I recently posted the Gagarin music video by Public Service Broadcasting. The song comes from their concept album titled The Race for Space. The album is reviewed at First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting, ‘The Race For Space’ – NPR‘.
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Here is the track The Other Side:
You can listed to the whole album at NPR.
Dwarf plane Ceres coming into focus as the Dawn spacecraft nears it:
Dawn Captures Sharper Views of Ceres
February 17, 2015 Image Advisory—Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. These images, taken Feb. 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, pose intriguing questions for the science team to explore as the spacecraft nears its destination.
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Two views of Ceres were acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a distance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) as the dwarf planet rotated. The images, which were taken about 10 hours apart, have been magnified from their original size. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
“As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, based at UCLA. “We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled.”
Dawn will be gently captured into orbit around Ceres on March 6. As the spacecraft delivers better images and other data, the science team will be investigating the nature and composition of the dwarf planet, including the nature of the craters and bright spots that are coming into focus. The latest images, which have a resolution of 4.9 miles (7.8 kilometers) per pixel, represent the sharpest views of Ceres to date.
The spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months during 2011 and 2012. Scientists gained numerous insights about the geological history of this body and saw its cratered surface in fine detail. By comparing Vesta and Ceres, they will develop a better understanding of the formation of the solar system.
Dawn’s mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.
The new Dawn images are available at the Ceres Science Gallery.
Mars presents a new mystery:
Mystery Mars plume baffles scientists
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Observations of a mysterious plume-like feature (marked with yellow arrow) at the limb of the Red Planet on 20 March 2012. The observation was made by astronomer W. Jaeschke. The image is shown with the north pole towards the bottom and the south pole to the top.
16 February 2015: Plumes seen reaching high above the surface of Mars are causing a stir among scientists studying the atmosphere on the Red Planet.
On two separate occasions in March and April 2012, amateur astronomers reported definite plume-like features developing on the planet.
The plumes were seen rising to altitudes of over 250 km above the same region of Mars on both occasions. By comparison, similar features seen in the past have not exceeded 100 km.
“At about 250 km, the division between the atmosphere and outer space is very thin, so the reported plumes are extremely unexpected,” says Agustin Sanchez-Lavega of the Universidad del País Vasco in Spain, lead author of the paper reporting the results in the journal Nature.
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The top image shows the location of the mysterious plume on Mars, identified within the yellow circle (top image, south is up), along with different views of the changing plume morphology taken by W. Jaeschke and D. Parker on 21 March 21 2012.
The features developed in less than 10 hours, covering an area of up to 1000 x 500 km, and remained visible for around 10 days, changing their structure from day to day.
None of the spacecraft orbiting Mars saw the features because of their viewing geometries and illumination conditions at the time.
However, checking archived Hubble Space Telescope images taken between 1995 and 1999 and of databases of amateur images spanning 2001 to 2014 revealed occasional clouds at the limb of Mars, albeit usually only up to 100 km in altitude.
But one set of Hubble images from 17 May 1997 revealed an abnormally high plume, similar to that spotted by the amateur astronomers in 2012.
Scientists are now working on determining the nature and cause of the plumes by using the Hubble data in combination with the images taken by amateurs.
![Hubble_spies_mystery_plume_on_Mars_node_full_image_2[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hubble_spies_mystery_plume_on_Mars_node_full_image_21.png?resize=388%2C374)
A curious plume-like feature was observed on Mars on 17 May 1997 by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is similar to the features detected by amateur astronomers in 2012, although appeared in a different location.
The Hubble image is extracted from this publicly available image.
“One idea we’ve discussed is that the features are caused by a reflective cloud of water-ice, carbon dioxide-ice or dust particles, but this would require exceptional deviations from standard atmospheric circulation models to explain cloud formations at such high altitudes,” says Agustin.
“Another idea is that they are related to an auroral emission, and indeed auroras have been previously observed at these locations, linked to a known region on the surface where there is a large anomaly in the crustal magnetic field,” adds Antonio Garcia Munoz, a research fellow at ESA’s ESTEC and co-author of the study.
The jury is still out on the nature and genesis of these curious high-altitude martian plumes. Further insights should be possible following the arrival of ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter at the Red Planet, scheduled for launch in 2016.
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Other articles:
Last fall a virtual company called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) began designing an implementation of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop concept for super-fast mass transportation. HTT, currently funded through (JumpStartFund), expects to become a public company soon: The Crowdsourced Company Building Elon’s Hyperloop Is Going Public – WIRED.
Meanwhile, another company called Hyperloop Technologies Inc. has formed and is backed by “a formidable lineup of Silicon Valley and Washington superstars” according to Forbes: Hyperloop Is Real: Meet The Startups Selling Supersonic Travel – Forbes.
They are taking a different approach to the hyperloop:
Even more surprising than the platinum-plated roster: Hyperloop Tech’s initial mission. They intend to go way beyond Musk’s original vision and focus first on freight rather than human transportation. This high-speed “cargoloop” could go over land or under water. Imagine submerged skeins of steel tubes crisscrossing the ocean or up and down the coasts hurtling shipping containers at near supersonic speeds. Need iPhones? Press a button and a container-load is on its way from Shenzhen overnight
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The guests and topics on The Space Show this week:
1. Monday, Feb. 16, 2015: 2-3:30 PM PST (5-6:30 PM EST; 4-5:30 PM CST): We welcome DR. ARLIN CROTTS who will be discussing his new book, The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation. Dr. Crotts is a professor at Columbia University Dept. of Astronomy.
2. Tuesday, Feb. 17,, 2015:,7-8:30 PM PST (10-11:30 PM EST, 9-10:30 PM CST): DAVE HOOK returns to discuss UAVs, regulations, and more.
3. Friday, Feb. 20, 2015; 9:30 -11 AM PST (12:30-2 PM EST; 11:30-1 PM CST): We welcome BRETT HOFFSTADT to discuss his book aimed at students, How To Be A Rocket Scientist.
4. Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015: 12-1:30 PM PST (3-4:30 PM EST, 2-3:30 PM CST): We welcomed DR. ASIF SIDDIQI, noted historian, professor of history, and Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies at Fordham University.
See also:
/– The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
/– The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
/– The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs
The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.