Category: space.com

The comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as seen by Europe’s orbiting Rosetta spacecraft on March 22, 2015. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

The outbursts of water vapor seen emanating from comets are fueled by subsurface ice reservoirs, a new study suggests.

Observations by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft show that surface ice on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which Rosetta has been orbiting since August 2014, appears and disappears on a daily cycle tied to illumination by the sun.

“Water gas activity is modulated by the diurnal cycle, and we see that also the presence of ice on the surface is modulated in the same way,” said study lead author Maria Cristina De Sanctis, a scientist at the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Planetology in Rome. [Photos: Europe’s Rosetta Comet Mission in Pictures]

“We think that this cycle is able to replenish the surface layers of ice from the interior of the comet, sustaining the activity for many diurnal cycles,” De Sanctis told Space.com via email. “Small outbursts have been observed on other comets at the morning terminator (dawn), and this is possibly due to a cyclical phenomenon such as the one we see. Thus, this cycle could be common on comets.”

De Sanctis and her colleagues analyzed data gathered by Rosetta’s Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) in the “neck” region of the rubber-duck-shaped Comet 67P.

They found that ice abundance on the surface waxes and wanes locally on a daily basis, according to whether the region in question is in sunlight or shadow. The daily illumination cycle also drives the outgassing of water.

“When the surface is illuminated, water ice sublimates mainly from the uppermost surface layers,” the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online today (Sept. 23) in the journal Nature. “When the surface goes into shadow (or into the night side), a temperature inversion occurs between the now colder surface layer and the interior layers, which maintain a higher temperature for a longer time.”

Some of the water vapor sublimating from the warmer near-surface layers of Comet 67P (and, presumably, other comets as well) recondenses on the frigid surface, De Sanctis and her team said.

“By this mechanism, the surface layer becomes enriched in water ice,” they wrote. “The water ice in the uppermost surface layers will be stable until a new cycle of solar illumination starts, which will increase the surface temperature and thus trigger again the outgassing of water from the comet.”

Rosetta is the first mission ever to orbit a comet, and the first to execute a soft landing on one of these icy bodies. (In November 2014, the Rosetta orbiter released a lander called Philae, which touched down on 67P during a harrowing landing that involved two unplanned bounces.)

The Rosetta mission is revealing a great deal about 67P’s composition and structure — information that should yield insights about the early days of the solar system, team members have said, because comets are icy remnants left over from the planet-formation period more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Comet 67P made its closest pass to the sun last month, coming within just 114.9 million miles (185 million kilometers) of our star on Aug. 13. Rosetta will continue studying the comet from orbit through September 2016.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Timothy “TJ” Creamer is the first astronaut in NASA’s history to be named a flight director in Mission Control. Credit: NASA TV

Timothy “TJ” Creamer, who this week joined the ranks of Christopher Kraft, Eugene Kranz and Glynn Lunney as one of NASA’s flight directors, is no stranger to Mission Control.

Over the course of his 20-year career at NASA, Creamer has been certified as a capsule communicator, “capcom” — the flight controller that relays commands to the crew members in space — and for four years, led the team that coordinates science operations on the International Space Station as the payload operations director at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

And, oh yes, he also worked closely with Mission Control during his 161 days living onboard the space station as an Expedition 22/23 flight engineer in 2010. [The Most Extreme Human Spaceflight Records]

Creamer is the first-ever astronaut-turned-flight director in the more than 50 years NASA has been assigning people to fly into space and others to oversee their missions from the ground.

NASA announced Creamer’s new role on Monday (Sept. 21) in the same release that named commercial crew chief engineer Vincent LaCourt, systems lead Anthony Vareha, communications and tracking group lead Mary Lawrence, and flight dynamics technical assistant Rick Henfling as the other four members of the 2015 flight directors class.

“This group of flight directors represent an amazing wealth of operational experience and demonstrated leadership,” said chief flight director Norm Knight in a statement. “The critical role of [a] flight director cannot be understated and I could not be prouder to have them join our team.”

NASA’s flight directors lead teams of controllers, research and engineering experts and support personnel around the world from within the rooms of the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center — named in honor of the first flight director — at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. They also are involved in space station cargo and crew vehicle integration and developing the plans for future exploration missions.

Creamer and his fellow new flight directors will oversee the teams of engineers monitoring the U.S. commercial cargo spacecraft as they resupply the space station, as well as the Boeing CST-100 Starlinerand SpaceX Dragon crewed transports now under development.

NASA astronaut Timothy “TJ” Creamer floats inside the European Columbus module aboard the International Space Station in May 2010.
Credit: NASA

They will also help ensure the orbiting laboratory’s crews have what they need to conduct research and help ready NASA for deep space exploration missions to destinations such as Mars as the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are prepared for flight.

Following the completion of the 2015 group’s training and certification, NASA will have 27 flight directors supporting the station, exploration missions, commercial spaceflights and technology demonstrations. Before this class, 86 men and women had served as flight directors throughout the more than five decades of U.S. human spaceflight.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2015 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Credit: NASA

Omega Nebula, Swan Nebula, Checkmark Nebula, Horseshoe Nebula, Lobster Nebula — whatever you call it, the spectacular star-forming Messier 17 sparkles in a new photo.

On Space.com alone, namers have called out the nebula’s similarity to a swan, the Greek letter omega and a horseshoe or lobster (although there’s another Lobster Nebula, too). But this new image, taken by the Wide Field Imager on the 2.2-meter (7.2 feet) telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile, makes a convincing argument for something rosier.

A nebula is an enormous cloud of dust and gas that often acts as a stellar nursery — the gas collapses to form newborn stars. In this case, the rose’s petals are picked out in the reddish glow of hydrogen gas, heated up by ultraviolet light released from the blue and white pinpricks of newly formed stars. [Watch: A Rose (Nebula) By Many Other Names]

The white at the center comes from the hottest gas emitting light that mingles with starlight, ESO officials said in a statement. The nebula’s gas is estimated to be more than 30,000 times the mass of the sun, they added. 

One of the sharpest images of the entire Messier 17 nebula was taken by the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Newly formed stars can be seen within the rose-colored dust.
Credit: ESO

The nebula is 5,500 light-years from Earth, and rests in the constellation Sagittarius. It hosts more than 800 stars, including the open star cluster NGC 6618, a collection of stars born together and held near one another by gravity. The darker red dust in the image is glowing along with the lighter stuff — infrared cameras reveal more of the light the dust gives off.

Its only constant name, Messier 17, isn’t even its first designation: 20 years before French astronomer Charles Messier categorized the nebula in 1764, it was discovered by another astronomer, Jean Philippe de Chéseaux, who described at the time it as the “perfect form of a ray or the tail of a comet.” But whatever its name, the rosy nebula remains sweet to see.

An image of Messier 17 built from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Credit: ESO / mash mix: Space.com

How do you capture the moon’s majesty in song? Astrophotographer Stephan Kogelman captured this photograph of the August 2014 supermoon on the Island of Bonaire in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela. Credit: Stephan Kogelman

As you settle in Sunday night (Sept. 27) to watch the supermoon lunar eclipse, kick back with some moon tunes as chosen by Space.com’s staff.

The moon has always fascinated humans, ever present and ever changing in the sky, and that fascination has inspired countless moon-based melodies. A full moon can mean romance or chaos and disaster; a thin silver sliver spells mystery, changeability or tranquility. What might a supermoon lunar eclipse represent?

Listen below to some moon favorites:

NASA has contemplated the moon in song as well: Steven Williams from NASA’s Planetary Science Division pulled together an infographic and long list of moon-inspired refrains.

The infographic pulls out classic moon tunes, songs about the Apollo moon missions, and even songs for a rainbow of multicolored moons (from “Red Moon” by The Walkmen down to “Kiko and the Lavender Moon” by Los Lobos). It also includes songs for geographical moons rising over dozens of American states, plus Australia (“Sorrento Moon” by Tina Arena) and Cuba (“Havana Moon” by Chuck Berry).

To prepare for Sunday’s eclipse, check out Space.com’s viewing guide or catch up on the science behind it. The moon won’t completely disappear — it will take on a reddish hue after it falls into Earth’s shadow. The total eclipse will begin at 8:11 p.m. EDT (0011 GMT on Sept. 28) and stretch for 72 minutes. So if you’re in it for the long haul, you’ll have plenty of time for a lunar playlist.

NASA’s Steven Williams listed classic, colorful and geography-based moon songs in an infographic for the Planetary Science Division. You can learn more about the moon in song by NASA at: http://moon.nasa.gov/moonsongs.cfm.
Credit: NASA

Editor’s note: If you capture an amazing view of the supermoon lunar eclipse or any other night sky view that you would like to share with Space.com for a possible story or gallery, send images and comments to managing editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com.

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

The whiskey company Ardbeg found differences in the taste of whiskey after it spent two years on the International Space Station. Credit: Ardbeg

After spending more than two years in a weightless environment, whiskey distillate on the International Space Station (ISS) tastes different from samples on Earth, a whiskey company reported.

Scotch whiskey company Ardbeg rocketed the samples into space along with an ISS crew at the invitation of NanoRacks LLC, the company that manages experiments on the U.S. side of the station.

Shortly after launch, in January 2012, astronauts broke open the glass separating the distillate (which is usually put into oak barrels to mature) and oak wood shavings, modeling the whiskey-making process where the substance is normally put in oak barrels to mature. At the same time, they ran a parallel test on Earth.

Although there were a few differences observed after the whiskey had spent 971 days in space, the biggest one was how many small molecules from the wood, called wood extractives, had made their way into the samples. The levels of wood extractives were much higher than they would have been if the whiskey had matured in barrels on Earth, due to the larger amount of surface area available when using wood shavings instead.

However, there were higher concentrations of flavors that come from oak wood, called lignin breakdown products, in the samples on Earth than in the ones in space. The company concluded that microgravity likely made their extraction more difficult.

“I was expecting a little different flavor. However, when myself and my team went to nose and taste the samples … I was quite astonished at how different the samples were,” Bill Lumsden, Ardbeg’s director of distilling, said in a YouTube video about the experiment.

Although the results are quite new, Lumsden pledged to try to find ways to incorporate the new flavor into his whiskey. He also said he hopes to send more samples to the space station for “something more advanced” but didn’t elaborate on what that might be.

This is the first such experiment for a whiskey maker in space, the company said, but there have been many other experiments involving beer and liquor.

Just last month, Japan’s Tokyo-based Suntory Global Innovation Center launched five different samples of booze to the International Space Station aboard a Japanese cargo ship as part of an experiment to study how whiskey “mellows” in space.

Among other recent experiments, an 11-year-old’s concoction flew on the ISS, and another company launched yeast on a sounding rocket that was later collected to form the basis of a beer.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on

NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE image of recurring slope lineae (RSL) in Melas Chasma, Valles Marineris. Arrows point out tops and bottoms of a few lineae. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The dark, fingerlike features that creep down steep Martian slopes in warm weather continue to puzzle scientists.

These “recurring slope lineae” (RSL), which have been spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) at low and middle latitudes on the Red Planet, fade during cooler months but come back again annually at nearly the same locations over multiple Martian years.

Scientists continue to debate the true nature of the RSL phenomenon; no guess as to what they are and why they occur yet satisfies all observations. And just how RSL sites should be explored generates spirited debate, as evidenced by the discussions that emerged during the second Mars 2020 Landing Site Workshop, which was held last month in Monrovia, California. [Photos: The Search for Water on Mars]

More than 200 researchers and engineers participated in that meeting, sifting through data and imagery in an effort to narrow down potential landing sites for NASA’s next Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch in 2020.

Sites for Mars life?

Evidence is mounting that RSL are the mark of some kind of volatile substance, and a leading theory posits that they are caused by the flow of salt-laden liquid water. If so, could RSL be the best markers of available water to help sustain future crewed Mars expeditions?

RSL sites may also offer insights into subsurface Mars, as well as help identify places where microbial life could occur on the Red Planet, some scientists say.

For example, researcher David Stillman has studied an RSL site in the huge Martian canyon Valles Marineris that he suggests is being recharged by an aquifer.

The total amount of water liberated from that area equals eight to 17 Olympic-size swimming pools, and the only way to annually recharge such a large volume of water is via an aquifer, said Stillman, who’s based at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

“I just think that these features are the best places to look for extant life,” Stillman told Space.com at the workshop. [The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)]

Caution warranted

The astrobiological potential of RSL sites has some scientists stressing caution, contending that the areas should be treated as “special regions” for planetary protection purposes in any Mars exploration plan.

Recurring slope lineae (RSL) seep in Garni crater on the floor of Mars’ Melas Chasm.
Credit: A. McEwen/NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) defines special regions on Mars as areas “within which terrestrial organisms are likely to replicate” and states that “any region which is interpreted to have a high potential for the existence of extant Martian life forms is also defined as a special region.”

John Rummel, a senior scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, thinks humanity should exercise caution in studying RSL sites.

“One of the central goals for Mars exploration is to determine whether or not Mars is the abode of life … or was in the past. Another is to understand the surface of Mars to ensure that it is, or can be, safe for human exploration,” Rummel, a former NASA planetary protection officer and COSPAR panel chair, told Space.com.

“Both of these goals would be harmed, perhaps permanently, by the introduction of Earth organisms into environments on Mars where they could grow and reproduce,” he added.

The RSL features are indicative, “at the very least,” Rummel said, of processes on Mars that involve fluid flows that nobody understands. And it may very well be that the fluid is liquid water, he added.

“To blunder into RSL without cleaning up your rover first, prior to launch, would be a tragic mistake, and a foolish one,” Rummel said. “The fact that RSL are on steep slopes where one could very well lose the rover to an unplanned tumble only compounds the problem.”

Before we study RSL “in depth,” Rummel said, “we need to be prepared for the unknown, and clean enough to sink into them if they turn out to be soft spots on the slopes of Mars.”

How close is too close?

How to protect RSL sites adequately is a complicated issue. For example, some scientists at the landing-site meeting asked a difficult question: How close is too close, as far as RSL and special regions are concerned? Could the Mars 2020 rover park on a hillside near an RSL site and study the features from afar?

Features called recurring slope lineae (RSL), which could indicate seasonal flows of salty water, are found on some Martian slopes in warmer months. Red arrows point out an RSL in this image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera system on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Credit: A. McEwen/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

“NASA needs to define a policy about landing-site candidates near confirmed or candidate RSL sites,” James Wray, an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said at the gathering.

The $1.5 billion Mars 2020 rover likely won’t roll through RSL sites if they are indeed designated as special regions. The chosen locale for the car-size robot should show geologic diversity, with the rover able to access rocks believed to be capable of preserving biosignatures of past Mars life, if any ever existed, NASA officials have said. [‪NASA’s Mars Rover 2020 Mission in Pictures (Gallery)]

During last month’s meeting, Doug Bernard, Mars 2020 Project system engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said planetary protection for the rover project “is a very rich topic.”

Mars Myths & Misconceptions: Quiz

No planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.

0 of 10 questions complete

Mars Myths & Misconceptions: Quiz

No planet is more steeped in myth and misconception than Mars. This quiz will reveal how much you really know about some of the goofiest claims about the red planet.

0 of questions complete

Bernard said that the Mars 2020 rover will not land in a formally defined naturally occurring special region, or any region where ice has been observed or is credibly predicted within 16 feet (5 meters) of the surface. Also, once down on the Martian surface, the future rover cannot drive to a region of interest within a special region.

Many questions to answer

Scientists continue to investigate the RSL phenomenon, for many questions remain.

For example: Is the origin of RSL water atmospheric? If so, RSL sites may show where it is easiest to extract water from the atmosphere. Or does RSL water come from the subsurface? If this is the case, then habitability at these sites would be more favorable, Wray said in his presentation, which was co-authored by Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, principal investigator of MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera system; Colin Dundas of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science center in Flagstaff, Arizona; and Matt Chojnacki, an associate staff scientist for HiRISE at the University of Arizona.

“We don’t think that we’re seeing actual liquid water … we’re not seeing the gun going off, but I would call this maybe the smoke from the gun,” Wray said. Having the Mars 2020 rover land near an RSL site would be “most excellent” for Mars science and future exploration, he said.

The future

HiRISE is at the forefront of the ongoing RSL studies. The camera helps chart the features, with snapshots of closely monitored sites typically taken every few weeks.

More data from HiRISE could help unravel the RSL mystery, Stillman said.

“It is essential to determine where these features are,” he said. “Once we know where, then hopefully we can answer why.”

Stillman said that, along with HiRISE imagery, “we are trying to use computers to interpret where the RSL are so we can compute all sorts of statistics on them to really understand when and why they flow.”

Such modeling work is difficult because salt concentrations change during the flow, and the brine freezes each day, he added.

Stillman and other researchers would love to put even more resources toward studying RSL sites. A dedicated Mars orbiter that focuses on RSL would be desirable, Stillman said, as would landed assets that sit and watch RSL flows while making thermal and water vapor measurements.

Wray also voiced a desire for the up-close investigation of RSL features.

“It would be great if we could observe these things throughout the days of their prime activity,” he said.

“RSL appear to grow very rapidly right after they form … for months afterward the growth is much slower than the initial burst,” Wray added. “But if we could just drive near enough to obtain remote-sensing observations, we could get really unique observations that we will never get from orbit.”

Wray said that it’s advisable to think ahead to future human exploration of Mars. “RSL could be the best markers of available water near the equator that we have. Think positive, not only negative, about RSL.”

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and is co-author of Buzz Aldrin’s 2013 book “Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration” published by National Geographic with a new updated paperback version released in May 2015. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

This weekend’s rare supermoon total lunar eclipse will offer a mix of risk and scientific opportunity for a NASA moon-orbiting spacecraft.

Earth’s nearest neighbor will be plunged into darkness Sunday evening (Sept. 27) North American time, during an eclipse that takes place when the moon is closest to Earth during its elliptical orbit (and therefore looks abnormally big and bright in the sky). The event will thus be a “supermoon” total lunar eclipse — the first such eclipse since 1982, and the last until 2033.

Earth’s shadow will darken NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as well, and that’s a bit of a concern for the solar-powered probe. However, LRO has survived three other lunar eclipses in just the last 17 months, so the spacecraft’s handlers are confident it will come through this one safely as well. [Supermoon Lunar Eclipse: Visibility Maps for the ‘Blood Moon’]

“We have a method, and it works well,” science operations planner Dawn Myers, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. “It’s always stressful during the approach of the eclipse, but we follow the same procedures every time, and we haven’t had any trouble.”

Those procedures originally involved shutting down LRO’s systems to save battery power and simply riding out the eclipse until the sun came out again. But as mission team members gained experience over the years — LRO launched in June 2009 — they grew confident enough to take some data during lunar eclipses.

For example, during recent eclipses, LRO has kept its Diviner instrument on, tracking surface temperatures as the moon has moved from sunlight to shadow to sunlight once again. These temperatures can swing dramatically, changing by about 280 degrees Fahrenheit (156 degrees Celsius) in just a few minutes, NASA officials said.

“The rapid cooling of the surface during an eclipse gives us a view of how the top few centimeters cool differently than during a normal lunar night,” LRO deputy project scientist Noah Petro, also of NASA Goddard, said in the same statement. “From this, we learn about the size of particles at the surface.”

LRO will also likely leave its star tracker and some heaters on during the eclipse, to allow for improved navigation, NASA officials said.

The $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, which is mapping the moon in unprecedented detail, is currently funded through October 2016. The probe is about the size of a small car and carries seven different science instruments (most of which will be turned off during Sunday’s eclipse).

Editor’s note: If you snap an amazing picture of the Sept. 27 supermoon total lunar eclipse or any other view of night sky that you’d like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send photos, comments and your name and location to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, and his new book encourages kids to take the first steps onto Mars.

“Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet,” by Buzz Aldrin, with Marianne J. Dyson
Credit: National Geographic Children’s Books

In “Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet” (National Geographic Children’s Books, 2015), astronaut Buzz Aldrin invites kids to set a course for Mars as he delves into its history and environment as well as plans for a manned mission. Along with co-author Marianne Dyson, an author, physicist and NASA flight engineer, Aldrin guides the reader through the steps of getting to, exploring and colonizing the planet.

Young readers learn what they will need to get to Mars (and what they won’t need on the Red Planet — such as a lawn mower, coat, umbrella, bug spray and a boat) and are introduced to activities that help explain the conditions on the planet, incorporating string, toy cars, microwaves, marshmallows and balloons into various explorations. The book goes through a detailed, fun history of all the missions to Mars so far and the information those missions have brought back before giving details about how humans might set foot there. [Buzz Aldrin Says Humanity’s Future Is on Mars (Exclusive Video)]

Aldrin has explained his plans for Mars before, as in his 2013 book, “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration”(written with Leonard David, a longtime contributor to Space.com). This time, he works his way step by step through a long-term scheme for an “Aldrin Cycler” spacecraft, which would cycle through the solar system from Earth to Mars, and back to Earth, every two and one-half years.

Before landing on the planet itself, he says explorers could scope out the planet from Phobos, one of Mars’ moons. Upon landing, Aldrin describes how the first explorers — including the reader — will de-dust themselves, set up camp and begin finding resources. He explains how, as time goes on, the settlers will transform the planet to be livable and suited to humanity’s needs.

Aldrin’s vision of Mars is packed with concrete information, instructions for hands-on demonstrations and straightforward descriptions of going from one step to the next — down to the menu of the first Mars cafe and the types of beds the first settlers will sleep on. Even if the details might differ, this book sets forward a tangible path that space-loving children will be eager to tread.

BUY “Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet” by Buzz Aldrin and Marianne Dyson >>>

Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Saturn’s dark side looms large in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft in January 2015. Barely visible in the bottom-left corner is Tethys, one of Saturn’s moons. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

A spectacular photo of Saturn’s night side and its rings plus a glimmer of moon, from the Cassini spacecraft, shows just how dark the planet can get.

The shadow of the gas giant cuts into the view of the rings surrounding the planet. At the planet’s pole is Saturn’s bizarre hexagon, a storm that has raged above the north pole for more than 30 years.

Hovering in the blackness, in the bottom left of the image, is Saturn’s moon Tethys, which was brightened by a factor of three during the editing process to make it more visible. The Cassini spacecraft captured the image on Jan. 15, and NASA released it on its website Sept. 14.

Cassini has been at the ringed giant since 2004, exploring the planet and its moons — particularly Titan, a moon with its own atmosphere and liquid cycle (similar to Earth).

The spacecraft is making several close final flybys of moons this year as it enters the last phase of its mission. The spacecraft will do more close-up observations of the rings before it plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere in an intentional death dive in 2017.

Some of Cassini’s major scientific observations include watching plumes erupt on the moon Enceladus, finding large hydrocarbon lakes on Titan and watching a new moon being born in Saturn’s rings. In 2005, it released a lander called Huygens, which spent a few hours making close-up observations of Titan during the descent and touchdown.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Baritone Ben Edquist performs as soprano Pureum Jo (left) looks on during a preview of “O Columbia” held for NASA employees at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Credit: Houston Grand Opera

HOUSTON — It is not unusual, given NASA’s presence in the community, to hear of people in Houston singing the virtues of space exploration.

Those voices though, do not often take the form of opera.

That will change this week, when a collaboration between the Houston Grand Opera and NASA debuts “O Columbia” at the Revention Music Center in downtown Houston. The chamber opera examines the past, present, and future of the spirit of exploration using the 2003 loss of the space shuttle Columbia as a touchstone.

“One of the things that opera does really, really well is get at big ideas in a way that is both moving and open ended [such] that it can be both specific and also atmospheric at the same time,” stated composer Gregory Spears. “In that sense, it felt right when talking about NASA in general and in the middle part of the piece about Columbia.” [Watch – Columbia Astronauts: In Their Own Words]

“It was a good way in order to contextualize the tragedy in a much larger history,” Spears said.

“O Columbia” opens not in outer space, but at sea, and in the past rather than the future. Over the course of the 70-minute performance, the English-language opera focuses on why the risks of exploration are worth the rewards, and how that has influenced our present and future paths into space.

That opera’s larger frame of reference grew out of Spears, librettist Royce Vavrek and the other members of the “O Columbia” production crew having the chance to consult with NASA astronauts, flight controllers, and others in the Houston-based Johnson Space Centercommunity, whose involvement helped to shape the tone and direction of the final piece.

“We started with an idea in January 2014 and then that idea became more solid once we had the chance to go to NASA and talk to people, ask questions and listen,” said Brittany Duncan, program director for HGOco, the Houston Grand Opera’s community collaboration initiative. “It has evolved a lot over time.”

Putting Columbia in context

David Rose’s wife introduced to him to opera not long after he went to work at the Johnson Space Center, first as an astronaut instructor and then later as a project manager during the space shuttle program. As a family, the Roses have Houston Grand Opera season subscribers for almost 20 years.

So it wasn’t too much of a surprise when Rose embraced the chance to combine his work experience at NASA with his interest in opera.

“I wanted to see this particular art form begin to embrace topics associated with human exploration of space,” Rose told collectSPACE. “Once I saw that the opportunity was there to participate, I jumped at it.”

Through those he met over the years at the opera, Rose learned of “O Columbia” and in addition to sharing his own thoughts on its development, he introduced the HGO team to the NASA community.

“Initially, when I was presented with the proposal for the opera, the way it was conceived was as a reflection on the actual day of the Columbia tragedy — viewing the tragedy from the standpoint of several principals who might have been involved, people working at mission control, people in the Houston community, even, maybe, the crew,” Rose recalled. “And reading through it, I, and then several other people who’ve worked in some way in human spaceflight who I consulted with, all had a pretty sharp reaction to it.” [NASA’s Columbia Shuttle Disaster Explained (Infographic)]

“Even years removed from the Columbia accident, it still seemed like a story that was going to touch on some raw nerves depending on how it was crafted,” Rose recounted.

Rose and his colleagues came to realize that their view of the accident differed from those who were involved in the opera. Spears and Vavrek were younger and had grown up knowing only the space shuttle.

Houston Grand Opera “O Columbia” poster art.
Credit: Houston Grand Opera

“We thought that we had a different historical perspective that put the Columbia tragedy into a different context than maybe someone coming at it who did not share a similar timeline or experience,” Rose explained. “When we began interviews with the opera’s production team, I and a few of the others focused on what Columbia meant in the broader context of the entire timeline of spaceflight and even more broadly, human exploration.”

As a result of those meetings, “O Columbia” moved away from using the tragedy as its central theme.

“The Columbia disaster now sits in the middle of the piece and I feel like it’s a piece of the piece, and so I hope that people come away from it with a feeling of exhilaration and awe that comes along when we really contemplate what it means to want to go further and discover things as people sail across the ocean and go up into space or travel to Mars,” Spears told collectSPACE. “Yet doing that is very difficult. There are incredible challenges and tragedies that go along with that.”

“I think what we impressed on the production team was that since Columbia, which is a whole decade in the past, still being in Earth orbit in regards to our current missions and with a really protracted timeline for when we will next go further, is very unsettling, if not deflating,” Rose stated. “There is a pain not only in the circumstances that led to the Columbia accident but to everything that has unfolded in the human exploration program since then.”

Continue reading at collectSPACE about “O Columbia” and the balance of hope and despair in the Houston Grand Opera production.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2015 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

If Earth were as small as a marble, the solar system out to Neptune would cover an area the size of San Francisco — and that’s just in two dimensions.

That point is driven home by a new video called “To Scale: The Solar System,” which shows filmmakers Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh, along with a few of their friends, building a size-accurate model of our cosmic backyard in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

The project aims to provide a rare piece of perspective about Earth’s neighborhood, team members said. [Solar System to Scale in the Desert: How They Did It (Video)]

“If you put the orbits to scale on a piece of paper, the planets become microscopic, and you won’t be able to see them,” Overstreet says in the 7-minute video, which has been viewed more than 1.4 million times since it was posted on YouTube Sept. 16. “There is literally not an image that adequately shows you what it actually looks like from out there. The only way to see a scale model of the solar system is to build one.”

So that’s what Overstreet, Gorosh and the rest of the group decided to do. They constructed their miniature solar system on a sunbaked playa in the Black Rock Desert (where the Burning Man festival is held every summer) over the course of 36 hours, marking out the planets’ orbits by dragging sections of chain-link fence behind a vehicle.

The sun at the center of this newly constructed solar system is about 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide. Mercury sits 224 feet (68 m) away from our star, while Venus, Earth and Mars lie 447 feet (120 m), 579 feet (176 m) and 881 (269 m) from the sun, respectively.

Jupiter is considerably more distant at 0.57 miles (0.92 kilometers), while Saturn and Uranus lie 1.1 miles (1.7 km) and 2.1 miles (3.4 km) from the sun. Neptune’s orbit represents the outer limit of this minisystem, at 3.5 miles (5.6 km) away. (The team did not stake out the orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto or any other objects in the Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond Neptune.)

Overstreet, Gorosh and their friends used a drone to capture aerial footage of the project. “To Scale: The Solar System” also features stunning timelapse video in which moving lights trace out the orbits of the planets on the playa. This latter footage was shot at night from a nearby mountaintop while a vehicle equipped with a bright light circled the “sun” on the playa below.

Well, “equipped” is probably too fancy a word, since team member Ramsey Meyer simply held the light out the window during these long, looping drives.

“It was great fun. It was also hard work at times,” Meyer told Space.com via email. “The shooting schedule was very aggressive — a total of 36 hours in the desert, with only five people there to help — and the weather didn’t fully cooperate, being cloudier and colder than we would have liked.”

Meyer said the team hopes “To Scale: The Solar System” leaves an impression beyond the eight circular tracks gouged into the dry lakebed.

“We all hope that it inspires thought and reflection — thought about science, about humanity, about our position in the galaxy and universe,” Meyer said. “We hope that inspires people in the variety of ways people can be inspired.”

You can watch “To Scale: The Solar System” on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR3Igc3Rhfg

And you can learn more about Overstreet and Gorosh and their other projects at www.wylieoverstreet.com and www.alexgorosh.com.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.