On this day in science history: Mars 5 launched

In 1973, the USSR launched Mars 5, on a Proton SL-12/D-1-e booster. It was one of several Soviet Mars probes - Mars 4, 5, 6, and 7 - launched in Jul-Aug 1973. The Mars 5 mission was to orbit Mars, which was achieved on 12 Feb 1974. Each orbit took about 25 hours. It was designed to return information on the composition, structure, and properties of the martian atmosphere and surface. However, after only 22 orbits, the mission ended prematurely due to loss of pressurization in the transmitter housing. Before the failure, data for a small portion of the martian southern hemisphere was captured with about 60 images forwarded over a nine day period. The probe also sent more measurements made by other instruments.

Mars in natural colour in 2007. By ESA - European Space Agency & Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research for OSIRIS Team ESA/MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA [CC BY-SA 3.0-igo (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0-igo)], via Wikimedia Commons

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, after Mercury. Named after the Roman god of war, it is often referred to as the "Red Planet" because the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps of Earth.

The rotational period and seasonal cycles of Mars are likewise similar to those of Earth, as is the tilt that produces the seasons. Mars is the site of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and second-highest known mountain in the Solar System, and of Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The smooth Borealis basin in the northern hemisphere covers 40% of the planet and may be a giant impact feature. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. These may be captured asteroids, similar to 5261 Eureka, a Mars trojan.

There are ongoing investigations assessing the past habitability potential of Mars, as well as the possibility of extant life. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is less than 1% of the Earth's, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be made largely of water. The volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be sufficient to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 meters (36 ft). In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. 

The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.

Mars can easily be seen from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. Its apparent magnitude reaches −2.91, which is surpassed only by Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and the Sun. Optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometers (190 mi) across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earth's atmosphere.

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Which Earth-Size Planets are Habitable?

A University of Oklahoma post-doctoral astrophysics researcher, Billy Quarles, has identified the possible compositions of the seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Using thousands of numerical simulations to identify the planets stable for millions of years, Quarles concluded that six of the seven planets are consistent with an Earth-like composition. The exception is TRAPPIST-1f, which has a mass of 25 percent water, suggesting that TRAPPIST-1e may be the best candidate for future habitability studies.

"The goal of exoplanetary astronomy is to find planets that are similar to Earth in composition and potentially habitable," said Quarles. "For thousands of years, astronomers have sought other worlds capable of sustaining life."

The Earth seen from space, by NASA/Apollo 17 crew; taken by either Harrison Schmitt or Ron Evans [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Quarles, a researcher in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, OU College of Arts and Sciences, collaborated with scientists, E.V. Quintana, E. Lopez, J.E. Schlieder and T. Barclay at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on the project. Numerical simulations for this project were performed using the Pleiades Supercomputer provided by the NASA High-End Computing Program through the Ames Research Center and at the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research.

TRAPPIST-1 planets are more tightly spaced than in Kepler systems, which allow for transit timing variations with the photometric observations. These variations tell the researchers about the mass of the planets and the radii are measured through the eclipses. Mass and radius measurements can then infer the density. By comparing Earth's density (mostly rock) to the TRAPPIST-1 planets, Quarles can determine what the planets are likely composed of and provide insight into whether they are potentially habitable.

TRAPPIST-1f has the tightest constraints with 25 percent of its mass in water, which is rare given its radius. The concern of this planet is that the mass is 70 percent the mass of Earth, but it is the same size as Earth. Because the radius is so large, the pressure turns the water to steam, and it is likely too hot for life as we know it. The search for planets with a composition as close to Earth's as possible is key for finding places that we could identify as being habitable. Quarles said he is continually learning about the planets and will investigate them further in his studies.

TRAPPIST-1 is a nearby ultra-cool dwarf about 40 light-years away from Earth and host to a remarkable planetary system consisting of seven transiting planets. The seven planets are known as TRAPPIST 1b, c, d, e, f, g and h.

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Diesels pollute more than lab tests detect

Because of testing inefficiencies, maintenance inadequacies and other factors, cars, trucks and buses worldwide emit 4.6 million tons more harmful nitrogen oxide (NOx) than standards allow, according to a new study co-authored by University of Colorado Boulder researchers.

The study, published in Nature, shows these excess emissions alone lead to 38,000 premature deaths annually worldwide, including 1,100 deaths in the United States.

The findings reveal major inconsistencies between what vehicles emit during testing and what they emit in the real world - a problem that's far more severe, said the researchers, than the incident in 2015, when federal regulators discovered Volkswagen had been fitting millions of new diesel cars with "defeat devices."

Red Diesel Tank, by Meena Kadri [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The devices sense when a vehicle is undergoing testing and reduce emissions to comply with government standards. Excess emissions from defeat devices have been linked to about 50 to 100 U.S. deaths per year, studies show.

"A lot of attention has been paid to defeat devices, but our work emphasizes the existence of a much larger problem," said Daven Henze, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at CU Boulder who, along with postdoctoral researcher Forrest Lacey, contributed to the study. "It shows that in addition to tightening emissions standards, we need to be attaining the standards that already exist in real-world driving conditions."

The research was conducted in partnership with the International Council on Clean Transportation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization, and Environmental Health Analytics LLC.

For the paper, the researchers assessed 30 studies of vehicle emissions under real-world driving conditions in 11 major vehicle markets representing 80 percent of new diesel vehicle sales in 2015. Those markets include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

They found that in 2015, diesel vehicles emitted 13.1 million tons of NOx, a chemical precursor to particulate matter and ozone. Exposure in humans can lead to heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other health problems. Had the emissions met standards, the vehicles would have emitted closer to 8.6 million tons of NOx.

Heavy-duty vehicles, such as commercial trucks and buses, were by far the largest contributor worldwide, accounting for 76 percent of the total excess NOx emissions.

Henze used computer modeling and NASA satellite data to simulate how particulate matter and ozone levels are, and will be, impacted by excess NOx levels in specific locations. The team then computed the impacts on health, crops and climate.

"The consequences of excess diesel NOx emissions for public health are striking," said Susan Anenberg, co-lead author of the study and co-founder of Environmental Health Analytics LLC.

China suffers the greatest health impact with 31,400 deaths annually attributed to diesel NOx pollution, with 10,700 of those deaths linked to excess NOx emissions beyond certification limits. In Europe, where diesel-passenger cars are common, 28,500 deaths annually are attributed to diesel NOx pollution, with 11,500 of those deaths linked to excess emissions.

The study projects that by 2040, 183,600 people will die prematurely each year due to diesel vehicle NOx emissions unless governments act.

The authors say emission certification tests, both prior to sale and by vehicle owners, could be more accurate if they were to simulate a broader variety of speeds, driving styles and ambient temperatures. Some European countries now use portable testing devices that track emissions of a car in motion.

"Tighter vehicle emission standards coupled with measures to improve real-world compliance could prevent hundreds of thousands of early deaths from air pollution-related diseases each year," said Anenberg.

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On this day in science history: Pioneer 10 crossed the orbit of Pluto

In 1983, Pioneer 10, an American space probe, crossed the orbit of Pluto, the outermost planet, to continue its voyage into the universe beyond our solar system. This space exploration project was conducted by the NASA Ames Research Center in California, and the space probe was manufactured by TRW Inc.

Pioneer 10 was launched on March 2, 1972, by an Atlas-Centaur expendable vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Between July 15, 1972, and February 15, 1973, it became the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Photography of Jupiter began on November 6, 1973, at a range of 25,000,000 kilometres (16,000,000 mi), and a total of about 500 images were transmitted. The closest approach to the planet was on December 4, 1973, at a range of 132,252 kilometres (82,178 mi). During the mission, the on-board instruments were used to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the Solar System and heliosphere.

Artist's impression of Pioneer 10's flyby of Jupiter, by Rick Guidice [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So, what do we know about Jupiter?

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants; the other two giant planets, Uranus and Neptune are ice giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity. The Romans named it after their god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, and making it on average the third-brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus.

Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium, though helium comprises only about a tenth of the number of molecules. It may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet's shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it has a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator). The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere. Jupiter has at least 67 moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.

Radio communications were lost with Pioneer 10 on January 23, 2003, because of the loss of electric power for its radio transmitter, with the probe at a distance of 12 billion kilometers (80 AU) from Earth.

Jupiter has been explored on several other occasions by robotic spacecraft, such as the Voyager flyby missions and later, the Galileo orbiter. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, which used Jupiter's gravity to increase its speed and bend its trajectory en route to Pluto. The latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa.

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Hubble spots possible water plumes erupting on Jupiter's moon Europa

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesting the icy moon erupts with high altitude water vapor plumes.

The observation increases the possibility that missions to Europa may be able to sample Europa's ocean without having to drill through miles of ice.

"Europa's ocean is considered to be one of the most promising places that could potentially harbor life in the solar system," said Geoff Yoder, acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "These plumes, if they do indeed exist, may provide another way to sample Europa's subsurface."

Jupiter. By NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The plumes are estimated to rise about 125 miles (200 kilometers) before, presumably, raining material back down onto Europa's surface. Europa has a huge global ocean containing twice as much water as Earth's oceans, but it is protected by a layer of extremely cold and hard ice of unknown thickness. The plumes provide a tantalizing opportunity to gather samples originating from under the surface without having to land or drill through the ice.

The team, led by William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore observed these finger-like projections while viewing Europa's limb as the moon passed in front of Jupiter.

The original goal of the team's observing proposal was to determine whether Europa has a thin, extended atmosphere, or exosphere. Using the same observing method that detects atmospheres around planets orbiting other stars, the team realized if there was water vapor venting from Europa's surface, this observation would be an excellent way to see it.

"The atmosphere of an extrasolar planet blocks some of the starlight that is behind it," Sparks explained. "If there is a thin atmosphere around Europa, it has the potential to block some of the light of Jupiter, and we could see it as a silhouette. And so we were looking for absorption features around the limb of Europa as it transited the smooth face of Jupiter."

In 10 separate occurrences spanning 15 months, the team observed Europa passing in front of Jupiter. They saw what could be plumes erupting on three of these occasions.

This work provides supporting evidence for water plumes on Europa. In 2012, a team led by Lorenz Roth of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, detected evidence of water vapor erupting from the frigid south polar region of Europa and reaching more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) into space. Although both teams used Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph instrument, each used a totally independent method to arrive at the same conclusion.

"When we calculate in a completely different way the amount of material that would be needed to create these absorption features, it's pretty similar to what Roth and his team found," Sparks said. "The estimates for the mass are similar, the estimates for the height of the plumes are similar. The latitude of two of the plume candidates we see corresponds to their earlier work."

But as of yet, the two teams have not simultaneously detected the plumes using their independent techniques. Observations thus far have suggested the plumes could be highly variable, meaning that they may sporadically erupt for some time and then die down. For example, observations by Roth's team within a week of one of the detections by Sparks' team failed to detect any plumes.

If confirmed, Europa would be the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes. In 2005, NASA's Cassini orbiter detected jets of water vapor and dust spewing off the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Scientists may use the infrared vision of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018, to confirm venting or plume activity on Europa. NASA also is formulating a mission to Europa with a payload that could confirm the presence of plumes and study them from close range during multiple flybys.

"Hubble's unique capabilities enabled it to capture these plumes, once again demonstrating Hubble's ability to make observations it was never designed to make," said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This observation opens up a world of possibilities, and we look forward to future missions - such as the James Webb Space Telescope - to follow up on this exciting discovery."

The work by Sparks and his colleagues will be published in the Sept. 29 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency.) NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. STScI, which is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, conducts Hubble science operations.

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Rosetta’s comet contains ingredients for life

Ingredients crucial for the origin of life on Earth, including the simple amino acid glycine and phosphorus, key components of DNA and cell membranes, have been discovered at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The possibility that water and organic molecules were brought to the early Earth through impacts of objects like asteroids and comets have long been the subject of important debate.

While Rosetta's ROSINA instrument already showed a significant difference in composition between Comet 67P/C-G's water and that of Earth, the same instrument has now shown that even if comets did not play as big a role in delivering water as once thought, they certainly had the potential to deliver life's ingredients.

ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0-igo (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0-igo)], via Wikimedia Commons

While more than 140 different molecules have already been identified in the interstellar medium, amino acids could not be traced. However, hints of the amino acid glycine, a biologically important organic compound commonly found in proteins, were found during NASA's Stardust mission that flew by Comet Wild 2 in 2004, but terrestrial contamination of the collected dust samples during the analysis could not be ruled out. Now, for the first time, repeated detections at a comet have been confirmed by Rosetta in Comet 67P/C-G's fuzzy atmosphere, or coma.

The first detection was made in October 2014, while most measurements were taken during the perihelion in August 2015 - the closest point to the Sun along the comet's orbit while the outgassing was strongest. "This is the first unambiguous detection of glycine in the thin atmosphere of a comet," says Kathrin Altwegg, principal investigator of the ROSINA instrument at the Center of Space and Habitability of the University of Bern and lead author of the study. The results are now being published in Science.

Glycine is very hard to detect due to its non-reactive nature: it sublimates at slightly below 150°C, meaning that little is released as gas from the comet's surface or subsurface due to its cold temperatures. "We see a strong correlation of glycine to dust, suggesting that it is probably released from the grains' icy mantles once they have warmed up in the coma, perhaps together with other volatiles," says Altwegg. At the same time, the researchers also detected the organic molecules methylamine and ethylamine, which are precursors to forming glycine. Unlike other amino acids, glycine is the only one that has been shown to be able to form without liquid water. "The simultaneous presence of methylamine and ethylamine, and the correlation between dust and glycine, also hints at how the glycine was formed," says Altwegg.

Another exciting detection by ROSINA made for the first time at a comet is of phosphorus. It is a key element in all living organisms and is found in the structural framework of DNA and RNA.

"The multitude of organic molecules already identified by ROSINA, now joined by the exciting confirmation of fundamental ingredients like glycine and phosphorus, confirms our idea that comets have the potential to deliver key molecules for prebiotic chemistry," says Matt Taylor, Rosetta project scientist of the European Space Agency ESA. "Demonstrating that comets are reservoirs of primitive material in the Solar System, and vessels that could have transported these vital ingredients to Earth, is one of the key goals of the Rosetta mission, and we are delighted with this result."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Bern. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Star Wars-style lava planet discovered close to Earth

First they thought it was a water world, a planet larger than Earth covered in nothing but ocean. Then they thought it might be a diamond world, covered in mountains of graphite and diamond. Now, researchers think that near-by 55 Cancri e has an entire hemisphere engulfed in lava.

The planet orbits a sun-like star located just 40 light years away. It orbits its parent star about 100 times closer than Earth to the sun, completing a circuit in just 17.68 hours.

So close to its parent star, the planet is locked by gravity to show only one face to the star rather like the moon shows only one face to Earth. This means that one hemisphere of the planet is permanently sunlit, while the other is in perpetual darkness.

The planet has attracted a lot of interest since 2011, when it was discovered to cross the face of its star and block out some of its light. This allowed the planet’s atmosphere to be analysed. No water vapour was found, putting paid to the idea of it being a water world.

An analysis of the parent star, however, showed a higher than usual concentration of carbon-bearing elements. This led researchers to suggest next that 55 Cancri e could be a diamond planet with a landscape composed of graphite and diamond mountains.

The latest work involves observations of the planet with the Spitzer space telescope, Nasa’s orbiting infrared observatory. It shows that the temperature of the sunward facing hemisphere soars to 2500°C, while the permanently dark hemisphere reaches around 1100°C.

At these temperatures the hot side must be completely molten. At the terminator, the name for the boundary between the light and dark side (sorry, another Star Wars reference), their must be some form of lava shoreline as the molten rock solidify into landforms. In the twilight of the terminator region, the lava will be glowing red hot casting a hellish appearance across the alien landscape.

Lava flow. By Brocken Inaglory (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Dr Brice-Olivier Demory of the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory is the lead author of the paper announcing the new results. Although the work answers some questions about the nature of the planet, it raises others.

For example, despite the proximity of 55 Cancri e to its star and the tremendous amount of blinding sunlight it receives as a result, the temperature calculated from the infrared observations is higher than expected. So there must be another source of heat in the planet.

At eight times the mass of the Earth, it seems certain that the planet will contain a lot more radioactive elements than our world. As these decay, they would heat the interior, perhaps providing the extra heating.

One thing is certain, 55 Cancri e must now be a top target for the James Webb Space Telescope. This Nasa-built spacecraft is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and will be launched in 2018 by the European Space Agency. Its mirror will be more than seven times larger than the Spitzer’s. Although it works at somewhat different infrared wavelengths it will be able to study nearby planets such as 55 Cancri e in unprecedented detail.

But perhaps the best thing about the announcement of this discovery is that none of the astronomers felt duty bound to reference Mustafar, the lava planet on which Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker fought their climatic light sabre battle in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

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New Mars rover findings revealed - much higher concentrations of silica indicate 'considerable water activity'

New findings by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover are the focus of a press conference this morning at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in San Francisco, Calif. A group of scientists, including one from Los Alamos National Laboratory, revealed that the Curiosity rover found much higher concentrations of silica at some sites the rover has investigated in the past seven months than anywhere else it has visited since landing on Mars 40 months ago. Silica makes up nine-tenths of the composition of some of the rocks.

Mars, by NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

"The high silica was a surprise," said Jens Frydenvang of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Copenhagen, also a Curiosity science team member. "While we're still working with multiple hypotheses on how the silica got so enriched, these hypotheses all require considerable water activity, and on Earth high silica deposits are often associated with environments that provide excellent support for microbial life. Because of this, the science team agreed to make a rare backtrack to investigate it more."

The first discovery was as Curiosity approached the area "Marias Pass," where a lower geological unit contacts an overlying one. ChemCam, the rover's laser-firing instrument for checking rock composition from a distance, detected bountiful silica in some targets the rover passed along the way to the contact zone. The ChemCam instrument was developed at Los Alamos in partnership with the French IRAP laboratory in Toulouse and the French Space Agency.

Adding information about silica clues was a major emphasis in rover operations over a span of four months and a distance of about one-third of a mile (half a kilometer). It involves many more readings from ChemCam, plus elemental composition measurements by the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometeter (APXS) on the rover's arm and mineral identification of drilled rock-powder samples analyzed by the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument inside the rover.

Curiosity's science team is working with two main hypotheses to explain the recent findings on Mount Sharp, both of which require water. Water that is acidic would tend to carry other ingredients away and leave silica behind. Alkaline or neutral water could bring in dissolved silica that would be deposited from the solution. Apart from presenting a puzzle about the history of the region where Curiosity is working, the recent findings on Mount Sharp have intriguing threads to what an earlier rover, Spirit, found halfway around Mars. There, signs of sulfuric acidity were observed.

Adding to the puzzle, some of the silica found at one rock Curiosity drilled, called "Buckskin," is in a mineral named tridymite, which is found in Bandelier tuff, common in New Mexico but rare elsewhere, and never before seen on Mars. The usual origin of tridymite on Earth involves high temperatures in igneous or metamorphic rocks, but the finely layered sedimentary rocks examined by Curiosity have been interpreted as lakebed deposits.

Curiosity has been studying geological layers of Mount Sharp, starting from the bottom, since 2014, following two years of productive work on the plains surrounding the mountains. The mission delivered evidence in its first year that lakes in the area billions of years ago offered favorable conditions for life, if microbes ever lived on Mars. As Curiosity studies successively younger layers up Mount Sharp's slopes, the mission is investigating how ancient environmental conditions evolved from lakes, rivers and deltas to the harsh aridity of today's Mars.

Buckskin was the first of three rocks where drilled samples were collected during that period. The CheMin identification of tridymite prompted the team to look at possible explanations for it: "We could solve this by determining whether trydymite in the sediment comes from a volcanic source or has another origin," said Liz Rampe, of Aerodyne Industries at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "A lot of us are in our labs trying to see if there's a way to make tridymite without such a high temperature."

Beyond Marias Pass, ChemCam and APXS readings showed a pattern of high silica in pale zones along fractures in the bedrock, linking the silica enrichment there to alteration by fluids that flowed through the fractures and permeated into the bedrock. CheMin analyzed drilled material from a target called "Big Sky" in bedrock away from a fracture and from a fracture-zone target called "Greenhorn." Greenhorn indeed has much more silica, but not any in the form of tridymite. Much of it is in the form of noncrystalline opal, which can form in many types of environments, including hot springs, acid leaching and other wet settings.

"What we're seeing on Mount Sharp is dramatically different from what we saw in the first two years of the mission," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "There's so much variability within relatively short distances. The silica is one indicator of how the chemistry changed. It's such a multifaceted and curious discovery, we're going to take a while figuring it out."

The ChemCam has just passed 300,000 laser shots on Mars, each of which returns a color spectrum of the resulting plasma.

For more about Curiosity, which is examining sand dunes this month, visit the Mars Science Laboratory webpage: mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

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Liquid water flows on today's Mars: NASA confirms evidence

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

Martian slopes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

"Our quest on Mars has been to 'follow the water,' in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we've long suspected," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars."

These downhill flows, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), often have been described as possibly related to liquid water. The new findings of hydrated salts on the slopes point to what that relationship may be to these dark features. The hydrated salts would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine, just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly. Scientists say it's likely a shallow subsurface flow, with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.

"We found the hydrated salts only when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration. In either case, the detection of hydrated salts on these slopes means that water plays a vital role in the formation of these streaks," said Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, lead author of a report on these findings published Sept. 28 by Nature Geoscience.

Ojha first noticed these puzzling features as a University of Arizona undergraduate student in 2010, using images from the MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). HiRISE observations now have documented RSL at dozens of sites on Mars. The new study pairs HiRISE observations with mineral mapping by MRO's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

The spectrometer observations show signatures of hydrated salts at multiple RSL locations, but only when the dark features were relatively wide. When the researchers looked at the same locations and RSL weren't as extensive, they detected no hydrated salt.

Ojha and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. Some perchlorates have been shown to keep liquids from freezing even when conditions are as cold as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 Celsius). On Earth, naturally produced perchlorates are concentrated in deserts, and some types of perchlorates can be used as rocket propellant.

Perchlorates have previously been seen on Mars. NASA's Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover both found them in the planet's soil, and some scientists believe that the Viking missions in the 1970s measured signatures of these salts. However, this study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form, in different areas than those explored by the landers. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.

MRO has been examining Mars since 2006 with its six science instruments.

"The ability of MRO to observe for multiple Mars years with a payload able to see the fine detail of these features has enabled findings such as these: first identifying the puzzling seasonal streaks and now making a big step towards explaining what they are," said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

For Ojha, the new findings are more proof that the mysterious lines he first saw darkening Martian slopes five years ago are, indeed, present-day water.

"When most people talk about water on Mars, they're usually talking about ancient water or frozen water," he said. "Now we know there's more to the story. This is the first spectral detection that unambiguously supports our liquid water-formation hypotheses for RSL."

The discovery is the latest of many breakthroughs by NASA's Mars missions.

"It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future."

For more information visit:-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150928094114.htm

https://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=regeneration-salt&Id=62072

Search for deadly asteroids must be accelerated to protect Earth, say experts

The search for deadly asteroids that could slam into Earth must be speeded up 100-fold to help protect the future of life on Earth, according to an influential group of scientists, astronauts and rock stars.

The call for action comes as experts around the world take part in Asteroid Day, an event on Tuesday marked by a series of talks and debates aimed at raising awareness of the existential threat posed by hurtling rocks from the heavens.

Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, and Brian May, from the rock group Queen, added their names to the 100X declaration, which calls for a rapid acceleration in human efforts to find and track potentially dangerous asteroids. Other signatories including Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox and Eileen Collins, the first female commander of Nasa’s space shuttle.

“The aim is to ramp up public awareness and the awareness of governments to the fact that we are under threat from a meteor strike,” May told the Guardian. “It’s been made light of, and we’ve seen some great films, like Bruce Willis saving the day, but it is a very serious threat.”

Asteroid Day falls on the anniversary of an asteroid strike in 1908 that saw a 40 metre-wide lump of space rock enter the atmosphere over Tunguska in Siberia at about 33,500 miles per hour. The rock exploded mid-air and released the energy of a large hydrogen bomb, which flattened 2000 sq km of conifer forest.

Were an asteroid of the same size to slam into the atmosphere over London, the blast could destroy much of the capital within the M25. People in cities as far away as Oxford could be burned by the intense heat released in the explosion. In Scotland, the same blast would still have the force to blow peoples’ hats off.

From observations with ground-based telescopes, researchers know that of the million or so asteroids that could one day strike Earth, only about 10,000 are known and tracked. That means we are in the dark about 99% of the asteroids that have the potential to crash into the planet.

“They are clearly a threat and for the first time it is possible for us to do something to reduce that threat,” Lord Rees told the Guardian.

“It is now feasible to do a survey of all the potentially Earth-crossing asteroids above 50m in diameter, and objects like that impact Earth about once per century. One could then check their orbits to see if any are on a collision course with Earth and within 20-30 years have technology to divert any that are on course,” he added.

Huge asteroids several kilometres across are expected to hit Earth every ten million years or so. These can cause destruction on a global scale. A ten kilometre-wide space rock that crashed into what is now Mexico triggered a global catastrophe 68 million years ago which brought the reign of the dinosaurs to an end.

Since most of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, asteroids are more likely to arrive over the oceans. But these can be the worst impact sites for asteroids of about 300 metres wide. If one landed in the mid-Atlantic, it would produce a tsunami wave that could devastate cities on the east coast of the US, and along the coast of Europe.

“We know the rough numbers, we just don’t know when a particular asteroid is going to hit. If we are going to take precautions, we need to know the orbits of all of these bodies,” Rees said.

“The first thing is to do the survey to find out if there are any asteroids which seem to be on course with a high probability of hitting within the next 50 years. If we knew there was one on course to hit the Earth in next 50 years, that would focus minds on the technology.”

One mission, proposed by Nasa, aims to catalogue two thirds of the asteroids and other “near earth objects” that are larger than 140m and come close to Earth’s orbit. The NEOCam mission would use an infra-red camera to garner information on asteroid size, shape, rotation and composition. A private mission called Sentinel, which would put an another infra-red telescope in space, is being led by Ed Lu, a former space shuttle astronaut.

Scientists are actively looking at ways to protect Earth from any asteroids that do turn out to be on a collision course. One strategy is to crash a massive spacecraft into the asteroid and change its trajectory. Another option is a “gravity tractor”. In this scenario, a spacecraft flies alongside an inbound asteroid for long enough that its minuscule gravitational tug diverts the asteroid enough to pass Earth safely. Both could run into problems in a real situation, though: if the nudge does not work as expected, the asteroid may miss one city only to hit another.

The option to lob nuclear warheads at an incoming asteroid is appealing to Hollywood, but less so to many scientists, including May, who has a PhD in astrophysics.

“Blowing it up is probably not the greatest option, because you have a lot of fragments to deal with then, and it becomes rather random, but deflecting it one way or another seems to be an option,” he said.

“It’s absolutely possible there’s something out there of the magnitude that would wipe out a major city of the world, and that’s a very big thing: you’re talking about a human disaster on a vast scale.

“This is about saving us all. All the people on the planet, all the creatures on the planet, everything which we have built up and might be proud of. It’s a kind of insurance if you like,” he said.

For more information visit:-

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/30/search-deadly-asteroids-protect-earth-brian-may-lord-rees

http://www.prlabs.co.uk/lab-supplies.php?N=urea-hydrogen-peroxide&Id=1606

On this day

1959 - NASA selects first US astronauts.

 

 

On this day in 1959 NASA announced the selection of the first seven US astronauts.

These astronauts were selected for the Mercury program to test if humans could survive in space.

Mercury astronauts had to be male, less than 40 years old and not more than 5'11" tall, less than 180 lbs. and in excellent physical condition.

The seven astronauts selected were: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.

For more information visit:-

http://chemistry.about.com/od/aprilinscience/tp/april9history.htm

On this day......

On March 7th 2009, the Kepler space observatory, designed to discover Earth-like habitable planets orbiting other stars, is launched.  The spacecraft is named after the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler who is best known for his laws of planetary motion.

Kepler is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way to discover dozens of Earth-size extrasolar planets in or near the habitable zone and estimate how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

Kepler uses a photometer that continually monitors the brightness of over 145,000 main sequence stars in a fixed field of view. This data is transmitted to Earth and analysed to detect periodic dimming caused by extrasolar planets that cross in front of their host star.

As of July 2013^[update], Kepler had found 134 confirmed exoplanets in 76 stellar systems, along with a further 3,277 unconfirmed planet candidates. In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.  11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.  The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists.

For more information visit:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_(spacecraft)
http://kepler.nasa.gov/

Back in 1984

On this day in 1984....

The first untethered spacewalk was made by American Bruce McCandless II on February 7, 1984, during Challenger mission STS-41-B, utilising the Manned Maneuvering Unit. He was subsequently joined by Robert L. Stewart during the 5 hour 55 minute spacewalk. Such a self-contained spacewalk was first attempted by Eugene Cernan in 1966 on Gemini 9A, but Cernan could not reach the maneuvering unit without tiring.

Untethered U.S. astronaut Bruce McCandless uses a manned maneuvering unit. photo taken by Robert "Hoot" Gibson

The Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) is an astronaut propulsion unit that was used by NASA on three Space Shuttle missions in 1984. The MMU allowed the astronauts to perform untethered EVA spacewalks at a distance from the shuttle. The MMU was used in practice to retrieve a pair of faulty communications satellites, Westar VI and Palapa B2. Following the third mission the unit was retired from use. A smaller successor, the Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), was first flown in 1994, and is intended for emergency use only.

While orbiting around the Earth at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour, McCandless floated from the cargo bay into outer space, 150 nautical miles above Earth, an experience he described as "a heck of a big leap." Mission specialist Robert L. Stewart, an Army lieutenant colonel, also flew the MMU on shuttle mission 41-B.

While flying the MMU, these men were in a journalistic phrase of the time "human satellites." They checked out the equipment, maneuvered within the cargo bay, flew away from and back to the orbiter, performed docking exercises, recharged the MMU nitrogen tanks, and collected engineering data. The MMU, according to Martin Marietta's post mission report, "performed as expected and no anomalies were reported.

Gaseous nitrogen was used as the propellant for the MMU. Two aluminium tanks with Kevlar wrappings contained 5.9 kilograms of nitrogen each, enough propellant for a six-hour EVA depending on the amount of manoeuvring done. Typical MMU delta-v (velocity change) capability was about 80 feet per second (24.4 m/s).

There were 24 nozzle thrusters placed at different locations on the MMU. To operate the propulsion system, the astronaut used his fingertips to manipulate hand controllers at the ends of the MMU's two arms. The right controller produced rotational acceleration for roll, pitch, and yaw. The left controller produced translational acceleration for moving forward-back, up-down, and left-right. Coordination of the two controllers produced intricate movements in the unit. Once a desired orientation was achieved, the astronaut could engage an automatic attitude-hold function that maintained the inertial attitude of the unit in flight. This freed both hands for work.

Yet the MMU has not been used since 1984. There are several reasons for this. First, most extravehicular activities were effective without use of the MMU. Tethers, safety grips, hand bars, and other restraints allowed astronauts to work in the open cargo bay. Furthermore, the maneuverability of the Space Shuttle itself and the utility of the shuttle's robotic manipulator arm had proved capable of rescuing satellites-the primary function for which the MMU had been designed.



For more information visit:-
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter13.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Maneuvering_Unit

Sprites!

Sprites are a fleeting, ethereal and a relatively unknown aspect of lightning storms.
 
Since the 1960s, and probably before then, pilots have been seeing but seldom reporting what have become known as sprites and elves above the clouds. Sprites are electrically-charged lightning funnels which shoot up from the top of a cloud as much as 60 miles into the atmosphere. These charges are vivid red and usually occur in clusters of three or more but are only visible for nanoseconds. They are sometimes preceded by lower altitude red flashes known as elves, and can have striking blue tendrils which are easily mistaken for blue jets. While they are a similar visual phenomenon, blue jets are less powerful than the sprites and travel neither as quickly nor as far.

 

Because 'everyone knows' lightning goes to ground, pilots were naturally reluctant to report this phenomenon in case they found themselves grounded for hallucinating. As a result, serious research was delayed until the last 15 years or so.

While sprites are more common during positively-charged lightning storms, this is not due to any preference on the part of the sprite, but rather due to the greater internal energy of a positively charged storm. It was not until 1999 that the first sprites of a negatively-charged storm were recorded.

 

During a powerful storm it is possible to see red sprites, elves and blue  jets, but the exact atmospheric conditions which create such a show are uncertain.
 
As sprites are relatively new to the science world there is still a lot more to learn about them.

It is only with the advent of high speed photography that the existence of these light shows could be confirmed, and even with that they were first photographed by accident in 1989. Amazingly, there have since been more than 10,000 confirmed sightings. They are also known to create a very low-frequency thunder which was only recently captured with the use of specialist listening equipment.

 

As their energy is spread more thinly than the traditional thunderbolt due to the cone like dispersal from cloud to atmosphere, they are thought to be relatively weak. Sprites are cold plasma phenomena that lack the hot channel temperatures of tropospheric lightning, so they are more akin to fluorescent tube discharges than to lightning discharges.

The effects of sprites are currently being investigated by various agencies including NASA who seriously addressed them as a possible cause for the tragic loss of the space shuttle Columbia, which was, incidentally, on a mission to record data about the very same sprite phenomenon.
 
The link below shows footage from the ISS and shows a red sprite over East Asia at around 0:06.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Red_Sprite.ogv

Sprite Halos
Sprites are sometimes preceded, by about 1 millisecond, by a sprite halo, a pancake-shaped region of weak, transient optical emissions approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) across and 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) thick. The halo is centred at about 70 kilometres (43 mi) altitude above the initiating lightning strike. These halos are thought to be produced by the same physical process that produces sprites, but for which the ionization is too weak to cross the threshold required for streamer formation.

Recent research carried out at the University of Houston in 2002 indicates that some normal (negative) lightning discharges produce a sprite halo, and that every lightning bolt between cloud and ground attempts to produce a sprite or a sprite halo.

For more information visit:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(lightning)
http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A13492398
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap990616.html