraft successfully deployed its sampling arm, the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), from its folded, parked position out to the sample collection configuration. Additionally, some of the spacecraft’s instruments collected science and navigation images and made spectrometry observations of the sample site, as will occur during the sample collection event.

“This artist’s concept shows the trajectory and configuration of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft during Checkpoint rehearsal, which was the first time the mission practiced the initial steps of collecting a sample from asteroid Bennu.” Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

** A high-res global map of Bennu using images taken by OSIRIS-REx was released in February:

A global map of asteroid Bennu’s surface created with a mosaic of images taken by OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.

** Hotel Mars/The Space Show – Wed, 04/15/2020 – John Batchelor and David Livingston spoke with Dr. Harold C. Connolly about “Asteroid sample return missions and more for both Bennu and Ryugu and their missions, OSIRIS-REx as well as the Japanese mission, Hayabusa2.”

** Avoiding an asteroid impact catastrophe: A presentation to a general audience by researchers at Lawrence Livermore Lab on Planetary Defense: Avoiding a Cosmic Catastrophe

Our planet has been continually bombarded by asteroids since its formation, 4.5 billion years ago. While the frequency of large impacts has decreased, many potential Near-Earth Object threats remain undiscovered, so if or when they will impact Earth remains unknown. Fortunately, if an Earth-threatening asteroid is discovered in time, there are ways to mitigate or even prevent a disaster. Scientists at LLNL provide computer simulations in preparation these scenarios so if the time comes where an asteroid is headed our way, we will be prepared.

** Hopes for Comet Atlas  to be visible to the naked eye were dashed when it began to break up:

Senior Planetary Astronomer Franck Marchis takes a closer look at Comet Atlas. Discovered by the Atlas Survey in December 2019 it has recently been observed exhibiting unusual behavior. What is happening?

Another comet was recently spotted, though, and it might succeed in brightening enough to be seen without a telescope: Introducing Comet Swain – Spaceweather.com

Exoplanets

** Rocky earth-class sized exoplanet discovered: Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planet Found Hidden in Early NASA Kepler Data – NASA JPL

A team of transatlantic scientists, using reanalyzed data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star’s habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky planet could support liquid water.

Scientists discovered this planet, called Kepler-1649c, when looking through old observations from Kepler, which the agency retired in 2018. While previous searches with a computer algorithm misidentified it, researchers reviewing Kepler data took a second look at the signature and recognized it as a planet. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this distant world – located 300 light-years from Earth – is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature.

This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet. Also, the amount of starlight it receives from its host star is 75% of the amount of light Earth receives from our Sun – meaning the exoplanet’s temperature may be similar to our planet’s as well. But unlike Earth, it orbits a red dwarf. Though none have been observed in this system, this type of star is known for stellar flare-ups that may make a planet’s environment challenging for any potential life.

“This intriguing, distant world gives us even greater hope that a second Earth lies among the stars, waiting to be found,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The data gathered by missions like Kepler and our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite [TESS] will continue to yield amazing discoveries as the science community refines its abilities to look for promising planets year after year.”

Comparison of Earth to an artist’s rendering of Kepler 1649c. Credits: NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

A discussion at the SETI Institute about Kepler 1649c:

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Mars, Space sciences roundup

Space sciences roundup – Mar.19.2020

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):

Mars

** The next US Mars rover given name selected by middle-school student: Virginia Student Earns Honor of Naming NASA’s Next Mars Rover | NASA

ASA’s next Mars rover has a new name – Perseverance.

The name was announced Thursday by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, during a celebration at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. Zurbuchen was at the school to congratulate seventh grader Alexander Mather, who submitted the winning entry to the agency’s “Name the Rover” essay contest, which received 28,000 entries from K-12 students from every U.S. state and territory.

“Alex’s entry captured the spirit of exploration,” said Zurbuchen. “Like every exploration mission before, our rover is going to face challenges, and it’s going to make amazing discoveries. It’s already surmounted many obstacles to get us to the point where we are today – processing for launch. Alex and his classmates are the Artemis Generation, and they’re going to be taking the next steps into space that lead to Mars. That inspiring work will always require perseverance. We can’t wait to see that nameplate on Mars.”

** A report on the selection of the target spot for Perseverance’s landing: Here’s How Scientists Mapped the Mars 2020 Rover’s Landing Site | The Planetary Society

NASA’s soon-to-be-named Mars 2020 rover launches in late July or early August and will arrive on Mars in February 2021. The rover will land near an ancient river delta. Deltas form as rivers deposit sediment from upstream sources into standing bodies of water, like lakes or oceans. On Earth, these areas tend to teem with life. The Mars 2020 rover will search for signs of past life while collecting soil and rock samples for future return to Earth.

Jezero crater is located at the northeastern edge of a volcanic region on Mars known as Syrtis Major. Credits: NASA Ames/USGS/JPL/Corrine Rojas via Planetary Society

** Meanwhile, the rover currently operating on Mars sent a new grand panorama: Curiosity Mars Rover Snaps 1.8 Billion-Pixel Panorama (narrated video)

NASA Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada guides this tour of the rover’s view of the Martian surface. This panorama showcases “Glen Torridon,” a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring. The panorama was taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019, when the Curiosity team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since the rover would be sitting still with few other tasks to do while it waited for the team to return and provide its next commands, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings several days in a row without moving. Composed of more than 1,000 images and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the larger version of this composite contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape.

The interactive panorama:

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover produced this 360-degree panorama of “Glen Torridon,” a region on the side of Mount Sharp. The panorama was taken between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019, when the mission team was out for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since the rover would be sitting still with few other tasks to do while it waited for the team to return and provide its next commands, the rover had a rare chance to image its surroundings several days in a row without moving. Composed of more than 1,000 images and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the larger version of this composite contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape.

** Curiosity rover detects organic material in Martian rock:

NASA’s Curiosity rover has found new evidence preserved in rocks on Mars that suggests the planet could have supported ancient life, as well as new evidence in the Martian atmosphere that relates to the search for current life on the Red Planet. While not necessarily evidence of life itself, these findings are a good sign for future missions exploring the planet’s surface and subsurface.

The new findings – “tough” organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks near the surface, as well as seasonal variations in the levels of methane in the atmosphere – appear in the June 8 edition of the journal Science.

Organic molecules contain carbon and hydrogen, and also may include oxygen, nitrogen and other elements. While commonly associated with life, organic molecules also can be created by non-biological processes and are not necessarily indicators of life.

** European/Russian ExoMars rover mission postponed till 2022: ExoMars to take off for the Red Planet in 2022 – ESA

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Roscosmos Space Corporation have decided to postpone the launch of the second ExoMars mission to study the Red Planet to 2022.

The joint ESA-Roscosmos project team evaluated all the activities needed for an authorisation to launch, in order to analyse the risks and schedule. With due consideration of the recommendations provided by European and Russian Inspectors General, ExoMars experts have concluded that tests necessary to make all components of the spacecraft fit for the Mars adventure need more time to complete.

The primary goal of the mission is to determine if there has ever been life on Mars, and to better understand the history of water on the planet. The ExoMars rover, named Rosalind Franklin, includes a drill to access the sub-surface of Mars as well as a miniature life-search laboratory kept within an ultra-clean zone.

Problems with the parachutes arose last year and fully testing the solutions apparently left too little margin in the schedule:

The latest ExoMars parachutes dynamic extraction tests have been completed successfully at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the main parachutes are ready for the two final high-altitude drop tests in March in Oregon, US.

See also: Mars in limbo – The Space Review.

** China continues to aim for summer launch of the Huoxing orbiter/lander/rover mission to Mars:

China’s probe, called Huoxing, will include an orbiter, a lander and a rover — the first Mars probe to include all three. The project will have 13 scientific payloads, including several cameras, subsurface radar imagers and particle analyzers, as well as a magnetometer and magnetic-field detector. The mission’s scientific goals include studying the Martian morphology, geology, soil and water–ice distribution.

Wang says the coronavirus outbreak has affected the way his team works, but has not yet caused delays.

Several days ago, the team had to move six scientific payloads for the orbiter from Beijing to Shanghai, where they will be assembled. Instead of risking the team members getting infected on a plane or high-speed train, 3 people drove the 6 payloads in a car — a journey that took more than 12 hours.

An illustration of the rover mounted on the China’s Mars 2020 mission. Credits: Xinhua

** UAE Hope Mars orbiter set to launch this summer to study Martian atmosphere and climate history:

The Hope Probe will be the first probe to provide a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers when it reaches the red planet’s orbit in 2021. It will help answer key questions about the global Martian atmosphere and the loss of hydrogen and oxygen gases into space over the span of one Martian year.

Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre is responsible for the execution and supervision of all stages of the design, development and launch of the Hope Probe in 2020.

The UAE Space Agency is funding and supervising procedures and necessary details for the implementation of this project. Following a journey of several months, the probe is expected to enter the Red Planet’s orbit in 2021, coinciding with the Golden Jubilee of the Union.

Some specifications of the Hope Orbiter. Credits: HopeMarsMission on Twitter

The mission will launch this July on a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H-IIA rocket.

More at Emirates mars mission | Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre – MBRSC -UAE.

Emirates Hope Orbiter in preparation for tests in vacuum chamber. Credits: UAE Space Program

** An update on recent activities of the Curiosity rover from Bob Zimmerman: Mars rover Update: March 4, 2020 | Behind The Black

Since my last rover update on January 13, 2020, Curiosity has finally moved on from the base of Western butte, where it spent more than a month drilling a hole and gathering a great deal of geological data. Rather than head downhill and around the plateau and back to its planned route (as indicated by the red line in the map to the right), the Curiosity science team decided to push upward and onto the Greenheugh Piedmont (as indicated by the yellow line).

They had always planned to reach the top of this plateau, but not for several years. First they were going to head east to study a recurring slope lineae (see my October 2019 update), an example of a dark streak that darkens and fades seasonally and could provide evidence of water seepage from below ground.

Map showing the trail of Curiosity’s recent roving. Credits: NASA with annotations by Bob Zimmerman

** Leonard David also describes Curiosity’s roving:

Curiosity Mast Camera Left image taken on Sol 2702, March 13, 2020. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS via Leonard David

** Tour more sites on the marvelous Martian surface with Bob Zimmerman

An impact crater on Utopia Planitia that was subsequently enlarged by the sublimation of water ice. Credits: NASA, Univ. Arizona. Cropped by Bob Zimmerman

Solar system

** Juno continues to display the glorious magnificence of our largest planet:

**** Massive Beauty | NASA

NASA’s Juno mission captured this look at the southern hemisphere of Jupiter on Feb. 17, 2020, during the spacecraft’s most recent close approach to the giant planet.

Juno captures a view of the southern hemisphere of Jupiter. Credits: NASA and Kevin M. Gill

Not only is Jupiter the largest planet orbiting the Sun, it contains more than twice the amount of material of all other objects in the solar system combined — including all the planets, moons, asteroids and comets. In composition, Jupiter resembles a star, and scientists estimate that if it had been at least 80 times more massive at its formation, it could have become a type of star called a red dwarf rather than a planet.

While the universe’s most common elements, hydrogen and helium, make up most of Jupiter’s mass, the striking clouds that are visible at the top of its atmosphere are composed mostly of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.

This high-resolution view is a composite of four images captured by the JunoCam imager and assembled by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill. The images were taken on Feb. 17, 2020, between 10:31 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. PST (1:31 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. EST). During that time, the spacecraft was between about 30,700 and 62,400 miles (49,500 and 100,400 kilometers) from the tops of the planet’s clouds, at latitudes between about 50 and 68 degrees South.

**** Jupiter Storms Merging | NASA

This view of Jupiter’s atmosphere from NASA’s Juno spacecraft includes something remarkable: two storms caught in the act of merging.

Juno spots two big storms on Jupiter. Credits: NASA and Tanya Oleksuik

The two white ovals seen within the orange-colored band left of center are anticyclonic storms — that is, storms that rotate counter-clockwise. The larger of the two ovals has been tracked for many years, as it grew in size through mergers with other anticyclonic white ovals. JunoCam was fortunate to capture this new merger, which typically takes place over the course of only a few days. The event interests scientists because the ovals had approached each other months earlier, only to move apart again.

This merger may be the result of perturbations due to the proximity of Oval BA, which is the larger storm just to the north of the two merging, white ovals. Oval BA is the second largest anticyclonic vortex in Jupiter’s atmosphere, second only to the famous Great Red Spot. During this pass over Jupiter, Juno gave scientists their best views of Oval BA to date.

Citizen scientist Tanya Oleksuik created this color-enhanced image using data from the JunoCam camera. The original image was taken on Dec. 26, 2019, at 10:28 a.m. PST (1:28 p.m. EST) as the Juno spacecraft performed its 24th close flyby of the planet. At the time, the spacecraft was about 44,900 miles (72,200 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of about 60 degrees South.

JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing.    

More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu.

Astronomy

** A cosmic Tarantula offers clues to the births of huge stars: On the Origin of Massive Stars -ESA/Hubble

This scene of stellar creation, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, sits near the outskirts of the famous Tarantula Nebula. This cloud of gas and dust, as well as the many young and massive stars surrounding it, is the perfect laboratory to study the origin of massive stars.

This image shows a region of space called LHA 120-N150. It is a substructure of the gigantic Tarantula Nebula. The latter is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe. The nebula is situated more than 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring dwarf irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.

The bright pink cloud and the young stars surrounding it in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have the uninspiring name LHA 120-N 150. This region of space is located on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, which is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe. The nebula is situated over 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring irregular dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.

The Large Magellanic Cloud has had one or more  close encounters in the past, possibly with the Small Magellanic Cloud. These interactions have caused an episode of energetic star formation in our tiny neighbour — part of which is visible as the Tarantula Nebula.

Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the Tarantula Nebula owes its name to the arrangement of bright patches that somewhat resemble the legs of a tarantula. It measures nearly 1000 light-years across. Its proximity, the favourable inclination of the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the absence of intervening dust make the Tarantula Nebula one of the best laboratories in which to study the formation of stars, in particular massive stars. This nebula has an exceptionally high concentration of massive stars, often referred to as super star clusters.

Astronomers have studied LHA 120-N 150 to learn more about the environment in which massive stars form. Theoretical models of the formation of massive stars suggest that they should form within clusters of stars; but observations indicate that up to ten percent of them also formed in isolation. The giant Tarantula Nebula with its numerous substructures is the perfect laboratory in which to resolve this puzzle as in it massive stars can be found both as members of clusters and in isolation.

With the help of Hubble, astronomers try to find out whether the isolated stars visible in the nebula truly formed alone or just moved away from their stellar siblings. However, such a study is not an easy task; young stars, before they are fully formed — especially massive ones — look very similar to dense clumps of dust.

LHA 120-N 150 contains several dozen of these objects. They are a mix of unclassified sources — some probably young stellar objects and others probably dust clumps. Only detailed analysis and observations will reveal their true nature and that will help to finally solve the unanswered question of the origin of massive stars.

Hubble has observed the Tarantula Nebula and its substructures in the past — always being interested in the formation and evolution of stars.

Sun

** An update on solar activity from Bob Zimmerman: Sunspot update: The flatline resumes | Behind The Black

NOAA this week released its February update of its monthly graph showing the long term sunspot activity of the Sun. Below is my monthly version, annotated as I have done every month since 2011.

After a tiny uptick in sunspot activity in January, the Sun resumed the unprecedented flatlining of sunspot activity that began last June. Since then, the Sun has produced practically no sunspots, a drought that as far as I can tell has never happened since the 11-year sunspot cycle resumed in the 1700s (after the grand minimum in the 1600s) and astronomers began counting sunspots.

Moon

** More about China’s lunar sample return mission: China’s Lunar Sample Handling Plans Detailed – Leonard David

China’s Chang’e-5 robotic lunar sample return mission is slated for liftoff later this year. That venture represents the third phase of China’s lunar exploration project -returning samples from the Moon.

The reported candidate landing region for China’s Chang’e‐5 lunar sample return mission is the Rümker region, located in the northern Oceanus Procellarum. The area is geologically complex and known for its volcanic activity.

The Chang’e-5 mission will retrieve and return to Earth up to 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of lunar surface and subsurface samples.

** Yutu-2 reveals the structure beneath the lunar surface near the Chang’e-4 landing site on the Moon’s far side: Chang’e 4 and Yutu-2 Reveal Moon’s Sub-surface — The Space Resource

After landing for the first time on the Moon’s farside, the Chang’e-4 lander deployed the Yutu-2 rover, which utilized a dual-frequency Lunar Penetrating Radar (LPR). The LPR was previously tested on the Chang’e-3, and uses ground penetrating radar at 60 MHz and 500 MHz. The LPR instrument collected data during the first two lunar days of Yutu-2’s journey across the Von Kármán crater. While capable of far less depth than instruments like JAXA’s LRS, the LPR on Yutu-2 has a much finer vertical resolution of about 30 centimeter.

Using the high frequency option, radar data from LPR revealed good signal penetration in the areas Yutu-2 traveled. This greatly exceeded the performance of the Chang’e-3 ground penetrating radar. After combining the radargram, tomographic image, and quantitative analysis, the team produced the first picture of the lunar farside subsurface (image above).

A diagram of the lunar subsurface structure as detected by the radar system on Yutu-2. Credits: Chunlai Li, et al 2020 via The Space Resource

More about the Yutu-2’s rovings and research:

Asteroids and Comets

** Follow comet ATLAS as it dives towards the sun: Comet Atlas Is Brightening Faster Than Expected – Spaceweather.com

Get ready for a wild ride. Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4) is plunging toward the sun and, if it doesn’t fly apart first, it could become one of the brightest comets in years.

“Comet ATLAS continues to brighten much faster than expected,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. “Some predictions for its peak brightness now border on the absurd.”

The comet was discovered in December 2019 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. Astronomers quickly realized it might be special. On May 31, 2020, Comet ATLAS will pass deep inside the orbit of Mercury only 0.25 AU from the sun. If it can survive the blast furnace of solar heating, it could put on a good show.

However, no one expected the show to start this soon. More than 2 months before perihelion (closest approach to the sun), Comet ATLAS is already “heating up.” The worldwide Comet Observation Database shows it jumping from magnitude +17 in early February to +8 in mid-March–a 4000-fold increase in brightness. It could become visible to the naked eye in early April.

“Right now the comet is releasing huge amounts of its frozen volatiles (gases),” says Battams. “That’s why it’s brightening so fast.”

Check out the Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS Images.

Exoplanets

** Imaging Exoplanets: From Adaptive Optics to Starshades In Space – SETI Institute

Direct imaging of exoplanets – “seeing” the planet as a separate point of light near a star – is extremely difficult, and several decades ago, scientists used to say that it would be impossible to image Earth-like exoplanets. Today this seems possible, using some combination of adaptive optics technology, coronagraphs, or starshades.

Adaptive lets telescopes on the ground compensate for the Earth’s atmosphere. Coronagraphs use ultraprecise masks inside telescopes to block the diffracted light from a bright star. Starshades combine a space telescope with a huge flower-shaped spacecraft that flies in formation to block the starlight before it even reaches the telescope…

So what are we waiting for? What are the technical challenges associated with developing an exoplanet-hunting space telescopes? The future NASA Wide-Field Infrared Survey telescope could test out some of these technologies by studying Jupiter-like planets, and the proposed Habitable Planets Explorer (HabEX) mission could fully integrate them in a search for earthlike planets around dozens of nearby stars.

** The Planetary Society is supporting a project to find and observe 100 Earths, i.e. earth size planets in habitable zones of their stars.

More on this Planetary Radio program:

Yale astronomer Debra Fischer has spent decades hunting for exoplanets. Now she leads the 100 Earths project that includes the Lowell Observatory and astrophysicist Joe Llama. Debra and Joe join us for a conversation about this search for worlds that could be like our own. There’s big space news in this week’s edition of The Downlink at the top of the show, and Bruce Betts takes us on his weekly tour of the night sky, though it’s the pre-dawn sky that may hold the most wonder. Try your hand at the space trivia contest!

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Space sciences roundup

Space sciences roundup – Feb.25.2020

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):

Astronomy

** Resolving the surface of Betelgeuse 700 light years away with the VLT‘s enormous mirrors: ESO Telescope Sees Surface of Dim Betelgeuse | ESO

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have captured the unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star in the constellation of Orion. The stunning new images of the star’s surface show not only the fading red supergiant but also how its apparent shape is changing.

Betelgeuse has been a beacon in the night sky for stellar observers but it began to dim late last year. At the time of writing Betelgeuse is at about 36% of its normal brightness, a change noticeable even to the naked eye. Astronomy enthusiasts and scientists alike were excitedly hoping to find out more about this unprecedented dimming.

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion, has been undergoing unprecedented dimming. This stunning image of the star’s surface, taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope late last year, is among the first observations to come out of an observing campaign aimed at understanding why the star is becoming fainter. When compared with the image taken in January 2019, it shows how much the star has faded and how its apparent shape has changed.

** Meanwhile, Betelgeuse has stopped dimming:

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse appears to have finally stopped its unprecedented dimming, Villanova University astronomer Edward Guinan told me this afternoon. He says that although he’s unsure what has caused its strange brightness fluctuations, Betelgeuse is not likely to undergo a supernova explosion anytime soon. 

“The star has been nearly steady in brightness now over the last 10 days,” said Guinan.

** Weekly Space Hangout: February 5, 2020 – “More Things in the Heavens” – YouTube

Tonight we welcome Dr. Michael Werner and Dr. Peter Eisenhardt, authors of the new book More Things in the Heavens[: How Infrared Astronomy Is Expanding Our View of the Universe – Amazon commission link] which looks at how infrared astronomy is aiding the search for exoplanets and extraterrestrial life, and is transforming our understanding of the history and evolution of our universe. Included in their book are many spectacular images that have been captured by the Spitzer space telescope over its lifetime.

Solar system

** New Horizons fly-by of distant Arrokoth reveals clues to solar system formation: New Horizons Team Discovers a Critical Piece of the Planetary Formation Puzzle – New Horizons

Data from NASA’s New Horizons mission are providing new insights into how planets and planetesimals – the building blocks of the planets – were formed.

The New Horizons spacecraft flew past the ancient Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth (2014 MU69) on Jan. 1, 2019, providing humankind’s first close-up look at one of the icy remnants of solar system formation in the vast region beyond the orbit of Neptune. Using detailed data on the object’s shape, geology, color and composition – gathered during a record-setting flyby that occurred more than four billion miles from Earth – researchers have apparently answered a longstanding question about planetesimal origins, and therefore made a major advance in understanding how the planets themselves formed.

“This brief animation moves between two New Horizons spacecraft views of Arrokoth, the spacecraft’s New Year’s 2019 flyby target in the Kuiper Belt. The 3D effects come from pairing or combining images taken at different viewing angles, creating a “binocular” stereo effect, just as the separation of our eyes allows us to see three-dimensionally. The 3D information from these images provides scientists with critical insight on the object’s shape and structure and, subsequently, origin.”
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Roman Tkachenko

A New Horizons panel discussion of the latest findings:

See also How a space snowman called Arrokoth sheds light on planetary origins – GeekWire

Sun

** A ULA Atlas V rocket launched the Solar Orbiter, a joint ESA-NASA project, on Feb. 9th from Cape Canaveral. The spacecraft will eventually go in close to the Sun and use the gravity of Venus to sling it into an orbit out of the ecliptic plane so that it can study the Sun’s polar regions.

** New spacecraft and earth sensors expected to produce a brilliant era for solar research:  We are entering the Golden Age of studying our Sun | Ars Technica

These new probes will build upon astronomers’ existing information about the Sun. Already, this body of knowledge has grown considerably over the last decade thanks to instruments such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is in geostationary orbit around the Earth and has provided a great amount of high-resolution imaging data. With the three new scientific tools, we are about to have a much more complete view of our Sun as a star, which matters not only for us, but also as we look to worlds around other stars.

“Over the course of the next 5 to 10 years we will have a much deeper understanding of the Sun as a star, which can have a significant impact on our understanding of exoplanet environments and as a consequence improve our understanding of what makes a planet habitable,” Alexander said.

** Sunspots made a small comeback in the New Year: Sunspot update: A tiny burst of activity that might mean something | Behind The Black

Despite their low number and general weakness, the continuing appearance of sunspots with polarities aligned with the new cycle strongly indicates that we will have a solar maximum in the next five years, not a grand minimum lasting decades that some scientists are predicting. While the year is young and it is certainly too soon to trust any trends, the fact that January saw an increase in activity over the past seven months suggests that we might have passed the low point of the minimum. We shall find out this year.

Moon

** China’s far side lunar rover ends 14th lunar day and restarts on the 15th:

** Asteroids and Comets

** OSIRIS-REx altimeter misbehaves on close pass of candidate sampling spot on Bennu:  Status Update: OSIRIS-REx Osprey Flyover – OSIRIS-REx Mission

On Feb. 11, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft safely executed a 0.4-mile (620-m) flyover of the backup sample collection site Osprey as part of the mission’s Reconnaissance B phase activities. Preliminary telemetry, however, indicates that the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) did not operate as expected during the 11-hour event. The OLA instrument was scheduled to provide ranging data to the spacecraft’s PolyCam imager, which would allow the camera to focus while imaging the area around the sample collection site. Consequently, the PolyCam images from the flyover are likely out of focus.

The other science instruments, including the MapCam imager, the OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emissions Spectrometer (OTES), and the OSIRIS-REx Visual and InfraRed Spectrometer (OVIRS), all performed nominally during the flyover. These instruments and the spacecraft continue in normal operations in orbit around asteroid Bennu.

The mission team is currently reviewing the available data from the flyover in order to fully assess the OLA instrument. The entire data set from the flyover, including the PolyCam images, will be completely downlinked from the spacecraft next week and will provide additional insight into any impact that the loss of the OLA data may have.

Exoplanets

** ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite.(CHEOPS) begins examination of exoplanets; CHEOPS Just Opened Its Eyes to Start Studying Known Exoplanets, We Should See the First Picture in a Few Weeks – Universe Today

The CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) spacecraft just opened the cover on its telescope. The spacecraft was launched on December 18th 2019 and has so far performed flawlessly. In one or two weeks we could get our first images from the instrument.

CHEOPS is an ESA mission in partnership with Switzerland’s University of Bern. Its mission is not to find exoplanets, but to look more closely at stars with known exoplanets, and to watch as those planets transit in front of their star. It will watch those transits with a keen eye, and will determine the size of those planets with greater accuracy and precision. That will lead to better measurements of their mass, density, and composition.

An artist’s view of the CHEOPS spacecraft as it searches for exoplanets. Credits: ESA

Venus

** Scott Manley looks at ways to explore Venus’s ferociously hot surface: Venus Rover Concepts That Beat The Killer Atmosphere

How do you build a rover that can happily work at 500C, 90 Atmospheres of pressure and the problems of dust and corrosion? NASA has 2 approaches – one seeks to harden electronics against the heat, the other replaces electronic logic with mechanical hardware. NASA and HeroX are crowdsourcing solutions for a mechanism to detect obstacles and allow the rover to head in a different direction with a $15,000 prize to the best entry: https://www.herox.com/VenusRover

Mars

** Mars northern hemisphere differs significantly from the southern half: Two halves of a whole – ESA

The morphology and characteristics of the martian surface differ significantly depending on location. The northern hemisphere of Mars is flat, smooth and, in places, sits a few kilometres lower than the southern. The southern hemisphere, meanwhile, is heavily cratered, and peppered with pockets of past volcanic activity.

A transition zone known as ‘dichotomy boundary’ separates the northern lowlands and southern highlands. Large parts of this region are filled with something scientists call fretted terrain: blocky, broken-up, fragmented swathes of terrain where the rough, pockmarked martian south gives way to the smoother north.

The topography of Nilosyrtis Mensae. Mars north is to the right. Credits: ESA

** Insight Lander detects over 450 small Mars quakes: A Year of Surprising Science From NASA’s InSight Mars Mission – NASA’s InSight Mars Lander

… the ultra-sensitive seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), has enabled scientists to “hear” multiple trembling events from hundreds to thousands of miles away.

Seismic waves are affected by the materials they move through, giving scientists a way to study the composition of the planet’s inner structure. Mars can help the team better understand how all rocky planets, including Earth, first formed.

…

Mars trembles more often — but also more mildly — than expected. SEIS has found more than 450 seismic signals to date, the vast majority of which are probably quakes (as opposed to data noise created by environmental factors, like wind). The largest quake was about magnitude 4.0 in size — not quite large enough to travel down below the crust into the planet’s lower mantle and core. Those are “the juiciest parts of the apple” when it comes to studying the planet’s inner structure, said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at JPL.

** Update on Insight Lander‘s Mole digger: NASA’s Mars InSight Lander to Push on Top of the ‘Mole’ | NASA

The mole found itself stuck on Feb. 28, 2019, the first day of hammering. The InSight team has since determined that the soil here is different than what has been encountered on other parts of Mars. InSight landed in an area with an unusually thick duricrust, or a layer of cemented soil. Rather than being loose and sandlike, as expected, the dirt granules stick together.

The mole needs friction from soil in order to travel downward; without it, recoil from its self-hammering action causes it to simply bounce in place. Ironically, loose soil, not duricrust, provides that friction as it falls around the mole.

This past summer, the InSight team started using the robotic arm’s scoop to press on the side of the mole, a technique called “pinning” that added just enough friction to help it dig without coming in contact with the fragile science tether connected to the mole’s back cap.   

While pinning helped, the mole popped back out of the Martian soil on two occasions, possibly from soil building up from beneath. With few alternatives left, the team has decided to try helping the mole dig by carefully pressing on its back cap while attempting to avoid the tether.

It might take several tries to perfect the back-cap push, just as pinning did. Throughout late February and early March, InSight’s arm will be maneuvered into position so that the team can test what happens as the mole briefly hammers.

Meanwhile, the team is also considering using the scoop to move more soil into the hole that has formed around the mole. This could add more pressure and friction, allowing it to finally dig down. Whether they pursue this route depends on how deep the mole is able to travel after the back-cap push.

** China plans to launch an orbiter/rover combo spacecraft to Mars this summer. Here are some hints as to where the rover will land: China’s candidate landing site on Mars | Behind The Black

This location, on the northern lowlands plains of Utopia Planitia, makes great sense however for a first attempt by anyone to soft land on Mars. In fact, in 1976 these plains were the same location that NASA chose for Viking 2, for the same reasons. (The Viking 2 landing site was to the northeast of the Chinese site, just beyond the right edge of the overview map) While there are plenty of craters and rough features, compared to most of Mars’s surface, Utopia could be considered as smooth as a bowling ball.

** The ESA/Roscosmos Mars Rover needs a solar panel fix: Europe’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover to make ‘pit stop’ for repair – BBC News

Europe’s Mars rover will have to make a “pit stop” for a minor repair when it is moved from France to Italy.

The vehicle, which is currently undergoing final preparations in Cannes prior to a summer launch, has developed a small problem with its solar panels.

Glue that holds brackets in place on the folding arrays has come unstuck.

It’s not considered a serious problem and will be fixed when the “Rosalind Franklin” robot passes through Turin on its way to the launch site.

Rosalind Franklin, also known by its codename ExoMars, is a joint venture of the European and Russian space agencies (Esa and Roscosmos)

** Looking for life under the Martian surface: Scientists eye the Martian underground in search for alien life | Space.com

Conference attendees generally agreed that the best places to look for extant Mars life are in the deep subsurface caves, and in salt and ice.

While the cold, dry surface of Mars, with its harsh radiation environment, is widely considered to be uninhabitable, the subsurface has been hypothesized to be a viable, long-lived habitable environment, protected from the punishing surface conditions of Mars and a place where water could be stable.

Vlada Stamenković, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, backed the underground approach at the conference. 

“The surface of Mars is a very oxidizing, radiation-heavy environment where liquid water is not really stable for an extended amount of time,” Stamenković said. “It’s the worst place to look for life-sites on Mars. Groundwater might be the only habitat for extant life on Mars, if it still exists today.” 

** Updates on Curiosity’s roving from Leonard David:

** Tour more sites on the marvelous Martian surface with Bob Zimmerman

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Astronomy, Exoplanets, Space Science, Space sciences roundup

Space sciences roundup – Jan.29.2020

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):

Astronomy

** What Does a Black Hole Look Like: How We Got Our First Picture –  Dr. Eliot Quataert of the University of California, Berkeley gave this recent Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture:

Black holes are one of the most remarkable predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity: so much material is compressed into such a small volume that nothing, not even light, can escape. In Spring 2019, the world-wide Event Horizon Telescope released the first real picture of gas around a massive black hole and the “shadow” it makes as the gas swirls into the black hole. Dr. Quataert describes how these pioneering observations were made and what they have taught us about black

** NASA’s Kepler Witnesses Vampire Star System Undergoing Super-Outburst | NASA

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was designed to find exoplanets by looking for stars that dim as a planet crosses the star’s face. Fortuitously, the same design makes it ideal for spotting other astronomical transients – objects that brighten or dim over time. A new search of Kepler archival data has uncovered an unusual super-outburst from a previously unknown dwarf nova. The system brightened by a factor of 1,600 over less than a day before slowly fading away.

The star system in question consists of a white dwarf star with a brown dwarf companion about one-tenth as massive as the white dwarf. A white dwarf is the leftover core of an aging Sun-like star and contains about a Sun’s worth of material in a globe the size of Earth. A brown dwarf is an object with a mass between 10 and 80 Jupiters that is too small to undergo nuclear fusion.

The brown dwarf circles the white dwarf star every 83 minutes at a distance of only 250,000 miles (400,000 km) – about the distance from Earth to the Moon. They are so close that the white dwarf’s strong gravity strips material from the brown dwarf, sucking its essence away like a vampire. The stripped material forms a disk as it spirals toward the white dwarf (known as an accretion disk).

“This illustration shows a newly discovered dwarf nova system, in which a white dwarf star is pulling material off a brown dwarf companion. The material collects into an accretion disk until reaching a tipping point, causing it to suddenly increase in brightness. Using archival Kepler data, a team observed a previously unseen, and unexplained, gradual intensification followed by a super-outburst in which the system brightened by a factor of 1,600 over less than a day. Credits: NASA and L. Hustak (STScI)“

It was sheer chance that Kepler was looking in the right direction when this system underwent a super-outburst, brightening by more than 1,000 times. In fact, Kepler was the only instrument that could have witnessed it, since the system was too close to the Sun from Earth’s point of view at the time. Kepler’s rapid cadence of observations, taking data every 30 minutes, was crucial for catching every detail of the outburst.

The event remained hidden in Kepler’s archive until identified by a team led by Ryan Ridden-Harper of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Baltimore, Maryland, and the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. “In a sense, we discovered this system accidentally. We weren’t specifically looking for a super-outburst. We were looking for any sort of transient,” said Ridden-Harper.

Kepler captured the entire event, observing a slow rise in brightness followed by a rapid intensification. While the sudden brightening is predicted by theories, the cause of the slow start remains a mystery. Standard theories of accretion disk physics don’t predict this phenomenon, which has subsequently been observed in two other dwarf nova super-outbursts.

Exoplanets

** The Space Show – Tue, 01/21/2020 – Dr. Jeffrey Coughlin talked about “Exoplanets, the search for life, five exoplanet detection methods, exoplanet atmosphere biosignature detection and more”.

** NASA Planet Hunter Finds its 1st Earth-size Habitable-zone World – NASA

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its first Earth-size planet in its star’s habitable zone, the range of distances where conditions may be just right to allow the presence of liquid water on the surface. Scientists confirmed the find, called TOI 700 d, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and have modeled the planet’s potential environments to help inform future observations.

TOI 700 d is one of only a few Earth-size planets discovered in a star’s habitable zone so far. Others include several planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system and other worlds discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.

“TESS was designed and launched specifically to find Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby stars,” said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Planets around nearby stars are easiest to follow-up with larger telescopes in space and on Earth. Discovering TOI 700 d is a key science finding for TESS. Confirming the planet’s size and habitable zone status with Spitzer is another win for Spitzer as it approaches the end of science operations this January.”

** TESS Discovers Its 1st Planet Orbiting 2 Stars – NASA

In 2019, when Wolf Cukier finished his junior year at Scarsdale High School in New York, he joined NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a summer intern. His job was to examine variations in star brightness captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and uploaded to the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project.

“I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit,” Cukier said. “About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet.”

A SETI Institute view on the TESS findings:

Interstellar space

** Voyager 2, 18.5 billion kilometers from earth, recovers after power glitch: Voyager 2 Engineers Working to Restore Normal Operations – NASA JPL

Engineers for NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft are working to return the mission to normal operating conditions after one of the spacecraft’s autonomous fault protection routines was triggered. Multiple fault protection routines were programmed into both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in order to allow the spacecraft to automatically take actions to protect themselves if potentially harmful circumstances arise. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, engineers are still communicating with the spacecraft and receiving telemetry.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are both in interstellar space, making them the most distant human-made objects in the solar system. On Saturday, Jan. 25, Voyager 2 didn’t execute a scheduled maneuver in which the spacecraft rotates 360 degrees in order to calibrate its onboard magnetic field instrument. Analysis of the telemetry from the spacecraft indicated that an unexplained delay in the onboard execution of the maneuver commands inadvertently left two systems that consume relatively high levels of power operating at the same time. This caused the spacecraft to overdraw its available power supply.

It’s a long way to make a service call:

It has taken the team several days to assess the current situation primarily because of Voyager 2’s distance from Earth – about 11.5 billion miles (18.5 billion kilometers). Communications traveling at the speed of light take about 17 hours to reach the spacecraft, and it takes another 17 hours for a response from the spacecraft to return to Earth. As a result, mission engineers have to wait about 34 hours to find out if their commands have had the desired effect on the spacecraft.

Voyager 1 Entering Interstellar Space (Artist Concept)
“This artist’s concept depicts one of NASA’s Voyager spacecraft entering interstellar space, or the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by the plasma, or ionized gas, that was ejected by the death of nearby giant stars millions of years ago.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sun

** An update on activity on the Sun’s surface: Sunspot update: The record flatline continues | Behind The Black

In the month of December 2019 the Sun continued its longest stretch of overall sunspot inactivity ever recorded, reaching seven months in length. At no point since the last grand minimum in the 1600s have scientists ever seen so few sunspots over so long a time period.
…

December saw only two sunspots, both becoming active on the same day, December 24. Both also had a polarity belonging to the next solar cycle, providing evidence that we will have another sunspot maximum sometime in the next five years, and that we are not heading to another grand minimum where there are no sunspots for decades.

See SpaceWeather.com for daily updates on sunspots.

** Parker Solar Probe sets new record for spacecraft nearness to the Sun: Parker Solar Probe Completes Fourth Closest Approach, Breaks New Speed and Distance Records – Parker Solar Probe/NASA

At 4:37 a.m. EST on Jan. 29, 2020, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe broke speed and distance records as it completed its fourth close approach of the Sun. The spacecraft traveled 11.6 million miles from the Sun’s surface at perihelion, reaching a speed of 244,225 miles per hour. These achievements topple Parker Solar Probe’s own previous records for closest spacecraft to the Sun — previously about 15 million miles from the Sun’s surface — and fastest human-made object, before roughly 213,200 miles per hour.

Parker Solar Probe will continue to fly ever closer to the Sun on its seven-year journey, exploring regions of space never visited before and providing scientists with key measurements to help unveil the mysteries of the solar corona and wind.

As with most of Parker Solar Probe’s close approaches, the spacecraft is out of contact with Earth for several days around perihelion.

Listen to the sounds of the Sun as recorded by the probe: Parker Solar Probe Team Hears First Whispers of the Solar Wind’s Birth – JHU-APL

There’s a wind that emanates from the Sun. It blows not like a soft whistle but like a hurricane’s scream. Made of electrons, protons and heavier ions, the solar wind courses through the solar system at roughly 1 million mph (1.6 million kph), barreling over everything in its path. Yet through the wind’s roar, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe hears the small chirps, squeaks and rustles that hint at the origin of this mysterious and ever-present wind. The spacecraft’s FIELDS instrument can eavesdrop on the electric and magnetic fluctuations caused by plasma waves. The Parker Solar Probe it can “hear” when the waves and particles interact with one another, recording frequency and amplitude information about these plasma waves that scientists could then play as sound waves. And it results in some striking sounds. Solar wind sounds playlist: https://soundcloud.com/jhu-apl/sets/s…

Jupiter

** Mighty Jupiter Revealed | The Planetary Society

It’s more massive than all the other planets combined. In nearly four years at Jupiter the Juno spacecraft has returned science that is revolutionizing our understanding of this gigantic world. Principal investigator Scott Bolton shows us the mysterious cyclones at its poles and that famously persistent red spot. Casey Dreier says the United States House of Representatives has proposed legislation that is at odds with NASA’s current Moon and Mars plans. John Flamsteed almost discovered Uranus! Bruce Betts will tell us where he went wrong in this week’s What’s Up space trivia contest.

[ Update: Juno flyby video created by citizen scientist Brian Swift (via Bob Zimmerman):

]

 

Moon

** China releases data and imagery from Chang’e 4 mission to the Moon’s far side:

Chinese officials marked the one-year anniversary of the Chang’e 4 mission’s historic first soft landing on the far side of the moon [January 3rd] with the public release of data collected by scientific instruments and cameras on the lunar lander and rover.

The Chang’e 4 lander and Yutu 2 rover landed together on the lunar surface Jan. 3, 2019, marking the first time a spacecraft has ever safely touched down on the far side of the moon.

Around 12 hours after touchdown, the Yutu 2 rover drove down a ramp to disembark from the Chang’e 4 mission’s stationary landing platform to begin exploring the barren lunar landscape.

Scientific instruments and cameras aboard the Chang’e 4 lander and Yutu 2 rover have downlinked measurements and numerous images in the past year. The Chang’e 4 mission relays data through a dedicated Chinese communications satellite positioned beyond the far side of the moon, with a line of sight to both Chang’e 4 and Earth-based receiving stations.

On Friday, the one-year anniversary of the mission’s successful landing, China National Space Administration and the Chinese Academy of Sciences published scientific data collected by five instruments on the Chang’e 4 lander and Yutu 2 rover.

China’s Yutu-2 rover on the Moon.

Asteroids

** In December the OSIRIS-REx team selected a spot for sample-taking on asteroid Bennu. Next August, the spacecraft will land briefly and grab a sample of regolith to return to Earth in 2023: X Marks the Spot: NASA Selects Site for Asteroid Sample Collection – OSIRIS-REx Mission

After a year scoping out asteroid Bennu’s boulder-scattered surface, the team leading NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission has officially selected a sample collection site.

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex) mission team concluded a site designated “Nightingale” – located in a crater high in Bennu’s northern hemisphere – is the best spot for the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to snag its sample.

The OSIRIS-REx team spent the past several months evaluating close-range data from four candidate sites in order to identify the best option for the sample collection. The candidate sites – dubbed Sandpiper, Osprey, Kingfisher, and Nightingale – were chosen for investigation because, of all the potential sampling regions on Bennu, these areas pose the fewest hazards to the spacecraft’s safety while still providing the opportunity for great samples to be gathered.

“This flat projection mosaic of asteroid Bennu shows the relative locations of the primary and backup sample collection sites on the asteroid: Nightingale and Osprey. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to collect a sample in summer 2020.” Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

This month the spacecraft made a low pass over the Nightingale spot to inspect it further: OSIRIS-REx Completes Closest Flyover of Sample Site Nightingale – OSIRIS-REx Mission

Preliminary results indicate that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully executed a 0.4-mile (620-m) flyover of site Nightingale yesterday as part of the mission’s Reconnaissance B phase activities. Nightingale, OSIRIS-REx’s primary sample collection site, is located within a crater high in asteroid Bennu’s northern hemisphere.

To perform the pass, the spacecraft left its 0.75-mile (1.2-km) safe home orbit and flew an almost 11-hour transit over the asteroid, aiming its science instruments toward the 52-ft (16-m) wide sample site before returning to orbit. Science observations from this flyover are the closest taken of a sample site to date.

The primary goal of the Nightingale flyover was to collect the high-resolution imagery required to complete the spacecraft’s Natural Feature Tracking image catalog, which will document the sample collection site’s surface features – such as boulders and craters. During the sampling event, which is scheduled for late August, the spacecraft will use this catalog to navigate with respect to Bennu’s surface features, allowing it to autonomously predict where on the sample site it will make contact . Several of the spacecraft’s other instruments also took observations of the Nightingale site during the flyover event, including the OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emissions Spectrometer (OTES), the OSIRIS-REx Visual and InfraRed Spectrometer (OVIRS), the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA), and the MapCam color imager.

Mars

** The European Mars Express views the northern ice cap: Rippling ice and storms at Mars’ north pole – ESA

Mars’ north polar ice cap in 3D: “This image shows shows part of the ice cap at Mars’ north pole in 3D when viewed using red-green or red-blue glasses. This anaglyph was derived from data obtained by the nadir and stereo channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express during spacecraft orbit 3670. It covers a part of the martian surface centred at about 244°E/85°N. North is to the upper right.” Credits: ESA

** Updates on Curiosity‘s roving from Leonard David:

“Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2659, January 29, 2020. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech” via Leonard David

** More of the marvelous Martian surface – Bob Zimmerman

“Convergent and Overlapping Narrow Curved Ridges” in the Martian mid-latitudes, taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and here  cropped and rotated by Bob Zimmerman

** Insight‘s mole digs in reverse again:

** China to launch an Mars orbiter and rover mission in July on a Long March 5 heavy lift rocket.

The Chinese combination Mars orbiter, lander, and rover is shown here in tests for launching. Credits: China Aerospace Technology Corporation

NASA’s Mars 2020 mission aims to launch during a window between July 17 – Aug. 5, 2020 and land on Feb. 18, 2021. The rover is of a similar design to that of Curiosity, which landed on Mars on August 5, 2012. The Mars 2020 rover will soon get a name as well: Nine Finalists Chosen in NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Naming Contest – NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.

The joint European/Russian ExoMars 2020 mission aims to launch on a Russian Proton rocket this summer and land on Mars on March 19, 2021. Problems with the parachutes need to be resolved else the mission will have to wait another two years for the next launch window: Promising progress for ExoMars parachutes – ESA

Artist’s view of the ESA Exomars rover on Mars.

 

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