ESA’s Rosetta Mission sets November 12th as the Landing Date for Philae

by Tim Reyes on September 27, 2014

Illustration of the Rosetta Missions Philae lander on final approach to a comet surface. The date is now set for landing, November 12. (Photo: ESA)

ESA Rosetta mission planners have selected November 12th, one day later than initially planned, for the historic landing of Philae on a comet’s surface. The landing on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will be especially challenging for the washing machine-sized lander. While mission scientists consider their choice of comet for the mission to be an incredibly good one for scientific investigation and discovery, the irregular shape and rugged terrain also make for a risky landing. The whole landing is not unlike the challenge one faces in shooting a moving target in a carnival arcade game; however, this moving target is 20 kilometers below and it is also rotating.

At  8:35 GMT (3:35 AM EST), the landing sequence will begin with release of Philae by Rosetta at an altitude of 20 kilometers above the comet. The expected time of touchdown is seven hours later – 15:35 GMT (10:35 AM EST). During the descent, Philae’s ROLIS camera will take a continuous series of photos. The comet will complete more than half a rotation during the descent; comet P67’s rotation rate is 12.4 hours. The landing site will actually be on the opposite side of the comet when Philae is released and will rotate around, and if all goes as planned, meet Philae at landing site J.
Before November 12th, mission planners will maintain the option of landing at Site C. If the alternate site is chosen, the descent will begin at 13:04 GMT also on November 12 but from an altitude of 12.5 kilometers, a 4 hour descent time.

NAVCAM image of the comet on 21 September, which includes a view of primary landing site J. Click for more details and link to context image. (Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM)

Rosetta will eject Philae with an initial velocity of approximately 2 1/2  kilometers per hour. Because the comet is so small, its gravity will add little additional speed to Philae as it falls to the surface. Philae is essentially on a ballistic trajectory and does not have any means to adjust its path.
The actions taken by Philae’s onboard computer begin only seconds from touchdown. It has a landing propulsion system but unlike conventional systems that slow down the vehicle for soft landing, Philae’s is designed to push the lander snugly onto the comet surface. There is no guarantee that Philae will land on a flat horizontal surface. A slope is probably more likely and the rocket will force the small lander’s three legs onto the slope.

A model of the comet P67/Churyumov-Gerasimenko created using images from the Rosetta OSIRIS narrow field camera. Mouse click on the image to start the animated GIF. (Credit: ESA)

Landing harpoons will be fired that are attached to cables that will be pulled in to also help Philae return upright and attach to the surface. Philae could actually bounce up or topple over if the rocket system and harpoons fail to do their job.

The Philae Lander anchoring harpoon with the integrated MUPUS-accelerometer and temperature sensor. (Credit: “Philae Lander Fact Sheet”, ESA)

However, under each of the three foot pads, there are ice screws that will attempt to drill and secure Philae to the surface. This will depend on the harpoons and/or rockets functioning as planned, otherwise the action of the drills could experience resistance from hard ground and simply push the lander up rather than secure it down. Philae also has a on-board gyro to maintain its attitude during descent, and an impact dampener on the neck of the vehicle which attaches the main body to the landing struts.
Ten landing sites were picked, then down-selected to five, and then finally on September 15th, they selected Site J on the head of the smaller lobe – the head of the rubber duck, with site C as a backup. Uncertainty in the release and the trajectory of the descent to the comet’s surface means that the planners needed to find a square kilometer area for landing. But comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko simply offered no site with that much flat area clear of cliffs and boulders. Philae will be released to land at Site J which offers some smooth terrain but only about a quarter of the area needed to assure a safe landing. Philae could end up landing on the edge of a cliff or atop a large boulder and topple over.

A ‘color’ view of Comet 67P, from a September 24, 2014 NavCam image. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – Processing by Elisabetta Bonora & Marco Faccin.

The Rosetta ground control team will have no means of controlling and adjusting Philae during the descent. This is how it had to be because the light travel time for telecommunications from the spacecraft to Earth does not permit real-time control. The execution time and the command sequence will be delivered to Rosetta days before the November 12th landing. And ground control must maneuver Rosetta with Philae still attached to an exact point in space where the release of Philae must take place. Any inaccuracy in the initial release point will be translated all the way down to the surface and Philae would land some undesired distance away from Site J. However, ground controllers have a month and a half to practice simulations of the landing many times over with a model of the comet’s nucleus. With practice and more observational data between now and the landing, the initial conditions and model of the comet in the computer simulation will improve and raise the likelihood of a close landing to Site J.

Astronauts Give Bill Clinton a Taste of Space Travel

NEW YORK — Astronauts paid a virtual visit to former President Bill Clinton from the International Space Station on Wednesday (Sept. 24) to share their perspectives on Earth as it appears from their orbital home.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, part of the station's current Expedition 41 crew, beamed down by video to the Clinton Global Initiative, a gathering world leaders here aiming to develop solutions to major world problems. Joining Clinton on Earth was NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, who visited the station during its Expedition 26/27 mission.
The astronauts spoke of the unique perspective afforded by the International Space Station an orbiting laboratory built through an international effort. They also showed off a few somersaults in zero gravity. [Watch Bill Clinton Talk Space with Astronauts (Video)]

"I want everyone to know what a unique and amazing place we have here [on the station]," Wiseman told Clinton and the conference audience.
Aboard the station, the astronauts are engaged in experiments on the effects of life in zero gravity. For example, the progressive bone disease osteoporosis proceeds 10 times faster in a typical astronaut in space than it does in a 70-year-old woman on Earth, Coleman said. By measuring the physiological changes that happen to astronauts, scientists can study the effects of aging in space.
The space station also provides a unique vantage point from which to view and appreciate Earth, the astronauts said.
"There are no words to describe that first glance when you look back on your planet," Wiseman said. Earth is a "beautiful living organism," he added.
With astronauts from United States, Russia, Brazil, Canada and Japan, as well as members of the European Space Agency, the space station is an exercise in global collaboration. When you're up in space, "it's hard to feel you're from any particular country," Coleman said.
As operators of the ISS, Wiseman and his colleagues have become good friends, he said. "We want to get the job done, and we want to have fun doing it," he said.
In response, Clinton joked that maybe the best way to get rid of the political gridlock in the U.S. Congress may be to send politicians to space.

When asked what the next frontier in space would be, Wiseman simply said, "we keep going" — and that could mean to the moon, an asteroid, Mars or beyond.

Last week, NASA awarded contracts to The Boeing Company and SpaceX to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station. NASA aims to end the United States' reliance on Russia for space transportation in 2017.

NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX Make 3D Printing History Today: The First 3D Printer in Space!

By Beth McKenna | More Articles
September 21, 2014 | Comments (0)

Elon Musk's SpaceX was involved in making 3D printing history at 1:52 a.m. EST today, when its Dragon spacecraft launched on a cargo mission to the International Space Station for NASA with a 3D printer in tow. Not only is this the first 3D printer in space, it will become the first manufacturing device used off-Earth. This isn't any off-the-shelf model 3D printer; this printer had to be specially built to function in a zero-gravity -- or "zero G" -- environment.
First let's look at the company that made today's historic event possible and its plans to develop a commercially available 3D printing production facility on the ISS, and then explore the potential long-term ramifications for 3D printing industry investors.

The ISS' robotic arm grappling Dragon on a previous cargo mission for NASA. Source: SpaceX.

The sky is no longer the limit for 3D printingMade In Space is the privately held company that designed and built the 3D printer that's making history. It was founded in 2010 out of a NASA Ames Research Center program at Singularity University and is cozily based at Ames.
The company was founded with the goal of bringing 3D printing -- technically called "additive manufacturing," since the technology involves building a component layer by layer -- to the space industry. The founding group is comprised of space veterans (including an astronaut), 3D printing experts, and several entrepreneurs. Among the 3D printing specialists is a Bespoke Innovations co-founder who's a director at Autodesk (NASDAQ: ADSK  ) . Bespoke was acquired by 3D Systems  (NYSE: DDD  ) in 2012; Autodesk makes design software for 3D printing and other applications, and, in fact, Made In Space used Autodesk's software to design its 3D printer.
Made In Space's mission started in early 2013 when it was awarded a Phase 3 Small Business Innovation Research contract with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to provide the 3D printer for the ISS mission. The project is dubbed the "3D Printing in Zero-G Experiment."
Constructing a 3D printer for a trip to space was no simple task. It involved more than 20,000 hours of testing of various off-the-shelf and custom-built 3D printers, and dozens of components. Ultimately, Made In Space had to design and build an extrusion-based printer from the ground up to ensure that it would function reliably in microgravity and meet NASA's stringent safety and operational requirements. The printer was "ruggedized" to survive launch and the hardware was designed so parts aren't floating around or moving when they are not supposed to.
Three 3D printers the company built were simulation-tested to see what the effects of microgravity would be. This was accomplished via parabolic airplane flights, which produce short periods of weightlessness. Of course, the 3D printer that would ultimately be launched into space needed to be NASA-certified. This process involved subjecting it to a series of tests at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, including electromagnetic interference, vibration, materials compliance, human factors, electrical, and ISS interface checks.
The 3D printer will print a series of test parts and tools, including the first item ever manufactured off-planet. Printing won't likely begin until the end of this year, as there are live rodent experiments on the ISS that need to take first priority.

The Made In Space 3D printer that's en route to the ISS. Source: Made In Space.

One small step for a 3D printer, one giant leap for 3D printing in spaceMade In Space will use its findings from this mission to develop a second 3D printer that will be permanently installed on the ISS. This printer will be a part of the company's Additive Manufacturing Facility, or AMF. The equipment for this facility is expected to launch to the ISS in 2015.
Being able to produce spare parts and tools in space will be tremendously valuable to NASA and astronauts. Currently, NASA has to launch considerably more parts than any mission will need. After all, it's not like astronauts can make speedy jaunts to Home Depot or call a contractor like we earthlings can if we're in need of a quick fix.
This fact illustrates the potential for 3D printing to make life in space easier and considerably less costly: "Our first 3D printer will be capable of building an estimated 30% of the parts that NASA has already needed to repair on the ISS," said Jason Dunn, CTO of Made In Space, in a press release.
The printer that was just launched into space can produce components made of ABS plastic, which is the plastic from which Legos are made. Grant Lowery, Made In Space's marketing and communications manager, told me by phone this week that the 3D printer that will be part of the AMF in 2015 will have increased materials capabilities and also a larger build box than the first-generation printer. Thus, AMF's 3D printer will surely increase Dunn's 30% figure quoted above. (As to the additional materials, Lowery wasn't at liberty to discuss this topic.)
Ultimately, NASA's goal is to include 3D printers on space missions. Beyond the moneysaving and convenience factors, there's the safety aspect. There's no way even a group of rocket scientists can foresee every conceivable emergency scenario. So, having a 3D printer on board to crank out a jerry-rigged fix on space missions could be life-saving.
3D printing in space could kick-start a new space economyOne of the most interesting facets of the AMF is that Made In Space plans to make it commercially available. So beyond astronauts, companies involved in constructing small satellites and independent researchers on the ISS could also benefit from the AMF. Additionally, beyond servicing existing businesses, Lowery told me that Made In Space envisions the AMF as an "incubator for new businesses."
There are also some mind-blowing longer-term possibilities. Lowery said the company foresees its printers eventually being able to use asteroid material as feedstock. The benefit is obvious: The entire 3D printing-in-space process would be self-sufficient, as it would eliminate the need for feedstock from Earth to be launched into space. Launching anything into space is a huge expense, as it currently costs several thousand dollars per pound to put anything from Earth into low-Earth orbit.
A few companies, such as Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, have recently formed with the goal of mining asteroids. Scientists believe that asteroids are likely made of all the ingredients necessary to live in space. The aim of these companies is to supply the raw materials to support a new space economy.
Self-sufficiency, or at least near self-sufficiency, is a must if humans are to eventually colonize other planets, such as Mars. Some people, including SpaceX founder and chairman Elon Musk, believe this will occur within 20 years.
The sky is no longer the limit for 3D printing... profitsThe market size for 3D printing could expand in an out-of-this-world way if 3D printing expands to a literal out-of-this-world technology. It seems safe to say that it's not a question of "if," just "when." NASA is gung-ho about 3D printing, as is much of the aerospace industry, and it's already using this amazing technology for various other applications. Additionally, where there's big money to be had, innovative entrepreneurs usually step up to the challenge.
According to Wohlers Report 2014, the global 3D printing industry is expected to grow from $3.07 billion in 2013 to more than $21 billion by 2020; that's greater than a 31% compounded annual growth rate. If and when -- again, I think it's a "when" -- 3D printing starts being used in space applications beyond testing, Wohlers' estimates could prove to be conservative. While we surely won't see an explosion in the use of 3D printing in space within the next six years, it seems within the realm of possibility that there could be some significant investments in the space applications of the technology by 2020.
The bigger 3D printing's market size, the greater the potential profits in the 3D printing industry. Made In Space is privately held, which means it doesn't offer publicly traded stock. It's certainly too soon for any speculation as to what the company's future holds, as we need to wait to see how well its 3D printer functions in space. If it functions well, and the company continues to make solid progress on its mission, it seems likely there will eventually be a public company tie-in. Going public or partnering with a publicly traded company is often the best way of raising a considerable amount of capital for growth purposes. Surely, both 3D printing bigwigs, 3D Systems and Stratasys (NASDAQ: SSYS  ) , would want a piece of the space action. There are numerous other captivating possibilities.

SpaceX Commercial Resupply Dragon Set for Sept. 20 Blastoff to Station – Watch Live

by Ken Kremer on September 19, 2014

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Dragon cargo capsule bound for the ISS launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, FL. File photo. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – SpaceX is on the cusp of launching the company’s fourth commercial resupply Dragon spacecraft mission to the International Space Station (ISS) shortly after midnight, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014, continuing a rapid fire launch pace and carrying NASA’s first research payload aimed at conducting Earth science from the stations exterior.
Final preparations for the launch are underway right now at the Cape Canaveral launch pad with the stowage of sensitive late load items including a specially designed rodent habitat housing 20 mice.
Fueling of the two stage rocket with liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants commences in the evening prior to launch.
If all goes well, Saturday’s launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket would be the second in less than two weeks, and the fourth over the past ten weeks. The last Falcon 9 successfully launched the AsiaSat 6 commercial telecom satellite on Sept. 7 – detailed here.

“We are ready to go,” said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX vice president of mission assurance, at a media briefing at the Kennedy Space Center today, Sept. 19.
Liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on the CRS-4 mission bound for the ISS is targeted for an instantaneous window at 2:14 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at the moment Earth’s rotation puts Cape Canaveral in the flight path of the ISS.

SpaceX Falcon 9 awaits launch on Sept 20, 2014 on the CRS-4 mission. Credit: NASA

You can watch NASA’s live countdown coverage which begins at 1 a.m. on NASA Television and NASA’s Launch Blog: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

Liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla, April 18, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

The weather forecast is marginal at 50/50 with rain showers and thick clouds as the primary concerns currently impacting the launch site.
The Dragon spacecraft is loaded with more than 5,000 pounds of science experiments, spare parts, crew provisions, food, clothing and supplies to the six person crews living and working aboard the ISS soaring in low Earth orbit under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.
The CRS-4 missions marks the start of a new era in Earth science. The truck of the Dragon is loaded Dragon with the $30 Million ISS-Rapid Scatterometer to monitor ocean surface wind speed and direction.
RapidScat is NASA’s first research payload aimed at conducting Earth science from the stations exterior. The stations robot arm will pluck RapidScat out of the truck and attach it to an Earth-facing point on the exterior trusswork of ESA’s Columbus science module.
Dragon will also carry the first 3-D printer to space for studies by the astronaut crews over at least two years.
The science experiments and technology demonstrations alone amount too over 1644 pounds (746 kg) and will support 255 science and research investigations that will occur during the station’s Expeditions 41 and 42 for US investigations as well as for JAXA and ESA.
“This flight shows the breadth of ISS as a research platform, and we’re seeing the maturity of ISS for that,” NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan said during a prelaunch news conference held today, Friday, Sept. 19 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
After a two day chase, Dragon will be grappled and berth at an Earth-facing port on the stations Harmony module.
The Space CRS-4 mission marks the company’s fourth resupply mission to the ISS under a $1.6 Billion contract with NASA to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 pounds) of cargo to the ISS during a dozen Dragon cargo spacecraft flights through 2016.

SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft arrives for successful berthing and docking at the International Space Station on Easter Sunday morning April 20, 2014. Credit: NASA TV

This week, SpaceX was also awarded a NASA contact to build a manned version of the Dragon dubbed V2 that will ferry astronauts crews to the ISS starting as soon as 2017.
NASA also awarded a second contact to Boeing to develop the CST-100 astronaut ‘space taxi’ to end the nation’s sole source reliance on Russia for astronaut launches in 2017.
Dragon V2 will launch on the same version of the Falcon 9 launching this cargo Dragon
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, Orion, Mars rover, MAVEN, MOM and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Ken Kremer

Boeing, SpaceX win contracts to build 'space taxis' for NASA

By Irene Klotz and Andrea Shalal 9 hours ago

CAPE CANAVERAL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA will partner with Boeing and SpaceX to build commercially owned and operated "space taxis" to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, ending U.S. dependence on Russia for rides, officials said on Tuesday.

The U.S. space agency also considered a bid by privately owned Sierra Nevada Corp, but opted to award long-time aerospace contractor Boeing and California's SpaceX with contracts valued at a combined $6.8 billion to develop, certify and fly their seven-person capsules.

Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion to SpaceX's $2.6 billion. SpaceX is run by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, also the chief executive officer of electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors.

“SpaceX is deeply honored by the trust NASA has placed in us," said Musk, a South Africa-born, Canadian American billionaire. "It is a vital step in a journey that will ultimately take us to the stars and make humanity a multi-planet species."

The awards position Boeing and SpaceX to be ready for commercial flight services in 2017, said Kathy Leuders, manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew program. She said both contracts have the same requirements.

"The companies proposed the value within which they were able to do the work and the government accepted that," Leuders told reporters in a conference call.

The contract has taken on new urgency given rising tensions between the United States and Russia over its annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Boeing's CST-100 spaceship would launch aboard Atlas 5 rockets, built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing. SpaceX, which already has a $1.3 billion NASA contract to fly cargo to the space station, intends to upgrade its Dragon freighter to carry astronauts.
NASA has said that in addition to test flights, the awards would include options for between two and six operational missions.
By flying astronauts commercially from the United States, NASA could end Russia's monopoly on space station crew transport. The agency pays $70 million per person for rides on Russian Soyuz capsules, the only flights available for astronauts since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011.
China, the only other country to fly people in orbit besides the United States and Russia, is not a member of the 15-nation space station partnership.
NASA has spent about $1.5 billion since 2010 investing in partner companies under its Commercial Crew program. Boeing and SpaceX have won most of NASA's development funds.
The companies retain ownership of their vehicles and can sell rides to customers outside of NASA, including private tourists.
“The work that we have underway … is making the possibility for everyone to someday see our planet Earth from space,” said Kennedy Space Center director and former astronaut Bob Cabana.

"I know a lot of us are cheering on the success of our Commercial Crew program, not because of what it means to NASA … but what it means to human spaceflight for everyone."

The program is based on a public-private partnership that created two cargo lines to the station, a research laboratory that flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.

In addition to SpaceX, NASA has a $1.9 billion contract with Orbital Sciences Corp for resupply missions.

For Boeing, the win in space is important symbolically, said Christian Mayes, an industrials analyst at Edward Jones in St. Louis, who rates Boeing stock a "hold."

"But financially, people need to come back to Earth," said Mayes. Boeing's space and network businesses contribute less than 10 percent of total revenue, and a $4.2 billion contract over multiple years "is not going to move the needle," he added.

Boeing shares closed about 0.8 percent higher.

(Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott in New York; Editing by Ros Krasny, Sandra Maler and Grant McCool)

Dark Spots in Our Knowledge of Neptune

AUG. 18, 2014

Photo

An image of Neptune taken by the Voyager spacecraft in August 1989, showing the storm, known as the Great Dark Spot, near the left side of the planet. Credit NASA/JPL

A quarter century ago, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was closing in on Neptune for its final planetary visit.

In Science Times on Aug. 15, 1989, John Noble Wilford described the anticipation among the scientists about what they were calling the “last picture show.”

Voyager 2, which would turn 12 a few days before its closest approach to Neptune on Aug. 25, was already elderly in spacecraft years — “arthritic and partially deaf, feeble of voice and prone to memory lapses,” Mr. Wilford wrote.

One of the first features scientists saw was a dark spot in the southern hemisphere as wide as Earth — a giant storm like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. The wind on Neptune blew up to 1,500 miles per hour, the strongest in the solar system; its magnetic field tilted 47 degrees from the rotational axis.

Voyager 2 also discovered new moons and incomplete rings orbiting the planet. And on Triton, the largest moon, it photographed what appeared to be the frozen flows of ice volcanoes.

Photo

Two composite images of Neptune, showing each of the planet's hemispheres, were taken in 1996 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The images were filtered to bring out features of Neptune's weather patterns. The planet's powerful equatorial jet stream appears as a dark blue ring around the center. Credit NASA/JPL/STScI

25 YEARS LATER The Hubble Space Telescope has had a few good looks at Neptune, beginning in 1994. By then, the storm, known as the Great Dark Spot, had disappeared, and a new dark spot emerged in the northern hemisphere. With limited Hubble observations, it is not known whether that spot remains or whether others have come and gone.

Telescopes on Earth cannot make out the dark spots, but they can see bright clouds that were next to them.

“Over the years, we have seen quite bright clouds come and go in both the north and south,” said Heidi B. Hammel, a planetary astronomer at the Space Science Institute. “Right now, there are some very bright clouds in the north, but we have no approved Hubble programs to verify an underlying Great Dark Spot.”

Others have gleaned new results from the old Voyager 2 photographs. Paul M. Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston and Kevin J. Zahnle of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., took a more careful look at the craters on Triton and argued that they all formed within the past 10 million years — almost yesterday in geological terms. That would suggest not only ice volcanoes, but also an ocean below the surface with liquid breaking through and freezing.

Candice Hansen-Koharcheck, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, said she had pushed for a new spacecraft to head to Neptune to explore these mysteries. Three of the four giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune — line up over the next few years. That is not quite the “grand tour” of the Voyager spacecraft, but it would provide the gravitational boost for a quicker trip. “You can get to Neptune in 10 years,” Dr. Hansen-Koharcheck said, and the mission could fit under a billion dollars.

But NASA did not have enough plutonium to provide a power source for an outer solar system mission, and now it is almost certainly too late to start one before the window closes in 2020. So anything that planetary scientists learn about Neptune will come from Hubble and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope.

“We’re not going to get a close-up look at it for a very long time,” said Carolyn C. Porco, who was a member of the Voyager imaging team. “And there’s so much to learn there.”

Voyager 2 is indeed still operating, 9.75 billion miles away. Its twin, Voyager 1, entered interstellar space in August 2012, but Voyager 2 remains in the region known as the heliosheath, still dominated by the sun’s magnetic field and outward-flowing particles.

“Several more years is a reasonable estimate,” said Edward C. Stone, the project scientist for the Voyagers both then and now.

Even though it will be second out of the solar system, scientists are anxious for the data from one of Voyager 2’s instruments, which measures solar wind particles. The equivalent instrument on Voyager 1 died in 1980.

How the Hubble telescope captures the colour out of space

The Hubble can only take images in black and white. Does this mean its gorgeous full-colour photos are "fake"? Well, actually... no.

• by Michelle Starr
• September 8, 2014 5:39 PM PDT

The Carina Nebula, snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope. ESA/NASA

When a telescope takes a picture of deep space, it doesn't take it in colour. Modern telescopes are equipped with digital cameras that employ CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors to take images consisting of greyscale pixels -- which leads many to believe that the coloured images we see from telescopes such as the Hubble aren't actually real.

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This, however, isn't actually the case -- and nor is it the case that astronomers colour telescope imagery purely for aesthetic value. There are actually some very good reasons for exaggerating colour or even colouring cosmic objects with hues that would be invisible to the naked eye -- and, of course, some images are coloured with their actual colours.
So how is it accomplished -- and why?
It's true that the images captured are laid down in black and white -- but that doesn't mean that the telescope has no way of knowing how it is actually coloured. Hubble, in fact, has a number of different filters, each of which allow light on a specific wavelength or number of wavelengths. A narrow-band filter, for example, will only let through a very small portion of the spectrum, while a broad-band filter will let through a large portion -- for example, all the red and green areas of the spectrum.
This means that the telescope can take a number of pictures of the same object using a variety of filters. One image might show only light on the blue area of the spectrum, while another shows yellow, and so on. These resultant images can be combined for a full-colour composite.

an image of a galaxy constructed from seven broad-band filters. ESA

The reasons for this are not purely aesthetic. A narrow-band filter, for instance, could isolate a small wavelength that is specifically isolated to a particular atomic transition, allowing the researchers to study that phenomenon in detail. Others allow astronomical researchers to view chemical dispersion or other details that would be blurred in a black-and-white image, enhance detail, or show what would usually be invisible to the naked human eye -- for example, details on the infrared spectrum.
Galaxies are usually photographed in broad-band. These allow more light to get through, and create the closest approximation to what a human might see, were he or she cruising by in a spaceship. Nebulae, on the other hand, are usually photographed in the narrow-band, which produces very sharply defined details -- and more exaggerated colour than we'd expect to see with out own eyes. This is because the telescope camera will take long exposures to pick out colours that are actually too faint for the human eye to see.

Colour image constructed from four broad-band filters. ESA

While it is true that this does result in some glorious images, there's a practical purpose: a reddish tint in a nebula might indicate the presence of sulphur, while blue might signal oxygen and green might signal hydrogen. However, without colour enhancement, all three gases correspond to different shades of red -- which makes a nebula's composition more difficult to ascertain.
Finally, some images are taken purely in spectra invisible to the naked human eye altogether: infrared and ultraviolet. These allow researchers not only to see through dense obstructions -- such as dark nebulae -- but also analyse various behaviours, such as heat signatures. However, because these spectra are invisible, the researchers assign visible light colours to various wavelengths in order to view them clearly.
For example, this image of the Egg Nebula -- and a dying star -- is depicted in representative colour: blue for infrared starlight reflected by dust particles around the dying star, green for longer-wavelength reflected starlight and red for the infrared light of hydrogen molecules around the star. This detail would be much more difficult to study were it shown in its actual visible light colours.
These images are called "false colour", but -- as you have read -- that doesn't make them fake. It just means that they are coloured along different spectra than visible light.
"The Hubble Space Telescope was not really designed to make pretty pictures,"NASA image processor Zolt Levay explained in a 2008 briefing explaining the Hubble imaging process. "The pretty pictures are kind of a by-product of the data that the astronomers get out of the telescope. The telescope was designed to do leading-edge science -- arguably the best telescope ever made."

Touchdown! US-Russian Space Station Crew Returns to Earth

By Mike Wall, Senior Writer   |   September 10, 2014 10:30pm ET

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A Soyuz capsule carrying NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev touches down safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan on Sept. 10, 2014.

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed back on Earth late Wednesday (Sept. 10), ending their 5 1/2-month mission to the International Space Station.
A Russian Soyuz capsule carrying American Steve Swanson, commander of the orbiting lab's Expedition 40, and cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev touched down safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 10:23 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0223 GMT Thursday; 0823 Thursday local Kazakhstan time).
The Soyuz had departed the space station at 7:01 p.m. EDT, meaning the trio's ride down to Earth lasted less than 3 1/2 hours — roughly the same amount of time it takes to fly from San Francisco to Houston

An asteroid will just miss Earth today. We won't always be so lucky

An artist's rendering of an asteroid. (P. Carril/ESA)

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On Sunday afternoon — at 2:15 pm Eastern time, to be exact — a small asteroid will whiz by the Earth.
Don't worry: it'll miss us by about 25,000 miles. To be clear, there is zero chance it can hit us. This is certain.

But in the long-term, worrying a little about asteroids isn't an unreasonable idea. Now, the odds of a massively destructive asteroid impact at any given time are tiny — but the potential costs would be enormous. Yet we still haven't invested in all the infrastructure needed to spot small asteroids with much warning (we spotted this one less than a week ago). And we've done nothing to develop the ability to divert a larger one if it threatened us.
We'll be totally fine on Sunday — in fact, the asteroid will be small and far enough away that you won't be able to see it without a telescope. But it'd be great if we can use this sort of near-miss to rouse us from our species-wide slumber, and make asteroid detection more of a priority.

The asteroid will not hit us on Sunday

NASA's calculated path of 2014 RC. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey — a telescope near Tucson, Arizona, used exclusively to spot potentially hazardous near-Earth objects — detected the asteroid on August 31.
After its existence was confirmed by observations from other telescopes, NASA has designated it 2014 RC. It's a chunk of rock that's around 60 feet in diameter — similar in size to the one that blew up over Chelyabinsk, Russia last year.
It's calculated that, at its closest approach, the asteroid will come within 25,000 miles of Earth. This is far enough away that it definitely won't hit us, but still pretty close — about as close to us as many of our weather and communications satellites, and about ten times closer to us than the moon.
When it passes by, the asteroid will be somewhere over New Zealand. But because it's so small, you'd need a telescope to see it. Its magnitude will be about 11 — which, as Phil Plait points out, means it'll be about 1 percent as bright as the faintest star you can normally see.

But asteroids are an overlooked risk

It's not that the risk of a catastrophic asteroid impact, in any given year, is particularly large. It's tiny: scientists estimate that the huge ones that would cause global damage come around once every million years.
But it doesn't take a kilometer-sized one — like the asteroid that led to the extinction of many species, including most dinosaurs, 65 million years ago — to cause a lot of damage. In 1908, an asteroid that was somewhere between 60 and 190 meters in diameter landed in a remote corner of Siberia.
When it hit the ground, this modest asteroid discharged an amount of energy one thousand times greater than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, scientists estimate. It knocked down some 80 million trees over a roughly 830 square mile area.

An asteroid of this size likely comes around once every few thousand years. That might not sound very frequent to you.
But the problem is that, given enough time, it will occur. And conceivably, we hope to stick around for a long time, as a species. But we haven't bothered to invest enough in efforts to detect asteroids to ensure this will happen.
Last week, I interviewed Alexander Rose, the direction of the Long Now Foundation, an organization that thinks our species has failed to engage in truly long-term thinking. He felt an epitome of this was the way we largely disregard the threat of asteroids.
"We know that, at some point, a catastrophic meteor or asteroid will impact this planet," he said. "For the first time in human history, we have the capability to detect and potentially divert it. Yet we aren't really putting any money into that."

How we fail to defend ourselves from asteroids

The trail of the meteorite that burned up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in February 2013. (Oleg Kargopolov/AFP/Getty Images)

The first step to protect ourselves from asteroids is seeing them. Currently, we have a few different telescopes here on Earth devoted to spotting near-Earth objects — most notably, the Catalina telescope, along with Pan-STARRS in Hawaii.
Using these telescopes, NASA now estimates we've spotted more than 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids capable of causing a global catastrophe. None of them, thankfully, are on track to hit us.
But that leaves a problem: we've spotted much fewer of the mid-sized objects that wouldn't cause global-scale damage but would still cause a regional-level disaster, like the 1908 event. In total, we've spotted about 10 percent of the asteroids big enough to cause any sort of damage on Earth. In other words, one of these could emerge pretty much anytime.
The way to identify a greater proportion of them is to use telescopes in space, because they don't have to deal with interference from the atmosphere and the sun's glare. NASA has proposed launching one of these, called NEOCam, and a private organization called the B612 Foundation is currently raising $450 million for a complementary mission, called Sentinel, that would survey a different area of the sky.

A rendering of the proposed Sentinel telescope. (B612 Foundation)

If both these missions happen, they'd be able to spot the vast majority of mid-sized asteroids that could pose a threat. But the NASA mission is still just a proposal — one that is reportedly short on money — and the B612 mission is also short of its fundraising goal.
Further, if we did spot an asteroid heading our way, we don't have any proven means of stopping it. The simplest way would probably be sending a craft crashing into the asteroid, nudging it off its path enough so that it'd miss Earth. The UN has proposed designing and testing a network of small probes that would be capable of doing so, but it's still waiting on the necessary funding from various national space agencies, with an estimated price tag of about $2.5 billion.
Funding all three of these projects — the two telescopes and the impact avoidance system — would cost a lot. Let's be generous and say they'd cost $5 billion in total. Now compare that to the cost of, say, the cost of the Sochi Olympics ($51 billion), or the cost of the F-35 fighter plane program ($400 billion). Screw it, compare it to the cost of a new football stadium for the Dallas Cowboys ($1.2 billion, with about a quarter paid by taxpayers).
When it comes to asteroids, we're talking about natural disasters that are probably preventable. Figuring out how to do so would be a relatively cheap insurance plan that would benefit the entire species.

Space Station's Cubesat Launcher has Mind of its Own

Sep 5, 2014 01:29 PM ET // by Irene Klotz

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In the grasp of the Japanese robotic arm, NanoRack’s CubeSat deployer releases a pair of miniature satellites last month.

NASA

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Satellite'Flock'LaunchedFromISSCubesatCannon:Photos

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Up NextEpic Aurora Photos From the International Space Station

Last night, two more of Planet Lab’s shoebox-sized Earth imaging satellites launched themselves from aboard the International Space Station, the latest in a series of technical mysteries involving a commercially owned CubeSat deployer located outside Japan’s Kibo laboratory module.
Station commander Steve Swanson was storing some blood samples in one of the station’s freezers Friday morning when he noticed that the doors on NanoRack’s cubesat deployer were open, said NASA mission commentator Pat Ryan.
ANALYSIS: ISS Astronauts Fire-Up Awesome ‘Cubesat Cannon’
Flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston determined that two CubeSats had been inadvertently released.
“No crew members or ground controllers saw the deployment. They reviewed all the camera footage and there was no views of it there either,” Ryan said.
The satellites, owned by San Francisco-based Planet Labs, are part of a planned 100-member network designed to collect images of the entire Earth every 24 hours.
So far, 12 of 32 CubeSats delivered to the space station aboard a Cygnus cargo ship in July have been deployed, including four launched inadvertently, said NanoRacks spokeswoman Abby Dickes.

 

Space Image: Moon Mimas as a Dot Against the Dark

Posted Today

As if trying to get our attention, Mimas is positioned against the shadow of Saturn’s rings, bright on dark. As we near summer in Saturn’s northern hemisphere, the rings cast ever larger shadows on the planet.

With a reflectivity of about 96 percent, Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across) appears bright against the less-reflective Saturn.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 10 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 13, 2014 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Saturn and approximately 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Mimas. Image scale is 67 miles (108 kilometers) per pixel at Saturn and 60 miles (97 kilometers) per pixel at Mimas.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Source: NASA

How Do Monster Black Holes Form? New Find May Provide 'Missing Link'

By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer   |   August 19, 2014 03:50pm ET

The recent finding of an intermediate-mass black hole provides evidence that could support some theories of how supermassive black holes form. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser View full size image

Black holes are some of the strangest objects in the universe, and they typically fall into one of two size extremes: "small" ones that are dozens of times more massive than the sun and other "supermassive" black holes that are billions of times larger than our nearest star. But until now, astronomers had not seen good evidence of anything in between.
A recent discovery of an intermediate-mass black hole in the nearby galaxy Messier 82 (M82) offers the best evidence yet that a class of medium-size black holes exists. The finding may provide a missing link that could explain how supermassive black holes — which are found at the centers of most, if not all, galaxies — come to be, researchers say.
"We know that supermassive black holes exist at the centers of almost every massive galaxy, but we don't know how [they] form," said Dheeraj Pasham, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park, who led the research. [The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

Insatiable giants
A black hole is a region of space where the gravitational field is so strong that neither matter nor light can escape. Though it can't be seen directly, astronomers can infer a black hole's existence by the way its gravity tugs on nearby matter, and from the radiation it spews out as bits of material falling into the black hole rub against one another, producing friction.
Astronomers have detected stellar-mass black holes, which are 10 to 100 times the mass of the sun, and supermassive black holes, which are hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. But the intermediate-mass variety has proved very difficult to detect, causing some to doubt their existence.
The recently identified medium-size specimen has a mass about 400 times that of the sun (give or take 100), according to the study published Sunday (Aug. 17) in the journal Nature. Scientists had hypothesized that such intermediate black holes existed, but this is the first time that one has been measured so precisely, the researchers said.

Astronomers know how stellar-mass black holes form: A massive star collapses under its own gravity. But such a process would seem unable to explain how much larger black holes arise, because they can only gobble material up to a rate known as the Eddington limit, and the universe isn't old enough for them to have grown from stellar mass to supermassive, said Cole Miller, an astronomer also at the University of Maryland.
"If you feed matter to the black hole too fast, it produces so much radiation that it blows away the matter that's trying to [accumulate]," Miller told Live Science.
Building a black hole
How, then, might supermassive black holes form? Some theories suggest these strange behemoths grew from intermediate-mass black holes — which act as "seeds" — that formed in the early stages of the universe from the collapse of giant clouds of gas.
Others say these black hole giants started out as stellar-mass black holes that somehow gobbled up material at a rate much faster than the typical limit.
Miller has theorized that maybe a dense cluster of stars merged in the early universe, "colliding with each other and sticking together like wet clay," producing a black hole that gathers mass at a rate exceeding the normal limit. "If you can evade that limit, you might be able to build bigger black holes," he said.
Priyamvada Natarajan, a theoretical physicist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and her colleagues recently developed a new theoretical concept that suggests it is possible to grow black holes from a stellar mass seed faster than the Eddington limit, if the seed is trapped in a star cluster feeding off cold, flowing gas. The research was detailed Aug. 7 in the journal Science.
The finding of an intermediate-mass black hole in a nearby galaxy is exciting because it provides a "missing piece" between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive ones, Natarajan told Live Science.
"We have very young black holes that are like the infant stage, and we have geriatric ones," Natarajan told Live Science. Intermediate mass black holes are like the teenagers, she said.
Now that Pasham's team has shown that at least one of these adolescent black holes exists, astronomers will no doubt look for more.
"There's very exciting science here," Natarajan said. "The discovery space is wide open."