NASA Gives a Detailed Analysis of all the Landing Debris Perseverance Has Found on Mars

A recent blog by Dr. Justin Maki, Imaging Scientist and the Deputy Principal Investigator on the Perseverance rover Mastcam-Z camera, provides a detailed account about the debris the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system left scattered around the Martian surface while delivering the Perseverance rover to Jezero Crater. This blog highlights how much hardware goes into sending our brave, robotic explorers to the Red Planet while discussing the importance of imaging such debris.

“For example, on Sol 414 (April 19, 2022), the Ingenuity helicopter returned a detailed color image of the discarded parachute and backshell located 1 km to the northwest of the landing site.” Dr. Maki writes. But how important is it to locate and identify debris from past missions on Mars?

Image of Perseverance’s backshell taken by the Ingenuity helicopter on Sol 414 (April 19, 2022). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Dr. Briony Horgan, Co-Investigator of the Perseverance rover and an Associate Professor of Planetary Science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University said, “The contamination concerns are pretty minor, but we actually do use hardware on the surface to track dust accumulation!” The parachutes are especially good for this and measuring their brightness over time can help us understand how dust deposition is changing over time due to local weather conditions.”

Dr. Maki continues in his blog, “A few weeks later, Perseverance entered the Hogwallow Flats region and acquired a high-resolution, 360-degree Mastcam-Z panorama. As those images were being downlinked to Earth, a science team member in Europe spotted the bright material (at 2:50 AM Pacific time) in a Sol 467 (June 12, 2022) Mastcam-Z image and immediately suggested that it might be a piece of debris from the Entry, Decent, and Landing (EDL) system. Later that morning it was confirmed by the EDL hardware team at JPL:  Perseverance had imaged a piece of multi-layer insulation (MLI), likely from the skycrane, which flew away from Perseverance’s landing site after touchdown, ensuring it would crash safely out of range from the rover.” But with debris being scattered around the Martian surface, can it interfere with Perseverance rover operations?

Image of EDL debris taken by Perseverance’s Left Mastcam-Z camera on Sol 467 (June 13, 2022). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

“Mars 2020 includes several design features to guard against this type of debris interfering with rover operations.,” said Steven Lee, who is the Deputy Project Manager for Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity. “The presence of debris on the ground in itself does not pose a risk to Perseverance’s mission. Only two rover components could touch debris on the ground. First, the mobility system is designed to be robust to a wide variety of terrain types and could easily drive right over this debris. Likewise, the sampling system is designed to operate in an environment with dust and pebbles (including dust and pebbles created during abrading or coring). We also occasionally perform a “percuss to clean chuck” operation to shake material out of the corer’s chuck.”

NASA’s Perseverance rover isn’t the first Mars rover to photograph its own debris, as Dr. Maki states in his blog, “The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity rover imaged a heatshield up close on Sol 335 (January 2, 2004) of the surface mission.  Those images revealed a debris field that stretched several meters, and included charred heatshield material, metal springs, and thermal blanket material.  The Curiosity images also showed a rock (“heatshield rock”) that is believed to be a meteorite – the original version of EDL debris.” Going forward, what specific steps can be taken to reduce this debris on future missions?

Image of Opportunity’s heat shield taken on Sol 335 (January 2, 2004). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell)

“For the moment, the number of missions that we’ve landed on Mars has been so small that it’s a very minor contributor to the surface,” said Dr. Horgan. “And I like to imagine that one day future Mars inhabitants will preserve these historic spacecraft landing sites and the hardware, perhaps as the first interplanetary parks!”

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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A Planet has Been Found That Shifts In and Out of the Habitable Zone

A super-Earth planet has been found orbiting a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from the Earth. Named Ross 508 b, the newly found world has an unusual elliptical orbit that causes it to shift in and out of the habitable zone. Therefore, part of the time conditions would be conducive for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface, but other times it wouldn’t.

The relatively small size and low luminosity of red dwarf stars means the habitable zone of this exoplanet is very close to the star, Ross 508. Therefore, the ever-changing conditions and likely high radiation environment doesn’t bode well for any type of habitability on this world, especially since this planet zips around its star every 11 days. The planet is about four times the mass of the Earth.

The Subaru Telescope. Credit: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

This exoplanet is the first to be discovered by a new infrared spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope, located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. The Subaru Telescope is the flagship telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Red dwarf stars, also called M dwarf or M-type stars, are the smallest and coolest kind of stars on the main sequence and they are also the most numerous, accounting for three-quarters of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. But because of their low luminosity, individual red dwarfs cannot be easily observed. They are very faint in visible light due to their low surface temperature of less than 4000 degrees.

The astronomers who discovered Ross 508b say that exoplanet discoveries around cool M dwarfs have been limited, as well. Previous planet searches using visible light spectrometers have only discovered three planets around very nearby red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri b. That’s why astronomers are so excited about the new InfraRed Doppler instrument on Subaru.

“Ross 508b is the first successful detection of a super-Earth using only near-infrared spectroscopy,” said Dr. Hiroki Harakawa, the lead author of the discovery paper, in a press release. “Prior to this, in the detection of low-mass planets such as super-Earths, near-infrared observations alone were not accurate enough, and verification by high-precision line-of-sight velocity measurements in visible light was necessary. This study shows that IRD-SSP alone is capable of detecting planets, and clearly demonstrates the advantage of IRD-SSP in its ability to search with a high precision even for late-type red dwarfs that are too faint to be observed with visible light.”

In total, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed so far. Exoplanet hunters say that understanding what makes planets habitable – or not — is of keen interest to those who study astrobiology, which studies how life originated on Earth and where it might exist in the Solar System and beyond.

Astronomers say the new infrared instrument offers a better chance to find more exoplanets candidates around red dwarfs, and more opportunities to investigate the possibility of life on other varied and unusual worlds.

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‘For All Mankind’ Gives Harsh Reality Check About Human Space Exploration

* Warning: Mild Spoilers Ahead *

The Apple TV+ series, For All Mankind, just wrapped up Season 3 and is a smash hit for both critics and fans, garnering Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 90% and 81%, respectively. It’s a show that (probably) came about from the Amazon hit, The Man in the High Castle, which depicted a world after the Allies lost World War II, and also garnered favorable ratings of 84% and 81%, respectively. Save the final scene (which I have erased from my mind), the show had both fantastic characters and writing.

Like its predecessor, For All Mankind also depicts a different world, but this time after the United States loses the race to the Moon, with the Soviet Union’s Alexei Leonov becoming the first man to step foot on its surface instead of Neil Armstrong. This historic event galvanizes both NASA and the United States to prove that America is still the greatest, resulting in the Jamestown moon base (Season 1 & 2), and eventually sending astronauts to Mars (Season 3).

Also like its predecessor, For All Mankind has fantastic characters and writing, but also doesn’t pull any punches in terms of the levels of tragedy and loss the astronauts and their families endure as humanity continues to push the boundaries of human space exploration. This is where the show really shines since it doesn’t just demonstrate how things could have been if we lost the race to the Moon, but how things could still be in our own reality as we prepare to send astronauts back to the Moon and to Mars in the coming years. Throughout the course of its three glorious seasons, astronauts suffer, they go crazy (one suffers from legitimate PTSD after a trip to the Moon), and a lot of astronauts meet some pretty grisly deaths, both in space and on Earth. During our own Space Age, we have encountered unspeakable tragedies such as the Apollo 1 fire, Challenger explosion, and Columbia disaster, and Artemis 1 currently sitting atop its launchpad is a testament to both our resilience and fortitude to keep going.

As our own world anxiously awaits the launch of Artemis 1 to the Moon, it’s more important than ever to prepare ourselves for the very real likelihood that Artemis astronauts and future Mars explorers will endure the same hardships and tragedies experienced by the astronauts in For All Mankind. If our own Artemis 3—slated to be the first crewed mission—loses an astronaut or the mission fails due to astronauts going crazy or dying on the Moon, we must keep going. If the first crewed mission to the Red Planet experiences the same level of loss and tragedy depicted in Season 3, we must keep going.

Despite it taking place both on television and in an alternate universe, For All Mankind gives a harsh reality check that space is hard. Much like in the show, some of our future astronauts to the Moon and Mars will suffer, some will go crazy, and some will die. But as we have demonstrated throughout the Space Age, we can’t let this stop us from achieving the impossible and pushing the boundaries of human space exploration to plant our flag a little farther.

We will endure, but don’t expect our future astronauts to have a sunshine and rainbows stay on the Moon and Mars.

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Lead Image:

Credit: Shisma; permission to share under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. (Image)

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Astronomers Find the Oldest Planetary Nebula

Planetary nebulae are short-lived “leftovers” of sun-like stars. Most of these “star ghosts” only last—at most—about 25,000 years. Usually, their clouds of debris disperse so broadly that they fade out fairly quickly. However, there’s one that has lasted at least 70,000 years. That makes it a “grande dame” of planetary nebulae.

A team of astronomers led by members of the Laboratory for Space Research (LSR) and the Department of Physics at the University of Hong Kong spotted this rare celestial jewel in the open star cluster M37. It orbits in our galaxy in the same galactic arm as the Sun and contains about 1,500 solar masses. The object, called IPHASX J055226.2+323724, is the third known planetary nebula associated with an open cluster in our galaxy. So, how do astronomers know it’s so old?

Understanding this Aged Planetary Nebula

A planetary nebula is a hot white dwarf star surrounded by a shell of material it ejected as it aged. In some planetary nebulae, the shell is roughly circular, while in others, it can be bi-polar-looking. The radiation from the star heats the nebula, which causes it to glow. The age of the expanding shell might seem tough to determine. Yet, there are ways. The team that discovered this object, led by HKU’s Quentin Parker, found it has a “kinematic age” of 70,000 years. That’s an estimate, but it’s a good one, based on how fast the nebula is expanding. The clues lie in the emission spectrum of light emitted from hot glowing gas in the expanding shell around the dying star. Those are “emission lines.”

The team also assumed the expansion speed has remained effectively the same since the beginning. Combining all that, you get the time elapsed since dying the star first ejected its outer layers. In this case, it comes to 70,000 years. By comparison, most “typical” planetary nebulae only last about 5,000 to 25,000 years. That’s a relatively quick time, compared to the life of the star, which could have been around hundreds of millions or billions of years.

The planetary nebula found in M37 (arrow points to it). Courtesy Laboratory for Space Research (LSR) and Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU).

In addition, the fact that IPHASX J055226.2+323724 is still visible despite its age and expanded size, makes it doubly rare. Its location shows that it “lives on” in a relatively “safe” environment. That home in an open cluster allows the expanding gas and dust cloud to fade. If the star were in the interstellar medium, the shell could be disrupted by other influences.

Tech Talk about IPHASX J055226.2+323724

This planetary nebula’s environment inside a stellar cluster gave the science team more insight into the original star that created the nebula. Currently, it’s a white dwarf, the aging progenitor star after it shrinks down on itself and ejects its outer layers. It’s a very hot object that will take billions of years to cool down. When it was still a sun-like star, however, it was around 2-3 solar masses. The team was able to estimate what mass it contained when it first ejected the material that became the shell and figure out what its mass is now. Using Gaia distance data, they also figured out that the expanding shell of material is now about 3.2 parsecs across. (For comparison, the distance between the Sun and its nearest neighbor star, Proxima Centauri, is 1.3 parsecs.) That places the shell at the extremely large end of known planetary nebula sizes.

Dr. Vasiliki Fragkou, the first author of the paper describing the work on this nebula, described the open cluster- planetary nebula (OC-PN) environment as “I am so excited to be able to work on these fascinating rare cases of OC-PN associations because they keep turning up important science results, like all three cases we have found are butterfly (bi-polar) PN in terms of shape, all are very faint and highly evolved, and all have Type-I chemistry according to their emission lines, and of course, all have intermediate to high progenitor masses.”

It’s Rare but Useful

Because this is only the third known example of a planetary nebula in an open star cluster in our galaxy, it provides interesting clues to the formation of the cluster where IPHASX J055226.2+323724 lives. Corresponding author Professor Quentin Parker pointed out that his group has found all three confirmed examples. “They are incredibly rare,” he said, “but also very important, as these beautiful objects allow us to independently determine points on the so-called initial to final mass relation (IFMR) for stars.”

Initial mass function describes the distribution of stellar masses that form in one star-forming event in a given volume in space. It covers all stellar objects, from low-mass brown dwarfs to the most massive stars formed. It’s important in clusters as a way of understanding the range of stars they contain and, along with the existence of IPHASX J055226.2+323724, give insight into the types of stars in M37.

For More Information

Discovery of the Oldest Visible Planetary Nebula

The Planetary Nebula in the 500 Myr Old Open Cluster M37

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The Geology at Jezero Crater is Even More Complex Than Scientists Were Expecting

On February 18th, 2021, the Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars. Since then, Perseverance has been exploring the region in search for evidence of past (and possibly present) life – much like its cousin, the Curiosity rover. This includes obtaining samples that will be placed in a cache and retrieved by a future ESA/NASA sample-return mission. These will be the first directly-retrieved samples of Martian rock and soil that will be analyzed in a laboratory on Earth, which are expected to reveal some tantalizing bits about the history of the Red Planet.

But it appears that we don’t need to wait on the sample-return mission since the Perseverance rover is already sending some surprising data back to Earth. According to a new study by a research team led by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Oslo, Perseverance’s ground-penetrating radar detected that the rock layers beneath the crater are strangely inclined. These strange sections could have resulted from lava flows that slowly cooled or could be sedimentary deposits from an underground lake.

The research team was led by Svein-Erik Hamran, a Professor of autonomous systems and sensor technologies at the University of Oslo (UiO) and the Principle Investigator of the Radar Imager for Mars subsurFAce eXperiment (RIMFAX) aboard the Perseverance rover. He was joined by \researchers from UiO, UCLA, the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Vestfonna Geophysical, the Centro de Astrobiología, the Norwegian Polar Institute, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and multiple universities. The paper that describes their findings recently appeared in the journal Science Advances.

Artist’s impression of what the Jezero Crater once looked like billions of years ago when water flowed into it. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Jezero Crater, located in Syrtis Major Planum between the Northern Lowlands and Southern Highlands, measures about 45 km (28 mi) in diameter and is believed to have once been a lake. This region was specifically selected as the landing site for Perseverance, which has been exploring the large deposits of rocks and clay minerals deposited at its western edge, where water once flowed into the crater. Like Curiosity, the purpose is to learn more about the periods when Mars had flowing water on its surface so scientists can get a better idea of how (and when) it transitioned to the cold, arid planet it is today.

As they indicate in their study, the team consulted the first data obtained by the Radar Imager for Mars subsurFAce eXperiment (RIMFAX), which performed the first rover-mounted ground-penetrating radar survey of the Martian subsurface. This survey was conducted as the rover made its initial 3-km (~1.85 mi) hike across the Jezero Crater and provided continuous data on the electromagnetic properties of the bedrock structure beneath the crater to depths of 15 meters (~49 feet) below the surface. The resulting radar images showed layered sequences that dip downward at angles of up to 15 degrees.

David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and one of the lead researchers on the RIMFAX, explained in a recent ULCA Newsroom release:

“We were quite surprised to find rocks stacked up at an inclined angle. We were expecting to see horizontal rocks on the crater floor. The fact that they are tilted like this requires a more complex geologic history. They could have been formed when molten rock rose up towards the surface, or, alternatively, they could represent an older delta deposit buried in the crater floor.”

RIMFAX paints a picture of Mars’ subsurface geology by sending bursts of radar waves into the surface, which are reflected by rock layers and other features underground. This allows scientists to determine the shapes, densities, thickness, angles, and composition of underground objects based on how radar waves are returned to the instrument. After analyzing the data, the research team noted that layered rock was common throughout the area surveyed by Perseverance. More perplexing, they also found that the inclined areas had highly-reflective rock layers that tilt in multiple directions.

Panoramic “selfie” view of the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter in the Jezero Crater, Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The most likely explanation for the angled layers they witnessed points toward an igneous (molten) origin, where the movement of magma underground deposited rock layers over time that cooled and solidified. However, there’s also the possibility that the layers are sedimentary, a phenomenon commonly found in aqueous environments on Earth. In this case, the features result from water depositing material over time, which hardens and becomes layered. As Paige said, this brought to mind another familiar Earth feature:

“RIMFAX is giving us a view of Mars stratigraphy similar to what you can see on Earth in highway road cuts, where tall stacks of rock layers are sometimes visible in a mountainside as you drive by. Before Perseverance landed, there were many hypotheses about the exact nature and origin of the crater floor materials. We’ve now been able to narrow down the range of possibilities, but the data we’ve acquired so far suggest that the history of the crater floor may be quite a bit more complicated than we had anticipated.”

The data collected by RIMFAX will be of great value when the samples collected by Perseverance are returned to Earth for analysis. Knowing what lies beneath the Jezero Crater and how it formed will provide the necessary context for characterizing the samples. This will provide a clearer picture of how and when Mars had flowing water on its surface, for how long, and whether this was intermittent or not. It will also indicate how and when Mars transitioned to the extremely cold and dry environment we see there today.

But most importantly, this data could reveal if Mars was ever able to support life on its surface, which would finally answer a question humans have been asking for centuries!

Further Reading: UCLA, Science Advance

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A Merger Completely Shut Down Star Formation

What’s the recipe for forming stars? Yep, lots of gas and dust. Galaxies rich in these materials get to make a lot of stars. When the supply runs out, star formation stops. That’s what’s happened in the galaxy SDSS J1448+1010, but there’s a twist. The galaxy didn’t stop making stars because it made so many it ran out of material. No, that happened because it merged with another galaxy. That action flung most of the available gas and dust out of the galaxy entirely. Essentially, the galaxy to went “dormant” and ceased star-forming operations.

That’s the story that the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (a radio astronomy facility) in Chile discovered when it focused on this newly dormant galaxy. So, what’s the story here? How could a merger strip star-forming material away so completely?

A Galaxy Merger with a Surprise Ending

Galaxy collisions and interactions are a fact of life in the Universe. So is star formation, and the two are linked in interesting ways. The general story is that smaller galaxies merge to make larger ones. Large ones will collide and merge with other large ones, and sweep up smaller ones, too. One consequence of mergers is star formation. That usually happens as shock fronts move through clouds of gas and dust during mergers. They shove the clouds together, which starts the process of star formation.

All that will happen to the Milky Way in about five billion years, when it merges with the Andromeda Galaxy. It turns out that the smaller Triangulum Galaxy will get involved, too. And, right now, the Milky Way is gobbling up dwarf spheroidal galaxies. But, it hasn’t affected our galaxy’s ability to make stars. So, why did SDSS J1448+1010 lose so much material in its merger that it went dormant?

SDSS J1448+1010 is a newly-dormant massive galaxy that’s nearing the completion of a merger with another galaxy. During the course of this merger, the force of gravity flung what amounts to nearly half of the system’s gas needed for star formation away from the galaxy, leaving it unable to form new stars. This composite image combines data from the Hubble Space Telescope and red/orange data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to show the post-merger distribution of gas and stars from the now-dormant galaxy into streams of material known as tidal tails.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Spilker et al (Texas A&M), S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

SDSS J1448+1010 is a massive galaxy born when the Universe was about half its current age. It has spent millions of years merging with another massive galaxy. That action ripped some amazing tidal tails out from the two galaxies. The tails were found during observations with the HST and ALMA. Those tails have about half of the entire system’s cold, molecular gas— exactly what’s needed for star formation. The tails contain about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Changing Understanding of Galaxy Evolution and Star Formation

“What initially made this massive galaxy interesting was that, for some reason, it suddenly stopped forming stars about 70 million years ago immediately following a burst of star-forming activity,” said Justin Spilker, a Texas A&M astronomer and lead author of a paper about the system. “Most galaxies are happy to just keep forming stars. Our observations with ALMA and Hubble proved that the real reason the galaxy stopped forming stars is that the merger process ejected about half the gas fuel for star formation into intergalactic space. With no fuel, the galaxy couldn’t keep forming stars.”

This discovery sheds light on the processes that change galaxies. It also helps scientists to better understand their evolution. According to cosmologist and paper co-author Wren Suess, at the University of California Santa Cruz, the processes galaxies experience are under intense study. “When we look out at the Universe, we see some galaxies that are actively forming new stars, like our own Milky Way, and some that aren’t. But those ‘dead’ galaxies have many old stars in them, so they must have formed all of those stars at some point and then stopped making new ones,” she said. “We still don’t yet understand all of the processes that make galaxies stop forming stars, but this discovery shows just how powerful these major galaxy mergers are, and how much they can affect how a galaxy grows and changes over time.”

What’s Next?

How common are these galaxy tugs-of-war? Do they always shut down galaxy star formation processes? This discovery may force astronomers to change their views about how star formation progresses and when galaxies die. Now, they have to find and observe more dormant galaxies to see if this happens everywhere.

“While it’s pretty clear from this system that cold gas really can end up way outside of a merger system that shuts off a galaxy, the sample size of one galaxy tells us very little about how common this process is,” said David Setton, a graduate student in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-author of the paper. “But, there are many galaxies out there like J1448+1010 that we’re able to catch right in the middle of those crashes and study exactly what happens to them when they go through that stage. The ejection of cold gas is an exciting new piece of the quiescence puzzle, and we’re excited to try to find more examples of this.”

These new observations show that while there are well-understood ways to shut down star formation in a galaxy, astronomers haven’t found all of them. “Astronomers used to think that the only way to make galaxies stop forming stars was through really violent, fast processes, like a bunch of supernovae exploding in the galaxy to blow most of the gas out of the galaxy and heat up the rest,” said Spilker. “Our new observations show that it doesn’t take a ‘flashy’ process to cut off star formation. The much slower merging process can also put an end to star formation and galaxies.”

For More Information

ALMA Witnesses Deadly Star-slinging Tug-of-War Between Merging Galaxies
Star Formation Suppression by Tidal Removal of Cold Molecular Gas from an Intermediate-Redshift Massive Post-starburst Galaxy

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Problem Solved! Voyager 1 is no Longer Sending Home Garbled Data!

Earlier this year, the teams attached to the Voyager 1 mission noticed that the venerable spacecraft was sending weird readouts about its attitude articulation and control system (called AACS, for short). The data it’s providing didn’t really reflect what was actually happening onboard. That was the bad news. The good news was that it didn’t affect science data-gathering and transmission. And, the best news came this week: team engineers have fixed the issue with the AACS and the data are flowing normally again.

The AACS is an important part of Voyager 1. It’s the machinery that keeps the spacecraft’s antenna pointed at Earth. Without it, all that valuable science data would get lost in space. The issue was really with the AACS’s data—it was garbled, and that left the team in the dark (so to speak) about the exact nature of the spacecraft’s health and activities.

Sussing out the Voyager 1 Problem

It turns out that it was a “networking problem” similar in spirit to something IT professionals might face here on Earth. Essentially, the AACS was sending telemetry data all right, but it was routing it to the wrong computer. Worse, it was a computer that had failed years ago. That actually corrupted the data, which led to the strangely garbled messages the ground-based crew received. It took a while for the team to figure out the problem, and it wasn’t clear why AACS suddenly began routing data to the wrong computer. Chances are, it received a faulty command from another computer. That implies there’s a problem somewhere else that they’ll have to solve. But, so far, the issues are not a threat to the spacecraft.

According to Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s current project manager, once the engineers figured out that the old, dead computer might have been part of the problem, they had a way forward. They simply told the AACS to switch over sending to the correct computer system. “We’re happy to have the telemetry back,” said Dodd. “We’ll do a full memory readout of the AACS and look at everything it’s been doing. That will help us try to diagnose the problem that caused the telemetry issue in the first place. So we’re cautiously optimistic, but we still have more investigating to do.”

The ongoing issue with AACS didn’t set off any fault protection systems onboard the spacecraft. If it had, Voyager 1 would have gone into “safe mode” while engineers tried to figure out what happened. During the period of garbled signals, AACS continued working, which indicated that the problem was either upstream or downstream of the unit. The fact that data were garbled provided a good clue to related computer issues.

Solar System Explorations

This aging and still-valuable spacecraft has been exploring the outer parts of the solar system since its launch in 1977, along with its twin sibling, Voyager 2. They each traveled slightly different trajectories. Both went past Jupiter and Saturn, but Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune. They’re both now outside the solar system, sending back data about the regions of space they’re exploring.

Where is Voyager 1? As of August 30, 2022, it is well outside of and above the plane of the Solar System. It will cross the Oort Cloud and head out to the stars. Courtesy NASA/JPL.

Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter in March 1979, and Saturn in November 1980. After its close approaches to those two gas giants, it started a trajectory out of the solar system and entered interstellar space in 2013. That’s when it ceased to detect the solar wind and scientists began to see an increase in particles consistent with those in interstellar space.

These days, Voyager 1 is more than 157.3 astronomical units from Earth and moving out at well over 61,000 km/hour. It’s busy collecting data about the interstellar medium and radiation from distant objects. If all goes well and it doesn’t whack into anything that could destroy it, the spacecraft should continue sending back data for nearly a decade. After that, it should fall silent as it travels beyond the Oort Cloud and out to the stars.

For More Information

Engineers Solve Data Glitch on NASA’s Voyager 1

Voyager Mission Overview

Voyager 1 Mission Status

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What is ISRU, and How Will it Help Human Space Exploration?

As Artemis 1 prepares for its maiden launch with the goal of putting astronauts back on the Moon’s surface within the next few years, the next question is how will astronauts live and survive its surface? Will we constantly ferry all the necessary supplies such as water and food from Earth, or could astronauts learn to survive on their own? These are questions that a discipline known as ISRU hopes to answer both now and in the years to come. But what is ISRU, and how will it help advance human space exploration as we begin to slowly venture farther away from the only home we’ve ever known?

“ISRU stands for in situ resource utilization where in situ basically means ‘in place or from the original place’,” said Bailey Burns, a System Engineer with Paragon Space Development Corporation, who also received a Master of Science in Space Resources from the Colorado School of Mines. “This basically is talking about using the resources that are there. This is a really big topic as we talk about space exploration because we can’t bring everything with us from Earth when we go to space. One of the largest reasons for this is the gravity well of Earth. To escape Earth’s gravity takes a lot of rocket power. They are estimating that it takes about $10,000 to put 1 kg into space. The short answer is ISRU is about living off of what’s in space to provide a permanent and sustainable human presence in space.”

Artist concept of Artemis astronauts on the Moon. NASA’s Artemis missions will establish the necessary technologies in preparation for human exploration to Mars. (Credit: NASA)

Dr. Norman Wagner, who is the Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware, believes that both landing pads and habitats are the two most important aspects the Artemis crewed missions should focus on when they first get to the Moon. He says this is due to rocket exhaust being able to “create projectiles”, while radiation and thermal shielding also being necessary or “we will be living underground.”

As stated, the Artemis astronauts will require both food and water to survive on the Moon, but how will they get both without constant resupply from Earth? A recent study explored how Moon dust can be turned into cement to build structures such as landing pads, but what about water and food? One possible avenue is growing it in the lunar regolith itself, which a recent study attempted with lunar regolith returned from the Apollo missions with marginal success. For water, the south pole of the Moon has been designated as a possible landing site for Artemis 3 astronauts due to its water ice content deep within some of its craters, specifically Shackleton Crater.

While the Moon lacks an atmosphere, it is currently hypothesized that pockets of water ice might exist within the depths of these craters due to the lack of sunlight reaching it. This is because the Moon’s axial tilt is only about 5 degrees relative to its orbit, meaning there are places at both poles that either receive constant sunlight, or none at all. Water is by far the most important need for humans, and water ice found on the Moon can not only be used for drinking and bathing, but can also be electrolyzed to make oxygen, as they currently do in the International Space Station.

“In terms of Artemis, I do believe what we’re doing right now is the best approach,” said Burns. “We really need to figure out how to utilize water best. After all, we are talking about having a human space presence and humans can only go three days without water. This makes this one of the largest concerns for humans in space. I think the next big areas will be figuring out how to use lunar regolith as a building material such as concrete here on Earth and utilizing helium 3 as a clean energy source.”

While Artemis astronauts will only be a few days from Earth in case something goes wrong, future astronauts going to Mars won’t be so lucky. It’s a six-month journey each way depending on the alignment of Earth and Mars, so ISRU will play an even bigger role there than on the Moon.

Concept art depicting autonomous robotic excavation and mining of Martian soil for water extraction in human exploration missions. (Credit: NASA)

“ISRU is going to be really beneficial to the Moon and Mars,” said Burns. “We’ve already talked about a few of the resources we can find there. Another one for Mars specifically is the abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now. It would be better if it had oxygen for us like Earth but having tons of CO2 is the next best thing. That means we don’t have to transport oxygen from Earth to Mars, which is really expensive, we just need to work on technology such as MOXIE which turns CO2 back into oxygen for us to breathe. Of course, with a carbon byproduct as well. The reason all of this is super beneficial, as I mentioned, it’s because it means we don’t have to bring these things from Earth, and we can have truly sustainable space civilizations on the Moon and Mars.”

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Lead Image: Artist concept of Artemis astronauts on the Moon. (Credit: NASA)

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NASA Will Try Again on September 3 For First Launch of Artemis

After reviewing the data from Monday’s scrubbed launch attempt for the Space Launch System/Artemis- 1 test flight, NASA’s Mission Management Team feels the rocket and the launch team will be ready for another try at the program’s maiden launch on Saturday, September 3. The two-hour launch window starts at 2:17 pm EDT (18:17 UTC).

“We got a good nights’ sleep and we reviewed all the data,” NASA’s Artemis mission manager Mike Sarafin told reporters today (Tuesday). “We agreed to move launch date to Saturday, September 3, but we will continue to review and evaluate all the data,” and make a final determination by September 1, Sarafin said.  

If the launch does not occur Saturday, officials said the scrub turnaround could be as soon as 48 hours, or Monday September 5. But that would be the case only if the launch would be called off due to weather. Any technical issues would likely delay the launch even further.

During the launch attempt on August 29, the main problem was due to an “engine bleed” issue, which effectively means that one of the four main engines could not be properly chilled to temperatures needed for ignition at launch. However, after reviewing the data, the team feels that the SLS rocket’s engine number 3’s temperature issue was very likely due to a faulty sensor, rather than the engine not reaching its desired chilldown temperature.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard at Launch Pad 39B, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022 during the first launch attempt of the Artemis program. Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber.

SLS program manager John Honeycutt said they needed to get the temperatures to about  -420 F (-251 C) . While engines 1, 2 and 4 had reached about -410 F (-245 C), engine 3 was about 30-40 degrees warmer.

“We did see that we had one engine that was reading a little out of family from the others,” said launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson. “We did some troubleshooting to try to bring that back, but that was not successful, and it was outside the bounds of launching.”

Even though they feel the problem came in the instrumentation, the teams will start engine chill earlier in the countdown in an attempt to have the RS-25 engines ready for ignition. This will replicate a timeline that was used successfully during a previous test of the engines.

If they still get the low temperature readings during Saturday’s countdown, Honeycutt said they will rely on other factors to determine if they will go ahead with the launch.

“We will have a plan for a go-no go that day,” he said, “but I’m anticipating we are not going to get any better results on the temperature bleed sensor on engine 3.”

Another factor on Saturday’s launch attempt might be the weather. Launch Weather Officer Mark Berger said the weather forecast favors showers and thunderstorms moving into the morning and early afternoon, but he’s optimistic there will be some “clear air” for parts the launch window. Morning storms could delay filling the fuel tanks. we’ will have some clear air for window, but have showers in the area and that could delay tanking.

“The probability of weather violation at any point in the countdown still looks to me rather high,” Berger said, and it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 60%. Berger said while that’s high, he expects showers to be sporadic, and feels there will be a good opportunity to launch.

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Science Fiction was an Inspiration for Many Professional Astronomers

What do MINBAR, TARDIS, Cardassian Expansion, BoRG, DS9, Tatooines, and ACBAR all have in common? They’re names of astronomical surveys and software created by astronomers who say that science fiction (SF) influenced their careers. Those names are just one indicator of widespread interest in SF in the science community. It’s not surprising considering how many scientists (and science writers) grew up with the genre.

Planetary scientists Colin Pillinger and John Zarnecki, and cosmologist Stephen Hawking often cited their SF interests. Astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously talked about his fannish admiration of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books on his Cosmos program. Rocket designer Hermann Oberth wrote SF, which caught the eye of astronomer Lyman Spitzer (of Spitzer Space Telescope fame). In addition, there are many scientists who have written creditable SF stories. These include Patrick Moore, Isaac Asimov, David Brin, Vonda McIntyre, and many others who used their science to inform fiction.

Inspiring Science Fiction Characters

It shouldn’t be news to anyone that these “geeky” SF interests remain part of many astronomers’ lives. Or that their interests show up in their work. The science fiction universe does more than entertain—it inspires careers. And, most often, specific characters made a huge difference in an astronomer’s formative years.

Take, for example, the character of Dana Scully in The X-Files. Or the woman who captained a starship in Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway. Or, the characters of Lieutenant Uhura (played by the late Nichelle Nichols), Mr. Spock, Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in early Star Trek. Countless engineers mention Scotty when you ask them about their heroes in SF. There are doctors who admired “Bones” McCoy and Dr. Beverly Crusher as inspirations. There’s even a dentist in Florida who designed offices and treatment rooms with a Trek theme.

Mentors from Science Fiction

Females are quite active in science fiction fandom and many are writers for the genre. A number of women in science mention the female characters Uhura, Scully, and Janeway as role models. Dr. Erin Macdonald, currently science advisor to the Star Trek universe, often cites Scully and Janeway among her mentors. She wrote on Twitter in 2019, “I grew up in Colorado, did my Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow, and would not have become a scientist if it weren’t for Dana Scully and Captain Janeway. Fictional mentors are just as valid.”

Macdonald, whose science career included research into gravitational waves, dedicated her dissertation to Janeway. In an article she did for StarTrek.com, she said Janeway helped her on her path to becoming a scientist. “Eventually, I would finish up at my Colorado undergrad and leave my friends and family behind to pursue a Ph.D. in Scotland. As I embarked on my new adventure, a certain Star Trek captain would emerge as a close companion, mentor, and inspiration. Kate Mulgrew’s portrayal of Captain Janeway on Voyager was everything I needed at that time of transition.”

The Star Trek universe isn’t the only influence scientists mention as their inspiration for STEM careers. Dr. Who, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars (in its many forms), and others come into play. The characters and plots set on distant worlds and in other times excite more than the imagination of budding scientists; they often (as in Macdonald’s case) inspire careers in SF itself.

A Survey of Science Fiction Interests

How many astronomers actually claim influence by SF in its many forms? That’s what astronomer Elizabeth Stanway at the Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability at the University of Warwick in the UK wanted to know. She surveyed colleagues to see how true it was. She got responses from 36 members at her university, and 239 responded during the UK National Astronomy Meeting 2022. Many surveyed were interested in SF, and furthermore, a good majority (69%) said that the genre influenced their career and life choices.

Stanway grouped the survey results into a schematic with five broad regions of interest labeled. They were: the asymptotic SF-lovers branch, the astronomers’ main sequence, the weakly interacting Cloud, the SFH (Science Fiction Haters) cooling track, and the D clump. Since a clear majority of the astronomers surveyed expressed a love of the genre, they became the basis of what she called the “astronomers main sequence”.

SF Finds Its Way into Science

So, those acronyms at the top of this story that Stanway reported in her paper? They’re part of a much larger collection of SF-related monickers that show up in scientific literature. And, on other planets. Scientists on various missions have named rocks on Mars after SF characters, and during the New Horizons mission, some features on Charon got informal names such as Mount Spock, Vulcan Planum, Serenity Chasma, Ripley Crater, Clarke Mons, and Nemo Crater.

This image contains the initial, informal names used by the New Horizons team for the features on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. Most of these names were approved by the IAU, including Clarke Montes (Clarke Mons), Kubrick Mons, and Spock Crater. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

In her paper, Stanway shares a table of some of the more colorful references taken from SF that she found. For example, MINBAR comes from Babylon 5, and stands for the Multi-INstrument Burst ARchive—a collection of data about stellar explosions. TARDIS is a supernova open source modeling code, while BoRG is a survey called Brightest of Reionization epoch Galaxies, named for the alien race that terrorized Star Trek crews.

Tatooines is one of the more intriguing names, used to describe circumbinary planets. It’s short for The Attempt To Observe Outer-planets In Non-single-stellar Environments and is a survey program using radial velocities to search out these worlds. ACBAR is a Star Warsian-related name for the Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver, which is a photon trap and references the famous line from the movie’s Admiral Ackbar, “It’s a trap!”

Stanway concludes her look at SF interests among scientists with suggestions for more surveys of astronomers and other scientists. Those could assess how deeply SF is woven into their interests and careers. She also points out other areas that need to be studied, in particular the gender differences and other personal aspects that influence interest in the genre and science careers.

For More Information

Evidencing the Interaction Between Science Fiction Enthusiasm And Career
Aspirations in the UK Astronomy Community

A List of Geological Features on Charon

Geological Features on Pluto

List of Rocks on Mars

To Captain Kathryn Janeway

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New Perseverance Rock Samples Were Altered by Water. They'll be Coming Back to Earth in the Sample Return Mission

The Perseverance rover is enjoying a bit of a winning streak lately! For the past year and a half, the rover has been exploring the Jezero crater on Mars to learn more about the planet’s past. As part of this mission, Perseverance is obtaining samples of Martian rock and soil that it will set aside in a cache for future retrieval. As part of a NASA/ESA sample-return mission, these will be returned to Earth for analysis and could contain evidence of past life. Thanks to the international team of geologists and astrobiologists overseeing the collection process, the first of these rock samples have been obtained!

The team consisted of researchers from Caltech, the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA Johnson Space Center, the Planetary Exploration Team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Institut de Minéralogie, de Physique des Matériaux et de Cosmochimie, the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS), and multiple universities. The paper that describes their findings, titled “Aqueously altered igneous rocks sampled on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars,” recently appeared in the journal Science.

Jezero Crater on Mars is the landing site for NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

The samples were retrieved from the floor of the Jezero crater, an ancient lakebed that once had water flowing into it. This is evident from the sedimentary deposits on the west side of the crater that were flow channels, as indicated by how they resemble a river delta. This site was specifically chosen as the landing site for Perseverance because scientists believe that samples from these sedimentary deposits will reveal things about Mars’ geological history. This includes when (and for how long) the planet had flowing water on its surface – i.e., persistently or in short bursts – and how it transitioned to what we see today.

Even more tantalizing is the possibility that these samples will contain evidence of past life on Mars, which could have emerged billions of years ago when Mars had a warmer, wetter climate. Amy Williams, a professor of geology at UF, is one of the long-term planners for the Perseverance mission who helps determine where the rover will drill and what tests and samples to prioritize. As she said in a recent UF News release:

“These kinds of environments on Earth are places where life thrives. The goal of exploring the Jezero delta and crater is to look in these once-habitable environments for rocks that might contain evidence of ancient life. We have organisms on Earth that live in very similar kinds of rocks. And the aqueous alteration of the minerals has the potential to record biosignatures.”

Ever since it landed in February 2021, Perseverance has explored the crater floor using a suite of tools to analyze the geological features, the chemical composition of the rocks, and the subsurface structure. So far, their results have confirmed that the environment is more complex than previously thought. For instance, the team discovered that the crater floor had eroded more than anticipated over time and exposed igneous rocks that formed from magma and lava flows. Scientists expected that the crater floor would be covered in softer sedimentary rock, which was likely worn away over eons.

Illustration of the robotic elements that will return samples to Earth collected by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The presence of igneous rocks shed new light on the crater’s formation and how it has evolved since. Said Bethany Ehlmann, a professor of planetary science and associate director of the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) at Caltech (who was not part of the research team):

“The finding of igneous rocks in the floor of the crater says that Jezero is more complex than the model of a lake basin that is filling with sediments over time with the delta being the last landform. It says that the region has had a rich geological history that has had both igneous and sedimentary processes.”

What’s more, the igneous rocks that Perseverance has sampled so far show signs of mineral alteration by water and organic compounds. These and other findings support the theory that the Jezero Crater could have been habitable billions of years ago. The rover is now surveying the river delta to collect additional samples for the Mars Sample Return Mission, which will consist of elements contributed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA that will land on the surface of Mars, retrieve the sample cache, and return it to orbit where a spacecraft will rendezvous with it and carry the samples home.

These include the NASA-designed Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL), Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), and Capture, Containment, and Return System (CCRS); and an ESA-designed Sample Transfer Arm and Earth Return Orbiter (ERO). This mission is currently under development and is tentatively scheduled to coincide with launch windows between the fall of 2027 and the summer of 2028. The mission will land near the Octavia E. Butler Landing site (where Perseverance landed in 2021) by 2029 and return the samples to Earth by 2033.

Jezero’s driving route since landing in Feb. 2021. Red exclamation marks denote where samples have been taken. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

To date, the Perseverance rover has obtained thirteen samples from various locations within the crater (see map above). Once they are returned to Earth, scientists can conduct detailed studies that would be impossible by robotic missions. While Perseverance and Curiosity are equipped with cutting-edge science instruments and onboard laboratories, the equipment necessary to conduct a very deep analysis is too heavy and cumbersome to transport to Mars. The sample-return mission will be the first to transport rock and soil obtained directly from Mars back to Earth.

These studies include measuring the age of rock samples taken from the bottom of the crater, which are likely to predate the river delta and provide important information about the age of the lake. In addition, scientists will be looking for signs of ancient life (aka. biosignatures), which are expected to consist of fossilized bacteria or organic molecules that form in the presence of life (assuming there’s anything to be found at all). Regardless of what these samples reveal, the results are sure to be nothing short of ground-breaking and could potentially revolutionize our understanding of Mars.

Further Reading: UFL

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With Better Communication, Astronomers and Satellites can co-Exist

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system has been in the news lately for both good and ill. The “Mega-constellation” of around 2,800 satellites added another 53 satellites to its roster just last week. But while it might one day provide high-speed internet for the whole of humanity, it is already causing a massive headache for one particular slice of humanity – astronomers. Starlink satellites are reflective due to the solar panels they need to power themselves. 

This is particularly bad early in the evening and just before dawn, when the sun alights on these high-in-the-sky panels before the Earth itself is lit up. But so far, only naked-eye observations have tracked the satellites on their course through the sky, except for a team of students from the University of Arizona. They recently published a peer-reviewed paper on their collected data of a series of Starlink satellites using a home-grown sensor.

Starlinks are undeniably easy to see at near dusk and dawn with the naked eye. They can be seen streaking across the sky at a speed that looks like a plane moving slightly faster than normal. But to an astronomer, these bright light sources are an absolute nuisance. 

UT video on Starlink’s struggle with brightness.

Typically, astronomy research, and much astrophotography more generally, requires long exposure times, meaning that the lens of the telescope must be continually exposed to the light it is trying to capture for long periods, typically hours. If a Starlink satellite happens to streak across the sky at that point, the exposure is ruined. The astronomer will have to either start again or attempt to eliminate the captured data with the satellite, which would most likely occur as a streak of light on the image.

There is no shortage of articles bemoaning this side effect of the development of the space economy. SpaceX itself is well aware of the problem, having devised several methods of lowering its satellite’s brightness profiles, including using darker materials and even a completely separate visor floating alongside it. The first solution, while it decreased the brightness of the satellite by a magnitude of 4.6, also caused the satellite to heat up to an unsustainable level and was thus abandoned. The visor solution, known as VisorSat, is what all current Starlink models, including the 53 launched last week, are currently constructed as.

Despite all the consternation these satellites have caused, no one has yet managed to quantify the data on the brightness and orbital path of these satellites. Astronomers have had to rely on naked eye observations and a government tracking resource called the Space Track Catalog. So a team of students at the University of Arizona, with help from professors in charge of the Space Domain Awareness lab, took it upon themselves to come up with better data.

Another UT video answering some questions about Starlink

But they ran into a problem when collecting that data. Traditional astronomical observational equipment is not well suited to fast-moving (and bright) satellites. That’s why people are upset about them in the first place. So the students invented one, using a small sensor with a camera lens.

They then tracked 61 satellites with 353 different measurements over two years and compared their results against the predicted values found in the Space Track Catalog. The results were striking – their data only differed by 0.3 arcseconds from the catalog itself. Most likely, that difference, which is minuscule in astronomical terms, is due to data lag in the government’s estimates, which are just that – estimates. But it also means there is a relatively accurate source of truth for astronomers who are interested in saving themselves the pain of having their image ruined by a satellite.

There are sure to be plenty of those. One of the team members estimates that the full Starlink mega-constellation, which will total around 42,000 satellites, could negatively impact as many as 30% of all telescope images. That is a potentially devastating blow to a field that, until this point in history, only had to worry about the weather in their data collection plans. But scientists are nothing if not inventive, so there will undoubtedly be some way to deal with this problem that will still allow humans to expand out into space. Knowing where not to look is undoubtedly a step in that direction.

Learn More:
UA – As reflective satellites fill the skies, UArizona students are making sure astronomers can adapt
Halferty et al. – Photometric characterization and trajectory accuracy of Starlink satellites: implications for ground-based astronomical surveys
UT – Starlink Satellites Are Still Bright
UT – 20% of Twilight Observations Contain Satellite Passes

Lead Image:
Grace Halferty, lead author of the paper, with the photometry instrument she and others help to build.
Credit – Kyle Mittan / University Communications

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Rocket Lab is Sending its own Mission to Venus to Search for Life

In a recent study published in Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, the private space company, Rocket Lab, outlines a plan to send their high-energy Photon spacecraft to Venus in May 2023 with the primary goal of searching for life within the Venusian atmosphere. The planet Venus has become a recent hot topic in the field of astrobiology, which makes the high-energy Photon mission that much more exciting.

Rocket Lab hopes to build off their recent successful launch of the CAPSTONE mission using its Photon satellite bus, and consists of a CubeSat designed to study the near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon and its applications for long-term missions such as Gateway.

Rocket Lab’s high-energy Photon mission hopes to search for life in the clouds of Venus and is scheduled to launch in May 2023. (Credit: Rocket Lab)

“With the high delta-V capabilities we just demonstrated on CAPSTONE, we can now access almost every destination in the inner solar system with Photon,” said Richard French, who is the Director of Business Development Strategy for the Space Systems Division at Rocket Lab, and lead author of the paper. “What makes Venus compelling to us is that until recently it hadn’t gotten a lot of attention in terms of missions targeting Venus, and in particular planning in-situ measurements. With VERITAS and DAVINCI now in implementation by NASA there is more focus but with those missions going no earlier than the late 2020’s we hope to increase the rate of discovery by going much sooner.” VERITAS and DAVINCI+ are two recently approved missions by NASA meant to study Venus more in-depth, to include its atmospheric composition and geologic history. Currently, high-energy Photon appears to be on schedule for a May 2023 launch.

“The development is proceeding as quickly as possible, with an eye towards taking advantage of next May’s launch opportunity,” explains French. “If we can’t make it, then we have a backup in January 2025. Either way, we are committed to moving as quickly as we can. We are benefiting from a strong partnership with our science team delivering the flight instrument late this summer and a bunch of flight spare hardware from the CAPSTONE mission.”

High-energy Photon will launch onboard Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle while ferrying a small probe with a single ~1-kilogram (2.2-pound) science instrument known as the autofluorescing nephelometer (AFN), which is designed to shine a laser onto cloud particles within Venus’ atmosphere in hopes of causing organic molecules to fluoresce, or light up. One such organic molecule, the amino acid tryptophan, is known to possess fluorescent properties. The probe is scheduled to spend approximately 5 minutes in the Venus atmosphere at 48-60 kilometers (30-37 miles) above the surface collecting an assortment of data to search for evidence of life.

Rocket Lab’s planned high-energy Photon mission to Venus is slated to conduct the approximate 5-minute science phase of its mission at 48-60 kilometers (30-37 miles) above the surface. (Credit: NASA Ames Research Center)

Since scientific planetary missions have been in the purview of government organizations throughout the Space Age, the high-energy Photon mission to Venus could have the potential to expand scientific planetary missions from the private sector.

“The ability to send a small payload of one or two instruments at a time enables focused science on rapid timescales and is a game changer for science,” said Dr. Sara Seager, a Professor of Planetary Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the mission’s Principal Investigator, and a co-author on the paper. “Missions otherwise typically take years to a decade to plan and implement, making it hard to jump on answering new and exciting science questions.”

As stated, the probe itself will only spend approximately 5 minutes collecting data within the Venusian atmosphere. Despite this small window, this mission is considered a “first step in a campaign of small missions to better understand Venus”, as noted by the paper.

“We envision two follow-on missions,” explains Dr. Seager. “One with a larger Probe with a parachute that can spend an hour in the Venus atmospheric cloud layers. The next a small balloon mission to last a week or more, inspired by the Russian Vega balloons sent in the 1980s.”

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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Everything Still Looks Good for Monday's Artemis 1 Launch

On Monday, August 29th, NASA will make history with the launch of the Artemis I mission. As the first flight in the Artemis Program, the mission will consist of a fully-stacked Space Launch System (SLS) and an Orion spacecraft taking off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once in orbit, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft and European Space Module (ESM) will fly beyond the Moon before returning to Earth. This mission will validate the key systems and components of the Artemis Program and be a dress rehearsal for the crewed Artemis II mission in 2024.

According to the Flight Readiness Review, the Artemis I mission is a GO for launch and will launch no earlier than 02:33 PM EST (11:33 PM PST). While the mission is uncrewed, the crew module will still carry two mannequins (Helga and Zohar), occupying two of the capsule’s passenger seats. Helga and Zohar will carry over 5600 sensors to measure the radiation load during the circumlunar journey. Shaun the Sheep, a character from the popular animated series Wallace and Grommit, will occupy the third seat as part of a global social media campaign.

The mission will last 20 to 40 days, depending on how many orbits the Moon mission controllers decide to make. This flexibility in mission duration is necessary to allow the mission to end with a splashdown off the coast of California during daylight hours (as planned). Once in orbit, the Orion and ESM will use the Moon’s gravity to gain speed and reach a maximum distance of 70,000 km (43,500 mi) from the Moon’s surface and almost half a million km (310,685 mi) from Earth – farther than any spacecraft has ever traveled.

This mission will set the stage for Artemis II, the first crewed mission of the program (scheduled for May 2024). This mission is planned to last ten days and will see a crew of four travel beyond the Moon – to a distance of 7,400 km (4,600 mi) from the lunar surface – without landing, then return to Earth. The ESM will provide for the astronaut’s basic needs, such as water, breathable air, temperature control, power, and propulsion. The ESM and Orion are the first space system since the Apollo Era that can carry crews beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and conduct high-speed reentry from the Moon.

By 2025, if all goes as planned, the Artemis III mission will send the “first woman and first person of color to the Moon.” Tomorrow is the latest step (albeit a huge one) on a long road that will return humans to the Moon for the first time in over fifty years!

Launch coverage will begin at 12:00 PM EST (09:00 AM PST) and 12:30 PM EST (09:30 AM PST) on NASA Live and ESA Web TV (respectively), when ground crews will begin fueling the SLS for launch. In the event that the launch is scrubbed, two more dates are available – September 2nd and September 5th. All the possible launch options are listed on the Orion blog.

Further Reading: ESA

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‘Panic!’ Around JWST, Exoplanet With CO2, Weak Mars Astronauts

No, James Webb didn’t disprove the Big Bang. Carbon dioxide found in an exoplanet atmosphere. An amazing picture of Jupiter from Webb, pieces of other stars found in asteroid Ryugu, weak astronauts arriving on Mars, and a new way to measure distances in the Universe.

It was a week full of space events, so the video version of the Space Bites is a bit longer than usual. Though, it’s still perfect for those of you who prefer the news being videoed at you by Fraser!

Don’t PANIC! JWST Did Not Disprove The Big Bang

I’m sure you’ve heard several stories about how JWST disproves the Big Bang Theory of the Universe. As you can probably guess, this isn’t true. This powerful infrared observatory has revealed fascinating views about some of the most distant and youngest galaxies ever seen. Still, none of the observations come close to overturning the Big Bang. They are fascinating and will provide astronomers with plenty of answers and even more questions.

More about JWST and the Big Bang.

Carbon Dioxide Discovered in an Exoplanet Atmosphere

This week we got an exciting new scientific result from the James Webb Space Telescope: a clear, unambiguous signal of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet’s atmosphere. The planet is a “hot Saturn” called WASP-39B, orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years away. Observations from Spitzer and Hubble revealed that the world has water vapor in its atmosphere, as well as sodium and potassium. But astronomers never had the sensitivity to detect carbon dioxide until now.

More about Webb’s CO2 discovery.

Jupiter With Auroras from JWST

This bizarre and beautiful image of Jupiter was taken by JWST in the first few weeks of operation, primarily to test how well it can track fast-moving targets like planets. The image has been cleaned up by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt and reveals features of Jupiter, such as its faint rings and polar auroras. Lighter colors correspond to higher altitudes so that you can see high-altitude hazes in some cloud layers and the Great Red Spot.

More about Jupiter in infrared.

Black Holes Help Measure Distances in Space

Astronomers are always looking for new ways to measure distance in the Universe. A new technique could use the gravitational waves from colliding black holes as a “standard candle” to add to the cosmic distance ladder. Light is red-shifted by the Universe’s expansion, and the same thing happens to gravitational waves, too, making the collisions appear more massive, happening in slow motion. If we know what kinds of black holes collided, we can use this to determine how far away the collision occurred and measure the distance to its galaxy.

More about ways to measure space distances.

Ryugu Samples Are Partially Interstellar

Our Solar System has been around for about 4.5 billion years, but the Universe was going for almost 10 billion years before that. Stars have lived and died, seeding our region with heavier elements. Scientists studying the samples of Asteroid Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa2 mission have found grains of material formed by previous generations of stars. These give us a better glimpse into the giant nebula that formed the Sun and thousands of other stars.

More about Ryugu samples.

How Weak Will Mars Astronauts Feel On Arrival

When astronauts spend several months in space, they come back to Earth significantly weakened. Exercise can slow the degradation of their bodies, but only to a certain point. When astronauts make the 6-month flight to Mars, how will they feel when they set foot on the Red Planet? Will they be strong enough to fulfill essential duties right away, or will they need some time to rest? Scientists have simulated astronaut capabilities based on a previous long-duration space mission and have made predictions.

More about travelling to Mars.

There’s Less Water Ice Under InSight That Scientists Expected

We know there’s a lot of water on Mars, especially at the poles. As you move closer to the equator, there’s less and less water, or maybe it’s frozen deep underground. NASA’s Mars InSight lander used its instruments to track how seismic waves move through the regolith under its feet. Unfortunately, it didn’t detect any evidence of water ice for hundreds of meters under the surface. This is too bad since the equator has the most reasonable temperature on Mars, and future explorers might rely on local deposits of water ice.

More about water on Mars.

Interview With Tory Bruno

My guest this week is Tory Bruno, the President, and CEO of United Launch Alliance. ULA has provided launch services for many NASA missions, including Juno, Curiosity, MAVEN, and the Parker Solar Probe.

Asking AI to Imagine Space Things

What if Mars was a cake? Or DaVinci designed spaceships? What if space monsters were real? Or what if the Universe was made of cake? We asked all these questions to an AI. Here’s what happened.

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