Earth observation image of the week: a Sentinel-2 image of the Northern Territory desert in Australia, also featured on the Earth from Space video programme
Tag: space
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Australian desert
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Crowded House! International Crew Arrives at Space Station
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen and Aidyn Aimbetov of Kazakhstan approaches the International Space Station for docking on Sept. 4, 2015.
Credit: NASA TVThree new crewmembers arrived at the International Space Station early Friday morning, boosting the orbiting lab’s population to a level not seen since late 2013.
A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen and Kazakhstan’s Aidyn Aimbetov docked with the space station’s Poisk module at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT) Friday (Sept. 4), two days after blasting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The hatches separating the two spacecraft are scheduled to open at 6:15 a.m. ET (1015 GMT) Friday, NASA officials said. When that happens, the Soyuz travelers will float aboard the $100 billion orbiting complex, joining the six crewmembers already there — cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Mikhail Kornienko and Gennady Padalka; NASA astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren; and Japanese spaceflyer Kimiya Yui.
That moment will mark the first time nine people have been on the International Space Station (ISS) since November 2013, NASA officials have said.
The abnormally dense population is a consequence of the yearlong mission involving Kelly and Kornienko that is currently taking place aboard the station. This unprecedented project, which kicked off in late March, is designed to help pave the way for long-duration crewed journeys to Mars.
Cosmic Quiz: Do You Know the International Space St…
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Soyuz spacecraft are certified to stay in space for just six months, so the vehicle that brought Kelly and Kornienko up cannot take them down again in March 2016. The newly arrived Soyuz was launched primarily to do that job.
The space station will soon be down to its normal population of six crewmembers. Mogensen, Aimbetov and Padalka (who arrived this past March along with Kelly and Kornienko) are slated to depart on Sept. 12. (Volkov will stay aloft for the typical six-month stint, in contrast to the brief, 10-day mission of his launch companions.)
Aimbetov was a relatively late addition to the Soyuz’s manifest. His seat was originally supposed to be filled by English singer Sarah Brightman, who was reportedly set to pay about $50 million for her short stay aboard the ISS. But Brightman backed out in May, citing personal reasons.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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The Force is Strong With These Toys: New 'Star Wars' Line is Here!
A new line of “Star Wars” toys was revealed at midnight (Sept. 4) at the Times Square Toys ‘R’ Us.
Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.comNEW YORK – The Force is strong with these toys.
At 11:50 p.m. last night (Sept. 3), more than 200 fans were lined up in front of the Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square, waiting for the store’s midnight opening, when they’d get a first look at the brand-new line of “Star Wars” toys and collectibles. Inside, a lucky group of fans watched a particularly dramatic reveal of the new toys, featuring a hip hop dance by five Stormtroopers. [See photos from “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”]
The new toy line includes items that refrence the upcoming entry into the “Star Wars” movie lexicon: “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Disney and Hasbro have been pumping up the toy reveal for months: Sept. 4, the day of the launch, was dubbed “Force Friday,” with events like the one at the Times Square Toys ‘R’ Us happening all over the country.
As you can see in the video above, the section of the store that held the new toys was surrounded by a black curtain. Moments before midnight, a group of five Stormtroopers stepped in front of the curtain and got the crowd a cheering as they performed a choreographed hip hop dance (a video of these troopers doing the same dance went viral in 2014). Then, the black curtain dropped and the toys were revealed.
The store was full of costumed characters from the “Star Wars” universe. There were well known characters, including Darth Vader, Darth Maul, and more than a few Stormtroopers. There were also some slightly lesser known characters, like the Jawa and the Red Guard. I ran into a group of Siths and tried my best to blend in.
Shoppers who came out to the event started lining up as early as 4:30 p.m. local time. Others said they got in line around 6 p.m., but were in the store hours earlier attending the full day of “Star Wars” related events, including drawing lessons from scifi and “Star Wars” artist Jeff Carlisle, and book signings by Steve Sansweet, owner of the largest collection of “Star Wars” memorabilia in the world.
Steve Sansweet at the Toys ‘R’ Us “Star Wars” toy reveal on Sept. 4.
Credit: Calla Cofield/Space.comAnd of course there was the toy everyone has been talking about: BB-8 by Sphero. This toy is both adorable and incredible: It’s a remote controlled ball with an independent head piece that somehow stays attached as it rolls around. It’s body movements and sounds give it an amazing amount of personality. Here is a video of a bunch of puppies playing with it.
Some of our favorite new items included the Lego X-Wing and new build-able Lego characters, the Millenium Falcon remote control drone, and the new line of light sabers. The store carried the fantastic “Star Wars” themed science toys made by Uncle Milton that we highlighted earlier this year. The new action figures were the first items that the store ran out of: Fans cleared away most of them in about 20 minutes.
One group of shoppers said they were particularly excited about the new “Star Wars” movie featuring more female characters, and were eager to get the related action figures and toys. One shopper said he was nervous about seeing spoilers for the movie in the new toys, but he came because he “just couldn’t miss this.” Another fan walked out with three BB-8 toys and two large bags of additional merchandise, and admitted she’d gone over the budget she set for herself (many other shoppers said they also went over their intended budget).
The event brought out a wide range of “Star Wars” fans. Some were dedicated “Star Wars” merchandise collectors (“I have a storage unit full of ‘Star Wars’ stuff,” one said), while others were buying their first “Star Wars” items. There were also fans who were “raised on the original trilogy,” (referring to the three “Star Wars” movies that came out in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s) to those those who had been introduced to the franchise through the three prequels (released between 1999 and 2005).
You can look at the complete listing of new toys at the Hasbro website.
Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on >Space.com.
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[Special] Interview: Dante S. Lauretta, Ph.D. Principal Investigator, NASA Asteroid Explorer OSIRIS-REx
Launched in December 2014, the asteroid explorer Hayabusa 2 is now cruising in outer space as scheduled. It will arrive at the asteroid 1999 JU3 in 2018, the same year that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is due to arrive at the asteroid Bennu. Both the Japanese and American explorers are attempting to unlock the mystery of the birth of the solar system. We interviewed the principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission, which is now in preparation for launch, scheduled a year from now.
Going after organic material
— What is the purpose of OSIRIS-REx?
OSIRIS-REx will drop its capsule to Earth, but will not land (courtesy of NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)OSIREX-REx is an asteroid sample return mission. The purpose is to send a robotic spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. We will spend almost one year mapping the asteroid, looking at the minerals, the geology and the physics of its surface, and then we will select a site and send our spacecraft down for a “touch and go.” We will collect a sample, and then leave the asteroid’s surface and return the material to Earth for scientific analysis.
We will launch OSIREX-REx in September 2016. The spacecraft will come back to Earth one year later for an Earth gravity assist – that is, using the gravity of the Earth to change the trajectory of the spacecraft – and then reach the asteroid in August 2018. The plan right now is to get the sample in October 2019, 14 months after we arrive at the asteroid. But the spacecraft won’t leave the asteroid until March 2021, coming back to Earth in September 2023. It’s a very long journey – same as Hayabusa 2, only the capsule comes back and the spacecraft stays in orbit around the sun. So maybe we can send it on another mission, to another asteroid or something.
— How will you collect the sample?
Collecting the sample using TAGSAM (courtesy of NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
TAGSAM under development (courtesy of Lockheed Martin)We have a device we call TAGSAM – the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism. The head is a filter that’s about 30 cm in diameter – like an air filter. It’s on the end of a robotic arm, which also carries three bottles of nitrogen gas. We put the head out in front of the spacecraft, the filter touches the surface – just a very short contact. And it’s like a vacuum cleaner – we send the gas down, it swirls around, and then we suck it up through the filter, which catches the soil. It’s like we’re vacuum cleaning the surface of the asteroid. We can do it three times if we have to, but hopefully we just have to do it once, because I worry a lot about what will happen when we hit the asteroid – the properties of the surface are uncertain.
So we take our sample, we open up the return capsule, we put the sample in, remove the head, and then close it. A camera watches and makes sure that everything is lined up properly. And if we get enough of a sample, then we just come home. The science requirement is a 60-gram sample.
— Why did you choose Bennu?
We chose Bennu as the target because its orbit is very close to Earth, so the energy needed to get there and bring a sample home was low compared to many other asteroids. We also chose it because its surface looks like it has a lot of carbon, and we’re very interested in organic molecules. Maybe asteroids led to the origin of life on Earth, so we want to understand the organic chemistry of these asteroids, which are ancient pieces from the early history of the solar system. One of objectives of this mission is solving the mystery of the solar system’s birth. So it’s a combination of engineering – the asteroid is easy to get to – and science, which requires organic material.
The biggest challenge: touchdown
— What is the most challenging thing about the mission?
Asteroid Bennu imaged by radar (left) and shape model (courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech (left), NASA/NSF/Cornell/Nolan)The most challenging thing is touching the asteroid to get the sample, because we don’t understand the nature of the soil on the asteroid. Asteroid Bennu is very small – only 500 meters across. To most telescopes, that’s just one point of light. We have radio telescope data from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and we were able to get a radar map, but that’s not really a picture. We know the shape of the asteroid from the radar data, but… we don’t know if it’s like quicksand? Is it very hard? Is it slippery? Is it dangerous? The radio map doesn’t give us this kind of important information for touching the asteroid. So the first thing I worry about is, is it really going to be difficult, or is it going to be like we imagine? Will our design work well? We’ll know that in August 2018, when we get the spacecraft’s camera close enough to take a picture.
We watched the Hayabusa mission very carefully, and something happened when they touched the asteroid. We don’t know what happened, and so we wonder why Hayabusa had problems when it touched the asteroid Itokawa. We’ve tried to think of everything that might go wrong, and to make sure our spacecraft is strong and can survive, but still, you are flying a spacecraft into an asteroid that you don’t understand very well. Even touching the asteroid is a science experiment. So, obviously, the engineering is a challenge, but the harder challenge is other things.
— What are those things?
The harder challenge is keeping up the team morale. Even though I’m a professor at a university, NASA put me in charge of the mission, and I have control of the science and also the budget and the schedule. My team consists of 450 people. I have to make sure they are happy and healthy, because it’s a stressful job; make sure they have the resources they need to do their work; and make sure they understand how valuable they are. So the job really is managing a very large team of people with very different skills and personalities, and keeping everybody focused on the mission’s success. The engineering is hard, but the really hard part is the big team.
OSIRIS-REx is a partnership between the University of Arizona, which is an academic institution, NASA, which is a government agency, and Lockheed Martin, which is a private company – very different cultures. So that is the biggest challenge.
I started in 2004, and sample analysis will be done in 2025. Making this mission succeed will take 21 years of my life. So I have to think about the whole story from beginning to end. And I will definitely make it a success.
— What are your hopes for OSIRIS-REx?
OSIRIS-REx (courtesy of NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)I have many hopes for OSIRIS-REx. First, I hope we are successful, that everything works well: the Atlas V rocket gets us into space, the spacecraft gets to the asteroid. We want it to be interesting, but also safe to get a sample from the surface. And then of course I hope that Bennu has many secrets about the early solar system, and that we bring back a sample that is a scientific treasure that many people can study for generations. We hope the asteroid is exciting, but not too exciting – because it may be too challenging.
— What’s the current state of development of OSIRIS-REx?
We are one year from launch. The spacecraft is almost completely built. The hardware – the flight system – is coming along very well, and we are now installing scientific instruments on the spacecraft. So we will leave Colorado, where Lockheed Martin is located, and go to Cape Canaveral, Florida in May 2016, and make the final preparation for launch in September.
Making the most of Hayabusa’s results
— What is the influence of the first Hayabusa?
Itokawa imaged by HayabusaHayabusa was a great mission – an amazing accomplishment. I was very excited to see the data come back from the Hayabusa mission. We started OSIRIS-REx in 2004; we got the first pictures of Itokawa in 2005. So when we were first designing the mission, we had no pictures of Itokawa, and we thought we were going to get a sample like from the moon, which is very fine powder. We were still going to go with the vacuum, but we thought we would be designing a vacuum for fine dust. And then we saw Itokawa, and we said, “Oh my God, that’s what a small asteroid looks like?” It was so strange and different than anything we had ever imagined, because it was lots of big boulders and no fine particles, and a strange shape, like two big boulders touching each other. And then the Muses-C region, which is where the smallest particles were, had gravel – rocks one or two centimeters in size. And so we decided we needed to design to grab gravel and bigger rocks, because there was probably no fine dust on the surface of the asteroid.
We have telescope data on Bennu. Bennu is bigger than Itokawa, and it’s shaped like a sphere, while Itokawa is more like a peanut. And Bennu also looks smoother. Its surface is smoother, and the grains look like they’re smaller, maybe less than a centimeter on average. So I told my team, “Design the spacecraft to go to Itokawa.” I think Itokawa is more rugged than Bennu, so if we can design a mission that will get a sample from Itokawa, then we should be able to get a sample from Bennu. We’ve used Itokawa as our “design case.” We’ve designed the mission for Itokawa, and we think Bennu’s environment may be a little more gentle in comparison.
And then we also saw the challenge of touching the asteroid, because they had some problems when they tried to get the sample – the spacecraft was damaged when it contacted the asteroid’s surface. We have studied what happened to Hayabusa, and how can we make sure OSIRIS-REx survives the same kind of event. So the Hayabusa mission was really valuable to us. And of course the sample from Itokawa came back, and we are now thinking about everything we’ve learned about the asteroid from the sample. There were small dust particles that came back, and that is helping us plan our sample science for OSIRIS-REx as well. So Hayabusa was a great mission.
— What do you think about the Hayabusa 2 mission?
Hayabusa 2I think it’s a very bold mission, because they want to get three samples, and, as I said, I worry about getting just one sample. So to go for three is bold. And they also have a bomb that will explode and dig a crater on the surface of the asteroid. That’s a very challenging experiment. By coincidence, the Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-REx operations are happening at the same time. They launched in 2014, we launch in 2016, but they both arrive in 2018. It takes them four years to get to the asteroid, it takes us two years to get to our asteroid, and then it takes them two years to come home and it takes us four years to come home. It’s a very interesting coincidence in many ways. We want to make good use of the opportunity.
“We’re much stronger if we help each other”
— What are your plans for promoting cooperation with Hayabusa 2?
OSIRIS-REx probe nearing asteroid Bennu (courtesy of NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)There’s an agreement between NASA and JAXA that says NASA will get part of the Hayabusa 2 sample and JAXA will get part of the OSIRIS-REx sample. So we are talking to each other about collaboration between the science teams. The timing is really great because we will be at the two asteroids at the same time, so we can really talk to each other and share personnel. We will have some Japanese scientists in Tucson, Arizona, and we’ll have some of our scientists here in Japan helping each other explore. It is important to exchange information while we are operating our spacecraft.
The plan is for Hayabusa 2 to get the first sample in, I think, October 2018. That’s about one year before we go for our sample, so I want to know what happens to Hayabusa 2 when they touch the asteroid. This is the biggest unknown and the biggest danger for OSIRIS-REx, so we really want to understand what the surface is like when you touch it. You know, it could be so soft that you just sink, or it could be so hard that you bounce off. So we really want to know what the soil is like on the asteroid surface, and then we have a year to study before OSIRIS-REx goes and gets its sample. This is very valuable to OSIRIS-REx. It’s very good for reducing the risk for our mission, so I’m very grateful.
On the other hand, one of the areas where we can help Hayabusa 2 is software. We have spent a lot of time and money developing software that can create a three-dimensional image of the asteroid. We have offered to share the software and our people who work on it with the Hayabusa 2 team, so that we can help them with the shape model and with the navigation around the asteroid. We are talking with JAXA about all of these areas. We’re much stronger if we help each other, and share lessons learned and ideas about how to make the mission safe.
— So it sounds like collaboration can produce great synergies.
Hayabusa 2 will collect samples from an artificial crater (courtesy of Akihiro Ikeshita)We really have an opportunity to come up with one sample-science plan to study both types of materials. For example, Hayabusa 2 wants three samples, and we want one. We kind of look at it like it’s really four samples of asteroid. And so if parts of 1999 JU3 look like parts of Bennu, and Hayabusa 2 gets that sample, then we probably won’t go to that spot on Bennu. We’ll pick something that looks different from the Hayabusa 2 area, so that we can get diversity of material. We can make sample collection more valuable by working together to pick the four sites, three from JU3 and one from Bennu.
I’m very good friends with the people who are working on Hayabusa 2. I look at us as pioneers. Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-REx are both pioneers studying asteroids, and we have the same will toward studying asteroids. The science is very similar. And by studying two asteroids, the science is increased maybe four times, because not only do you get two samples, but you get to compare the samples to each other and learn why they are different, and how they are the same. So the science becomes more powerful because of the diversity of material.
Space is the best place for exploration
— What is your research specialty in planetary science? How did you become interested in it?
I studied meteorites for most of my career. My interest started when I was a college student in 1993, and I got a research grant to study the search for extraterrestrial intelligence – in other words, aliens that have technology. We were using radio to see if we could find another planet where there were intelligent people with technology. We didn’t find anything, but it got me thinking about who else it out there. Are there other planets? Is there life on these planets? And is that life intelligent and does it have technology? That really was exciting to me. I wanted to learn how life started, and how common it is. So I decided I needed to understand the origin of our solar system. How did the Earth form? Why does the Earth have oceans? Why does the Earth have life? And that led me to meteorite science, because meteorites are pieces from the early solar system.
— Were you interested in space as a child?
I always wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to go someplace where nobody had ever been before, like climb a mountain or go to the bottom of the ocean, or something like that. But on Earth there are not very many places left to discover. That’s what made me interested in outer space, because that’s where there’s still a lot of places to explore. I don’t get to go personally, but I can build a robot and send it, and that’s kind of like a part of me that is going. So it was really the desire to be an explorer that led me to think about outer space as the best place for exploration.
“Each mission will keep building on the one that came before it”
— What is the attraction of exploration?
Comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko imaged by Rosetta (courtesy of ESA/Rosetta/Navcam)Exploration is being the first to see a new world, when you go somewhere nobody has ever been before and it’s beautiful. We saw the pictures from Rosetta, the European Space Agency mission. That comet is amazing, and unlike anything we ever imagined. Every time we go to a new world we are surprised and in awe of the beauty and the diversity of the solar system. And there are so many places to explore. The Earth is so tiny compared to the vastness of even our solar system, and the solar system is so tiny compared to the galaxy. It’s just almost incomprehensible what a tiny piece of the universe we are, yet we are so special because we can think, and we can build machines, and we can ask questions about all these things. Only mankind has always had a great curiosity about an unknown world.
— What are your expectations for the Japanese planetary mission?
I have many Japanese colleagues from meteorite science and from planetary science, and they’re the best in the world. I think the Japanese have a very excellent space program. Our Japanese colleagues should be very proud of the vision of the leaders here. I heard that after Hayabusa 2, they may go to Phobos or Deimos, one of the moons of Mars. This would be an amazing mission, and a very important mission for science. I really am impressed by the technology that has been developed in Japan, and with that technology, picking this challenge makes sense. JAXA has clearly developed excellent capabilities for asteroids, so it’s a perfect combination to do Mars exploration by going to one of its moons and bringing a sample back. I’m hopeful that maybe we can be a partner, or contribute to this great mission.
What’s really important, I think, is that you have a continuous set of opportunities, because the missions are so challenging. As I said, it’s hard to manage a big team, but once you have a team that has succeeded, the chance of the next project succeeding is so much higher if you can put them to work right away: “Okay, you just finished Hayabusa 2, now go to Deimos and get a sample.” If you just said, “We’ve got Hayabusa 2, now we’re not going to do anything for ten years,” you’re going to have to almost go back to the beginning and learn again how you did it. So I think the plan right now looks very promising, that each mission will keep building on the people and technology of the one that came before it. That is the real key to success, I think.
Dr. Dante S. Lauretta
Principal Investigator, NASA Asteroid Explorer OSIRIS-REx
Professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary LaboratoryDr. Lauretta began his studies at the University of Arizona, receiving a B.S. in Math and Physics and a B.A. in Oriental Studies in 1993. In 2001, after earning a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis, he joined the faculty of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Dr. Lauretta was selected as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008, and received the Antarctica Service Medal of the United States of America in 2010, for his service as a member of the 2002-03 Antarctic Search for Meteorites. He is an expert in the analysis of extraterrestrial materials, including lunar samples, meteorites and comet particles.
[September 4, 2015 ]
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LISA Pathfinder to Refine Hunt for Gravitational Waves
Artist’s impression of LISA Pathfinder, which will look for gravitational waves in space.
Credit: ESA–D. DUCROSThe fabric of spacetime is continually being stretched and squeezed due to the motion of all the bodies of the universe. These fluctuations are called gravitational waves and an upgraded, ground-based set of stations called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is currently trying to probe them with unprecedented sensitivity.
However, astronomers would love to measure gravitational waves in space with even better resolution, but that requires two satellites separated by millions of miles. Even over these extreme distances, the gravitational wave’s influence on the warping of spacetime will be minuscule, requiring precise measurements.
ANALYSIS: Colliding Black Holes and the Dawn of Gravitational Astronomy
Luckily for science, the European Space Agency will launch a large-scale gravitational wave observatory in 2034, although the design of it isn’t yet finalized. Previous concepts called Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and New Gravitational wave Observatory (NGO) have been studied in detail but were not selected.
That’s where LISA Pathfinder comes in. It won’t actually hunt for gravitational waves, but will work out the kinks for the much larger mission in a couple of decades. And project scientist Paul McNamara plans to be there for both launches.
“What I really wanted to do (with my career) is gravitational wave astrophysics,” McNamara told Discovery News, adding he started working on LISA at age 21, in 1994. That will put him close to retirement age when the 2034 mission gets off the ground.
ANALYSIS: Ripples in Space-Time Could Reveal ‘Strange Stars’
LISA Pathfinder will need to be an extraordinarily quiet and stable spacecraft. It will carry two 2 kilogram (4.4-pound) precious payloads — test masses of a gold-platinum alloy — that it needs to shield from the stresses of launch, the pressure of solar radiation, and the extreme environment of space. Also, no magnetic materials can be used during construction, among other requirements.
It also will need to travel a stable orbit so that the effect of the earth and moon doesn’t perturb the masses too much. So the spacecraft will orbit a region called the Sun Earth Lagrange point, L1 — 1.5 million kilometers or 932,000 miles closer to the sun than the Earth’s orbit. This requires once-a-week orbit adjustments. The 2034 successor mission, fortunately, will orbit the sun and not require any adjustments in its five-year mission.
ANALYSIS: Trio of Monster Black Holes Rumble Spacetime
The gold platinum masses are separated by 38 centimeters (15 inches) and that distance will be measured by a laser interferometer. Under ideal conditions, the investigators hope to see no motion. They’ll run this “clock” for 90 days, only taking a break for orbital adjustments. If the money is there, there’s enough to fuel to last a year. The extended mission (if approved) will test more intrusive spacecraft maneuvers to see what happens with the masses, McNamara said.
LISA Pathfinder is on its way to its launch pad in French Guiana in September for an expected launch date in the last week of November.
This article was provided by Discovery News.
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NASA Satellite's Dirt-Mapping Radar Bites the Dust
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft in orbit.
Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechOne of the two science instruments aboard a NASA Earth-observing satellite that launched earlier this year has failed, agency officials say.
The radar instrument on NASA’s $916 million Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft stopped returning data on July 7, a few months after the satellite began its science mission. The SMAP team has been unable to bring the instrument back online despite multiple attempts, and now views its recovery as unlikely.
But SMAP’s mission to map global soil moisture levels is not over; the satellite continues to collect data with its other instrument, a radiometer, team members said. [NASA’s SMAP Mission in Photos]
“Although some of the planned applications of SMAP data will be impacted by the loss of the radar, the SMAP mission will continue to produce valuable science for important Earth system studies,” Dara Entekhabi, SMAP science team lead at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, said in a statement.
SMAP launched Jan. 31, equipped with the radar and radiometer instruments, as well as a 20-foot-wide (6 meters) reflector antenna that NASA officials have said is the largest of its type ever deployed in space.
The satellite endured a three-month commissioning period on orbit, and then embarked on its soil-studying mission. SMAP’s observations should help scientists better understand how Earth’s water, carbon and energy cycles are linked and improve weather forecasts and crop-yield predictions, among other things.
SMAP’s mission is designed to last at least three years, but a problem with the radar’s high-power amplifier knocked the instrument out in early July. Mission team members studied the glitch and performed a series of tests over the next six weeks but determined the radar was dead after an attempt to power it up failed on Aug. 24, NASA officials said.
A three-day composite global map of surface soil moisture as measured by the radiometer instrument aboard NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive spacecraft (SMAP) between Aug. 25 and Aug. 27, 2015.
Credit: NASAThe space agency has appointed a mishap review board to determine what went wrong and how such an issue can be prevented in the future.
Working together, the radar and radiometer could collect soil-moisture data about regions of Earth 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) wide, and determine if soil is frozen or thawed in a patch just 1.9 miles (3 km) across. SMAP’s resolution will suffer without the radar, ballooning to 25 miles (40 km) for both soil moisture and freeze-thaw data, NASA officials said.
Still, “the mission will continue to meet its requirements for soil moisture accuracy and will produce global soil moisture maps every two to three days,” agency officials wrote in the same statement.
In addition, SMAP team members are investigating other ways that the spacecraft’s radiometer data can be used. For example, the instrument can likely measure salinity levels at the sea’s surface and study strong ocean winds, NASA officials said.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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NASA's Laser-Communication Tech for Spacecraft Zaps Forward
An artist’s illustration shows the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) laser beaming data to Earth from its perch on the International Space Station.
Credit: NASANASA spacecraft may soon be able to beam their data home to Earth blazingly fast — with lasers!
In space, a slow data connection means more than just annoyingly long video-loading times. It can cause frustration and mistakes on the International Space Station, according to a new NASA study — and it’s forcing scientists to wait 16 months to get all the data back from the New Horizons spacecraft’s historic July 14 flyby of Pluto.
But a new, high-precision laser communications system will burst through those old radio-wave barriers for a faster back-and-forth, agency officials say. [Watch the 1st Video Transmitted Via Laser Beam From Space Station]
“If we wanted to do a Google map of the entire surface of Mars, it would take nine years to bring back all the data with the current radio-frequency system” when Mars is at its closest, said Don Cornwell, director of the Advanced Communications and Navigation Technology Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“The laser communication system that we’re talking about is 40 times more bandwidth, which means that you could bring back that Google map of the complete Martian surface in nine weeks instead of nine years,” Cornwell told Space.com.
Cornwell also envisions using lasers to send HD videos to astronauts on the moon or more distant destinations, giving them instructions about how to fix a broken piece of equipment or treat a sick crewmember.
Need for speed
A recent NASA experiment probed the effects of communications delays aboard the International Space Station by mimicking the gaps in communication that might happen during a crewed mission to a faraway destination.
The researchers found that a 50-second communications delay frustrated space station astronauts and made it more difficult for them to complete tasks. Interviews with the crewmembers suggested that sending videos, and doing everything possible to cut down on the gap, could help lessen the negative impact.
The speed of light makes instantaneous communication between two parties impossible, and delays can be considerable for exploration missions. Spacecraft at Mars, for instance, will always have to wait at least 4 minutes to hear anything transmitted from Earth. (Delay times between Mars and Earth are always changing because the two planets are constantly moving relative to each other; the maximum one-way light-travel time is about 24 minutes.)
But sending more data at once can lessen the burden of that wait, NASA officials say.
“There’s a fundamental limit to radio frequencies,” Matt Abrahamson, a navigation systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told Space.com. “The higher in frequency you go, the more bits you can pack into the transmission … And the next leap is to go optical.”
Going “optical” means communicating with laser beams of near-infrared light — a process that can send a stream of data 10 to 100 times faster than standard radio, according to NASA, and uses much less power than today’s fastest, strongest radio signals. The near-infrared rays are not visible to the human eye.
Abrahamson is mission manager for the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), an effort to test a laser communications system between the Space Station and Earth. The system was built from off-the-shelf parts that hadn’t been tested in space, but it still managed to aim and send a high-definition video down to Earth last June — a task that took 3.5 seconds instead of the 10 minutes it would have taken with the space station’s radio-wave communications system.
The task was especially challenging because of the laser beam’s focused shape: As the space station moved at 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h), the system had to lock onto, and stay focused on, a laser beacon in California while transmitting the message. Whereas radio waves spread out in a wide beam, lasers are much more narrowly focused. And using lasers presents another challenge: When OPALS researchers zeroed in to communicate with the German Aerospace Center’s ground station, a band of clouds thwarted their exchange.
There are ways to overcome these challenges, though, and the pace of the technology’s development on Earth has let researchers take it farther, for a lower cost. The researchers use the same wavelength of near-infrared light that Earth-bound companies use in fiber-optic cable, like the superfast Internet FiOS.
(And as for clouds, there are ideas in the air. For instance, some on-the-ground communications systems, like the Internet delivery networks that Google and Facebook are currently developing, get around the problem by beaming lasers among drones or balloons above the clouds and then sending the data downward to computers using radio waves.)
Since the OPALS mission’s early success, the team has tested the limits of the technology. Researchers found that the space station’s laser signal can be focused into fibers one-quarter the width of a human hair, NASA officials said. A series of experiments has been testing the angles and strengths at which the beam could make it through Earth’s atmosphere, and scientists are even using the system to measure how the space station vibrates.
Zooming out
NASA is also looking into pushing the technology much farther away than Earth orbit. An earlier experiment, in October 2013, set up a two-way laser link between New Mexico and NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft, which was orbiting the moon. [How NASA’s Space Laser Communications System Works (Infographic)]
Cornwell, who managed that mission, said a laser system in development now that could communicate with a satellite around Mars would need a signal about 1 million times more powerful than LADEE’s. And the farther out you go, the more of a challenge it will be to aim and decipher the results.
“The laser beam that’s going from Mars to Earth is so tight and narrow that little vibrations [on the spacecraft bearing the laser] can make that beam shake around and totally miss the Earth,” Cornwell said. “It’s the equivalent of when you’re giving a presentation and you have a laser pointer, and you’re a little bit nervous and people can tell, and it’s very hard to point it where you want it to point because your hand has a quake to it.”
Plus, the beam has to point to where the Earth will be, once the light gets there — and the farther away a probe is, the more Earth will move during the light’s journey.
To receive the faint laser light, researchers would borrow time on a large telescope, like the 200-inch (16.7 feet, or 5 meters) one at San Diego’s Palomar Observatory. New detectors, perfected in the last five years, can count individual photons of the laser light that make it back, and error-detection algorithms can descramble the signals to recreate the original bits. For near-Earth communications, adaptive optics systems can take out the “twinkle” and distortion in the signal caused when the beam passes through Earth’s atmosphere.
Currently, Cornwell said, researchers are on target to make a tested, space-ready system by 2017 that could link Mars and Earth by laser light at a faster data rate, and at a much lower size and power cost than a radio connection would allow.
“We’re so close to Mars — we have been for a decade — but we’re leaving a lot of information on the table there that we’re not able to bring back,” Cornwell said. “We may be missing moments of serendipity where we might discover something, but we didn’t see it because we never brought the data back; we never brought the images back.”
“Our sensors collect so much data out there today; we never had to deal with HD video being a data type that we’ve collected for science before, or high-rate imagery,” Abrahamson added. “We have a tangible need to get it back to the ground.”
Abrahamson envisions spacecraft having two communications systems: a slower, radio-based one for emergencies and a fast laser connection to quickly exchange data. A similar system today sits on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, using a slower and faster radio connection. (Dawn is currently circling the dwarf planet Ceres.) [Photos of Dwarf Planet Ceres]
So far, no laser connection has been made farther out than the moon. But that may change soon: The systems needed to do so are in development, and NASA offered a $30 million incentive to include laser communications on the next Discovery-class mission proposals.
Ultimately, laser communications technology could be humanity’s best bet for extreme long-distance missions, advocates say.
“The reason that lasercomm is better for distance is because radio beams spread out more, because they’re longer wavelengths,” Cornwell said. “If I’m trying to send it a far distance, the beam spreads out so much that I don’t have a whole lot of signal that lands on my detector at the other end. But because a laser beam is so much more narrow and concentrated and focused at a great distance, I can deliver more signal power at a greater distance. I think we can communicate between the stars.”
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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'Star Wars' Celebration Takes Over Toys 'R' Us in NYC's Times Square
NEW YORK – A few hours ago, at a toy store not so far away, Space.com sent one of its reporters to eat Wookie cookies, attend “Light Saber Academy,” and meet the owner of the world’s largest “Star Wars” memorabilia collection, in a daylong countdown to “Force Friday.”
Tomorrow (Sept. 3), is “Force Friday”: Also known as the day Hasbro and Disney will reveal a new line of “Star Wars” toys, inspired by the new movie, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” set to be released on Dec. 18. The toys will be available at the Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square at 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT), but leading up to the big reveal, the store has an entire day of “Star Wars” activies planned. Space.com reporter Calla Cofield went into the field to capture the action. Some amazing Star Wars LEGO sculptures welcomed visitors upon arrival:
Where are those droids we’re looking for?
Maybe this guy can find them?
From Calla: “Star Wars and sci-fi artist Jeff Carlisle teaching the kids how to use simple shapes to make Star Wars characters. They did Yoda, TIE Fighters, the Millennium Falcon, Vader and R2D2.”
Shh! In session, this Star Wars class is. Younglings are learning to use the Force.
From Calla: “Steve Sansweet curated a ‘Star Wars’ vintage toy display that’s spread throughout the store. It features this hysterical line of action figures where all the guys are shaped like He-Man and Leia is cross eyed. Read the paragraph that goes with it.”
We don’t remember Mark Hamill being this bulked up for the movies.
“Chewie, we’re home. And our shoulders are HUGE.”
This is the van we’re looking for!
Steve Sansweet was on hand to sign copies of his new book, “Star Wars: The Ultimate Collectors Guide.” Sansweet is president and CEO of the non-profit Rancho Obi-Wan, which is based around his massive “Star Wars” toy collection (over 300,000 pieces!). Sansweet says he’s most excited about the technology that will appear in the new generation of “Star Wars” toys. He referenced, as an example, the incredible little BB-8 robot, designed by the Sphero toy company.
“I think this is going to be a breakthrough kind of merchandising event and breakthrough for the new movies. We’re really going to see the technology being integral to what the toy does,” Sansweet said.
In the vintage toy displays that Sansweet curated, there are some awesome examples of bygone technology in “Star Wars” toys. For example, a “Movie Cassette Color Show” toy from the 1970’s let the user run short movies through a sort of plastic film-based movie camera. But Sansweet said the film would get scratched with every viewing.
Some of the items in Sansweet’s collection are extremely rare and valuable, but he emphasized that a collector shouldn’t get into the game hoping the items will eventually become valuable. He says he plays with all the toys he buys, and will buy a second one if he thinks he’d like to keep one in good condition.
“You need to find what you love,” he said.
Stay tuned for more amazing photos from the midnight toy reveal at the Toys ‘R’ Us here in Times Square!
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'Floating Spoon' on Mars Is Just a Weird Rock, But Still Awesome
Is that really a floating spoon on Mars? No, but this photo from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity this week does show a weird rock that looks like a floating spoon. It was likely sculpted by Martian winds, NASA says.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSA so-called “floating spoon” on Mars spotted by NASA’s Curiosity rover is cooking up a storm on the Internet, but it’s actually a cool rock formation sculpted over time by the Martian winds, officials with the space agency say.
The uncannily spoon-shaped rock was photographed by Curiosity on Sunday (Aug. 30) during the rover’s 1,089th day on Mars, and word of the rock spread online in the days that followed. In the Curiosity photo, a handle shape juts out from an outcrop and ends in a rounded tip much like a spoon. It even casts its own spoon-shaped shadow on the ground below.
But alas, per NASA, the “spoon” is not some leftover debris from a Martian campsite or kitchen. Like other “sightings” on Mars, it’s a strangely shaped rock. [Photos of the Face on Mars and Other Optical Illusions]
“There is no spoon. This weird Mars feature is likely a ventifact — a rock shaped by wind,” NASA officials wrote in an image description.
This photo by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the raw image of Mars that includes a spoon-shaped rock at the lower center. Curiosity took this photo with its Mastcam camera on Aug. 30, 2015, the rover’s 1,089th day on Mars.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSWe’ve included two views of the “spoon on Mars” here, one with the formation picked out and the other the raw image from Curiosity’s Mastcam camera. Seeing shapes and patterns that aren’t really there is known as pareidolia — and those mysterious shapes are merely optical illusions that trick the human eye and brain.
There’s a long history of seeing strange shapes on the Red Planet, dating back to the eerie “Face on Mars” first spotted by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter. Since then, other shapes, including a rat, woman, jelly doughnut and — more recently — a crab, have been reported by eagle-eyed observers poring over NASA’s photos. So far, they’re all rocks, though. Every last one.
NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012 and is now into its third year on Red Planet. The rover is currently studying a rock formation known as the Stimson unit inside the vast Gale Crater, according to a status update posted today (Sept. 2). Curiosity is expected to head for new location nearby, known as the Bridger Basin, on its way toward a spot called Bagnold Dunes.
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“It’s exciting to be driving again, and I’m sure we’ll encounter some beautiful views as we continue to drive through this interesting terrain,” Curiosity science team member Lauren Edgar, a research geologist with the USGS Astrogeology Science Center, wrote in the status update.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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