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Mars Base

Opportunity Scaling Solander Mountain Searching for Science and Sun - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...-searching-for-science-and-sun

scibyte105 opportunity SpacecraftUpdae

shared by Mars Base on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Opportunity rover has begun
  • the ascent of Solander Point, the first mountain she will ever climb, after roving the Red Planet for nearly a decade
  • l Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • recently succeeded in collecting “really interesting” new high resolution survey scans of Solander Point
  • The new MRO data are crucial for targeting the rover’s driving in coming months.
  • Solander Point is an eroded ridge located along the western rim of huge Endeavour Crater where Opportunity is currently located
  • it will take some time to review and interpret the bountiful new spectral data and decide on a course of action
  • Expect that analysis to take a “couple of weeks”
  • The new CRISM survey from Mars orbit will vastly improve the spectral resolution – from 18 meters per pixel down to 5 meters per pixel
  • Another important point about ‘Solander Point’ is that it also offers northerly tilted slopes that will maximize the power generation during Opportunity’s upcoming 6th Martian winter
  • winter’s last six full months
  • The rover recently investigated an outcrop target called ‘Poverty Bush’.
  • deployed her 3 foot long (1 meter) robotic arm and collected photos with the Microscopic Imager (MI)
  • collected several days of spectral measurements with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).
  • There are several geologic units that are overlapping
  • Opportunity is sitting on the contact
  • the east side of the contact are rocks maybe a billion years older than those on the west side of the contact
  • So far
  • has snapped over 184,500
  • images
  • total odometry stands at over 23.82 miles (38.34 kilometers) since touchdown on Jan. 24, 2004
Mars Base

Doubly Historic Day for Private Space: Cygnus docks at Station & Next Gen Falcon 9 Soars - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...tation-next-gen-falcon-9-soars

scibyte105 PrivateSpaceTravel Cygnus SpacecraftUpdae

shared by Mars Base on 30 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Sept. 29
  • Cygnus commercial cargo ship docked at the International Space Station (ISS)
  • a few hours later the Next Generation commercial SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • demonstration test flight from the California coast carrying a Canadian satellite to an elliptical earth orbit
  • Both Cygnus and Falcon 9 were developed with seed money from NASA in a pair of public-private partnerships between NASA and Orbital Sciences and SpaceX
  • docking was delayed a week due to an easily fixed communications glitch
  • The Cygnus spacecraft
  • Hatches to Cygnus
  • opened on Monday, Sept. 30 after completing leak checks
  • second commercial partner’s demonstration mission reaches the ISS
  • Cygnus delivers about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo, including food, clothing, water, science experiments, spare parts and gear to the Expedition 37 crew
  • SpaceX Falcon 9 blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California
  • deployed Canada’s 1,060 pound (481 kg) Cascade, Smallsat, and Ionospheric Polar Explorer (CASSIOPE) weather satellite and several additional small satellites.
Mars Base

Is comet ISON disintegrating? - 0 views

phys.org/...comet-ison-disintegrating.html

scibyte105 CometISON

shared by Mars Base on 06 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • predictions
  • concerning the uncertain future of Comet ISON
  • supported by the most recent optical observation
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • the comet is still showing an unexpected behavior that cometary specialists are fighting to explain
  • . The brightness has remained practically constant for more than 270 days or 9 months, a behavior without any precedent in cometary astronomy
  • presented and discussed what he identified as a peculiar photometric signature previously observed in disintegrating comets
  • . The following few weeks will reveal the real fate of weird Comet ISON.
  • No theoretical model exists capable of explaining all the observed phenomena with those defunct comets.
  • Several well known facts about the strange behavior of Comet ISON should be widely recognized.
  • It was expected that the comet would bright up after passing the "frost line
  • the comet has already passed that line and almost none has occurred.
  • ISON has surprised experts by maintaining almost unmodified its photometric behavior.
  • ISON faces other challenges
  • First, the comet will reach perihelion very near the Sun
  • calculated a temperature of 2,700 degrees Celsius, high enough to melt iron and lead
  • Second,
  • the comet will penetrate the solar Roche limit.
  • Any object penetrating this forbidden limit will experience solar tides that may tear apart the nucleus of the comet
  • The combination of temperature, radiation and tides may prove too much for the comet, which may not survive the encounter with the Sun
Mars Base

Supervolcanoes Rocked Early Mars - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...rs-super-volcano-space-ancient

scibyte105 ViewerFeedback Google+

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Massive "supervolcanoes" erupted across the northern face of Mars some 3.7 billion years ago, planetary scientists suggest
  • he eruptions likely blasted lava, sulfur, and ash across the red planet, altering its atmosphere and surface.
Mars Base

NASA Finds Ingredient for Plastic on Saturn's Moon Titan | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-titan-plastic-ingredient.html

scibyte105 ViewerFeedback titan

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • a chemical essential for the creation of plastic on Earth has been found in
  • Saturn's largest Titan
  • NASA's Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn, found that the atmosphere of Titan contains propylene
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • key ingredient of plastic containers, car bumpers and other everyday items on Earth
  • strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene
  • Scientists used Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) instrument, which measures infrared light given off by Saturn and its moon, made the discovery
  • When Voyager 1 conducted the first close flyby of the moon in 1980, it recognized gasses in the moon's brown atmosphere as hydrocarbons.
  • measurement was very difficult to make because propylene's weak signature is crowded by related chemicals with much stronger signals
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Images - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...images

scibyte105 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used a new technique, with added autonomy for the rover, in placement of the tool-bearing turret on its robotic arm
  • the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument placed close to the target rock
  • image from the rover's front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Hazcam) on that sol shows the position of the turret during that process
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The technique, called proximity placement, uses the APXS as if it were a radar for assessing how close the instrument is to a soil or rock surface
  • The rover can interpret the data and autonomously move the turret closer if it is not yet close enough
  • This will enable placement of the instrument much closer to soil targets than would have been feasible without risk of touching the sensor head to loose soil
  • extra days of having team members check the data and command arm movement in response
Mars Base

Mars Orbiter Spies Lackluster Comet ISON : Discovery News - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...met-ison-closing-in-131002.htm

scibyte105 CometISON ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have released their first observations of the incoming Comet ISON
  • the comet appears to be at the low end of the range of brightness predictions
  • as it falls deeper and deeper into the sun’s gravitational well, ISON will likely brighten
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • addition of gas and dust should cause the comet’s coma to increase in size.
Mars Base

Comet ISON Buzzing Mars Now: A Telescope Viewing Guide | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/near-mars-telescope-guide.html

scibyte105 CometISON ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Seeing Comet ISON: A telescope guide
  • If you really want to try to see Comet ISON for yourself, you'll need two things
  • A dark sky.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • A moderately large telescope.
  • A comet's brightness
  • an "extended" object with the light inside the comet's head spread out over a larger area of space
  • (a dark sky) is absolutely necessary
  • telescope in the 8 to 12-inch range
  • magnification of at least 200 to 300 power
  • if you're trying to see the comet you’ll have much better success by looking off to one side of its position (averted vision) rather than staring right at it; in that way you’ll be able to better detect its faint and fuzzy image
  • if you're trying to see the comet you’ll have much better success by looking off to one side of its position (averted vision) rather than staring right at it; in that way you’ll be able to better detect its faint and fuzzy image
  • Tuesday, Oct. 15. 
  • the comet will appear 1.1 degrees above and to the left of Mars, while Mars itself is passing only 0.9 degrees above and to the left of the bluish 1st-magnitude star Regulus
  • Comet ISON continues to run roughly two magnitudes fainter than original projections
  • recent 'discovery' of a jet feature may be the key in understanding Comet ISON's behavior during the past 7 weeks
  • observers
  • have begun to notice a lengthening of Comet ISON's tail
  • might" be a sign that the sun's warmth has indeed begun to make the comet more active by way of sublimation
Mars Base

NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds on Exotic World - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...news.php

scibyte105 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet
  • known as Kepler-7b
  • Previous studies from Spitzer have resulted in temperature maps of planets orbiting other stars
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world.
  • observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' of this giant, gaseous planet
  • wouldn't expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds
  • Kepler-7b was one of the first
  • Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere
  • data were not enough on their own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat
  • Spitzer Space Telescope played a crucial role in answering this question
  • Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet's atmosphere
  • Spitzer's ability to detect infrared light means it was able to measure Kepler-7b's temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 and 1,300 Kelvin).
  • relatively cool for a planet that orbits so close to its star -- within 0.06 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth and the sun)
  • , too cool to be the source of light Kepler observed.
  • Instead, they determined, light from the planet's star is bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet.
  • Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we've found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere
  • the cloud patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time -- it has a remarkably stable climate
  • With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away
  • exoplanet science
  • moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them
  • observations of Kepler-7b previously revealed that it is one of the puffiest planets known: if it could somehow be placed in a tub of water, it would float
  • found to whip around its star in just less than five days
  • a fully rendered 3D visualization tool, available for download at http://eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets
  • program is updated daily with the latest findings from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets
Mars Base

Chemistry's Biggest Loser: Official Atomic Weights Change For 19 Elements | Popular Sci... - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...mic-weights-change-19-elements

scibyte105 Chemistry

shared by Mars Base on 01 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Improved measurements of different elements and their isotopes have changed the official atomic weights of 19 elements
  • The changes are relatively small, and they're part of a regular effort to update atomic weights
  • Every atom of an element
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • silver as an example
  • has the same number of protons
  • Silver has 47
  • not every atom of an element necessarily has the same number of neutrons
  • different versions of an element's atoms are called isotopes
  • Silver occurs as silver-109 and silver-107
  • Chemists calculate the atomic weight of an element that you see on the periodic table from the masses of its isotopes, giving more common isotopes more weight than less common isotopes
  • doesn't necessarily mean every sample of silver on Earth has an atomic weight of exactly
  • samples of elements vary from place to place
  • erences play an important role in many sciences
  • They help chemists trace the origin of different materials
  • and date archaeological findings
  • The latest atomic weights measurements differ too little from their predecessors to really change science
  • do it?"
  • If it's just small changes, why
  • should give the best numbers there are
  • some new idea will come up that needs more accurate data
  • Molybdenum, Losing 0.0122
  • Atomic weights are relative, so they don't have units
  • Thorium, Losing 0.000322
  • Yttrium and Niobium, Tied, Losing 0.00001
  • Selenium, Gaining 0.0088
  • Cadmium, Gaining 0.0026
  • Holmium, Thulium and Praseodymium, All Tied, Gaining 0.00001
  • The changes in weights mostly come from continuing improvements in atomic mass measurements
  • advances in the technology behind mass spectrometers
  • not all about measuring more accurately
  • thorium, the IUPAC decided to recognize an isotope, thorium-230, that it previously thought was too rare to include in atomic weight calculations
  • The last time international chemistry
  • really altered the periodic table was in 2009, when IUPAC decided to list the atomic weights of some elements as ranges, instead of single numbers
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