Tag: space.com

The early-morning planet Mercury is visible all month long in October 2015, with observers in the Northern Hemisphere having a better view than those in the south. Credit: Starry Night Software

In case you haven’t yet set your alarm clock to normally awaken you at, say 5:45 a.m., this is most definitely the time to do so. Over next three weeks, we’re going to be treated to a show being staged in the eastern twilight skies by three bright planets: Jupiter, Mars and Venus. And the often hard-to-spot planet Mercury is joining the show, too.

Presently, Jupiter, Mars and Venus can be seen in the predawn sky stretched out in a diagonal line in that order, going from lower left to upper right. But the thing that is so fascinating is how these planets appear to change their positions relative to each other from one morning to the next.

In fact, in the coming days Jupiter seems intent on having separate meetings with two his companions. Come the morning of Friday, Oct. 17, Jupiter and Mars will be separated by less than 0.5 degrees (that’s smaller than the apparent width of the moon). Between Oct. 22 and Oct. 29, we’ll have a “summit meeting” of the three planets … defined as a “trio” when they’re within 5 degrees of each other. They’ll be closest together on the Oct. 26, the very same morning where Jupiter has a close encounter with Venus; the pair forming a dazzling “double planet.” [Sky Maps: The Best Night Sky Events of October 2015]

And if three bright planets aren’t enough for you, how about we add a fourth to this celestial array? That’s where the “elusive” planet Mercury comes in.

Is Mercury really elusive?

I think part of the reason that not many people have seen Mercury, is because many astronomy guidebooks give the impression that it’s difficult, if not impossible to see. If you go into something with a defeatist attitude like that, well of course, you’re not going see it. Here is a classic example:

In his book “The Solar System and Back,” (Doubleday, 1970) famed science writer, the late Dr. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) argued that the planet Mercury:

“… Is hardly ever visible when it is truly dark. Mercury … will be seen only near the horizon in dawn or twilight, amid haze and Sun glare.  I suspect, in fact, that many people today (when the horizon is dirtier and the sky much hazier with the glare of artificial light than it was in centuries past) have never seen Mercury.”

Nonetheless, from now through the end of this month, we will be presented with an excellent opportunity to view Mercury in the early morning dawn sky. Mercury is called an “inferior planet” because its orbit is nearer to the sun than the Earth’s. Therefore, it always appears from our vantage point (as Dr. Asimov indicated) to be in the same general direction as the sun. 

A dual identity

In old Roman legends, Mercury was the swift-footed messenger of the gods. The planet is well named for it is the closest planet to the sun and the swiftest of the sun’s family, averaging about 30 miles per second; making its yearly journey in only 88 Earth days. [Mercury Quiz: Do You Really Know This Planet?]

Interestingly, the time it takes Mercury to rotate once on its axis is 59 days, so that all parts of its surface experiences periods of intense heat and extreme cold. Although its mean distance from the sun is only 36 million miles (58 million kilometers), Mercury experiences by far the greatest range of temperatures: nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius) on its day side; minus 300 F (minus 184 C) on its night side.

In the pre-Christian era, this planet actually had two names, as it was not realized it could alternately appear on one side of the sun and then the other. Mercury was called Mercury when in the evening sky, but was known as Apollo when it appeared in the morning. It is said that Pythagoras, about the fifth century B.C., pointed out that they were one and the same.

On Sunday, Oct. 11, Mercury will shine near the moon making it easy to spot in the early-morning sky. Set your alarms, though. You’ll have to get up before dawn to see Mercury.
Credit: Starry Night Software

Best time for a sighting in 2015

Mercury rises before the sun all of this month and is surprisingly easy to see from now through Halloween. All you have to do is just look well below and to the left of our three other morning planets and above the eastern horizon during morning twilight, from about 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise for a bright yellowish-orange “star.”

And as an added bonus, be sure to be outside early on Sunday, Oct. 11, no less than a half-hour before local sunrise.  Be sure to have a clear and unobstructed eastern horizon. There you will see a razor-thin crescent moon, only 2-percent illuminated, and hovering less than 1.5 degrees above it will be Mercury.  Scanning the eastern horizon with binoculars will make it easier, but you should have no problem getting a view of the pair with your unaided eyes.

It’s at greatest elongation, 18-degrees to the west of the sun, on Oct. 16. With Mercury shining at a very bright magnitude of –0.6 (matching Canopus, the second brightest star in the sky), the planet will rise dawn breaks. It will be Mercury’s best morning apparition of 2015.

Mercury, like Venus, appears to go through phases like the moon. When October began, Mercury was much dimmer because it was just a skinny crescent.  But now the amount of its surface illuminated by the sun will continue to rapidly increase in the days to come. So although it will begin to turn back toward the sun’s vicinity after Oct. 16, it will continue to brighten steadily, which should help keep it in easy view over the next couple of weeks. 

By Oct. 30, Mercury will have brightened to magnitude –1.0, surpassing the brilliance of every star in the sky with the exception of Sirius (the brightest of all stars).  Also on Oct. 30, Mercury will appear side-by-side with the bluish first magnitude star Spica, in Virgo. Spica, however, will be only appear about 1one-sixth as bright as Mercury, so you’ll probably need binoculars to spot it.

Editor’s Note: If you capture a great photo of Mercury or any other planet or night sky view that you’d like to share with Space.com and its news partners for a story or gallery, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at: spacephotos@space.com.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer’s Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

An image captured on the lunar surface during NASA’s Apollo 15 mission in 1971. Credit: NASA

A huge new online gallery gives people around the world an up-close look at NASA’s iconic Apollo moon missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

More than 8,400 unprocessed scans have now been uploaded into the online Project Apollo Archive. The entire gallery — with each picture organized by the magazine or film on which it was shot — is available on the photo-sharing service Flickr.

As a whole, the set represents every picture ever taken on the moon, and many that were shot during other parts of the missions, founder Kipp Teague told The Planetary Society. Teague requested the shots years ago from NASA as part of a project related to Eric Jones’ Apollo Lunar Surface Journal website, which details what the astronauts did on the moon. [Lunar Legacy: 45 Apollo Moon Mission Photos]

These are my favorite three shots of the bunch:

The Earth as seen during the July 1969 Apollo 11 mission.
Credit: NASA

The July 1969 Apollo 11 mission is (naturally) best known for being the first to land humans on the moon, but what struck me about this image is how clear a view it provides of Earth. Parts of the magazine it came from, in fact, flip between views of the Earth and moon.

While perhaps the comparison was coincidental — the astronauts were assigned photography targets for much of their mission — the contrast between the living Earth and the desolate moon really shows after seeing image after image.

This photo was taken during the troubled Apollo 13 moon mission.
Credit: NASA

The 1970 Apollo 13 mission — which spawned a Hollywood film 20 years ago, in 1995 — turned from a moon-landing mission into one of survival after an explosion crippled one of the two spacecraft.

In one of the most famous fixes in spaceflight history, the Apollo astronauts adapted a command module filter so that it would fit in the lunar module and scrub the air of poisonous carbon dioxide. This was done with assistance from the ground and represents only one of the many crises the crew overcame during their mission.

Dave Scott and Jim Irwin of the Apollo 15 mission cast shadows on the moon.
Credit: NASA

Apollo 15, which launched in July 1971, was one of the more science-oriented missions of the program; the astronauts received extensive geology training before embarking on their exploration of the moon’s Hadley Rille.

This photo shows Dave Scott and Jim Irwin working together on the surface, but in shadow. To me, it shows how transient the missions were in history (the longest stay on the moon was about three days) and how fleeting humanity’s existence is compared to the history of Earth and the solar system.

You can explore the entire gallery online here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums

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

Jim Watzin, NASA’s Mars exploration program director, said NASA is now considering adding to the post-2020 orbiter “the sample rendezvous capture and return capability, which allows us to retrieve the sample from orbit and prepare it for the return trip home.” Credit: NASA

WASHINGTON — A Mars orbiter NASA plans to launch in the 2020s could carry the mechanisms needed to collect and store sealed Martian surface samples for a return trip to Earth, an agency official said here Oct. 5.

The technology is crucial for the long-term, multimission, sample-return campaign that is quietly driving NASA’s robotic Mars exploration program. It is nonetheless conspicuously absent from the agency’s well-publicized “Journey to Mars” public relations campaign and barely a blip in official budget documents drafted each year to justify construction of new Mars rovers and satellites.

The orbiter would be NASA’s next strategic mission — that is, a mission custom-ordered by the agency and not selected through a competition that includes proposed missions to other places — to the Red Planet after the Mars 2020 rover, which is scheduled to launch that year to cache surface samples and leave them on the ground for later retrieval.

The orbiter would be designed for a five-year mission and could launch as soon as 2022, Jim Watzin, NASA’s Mars exploration program director, told members of the NASA Advisory Council’s (NAC) planetary science subcommittee here during a meeting at NASA Headquarters.

Watzin first mentioned the orbiter publicly earlier this year, characterizing it primarily as a telecommunications package to replace the aging Mars Odyssey, which today relays data from surface assets such as the Curiosity rover back to Earth over NASA’s Deep Space Network.

In successive public meetings this year, Watzin has described more and more potential features for the spacecraft, including optical communications gear and a solar-electric propulsion system that would dramatically increase the spacecraft’s orbital maneuvering capabilities. The orbiter also would carry at least one remote sensing instrument to ensure that, whatever else it does, it can contribute to Mars science.

Watzin said NASA is now considering adding “the sample rendezvous capture and return capability, which allows us to retrieve the sample from orbit and prepare it for the return trip home.”

Implicit there is the idea that what Watzin now calls a “multi-function orbiter” would pluck samples cached by Mars 2020 from a future Mars ascent vehicle that would deliver the samples to Martian orbit. From there the orbiter would return the samples back to Earth.

The orbiter would be NASA’s next strategic mission to the red planet after the Mars 2020 rover (above), which is scheduled to launch that year to cache surface samples and leave them on the ground for later retrieval.
Credit: NASA

That ascent vehicle, which like the orbiter is only a proposal at this stage with no approved funding, might be a part of the Mars rover that follows Mars 2020 and sweeps up the samples Mars 2020 plans to collect. Alternatively, the ascent vehicle might be a successor to the sweep-up-only rover, depending on how ­­­— and if — NASA decides to try and retrieve the Mars 2020 samples.

Whether the orbiter would perform or merely demonstrate sample capture and return capabilities is still being discussed, Watzin said. If it left Martian orbit, it would leave the same hole in NASA’s telecommunications infrastructure that the increasingly complex spacecraft was conceived to fill, he noted.

Watzin originally pegged a 2022 launch for the orbiter, but with scientists in the Next Orbiter Science Analysis Group piling on more payloads, a 2024 date might be more realistic, according to an abstract of a presentation the NASA-chartered group plans to give at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco Dec. 14-18.

Either way it remains uncertain whether the White House will approve the mission in the first place. “We don’t have the budget for it yet,” Watzin acknowledged. NASA did not ask for funding for the mission in the 2016 budget request the White House delivered to Congress in February.

While the White House has refused to commit outright to a Mars sample-return campaign because of the associated long-term expense, the Obama administration has shown some willingness to let NASA put the pieces of such a campaign in place.

In 2013, for example, the White House agreed to let NASA build the sample caching Mars 2020 rover out of spare parts from the $2.5 billion Curiosity rover that has been exploring Mars since 2012.

NASA could have a similar idea in mind for the orbiter, at least with regard to the science payload. The instruments scientists are considering are all far advanced on NASA’s Technology Readiness Level scale, “so we don’t have to invent anything to do the additional reconnaissance that we have to do,” Watzin said.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

As the sun sets, our own planet can light up the moon and produce an ashen glow. 

The crescent moon lit up by earthshine was captured by astrophotographer John Chumack on Sept. 8. “That pale glow on the unlit part of a crescent moon is light reflected from Earth, also known as earthshine,” Chumack wrote in an email to Space.com.

If you look at a crescent moon just after sunset or right before the sunrise, you can spot not only the familiar crescent shape, but also the rest of the glowing orb as a dark disk. [Amazing Lunar Eclipse Photos of 2015]

When sunlight reflects off the Earth and shines onto the moon, the phenomenon is called “earthshine.” A crescent moon is between a new moon and a half moon. The sunlit portion is a waning crescent moon, and the Earth lit portion is a waxing gibbous earthshine. 

Chumack used a Canon 6D DSLR & 8 Inch Diameter F10 SCT(2000mm FL), ISO 400, 1.6 second exposure. 

To see more amazing night sky photos submitted by Space.com readers, visit our astrophotography archive.

Editor’s note: If you capture an amazing image of the night sky that you would like to share with Space.com and its news partners for a story or photo gallery, send photos and comments in to: spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original story on Space.com. 

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field combines 10 years of images to capture the most distant galaxies ever seen. Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University and the HUDF09 Team

Although time machines remain a sci-fi fantasy, the vast distances of the universe make it possible to peer back in time and see things as they appeared billions of years ago.

Scientists make use of the “universal speed limit” imposed by the speed of light to observe the early universe with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments — and the space agency’s forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) should allow them to observe the earliest galaxies.

“The speed of light is fast, but not instantaneous,” JWST Deputy Senior Project Scientist Jonathan Gardner, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told Space.com by email. [Images: Peering Back to the Big Bang & Early Universe]

“When we look at something that is many light-years away, the light has traveled for many years,” Gardner added. “That means we see things as they were when the universe was much younger than it is now.”

Peering through time

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). In the world around us, that’s too fast to really notice.

“If I have a conversation with you, there is always a slight delay,” Joel Green, project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which operates Hubble’s science program, told Space.com by email. “It’s a lot smaller than the delay in getting the signal from our eyes to our brain, so we don’t worry about this effect in everyday life.”

But when stretched over the vast timescale of the universe, the delay is more noticeable. When scientists observe an object that is billions of light-years from the sun, they see the light as it was when it left the object billions of years ago, rather than as it exists now, allowing for a sort of “time travel” of sight.

The time-traveling nature of the universe allows astronomers to observe galaxy evolution in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Galaxies change over timescales of millions or billions of years, so watching a single galaxy grow and change would take more patience than humanly possible. Instead, astronomers study galaxies in the early universe and compare them to local galaxies.

“By comparing the most distant galaxies to nearby galaxies — and those in between — we can build up a picture of how galaxies form over time,” Gardner said.

To do that, astronomers compare galaxies that they think are similar in terms of size or other properties, viewing them at different stages in their evolution. Computer models then help connect the dots in between.

Such time travel has its limitations, however. While scientists can observe distant objects as they appeared billions of years ago, they can’t see local galaxies as they existed in the distant past. The nearby Andromeda galaxy, for instance, lies 2.5 million light-years from Earth, so scientists can only see it as it was 2.5 million years ago, a relatively recent time frame in astronomical terms.

“We can’t somehow look at Earth in the past and see dinosaurs,” Gardner said.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018, will allow scientists to peer farther across the universe — and farther back in time — than ever before.
Credit: Northrup Grumman

Seeing the first galaxies

Taking a snapshot of the early universe is not without its challenges. The farther away an object is, the fainter the light it emits; think about how much more challenging it is to see a flashlight glow from 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away, as opposed to 1 foot (0.3 meters) away.

“To see farther back in time, you need to see things that are fainter, so you need a larger, or more powerful, telescope,” Gardner said. [The Universe: Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps]

In recent years, Hubble has performed this task admirably, peering across greater distancesthan previous instruments could.

“The oldest galaxies Hubble can see are from the universe’s ‘teen years,’ about 12 to 13 billion years ago, when [the universe] was about 1 billion years old,” Green said.

The faintest picture ever taken, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, reveals these distant galaxies. But according to Gardner, some of the galaxies in that image were already a few hundred million years old when the light was emitted, which means that Hubble isn’t capturing the very first galaxies that formed after the Big Bangcreated the universe 13.82 billion years ago.

Enter the James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in late 2018. Webb will be larger than Hubble, with a primary mirror diameter of 21.6 feet (6.6 m) compared with Hubble’s 7.9 feet (2.4 m), which will allow the new observatory to see fainter objects.

“We think those first galaxies formed at about 250 to 400 million years after the Big Bang,” Gardner said. “Webb is designed to be able to detect them.”

Spotting those original galaxies isn’t just about mirror size, however. Because the universe is expanding, the wavelengths of light leaving the most distant objects are stretched from the visible spectrum into the infrared and microwave.

“The very first picture of the universe is called the cosmic microwave background,” Green said. “It’s a picture of the universe when it was only 378,000 years old, 13.8 billion years ago. The imprint of this picture is written across the sky in microwaves coming from all directions that we have detected with space telescopes like NASA’s WMAP and [the European Space Agency’s] Planck.”

Such stretching renders the most distant galaxies invisible to the Hubble Space Telescope. According to Green, the cosmic microwave background reveals a lack of stars and galaxies, while Hubble can detect galaxies from the universe’s first billion years.

“Somewhere in between, there was an era of time when stars and galaxies turned on, forming and lighting up the universe,” Green said.

JWST should be able to break through the mystery surrounding the first galaxies. In addition to a larger mirror, the telescope is optimized to view infrared light, allowing astronomers to see stretched-out wavelengths hidden from Hubble.

“It should see the time when these stars and galaxies turned on, which will tell us detailed information about the early history of the universe — what the role of dark matter was, how long it took to make the first stars and how long they lasted, when the heavier elements formed — a huge origin story of the universe,” Green said.

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

The path to Mars goes through the moon — or the region of space near the moon, anyway.

NASA aims to put boots on Mars in the 2030s after first gathering human-spaceflight experience and expertise in low Earth orbit and the “proving ground” of cis-lunar space near the moon.

NASA has been working on this three-stage path to the Red Planet for some time, and the space agency lays out the basic plan in a 36-page report called “Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration,” which was released Thursday (Oct. 8). [5  Ideas for Manned Missions to Mars] 

“This strategy charts a course toward horizon goals while delivering near-term benefits and defining a resilient architecture that can accommodate budgetary changes, political priorities, new scientific discoveries, technological breakthroughs and evolving partnerships,” William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters, said in a statement.

The first step in the three-phase Mars plan is already underway; NASA astronauts and their international colleagues have been living aboard the International Space Station continuously, in roughly six-month-long crew rotations, since November 2000. (The station will keep operating through at least 2024.)

These spaceflyers’ experiences are helping researchers and mission planners better understand how spaceflight affects the human body and mind. In addition, the space station allows NASA and its partners to develop and test critical technologies in areas such as life support and space-to-ground communications, agency officials said.

The International Space Station orbits just 250 miles (400 kilometers) from Earth’s surface. Robotic cargo ships bring supplies on a regular basis to the astronauts, who can be back on their home planet in a matter of hours if need be. Mars pioneers will have to be much more independent, and that’s what the next step in NASA’s Red Planet plan — the proving ground — is all about.

NASA aims to gain deep-space experience near the moon on a series of missions over the next decade or so. One such project is the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), in which a robotic probe — powered by advanced solar-electric propulsion, which NASA regards as a key technology for hauling big payloads to Mars — will pluck a boulder off a near-Earth asteroid and haul it to lunar orbit, where it can be visited by astronauts in the future.

Agency officials want the first astronaut visit to come by 2025. Spaceflyers will rendezvous with the asteroid chunk using NASA’s Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket, both of which are in development. [Space Launch System: NASA’s Giant Rocket Explained (Infographic)]

Orion’s maiden flight, an uncrewed affair that used a United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket, came last December. The capsule and SLS are scheduled to fly together for the first time in 2018, on a seven-day-long, uncrewed journey around the moon.

NASA also aims to test a deep-space habitation system in the proving ground, for short durations in the early 2020s and for longer missions later in the decade, according to the new report.

“A modular, pressurized volume would enable extended stays by crews arriving with Orion,” the report states. “This initial habitation capability in cis-lunar space would demonstrate all the capabilities and countermeasures necessary to send humans on long-duration transit missions to Mars.”

Sending astronauts to Mars is the third stage of the plan. This ambitious goal will be enabled by international cooperation, the knowledge and expertise gained by human missions to the space station and the proving ground, and by all the data gathered by robotic Red Planet explorers, according to the new report.

NASA currently has two operational Mars rovers (Opportunity and Curiosity) and three functioning orbiters circling the Red Planet — Mars Odyssey, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and MAVEN (whose name is short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution). India and Europe also control active Mars orbiters, called Mangalyaan and Mars Express, respectively.

These spacecraft have already returned information of interest to the crewed Mars effort. For example, scientists analyzing MRO data announced late last month that the seasonal dark streaks on some Martian slopes are caused by liquid water.

And more robotic Mars missions are on the way. NASA plans to launch a lander called InSight next year to probe the Red Planet’s interior and a highly capable rover in 2020. The Mars 2020 rover will hunt for signs of past life and cache samples for future return to Earth, among other tasks. It will also carry a technology-demonstrating instrument that generates oxygen from Mars’ atmospheric carbon dioxide.

In addition, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars project will send an orbiter toward the Red Planet in 2016, and a life-hunting rover in 2018.

“Robotic science pathfinder missions will continue well into the next decade to meet high-priority science objectives and prepare for future human missions to Mars,” the new NASA report states. “Robotic missions after Mars 2020 are in their conceptual stages and will address key exploration questions, such as characterizing the complex gravitational environment of the Martian moons; identifying resources and areas of scientific interest; understanding the effects of space radiation; validating EDL [entry, descent and landing] techniques; and studying regolith mechanics and dust.”

NASA is still working out the details about the journey to Mars. For example, astronauts may stop at one of Mars’ two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, along the way. But putting boots on the Red Planet’s surface, and setting up a permanent outpost, remain the ultimate goals.

“There are challenges to pioneering Mars, but we know they are solvable,” the report states. “We are developing the capabilities necessary to get there, land there, and live there.”

You can download the new NASA Mars report for free here:
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/journey-to-mars-next-steps-20151008_508.pdf

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

Two RD-181s integrated with the Antares first-stage air frame at the Wallops Island, Virginia, Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF). A “hot fire” test on Pad 0A is scheduled for late 2015 or early 2016. Credit: NASA/Terry Zaperach

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Following a devastating loss of vehicle last year, Orbital ATK is ready to get back to business sending cargo to the International Space Station.

The company will send one cargo mission to the orbiting laboratory aboard an Atlas V rocket (made by United Launch Alliance) this December, and another in March of next year. The company’s Antares rocket, which exploded seconds after liftoff on Oct. 28, 2014, will launch again in the first half of 2016, according to company representatives.

Frank DeMauro, vice president of human space systems at Orbital ATK, spoke about the company’s current status at the International Symposium of Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) today (Oct. 8) in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He described the loss of vehicle as “painful,” but emphasized that only one day after the accident, “the company embarked on figuring out how we were going to return to flight.”

Orbital ATK was formed from the merger, finalized in February, of Orbital Sciences Corp. and Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK). The company sends cargo to the space station in its Cygnus spacecraft, and made three successful deliveries to the station between 2013 and 2014. NASA announced in August that it had ordered two more cargo deliveries to the station by Orbital ATK, as part of a Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract signed in 2008. Those deliveries will be made in December and March using the Atlas V rocket, and an upgraded version of the cargo spacecraft called the Enhanced Cygnus, which has a bigger cargo module than the regular Cygnus, DeMauro said.

Orbital ATK had planned to fly the Enhanced Cygnus on future cargo missions, DeMauro said. He praised the collaboration of the Orbital ATK team and ULA in making the Cygnus vehicle compatible with the Atlas V in such a short period of time.

The members of the Antares team, meanwhile, are working to get the rocket ready for flight. One of the major changes to the new rocket will be the use of two RD-181 main engines. A “hot fire” test of the engines is scheduled for early 2016 at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.

“Antares made great progress in getting ready for return to flight,” DeMauro said. “The first flight engines have been delivered, they’ve been integrated on the vehicle. […] So really great job by the Antares team getting ready for that.”

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Pluto’s haze layer displays a blue color in this image obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft’s Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Image released Oct. 8, 2015. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

The more scientists learn about Pluto, the more interesting the dwarf planet gets.

During its historic flyby of Pluto this past July, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft discovered towering ice mountains and vast glaciers on the frigid body. And now, flyby images recently beamed home by New Horizons reveal that the faraway dwarf planet has blue skies similar to those of Earth.

“Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt?” New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement today (Oct. 8). The Kuiper Belt is the ring of icy bodies that lies beyond Neptune’s orbit. “It’s glorious.” [Destination Pluto: NASA’s New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

The newly received image is the mission’s first color photo of Pluto’s atmosphere, team members said. (New Horizons sent home atmosphere photos shortly after the July 14 close approach, but they were all in black and white.)

The blue color comes from complex organic molecules in Pluto’s atmosphere called tholins, which are themselves probably gray or red but scatter light in blue wavelengths, New Horizons team members said. The same basic phenomenon explains why Earth’s sky is blue.

“That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” mission team member Carly Howett, also of SwRI, said in the same statement. “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules.”

Ultraviolet radiation from the sun breaks apart nitrogen and methane high up in Pluto’s tenuous but extended atmosphere, allowing tholins and other complicated molecules to form, researchers said. The tholins eventually drift down to Pluto’s surface, which explains why the dwarf planet sports a reddish-brown hue.

These tholins typically settle onto ices composed of nitrogen and other exotic substances (exotic to those with Earth-based sensibilities, at least). But some regions of exposed water-ice do exist on Pluto’s surface, newly received New Horizons data reveals.

Mission scientists said they aren’t sure why the water ice crops up where it does — generally, in some of the reddest areas on Pluto.

“I’m surprised that this water ice is so red,” said science team member Silvia Protopapa, of the University of Maryland. “We don’t yet understand the relationship between water ice and the reddish tholin colorants on Pluto’s surface.”

Regions on Pluto having exposed water ice appear in blue in this composite image from New Horizons spacecraft’s Ralph instrument, which combines visible imagery from the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) with infrared spectroscopy from the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). Image released Oct. 8, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

New Horizons sent back a small portion of its flyby data shortly after the epic encounter but stored most of this treasure trove on board for later transmission. The spacecraft began beaming the entire data set back to mission control last month; all of it should be on the ground by the end of 2016, team members have said.

New Horizons is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth and in good health. The mission team aims to perform a flyby of a second, much smaller Kuiper Belt object in early 2019 if NASA approves and funds an extended mission for the spacecraft.

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

Illustration depicting a lake of fresh water partially filling Mars’ Gale Crater. Gale hosted a series of such lakes that each persisted for hundreds to tens of thousands of years at a time, a new study suggests. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

Ancient Mars harbored long-lasting lakes, boosting the odds that life could have existed on the Red Planet billions of years ago, a new study suggests.

A series of freshwater lakes within Mars’ 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater likely persisted for hundreds or thousands of years at a time, and perhaps even longer, according to the new study, which is based on observations made by NASA’s 1-ton Curiosity rover.

While these individual lakes were apparently transient, drying out and filling up repeatedly over time, the overall lake-and-stream system inside Gale Crater existed for a quite a long time, researchers said. [Photos: The Search for Water on Mars]

“Even if the lake goes away, there’s still going to be a groundwater table,” study lead author John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, told Space.com.

“If life had evolved on Mars, you now have a habitat which is perpetually wet that would allow microbes to be sustained,” added Grotzinger, a Curiosity team member who previously served as project scientist on the $2.5 billion mission. “Those environments would have existed probably for millions, if not tens of millions of years throughout the rocks that we see.”

Habitable ancient Mars

Curiosity has been exploring the spacious interior of Gale Crater since August 2012, when the car-size rover landed on a mission to determine if the area could ever have supported microbial life.

Curiosity succeeded in this main task quickly, finding evidence near its landing site that a habitable lake-and-stream system existed within the crater about 3.5 billion years ago.

The new study, which was published online today (Oct. 8) in the journal Science, further characterizes that system and its duration. Grotzinger and his colleagues analyzed photos taken by Curiosity near the robot’s landing site and throughout its 5-mile-long (8 km) traverse to Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky from Gale’s center. (Curiosity set out for Mount Sharp’s foothills in July 2013 and arrived there in September 2014.)

Those photos contain copious evidence of river, delta and lake environments within Gale, which is thought to have formed after a massive impact about 3.8 billion years ago. Streams carried sediments from the crater’s northern rim and walls down to the floor, where the intermittent lake existed, study team members said.

It’s unclear how deep the Gale lake was, Grotzinger said, though he suggested a possible maximum depth in the “tens of meters” range.

Water may have gotten to the crater rim in the form of snow, or perhaps as ice that condensed out of the atmosphere, Grotzinger said. Gale’s northern rim lies adjacent to Mars’ extensive northern plains, which some scientists think hosted an ocean when the crater lake system existed.

“If there was some type of a northern ocean, that would be a very convenient way to get water vapor and moisture on the northern rim to generate the very localized deposits we see in Gale Crater itself,” Grotzinger said.

Mars has no oceans today, of course, or any liquid surface water that’s stable for long periods of time. (However, scientists recently announced that the seasonal dark streaks on some Martian slopes are caused by flowing water.)

Researchers are trying to understand what happened to the Red Planet’s surface water, and Curiosity’s observations should help them in that quest, Grotzinger said. Indeed, Curiosity is now climbing up through Mount Sharp’s lower reaches, reading the rocks for clues about how Mars’ climate has shifted over time.

Mount Sharp mystery solved

Mount Sharp, which is also known as Aeolis Mons, is a bizarre massif with no close analogues here on Earth. Researchers have been debating how the mountain’s core formed, whether its constituent particles were delivered mostly by water or by wind.

The new study strongly supports the water hypothesis.

“It seems to have formed largely by erosion of pre-existing strata that were deposited in aqueous environments,” Grotzinger said.

That erosion comes courtesy of the wind, which has been carving away portions of the original mound over the eons. But the wind apparently played a constructive role as well, depositing the material that forms Mount Sharp’s upper layers.

“Above 800 meters, Mount Sharp shows no evidence of hydrated strata, and that is the bulk of what forms Mount Sharp,” Grotzinger said in a statement. “We see another 4,000 meters of nothing but dry strata.”

Scientists can estimate the age of a planetary surface by counting its craters, which accumulate at a relatively constant rate over long periods of time. Crater counting suggests that the terrain Curiosity has been exploring was exposed by around 3.3 billion years ago, researchers said.

The processes that built and eroded away the mound that became Mount Sharp therefore seem to have acted surprisingly quickly, Grotzinger said.

“In that interval of 500 million years, you had the crater becoming filled up with sediments deposited in aqueous environments, perhaps also associated with final filling up of drier sediments that make the bulk of Mount Sharp,” Grotzinger told Space.com. “All of that has to be eroded back down again. I think that’s new. That’s one of the really interesting implications.”

This story was updated at 5:30 p.m. EDT.

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

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico – A space plane that would continue the legacy of NASA’s shuttle program is getting ready for a second stage of flight testing, according to representatives from the Sierra Nevada Corp.

At a gathering of the top leaders and innovators in the commercial spaceflight industry here yesterday (Oct. 7), Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of Sierra Nevada’s space systems division, discussed the status of the two “Dream Chaser” space planes, which could one day fly astronauts or cargo to the International Space Station or other destinations. The vehicle will begin its second stage of testing at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in early 2016. The NASA research center is located in the Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

A video of Dream Chaser’s cargo ship role released in March offers a simulation of what the reusable space plane could be capable of. It shows the vehicle — which can operate with a human pilot or  autonomously — hitching a ride on a large rocket, then unfurling itself when it reaches space. From there, the vehicle can rendezvous with the space station. [Dream Chaser: A Private Space Plane in Photos]

Technicians with the Sierra Nevada Corp. inspect the sub-orbital version of the Dream Chaser vehicle, which the company says would continue the legacy of NASA’s shuttle program.
Credit: Sierra Nevada Corp.

One version of the Dream Chaser vehicle is a successor to the very first space shuttle, Enterprise, according to Sirangelo. Known as the atmospheric engineering test article (ETA), the version, like NASA’s Enterprise, would not actually reach orbit above Earth, but would be able to fly at suborbital altitudes and would serve as a microgravity laboratory. Sierra Nevada announced in September that it was beginning talks with spaceports and commercial airports to find suitable locations for Dream Chaser to land after a mission (the space plane lands horizontally, like NASA’s space shuttles).

Sirangelo spoke at a news briefing at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS), which takes place annually here in Las Cruces. The meeting has become a place for companies and industry members to share updates and ideas about the industry.

The body of the Dream Chaser orbital vehicle, recently manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
Credit: Sierra Nevada Corp.

In a news release put out by Sierra Nevada Corp. following Sirangelo’s talk, the company also announced that it had made progress on the orbital Dream Chaser vehicle (portrayed in the video above). Lockheed Martin, which will manufacture the orbital vehicle, recently completed the first cabin assembly of the orbital space plane.

“Upon completion, the Dream Chaser orbital vehicle will be the most advanced composite structure ever built. We look forward to Dream Chaser becoming the world leader in this area and to its first orbital flight,” Sirangelo said in the news release.

The Sierra Nevada Corp. was one of three companies that received money from NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) award, which is intended to help companies in the later stages of spacecraft development to reach completion. But Sierra Nevada lost out in the second round of the program, with awards given instead to SpaceX and Boeing. Despite that, the company has pressed on with its development of Dream Chaser.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

This snapshot from a computer simulation of the formation of large-scale structures in the universe shows the coherent motions of galaxies flowing toward the highest mass concentration in the center. (A patch of 100 million light-years is shown.) Credit: ESO

Our universe is actually really simple, it’s just our cosmological theories that are getting needlessly complex, argues one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists.

This conclusion may sound counterintuitive; after all, to fully understand the true complexities of Nature, you need to think bigger, study things on finer and finer scales, add new variables to equations, and think up “new” and “exotic” physics. Eventually we’ll discover what dark matter is; eventually we’ll gain a grasp of where those gravitational waves are hiding – if only our theoretical models were more advanced and more… complex.

Not so, says Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada. By Turok’s rationale, if anything, the universe, on its largest and smallest scales, is telling us that it is actually amazingly simple. But to fully grasp what this means, we’ll need a revolution in physics.

PHOTOS: Cosmos Snaps Into Dazzling Focus With Hubble Upgrade

In an interview with Discovery News, Turok pointed out that the biggest discoveries of the last few decades have confirmed the structure of the universe on cosmological and quantum scales.

“On the largest scales, we’ve mapped the whole sky — the cosmic microwave background — and measured the evolution of the universe, the way it’s changing, the way it’s expanding … and these discoveries reveal that the universe is astonishingly simple,” he said. “In other words you can describe the structure of the universe, its geometry, and the density of matter … you can essentially describe all that with just one number.”

The most fascinating outcome of this reasoning is that to describe the universe’s geometry with one number, it is actually simpler than the numerical description of the simplest atom we know — the hydrogen atom. The hydrogen atom’s geometry is described by 3 numbers, which arise from the quantum characteristics of an electron in orbit around a proton.

“It basically tells us that the universe is smooth but it has a small level of fluctuation, which this number describes. And that’s it. The universe is the simplest thing we know.”

At the opposite end of the scale, a similar thing happened when physicists probed into the Higgs field, using the most complex machine ever constructed by humankind, the Large Hadron Collider. When, in 2012, physicists made the historic discovery of the particle that mediates the Higgs field, the Higgs boson, it turned out to be the simplest type of Higgs described by the Standard Model of physics.

“Nature has gotten away with the minimal solution, the minimal mechanism you could imagine to give particles their mass, their electric charges and so on and so forth,” said Turok.

OPINION: Will Gravitational Waves Ever Be Found?

Physics from the 20th century has taught us that as you gain more precision and you probe deeper into the quantum realm, you discover a zoo of new particles. So as the experimental results generated a bounty of quantum information, theoretical models predicted more and more outlandish particles and forces. But now we’re reaching a crossroads where many of our most advanced theoretical ideas about what lies “beyond” our current understanding of physics are turning up few experimental results that support their predictions.

“We’re in this bizarre situation where the universe is talking to us; it’s telling us that it’s extremely simple. At the same time, the theories that have been popular (from the last 100 years of physics) have become more and more complicated and arbitrary and un-predictive,” he said.

Turok pointed to String Theory that was billed as the “final unified theory,” wrapping all of the universe’s mysteries up in a neat package. Also, the search for evidence of inflation — the rapid expansion of the universe just after the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago — in the form of primordial gravitational waves etched into the cosmic microwave background (CMB), or the “echo” of the Big Bang. But as we seek out experimental evidence, we’re left clutching at proverbial straws; the experimental evidence simply is not agreeing with our maddeningly complex theories.

Our Cosmic Origins

Turok’s theoretical work focuses around the origins of the universe, a subject that has garnered a lot of attention in recent months.

Last year, the BICEP2 collaboration, which uses a telescope located at the South Pole to study the CMB, announced the discovery of primordial gravitational wave signals in the Big Bang’s echo. This is basically the “Holy Grail” of cosmology — the discovery of gravitational waves that were spawned by the Big Bang would confirm certain inflationary theories of the universe. But unfortunately, for the BICEP2 team, they announced the “discovery” prematurely and the European Planck space telescope (that is also mapping the CMB) revealed that the BICEP2 signal was caused by dust in our galaxy and not ancient gravitational waves.

ANALYSIS: BICEP2 Gravitational Wave ‘Discovery’ Deflates

What if these primordial gravitational waves are never found? Many theorists who have pinned their hopes on the Big Bang followed by a rapid period of inflation may be disappointed, but according to Turok, “it will be a very powerful clue” that the Big Bang (in a classical sense) may not be the absolute beginning of the universe.

“The biggest challenge for me has been to describe the Big Bang itself, mathematically,” Turok added.

Perhaps a cyclical model for universal evolution — where our universe collapses and rebounds anew — may better fit the observations. These models do not necessarily generate primordial gravitational waves and if these waves are not detected, perhaps our inflationary theories need to be thrown out or modified.

As for the gravitational waves that are predicted to be generated by the rapid motion of massive objects in our modern universe, Turok is confident that we are reaching a realm of sensitivity that our gravitational wave detectors will detect them very soon, confirming another one Einstein’s space-time predictions. “We do expect to see the gravitational waves from black hole collisions within the next 5 years,” he said.

The Next Revolution?

From the largest scales to the smallest scales, the universe seems to be “scale-free” — in other words, no matter what spatial or energy scale you look at, no scale is “special.” And this finding actually suggests the universe has a far simpler nature than current theories suggest.

“Yes, it’s a crisis, but it’s a crisis of the best kind,” said Turok.

ANALYSIS: Planck’s Mystery Cosmic ‘Cold Spot’ Could be an Error

So, to explain the origins of the universe and come to terms with some of our universe’s most perplexing mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy, we may need to look at our cosmos differently. But this will require a revolution in physics understanding, a revolution possibly as historic as Einstein’s realization that space and time are one of the same thing when he formulated his theory of general relativity 100 years ago.

“We need a very different view of basic physics. This is the time for radical, new ideas,” he concluded, pointing out that this is a great time in human history for young people to get into the field of theoretical physics, as it will be the next generation that will likely transform the way we view the universe.

To find out more about Turok’s research and the apparent simplicity of the universe, tune into his Perimeter Institute public lecture at 7pm ET today (Wednesday). The lecture will be streamed LIVE on Discovery News.

Originally published on Discovery News.

Patricia Hynes, chair of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, speaks during the 2015 conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico – Members of the international spaceflight industry gathered in New Mexico for an annual meeting to discuss new developments, ideas and technologies.

The International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight began here yesterday (Oct. 7) iand continues through today. According to the ISPCS curator, Pat Hynes, the two-day meeting is a “live update of what’s happening in the [spaceflight] industry — a snapshot at the time of the conference.”

Among the topics being discussed at this year’s meeting is an update on the status of a proposed spaceport in Colorado. [6 Private Companies That Could Launch Humans Into Space]

Spaceport Colorado pushing toward FAA licensing

The proposed Spaceport Colorado would build upon the state’s aerospace prowess, home to the nation’s second‐largest aerospace industry.
Credit: Front Range Airport

Spaceport Colorado, a facility about 6 miles from Denver International Airport, is getting ready to submit its application for a launch license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The facility would service as a launch port for horizontal-launch space vehicles, including passenger space planes like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and the XCOR Lynx. Spaceport Colorado would also provide a launch site for vehicles carrying small satellites, scientific experiments and other non-human cargo.

David E. Ruppel, airport director for Spaceport Colorado, told reporters that the spaceport expected to submit its application for a license sometime in the next few months. If all goes well, Ruppel says they can expect a decision by the second quarter of 2016. The spaceport does not have any specific customers lined up yet — Ruppel said those kinds of discussions will only start  once a launch license is acquired.

Spaceport America, a licensed launch facility located about 90 miles north of El Paso, Texas, is also approved to launch large horizontal vehicles like the XCOR Lynx. Ruppel said both spaceports would have certain advantages, with Spaceport Colorado being very close to a major metropolitan area and international airport. This shortened travel time could be a major advantage for customers using commercial vehicles.

The International Symposium of Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) is held annually in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com

Staying in orbit

NASA has committed to keep its side of the International Space Station operating through 2024. But what will happen to the station when that contract expires, and how would the closure of the station affect the future of human spaceflight? 

Former astronaut Chris Ferguson, who works in the commercial crew program at Boeing, made the argument that a crewed Earth-orbiting station is critical if humans ever hope to reach more ambitious space goals, like going to Mars or setting up a base on the moon.

“If Mars is [Mount] Everest, then a sustained [low-Earth orbit] presence is base camp,” Ferguson said. “And as Megan Trainor said, ‘It’s all about the base.” (Ferguson was making a play on the pop song by Trainor titled “All About That Bass.” )

In his talk, Ferguson listed various technologies that have been developed on the ISS that would be crucial on a trip to Mars, like the water recycler that turns water vapor and urine into drinkable water for the astronauts. He also emphasized that astronauts need the opportunity to train in microgravity before they take a long, dangerous trip to Mars.

“The knowledge gained [on space missions] is perishable. The lessons learned, that we’re learning today, quickly become diluted without constant reinforcement,” Ferguson said.

If the private spaceflight industry isn’t interested in sending people to Mars (yet), Ferguson said that the closure of the space station would remove a significant source of income for many major private spaceflight companies contracted to fly cargo and crew there.

ISPCS is held each year at the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is appropriately home to a herd of cattle.
Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.com

Frank Culbertson, president of Orbital ATK’s space system group, discussed a possible roadmap for gradually adding commercial elements to the space station’s science facilities. In the short term, this could mean augmenting the current space station laboratory and making more room for commercial experiments, or even commercially owned scientific equipment. In the long term, it might mean building an entire commercial science module.

Culbertson noted that the commercialization of the ISS or the creation of a new, commercially owned low-Earth orbit station is not a new idea — but both he and Ferguson stressed that action should be taken soon to avoid a gap between the end of NASA’s involvement with the station in 2024, and the next phase, whatever that may be. And while Ferguson said he felt that NASA would most likely need to be involved in developing a next phase, private industry could potentially be the initiator.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

On Oct. 8, 2015, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket soared into space from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:49 a.m. PDT (8:49 a.m. EDT)…Read More » to deliver the classified NROL-55 satellite into orbit. The mission, ULA’s 101st rocket launch, also delivered 13 tiny cubesats into orbit for the NRO and NASA. See photos from the mission, including this one, in our full gallery here. Read our full launch wrap story.   Less «