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Mars Base

India's Mars Orbiter Mission Rising to Red Planet - Glorious Launch Gallery - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...planet-glorious-launch-gallery

scibyte109 SpacecraftUpdate India-MarsOrbiterMission

shared by Mars Base on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) safely
  • injected into
  • initial elliptical Earth parking orbit following Tuesday’s (Nov. 5)
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • launch
  • ISRO engineers successfully completed the first of six orbit raising “Midnight Maneuver” burns at 01:17 hrs IST
  • Nov. 6
  • The goal is to gradually maneuver MOM – India’s 1st mission to the Red Planet – into a hyperbolic trajectory so that the spacecraft will
  • eventually arrive at the Mars Sphere of Influence after a 10 month interplanetary cruise
  • India’s PSLV rocket is not powerful enough to send MOM on a direct flight to Mars
  • The launch “placed MOM very precisely into an initial elliptical orbit around Earth
  • ISRO’s engineers devised a
  • procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over the next several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
  • engine fires when
  • is at its closest point in orbit above Earth. This increases the ships velocity and gradually widens the ellipse
  • raises the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
  • expected to achieve escape velocity on Dec. 1 and depart Earth’s sphere of influence tangentially to Earth’s orbit to begin the 300 day
  • voyage
  • arrives in the vicinity of Mars on September 24, 2014
  • , NASA’s
  • MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch
  • on Nov. 18 – from Cape Canaveral, Florida
  • Both MAVEN and MOM’s goal
  • study the Martian atmosphere , unlock the mysteries of its current atmosphere and determine how, why and when the atmosphere and liquid water was lost
  • MOM science teams will “work together” to unlock the secrets of Mars atmosphere and climate history
Mars Base

Guest Post: No turning back, NASA ISEE-3 Spacecraft Returning to Earth after a 36 Year ... - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-earth-after-a-36-year-journey

scibyte132 ISEE-3

shared by Mars Base on 25 May 14 - No Cached
  • 30 years later and documents and magnetic tapes have predictably disappeared.
  • The software and hardware to program, command and transmit to ISEE-3 are long gone
  • An independent team of engineers
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • recovering old imagery on magnetic tape reels from the first lunar orbiter missions),
  • operating outside the ranks and hallways of NASA
  • to accomplish a landmark achievement: to turn on, command and maneuver a NASA spacecraft long ago abandoned
  • Amateur radio operators now have technology sufficient to acquire the signal and through the internet are also a part of the recovery effort
  • without the original hardware transmitter, today’s high-speed electronics are able to emulate in software the hardware from 36 years ago
Mars Base

NASA - NASA Researchers Discover Ancient Microbes in Antarctic Lake - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...12-408_Lake_Vida_Microbes.html

scibyte73 AntarcticLake

shared by Mars Base on 01 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • In one of the most remote lakes of Antarctica, nearly 65 feet beneath the icy surface, scientists
  • , have uncovered a community of bacteria
  • one of Earth's darkest, saltiest and coldest habitats
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • increase our limited knowledge of how life can sustain itself in these extreme environments on our own planet and beyond.
  • Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is mostly frozen and possesses the highest nitrous oxide levels of any natural water body on Earth
  • approximately six times saltier than seawater
  • average temperature is minus 8 degrees Fahrenheit
  • the brine harbors a surprisingly diverse and abundant variety of bacteria that survive without a current source of energy from the sun
  • Previous studies of Lake Vida dating back to 1996 indicate the brine and its inhabitants have been isolated from outside influences for more than 3,000 years.
  • the best analog we have for possible ecosystems in the subsurface waters of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa
  • collaborators
  • developed stringent protocols and specialized equipment for their 2005 and 2010 field campaigns to sample from the lake brine while avoiding contaminating the pristine ecosystem
  • expands our knowledge of environmental limits for life and helps define new niches of habitability
  • To sample unique environments such as this, researchers must work under secure, sterile tents on the lake's surface
  • The tents kept the site and equipment clean as researchers drilled ice cores, collected samples of the salty brine residing in the lake ice and assessed the chemical qualities of the water and its potential for harboring and sustaining life
  • analyses suggest chemical reactions between the brine and the underlying iron-rich sediments generate nitrous oxide and molecular hydrogen
  • may provide the energy needed to support the brine's diverse microbial life.
  • Additional research is under way to analyze the abiotic, chemical interactions between the Lake Vida brine and its sediment
  • investigating the microbial community by using different genome sequencing approaches
Mars Base

Video Transcript: Curiosity's Cameras - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...video-transcript.php

scibyte98 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • received a lot of questions about the cameras on the rovers and we're here to answer some of those questions
  • The Curiosity rover actually has 17 cameras on it, which is the most of any NASA planetary mission ever.
  • took pictures as the rover was landing on Mars
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • MARDI, or the Mars Descent Imager,
  • is the camera mounted on the end of the arm, and that takes close-up, high-resolution color photos
  • MAHLI
  • hazard avoidance cameras, or the HazCams. There are four of these in the front and four in the back, and they're used to take pictures of the terrain near the wheels and nearby the rover
  • Navigation Cameras, which take pictures that are used to drive the rover
  • Mast Cameras, which are color imagers, which are used to do geology investigations
  • the remote microscopic imager, which is part of the ChemCam laser instrument. And that's used to document the laser spots, that the rover makes on the surface
  • Many of the black and white images that come back from the rover are
  • black and white, or gray scale as we call it, is because that's all the rover really needs in order to detect rocks and other obstacles
  • Other cameras are color, such as the Mastcam imager, and the reason that they're color is because the scientists use the color information to learn about the soil and the rocks
  • There are 1-megapixel black and white imagers for the engineering cameras and 2-megapixel color imagers for the science cameras
  • In addition to the video that we took when the rover descending on to the surface, we've taken movies of the soil being shaken in the scoop.
  • files are pretty large and because we have a limited downlink each day, the scientists prefer to take still images of new targets
Mars Base

Antarctic's Mountains Revealed By Sharpest Map Yet - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...unken-mountains-antarctica-ice

scibyte97 scibyte98

shared by Mars Base on 08 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • the British Antarctic Survey, Bedmap2 drew upon millions of new measurements of the frozen continent's surface elevation, ice thickness, and bedrock topography from a wide variety of sources collected over several decades
  • the original Bedmap relied mostly on ground-based measurements, which limited the scientists in terms of how much land they could cover
  • a NASA program called Operation IceBridge sends out airplanes that fly over the entire continent. The airplanes are equipped with lasers that measure the surface mountains' heights and other features, as well as ice-penetrating radar that maps subglacial bedrock—"giving [scientists] a more 3-D picture of the ice sheet itself
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the new data has revealed several smaller features—both on Antarctica's surface and buried under the ice—that were missed in the previous Bedmap effort
  • scientists want to know the shapes of mountains and rocks to model how fast ice will move across these features on its way to the ocean, where the ice can melt and contribute to sea level rise
Mars Base

NASA - 2013 Astronaut Class - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...2013astroclass.html

scibyte98 astronaut

shared by Mars Base on 17 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The 2013 astronaut candidate class comes from the second largest number of applications NASA ever has received -- more than 6,100
  • Josh A. Cassada, Ph. D
  • a former naval aviator
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • is a physicist by training and currently is serving as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Quantum Opus
  • Victor J. Glover
  • is an F/A-18 pilot and graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School
  • currently is serving as a Navy Legislative Fellow in the U.S. Congress
  • Tyler N. Hague
  • currently is supporting the Department of Defense as Deputy Chief of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization
  • Christina M. Hammock
  • currently is serving as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Station Chief in American Samoa
  • Nicole Aunapu Mann
  • Lt. Colonel, U.S. Air Force
  • Lt. Commander, U.S. Navy
  • Major, U.S. Marine Corps
  • is an F/A 18 pilot, currently serving as an Integrated Product Team Lead at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River
  • Anne C. McClain
  • Major, U.S. Army
  • is an OH-58 helicopter pilot, and a recent graduate of U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station, Patuxent River
  • currently is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
  • Andrew R. Morgan, M.D
  • Jessica U. Meir, Ph.D.
  • Major, U.S. Army
  • has experience as an emergency physician and flight surgeon for the Army special operations community, and currently is completing a sports medicine fellowship
  • The new astronaut candidates will begin training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston in August
Mars Base

Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars - 0 views

phys.org/...red-nuclear-fusion-humans.html

scibyte90 MarsMission

shared by Mars Base on 11 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • researchers and scientists
  • are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks
  • funded through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Last month
  • presented their mission analysis for a trip to Mars, along with detailed computer modeling and initial experimental results
  • one of a handful of projects awarded a second round of funding last fall after already receiving phase-one money in a field of 15 projects chosen from more than 700 proposals
  • NASA estimates a round-trip human expedition to Mars would take more than four years using current technology
  • team have published papers calculating the potential for 30- and 90-day expeditions to Mars using a rocket powered by fusion, which would make the trip more practical and less costly
  • They have demonstrated successful lab tests of all portions of the process
  • Now, the key will be combining each isolated test into a final experiment that produces fusion using this technology
  • The research team has developed a type of plasma that is encased in its own magnetic field
  • Nuclear fusion occurs when this plasma is compressed to high pressure with a magnetic field.
  • The team has successfully tested this technique in the lab.
  • a small grain of sand of this material has the same energy content as 1 gallon of rocket fuel.
  • power a rocket, the team has devised a system in which a powerful magnetic field causes large metal rings to implode around this plasma, compressing it to a fusion state
  • The converging rings merge to form a shell that ignites the fusion, but only for a few microseconds
  • enough energy is released from the fusion reactions to quickly heat and ionize the shell
  • This super-heated, ionized metal is ejected out of the rocket nozzle at a high velocity. This process is repeated every minute or so, propelling the spacecraft
  • successfully demonstrated the metal-crushing process
  • The team had a sample of the collapsed, fist-sized aluminum ring resulting from one of those tests on hand for people to see and touch at the recent NASA symposium
  • Now, the team is working to bring it all together by using the technology to compress the plasma and create nuclear fusion
  • With the flip of a switch, the capacitors are simultaneously triggered to deliver 1 million amps of electricity for a fraction of a second to the magnet, which quickly compresses the metal ring.
  • The mechanical process and equipment used are reasonably straightforward
  • In actual space travel, scientists would use lithium metal as the crushing rings to power the rocket. Lithium is very reactive, and for lab-testing purposes, aluminum works just as well
  • Nuclear fusion may draw concern because of its application in nuclear bombs, but its use in this scenario is very different
  • The fusion energy for powering a rocket would be reduced by a factor of 1 billion from a hydrogen bomb, too little to create a significant explosion
  • Also,
  • concept uses a strong magnetic field to contain the fusion fuel and guide it safely away from the spacecraft and any passengers within
Mars Base

Alien Planet Archive Now Open to World | NASA Kepler Spacecraft | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/lanet-nasa-kepler-website.html

scibyte78 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Researchers are now posting all exoplanet sightings by the Kepler observatory into a single, comprehensive website called the "NASA Exoplanet Archive."
  • Instead of going through the long planet confirmation process before making data publicly available
  • So the day we know about the list, the archive knows about the list. And then everybody, including us, can work on that list. But that list is dynamic so if we, or a community person, makes an observation and says, 'Hey, I looked at this planet candidate but it's really an eclipsing binary,' then that entry in the archive will be changed."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The archive has information about the size, orbital period and other metrics of any possible planet discovered and investigated by Kepler
  • Planet Hunters, a collective of amateur astronomers, recently found 42 new alien planets using Kepler data that was publicly available prior to the launch of the new archive system.
Mars Base

NASA - Asteroid 2012 DA14 - Earth Flyby Reality Check - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...asteroidflyby.html

scibyte82 meteor

shared by Mars Base on 15 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • NASA statement on Russia meteor
  • the trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, making it a completely unrelated object
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Billion-Pixel View of Mars Comes From Curiosity Rover - 1 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte99 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 22 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • The first NASA-produced view from the surface of Mars larger than one billion pixels stitches together nearly 900 exposures taken by cameras onboard Curiosity and shows details of the landscape along the rover's route
  • using 850 frames from the telephoto camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera instrument, supplemented with 21 frames from the Mastcam's wider-angle camera and 25 black-and-white frames -- mostly of the rover itself -- from the Navigation Camera
  • The images were taken on several different Mars days between Oct. 5 and Nov. 16, 2012.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The new mosaic from NASA shows illumination effects from variations in the time of day for pieces of the mosaic. It also shows variations in the clarity of the atmosphere due to variable dustiness during the month while the images were acquired
Mars Base

Listen to solar storm activity in new sonification video - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-storm-sonification-video.html

scibyte38 solar flare

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • What does a solar storm sound like
  • Take a listen
  • sonification of the recent solar storm activity turns data from two spacecraft into sound
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • measurements from the NASA SOHO spacecraft and the University of Michigan's Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) on NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury
  • creator is Robert Alexander, a design science doctoral student at the University of Michigan and NASA fellow.
  • a composer with a NASA fellowship to study how representing information as sound could aid in data mining.
  • raw information to an audio waveform
  • To sonify the data
  • in its original sampling rate of 44,100 hertz, it played back in less than a quarter of a second
  • benefits of sonifying data. You can zip through days' worth of information in an instant
  • Sonification is the process of translating information into sound
  • used in Geiger counter radiation detectors, which emit clicks in the presence of high-energy particles
  • not typically used to pick out patterns in information, but scientists on the U-M Solar and Heliospheric Research Group are exploring its potential in that realm. They're looking to Alexander to make it possible.
  • used to looking at wiggly-line plots and graphs, but humans are very good at hearing things. We wonder if there's a way to find things in the data that are difficult to see."
  • his approach led to a new discovery
  • a particular ratio of carbon atoms that scientists had not previously keyed in to can reveal more about the source of the solar wind than the ratios of elements they currently rely on. The solar wind is a squall of hot plasma, or charged particles, continuously emanating from the sun.
  • hopes to build a bridge between science and art.
  • movies were silent and people just accepted that that's the way it
  • this high res footage of what's happening on the surface of the sun, and it's silent. I'm creating a soundtrack
Mars Base

NASA - NASA Spacecraft Images Offer Sharper Views of Apollo Landing Sites - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...apollo-sites.html

scibyte39 moon Apollo MarMedia

shared by Mars Base on 22 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites
  • interactive shows two LRO images of the Apollo 17 landing site. Click and drag on the white slider bar to wipe from one to the other
  • This interactive shows two LRO images of the Apollo 12 landing site. Click and drag on the white slider bar to wipe from one to the other
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • can retrace the astronauts' steps with greater clarity to see where they took lunar samples
  • In the Apollo 17 image, the foot trails, including the last path made on the moon by humans
  • One of the details that shows up is a bright L-shape in the Apollo 12 image. It marks the locations of cables running from ALSEP's central station to two of its instruments. Although the cables are much too small for direct viewing, they show up because they reflect light very well.
  • higher resolution of these images is possible because of adjustments made to LRO's orbit, which is slightly oval-shaped or elliptical
  • paths left by astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell on both Apollo 14 moon walks are visible in this image. (At the end of the second moon walk, Shepard famously hit two golf balls.)
Mars Base

Mercury Surprises: Tiny Planet Has Odd Interior, Active Past | Messenger Spacecraft | S... - 0 views

www.space.com/ries-messenger-spacecraft.html

scibyte39 MarMedia mercury messenger

shared by Mars Base on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • interior unlike that of any other rocky planet in our solar system and a surprisingly dynamic history,
  • remained geologically active for a surprisingly large chunk of its evolutionary history, researchers said
  • planet's huge iron core is even larger than they had thought
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • likely overlain with a solid shell of iron and sulfur
  • layered structure not known to exist on Earth, Venus or Mars
  • Messenger has taken nearly 100,000 images and made more than 4 million measurements of the planet's surface
  • probe is mapping Mercury's surface and gathering data on the planet's composition, magnetic environment and tenuous atmosphere, among other features
  • s original science campaign was designed to last one Earth year
  • NASA announced in November that it had granted the spacecraft a one-year mission extension
  • officially began its extended mission earlier this week.
  • In one study
  • They found that the range of elevations was smaller than that found on either Mars or the moon.
  • also observed that the floors of many Mercury craters have been tilted substantially
  • suggest that internal forces pushed the craters up after the impacts created them
  • not out of the question that Mercury is still active today
  • not very likely
  • have not observed an active eruption or extrusion
  • determined that Mercury has "mascons," large positive gravity anomalies associated with big impact basins
  • first discovered on the moon in 1968 and caused great problems in the Apollo program because they tugged low-orbiting spacecraft around and made navigation difficult
  • Subsequently mascons were discovered on Mars
  • find out that Mercury has
  • appear to be a common feature of terrestrial planetary bodies
  • gravity calculations also suggest that Mercury has an iron core that comprises roughly 85 percent of the planet's radius
  • Earth's iron core covers about half of its radius
  • new findings should help shed light on Mercury's past
  • formation and evolution of rocky planets in general
  • looks like a layer of solid iron sulfide overlies Mercury's core — a feature not known to exist on any other terrestrial planet
Mars Base

Missing 'Big Bang' Antarctic Telescope Found - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...ig-bang-arctic-telescope-found

scibyte49 telescope

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers and students from the University of Minnesota hoping to search for radiation left over from the Big Bang instead spent the past few days looking for their telescope
  • 6,000 lb (2729 kg)
  • the truck driver who was supposed to deliver it to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • he’s not talking and police in Texas won’t press charges against him.
  • good news is that the missing telescope has been found – sitting at a truck wash — after a frantic cross-country search
  • telescope is a high-tech irreplaceable piece of equipment that is 22 ft high 15 ft wide (6.5 X 4.5 meters
  • designed to detect radiation from the Big Bang and it took fifteen people 8 years to build
  • will be shipped to Antarctica, where it will be attached to a giant balloon in December and sent 110,000 feet (33,500 meters) into the atmosphere.
  • Friday, a Minnesota trucking company sent off one of their trucks with telescope inside
  • Monday there was no word from the trucker and the scientists started to panic when the truck didn’t show up at the NASA facility
  • Calls to the trucker went unanswered
  • The owner of the trucking company sent his son to Dallas to search for the truck and the driver
  • only clue was a credit card charge at a Dallas truck stop.
  • The son found the driver, asleep in the cab of the truck, but the trailer, with the precious cargo inside, was nowhere to be seen.
  • driver said he left the trailer at a hotel parking lot
  • when the searchers arrived, it wasn’t there
  • trucker clammed up and wouldn’t provide any more clues or reasons for why he didn’t deliver his cargo
  • another employee of the trucking company found the trailer sitting at a truck wash in Dallas
  • If they would not have found that particular trailer at that time, maybe half a day or a day later someone would have stolen it and taken it for metal or just for scrap,”
  • NASA unpacked the crate Thursday morning and said the telescope was unharmed and is in great shape
Mars Base

Black Hole 'Bonanza': Millions Found by NASA Space Telescope | WISE | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/ound-nasa-space-telescope.html

scibyte61

shared by Mars Base on 30 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • A jackpot of previously unknown black holes across the universe has been discovered by the infrared eyes of a prolific NASA sky-mapping telescope
  • astronomers are still poring through this celestrial trove for discoveries.
  • These black holes aren't the average tiny, dense objects created by the collapse of dead stars, but rather humongous "supermassive" black holes that have been caught feasting on matter falling into them
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • We expected that there should be this large population of hidden quasars in the universe, but WISE can now identify them across the sky
Mars Base

Students: Asteroid 1999 RQ36 Needs a New Name! - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...oid-1999-rq36-needs-a-new-name

scibyte62 Asteroid

shared by Mars Base on 06 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • NASA and the Planetary Society are giving students worldwide the opportunity to name an asteroid
  • an upcoming NASA mission will return samples of this asteroid to Earth
  • Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) will be heading to an asteroid, currently named (101955) 1999 RQ36
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Scheduled to launch in 2016
  • NASA also is planning a crewed mission to an asteroid by 2025
  • competition is open to students under age 18 from anywhere in the world
  • Each contestant can submit one name, up to 16 characters long
  • must include a short explanation and rationale for the name
  • Submissions must be made by an adult on behalf of the student. The contest deadline is Sunday, Dec. 2, 2012
  • sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington; and the University of Arizona in Tucson
  • A panel will review proposed asteroid names. First prize will be awarded to the student who recommends a name that is approved by the International Astronomical Union Committee for Small-Body Nomenclature
  • asteroid was discovered in 1999
  • received its designation of (101955) 1999 RQ36 from the Minor Planet Center, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
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