NASA’s MMS Satellite Constellation Blasts to Orbit to Study Explosive Magnetic Reconnection

by Ken Kremer on March 13, 2015

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft onboard launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Thursday, March 12, 2015, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s constellation of state-of-the-art magnetospheric science satellites successfully rocketed to orbit late Thursday night, March 12, during a spectacular nighttime launch on a mission to unravel the mysteries of the process known as magnetic reconnection.
The $1.1 Billion Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is comprised of four formation flying satellites blasted to Earth orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, precisely on time at 10:44 p.m. EDT.
Magnetic reconnection is a little understood natural process whereby magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect while explosively releasing vast amounts of energy. It occurs throughout the universe.
NASA’s fleet of four MMS spacecraft will soon start the first mission devoted to studying the phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. Scientists believe that it is the catalyst for some of the most powerful explosions in our solar system.
The night launch of the venerable Atlas V booster turned night into day as the 195 foot tall rocket roared to life on the fiery fury of about a million and a half pounds of thrust, thrillinf spectators all around the Florida space coast and far beyond.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft onboard launches from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41, Thursday, March 12, 2015, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com

NASA’s four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft were stacked like pancakes on top of one another and encapsulated inside the rocket extended nose cone atop the Atlas V.
The venerable rocket continues to enjoy a 100% success rate. It launched in the Atlas V 421 configuration with a 4-meter diameter Extra Extended Payload Fairing along with two Aerojet Rocketdyne solid rocket motors attached to the Atlas booster first stage.
The two stage Atlas V delivered the MMS satellites to a highly elliptical orbit. They were then deployed from the rocket’s Centaur upper stage sequentially, in five-minute intervals beginning at 12:16 a.m. Friday, March 13. The last separation occurred at 12:31 a.m.
About 10 minutes later at 12:40 a.m., NASA scientists and engineers confirmed the health of all four spacecraft.
“I am speaking for the entire MMS team when I say we’re thrilled to see all four of our spacecraft have deployed and data indicates we have a healthy fleet,” said Craig Tooley, project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Artist’s concept of the MMS observatory fleet with rainbow magnetic lines. Image Credit: NASA

This marked ULA’s 3rd launch in 2015, the 53nd Atlas V mission and the fourth Atlas V 421 launch in the programs life.
Each of the identically instrumented spacecraft are about four feet tall and eleven feet wide.
The deployment and activation of all four spacecraft is absolutely essential to the success of the mission, said Jim Burch, principal investigator of the MMS instrument suite science team at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas.
They will fly in a pyramid formation to conduct their science mission, spaced about 10 miles apart. That separation distance will vary over time during the two year primary mission.
NASA scientists and engineers will begin deploying multiple booms and antennas on the spacecraft in a few days, MMS mission scientist Glyn Collinson of NASA Goddard told Universe Today.
The deployment and calibration process will last about six months, Collinson explained. Science observations are expected to begin in September 2015.

Technicians work on NASA’s 20-foot-tall Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mated quartet of stacked observatories in the cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on May 12, 2014. Credit: Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com

“After a decade of planning and engineering, the science team is ready to go to work,” said Burch.
“We’ve never had this type of opportunity to study this fundamental process in such detail.”
The spacecraft will fly in a tight formation through regions of reconnection activity.
The instruments will conduct their science observations at rates100 times faster than any previous mission.
“MMS is a crucial next step in advancing the science of magnetic reconnection – and no mission has ever observed this fundamental process with such detail,” said Jeff Newmark, interim director for NASA’s Heliophysics Division at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington.
“The depth and detail of our knowledge is going to grow by leaps and bounds, in ways that no one can yet predict.”
MMS measurements should lead to significant improvements in models for yielding better predictions of space weather and thereby the resulting impacts for life here on Earth as well as for humans aboard the ISS and robotic satellite explorers in orbit and the heavens beyond.
The best place to study magnetic reconnection is ‘in situ’ in Earth’s magnetosphere. This will lead to better predictions of space weather phenomena.
Magnetic reconnection is also believed to help trigger the spectacular aurora known as the Northern or Southern lights.

NASA MMS spacecraft fly in a pyramid pattern to capture the 3-D structure of the reconnection sites encountered. Credit: NASA

MMS is a Solar Terrestrial Probes Program, or STP, mission within NASA’s Heliophysics Division. The probes were built, integrated and tested at NASA Goddard which is responsible for overall mission management and operations.

First Attempt to Contact Hibernating Philae Lander Will Be March 12

by Nancy Atkinson on March 10, 2015

Artist rendition of the Philae lander on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: DLR.

Where is the Philae lander and will it wake up again? Those are the questions the team at the DLR Lander Control Center will be trying to answer starting this week. Thursday, March 12 provides the first possibility to receive a signal from Rosetta’s lander, sitting somewhere on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
“It could be that the lander has already woken up from its winter sleep 500 million kilometers away, but does not yet have sufficient power to inform the team on Earth,” said Koen Geurts from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) in a blog post today.

The animated image below provides strong evidence that Philae touched down for the first time almost precisely where intended. The animation comprises images recorded by Rosetta’s navigation camera as the orbiter flew over the (intended) Philae landing site on November 12th. The dark area is probably dust raised by the craft on touchdown. The boulder to the right of the circle is seen in detail in the photo below. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

The lander has been sleeping in a shaded spot on the comet’s surface after its dramatic touchdown (actually, three touchdowns) four months ago on Nov. 12, 2014 when it flew, landed, bounced and then repeated that process for more than two hours across the surface. Scientists estimated it could have bounced as high as 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) before becoming wedged in a spot that –- at that time — didn’t get much sunlight. The solar-powered lander quickly ran out of power, just hours after landing.
The team admits they would be very lucky if a signal were to be received from Philae at the first opportunity, which is 05:00 CET on March 12, 2015 (midnight on March 11 EDT) when the communication unit on the Rosetta orbiter will be switched on to call the lander.
While the comet is coming ever-closer to the Sun, Philae needs to receive enough solar energy to activate a few systems before it can wake up and begin communicating.
“Philae currently receives about twice as much solar energy as it did in November last year,” said Lander Project Manager Stephan Ulamec from DLR. “Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and its companion, Philae, are now only 300 million kilometers from the Sun. It will probably still be too cold for the lander to wake up, but it is worth trying. The prospects will improve with each passing day.”
The team did give a caveat that several conditions must be met for Philae to wake up and start operating again. By no means is it a given that Philae will awake.
First, the interior of the lander must be at least at minus 45 degrees Celsius before Philae can wake up from its winter sleep. In addition, the lander must be able to generate at least 5.5 watts using its solar panels to wake up. The temperatures are significantly lower in the shadowed region where it sits (named Abydos, even though the exact location has not been identified) than at the originally planned landing location.
While hibernating, the lander has been gathering and storing as much power as possible to heat up and Geurts said that as soon as Philae ‘realizes’ that it is receiving more than 5.5 watts of power and its internal temperature is above minus 45 degrees Celsius, it will turn on, heat up further and attempt to charge its battery.
Then, once awakened, Philae will switch on its receiver every 30 minutes and listens for a signal from the Rosetta orbiter. This, too, can be performed in a very low power state, but Philae needs a total of 19 watts to begin operating and allow two-way communication.

Mars Loses an Ocean But Gains the Potential for Life

by Bob King on March 6, 2015

NASA scientists have determined that a primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean and that the Red Planet has lost 87 percent of that water to space. Water would have covered 20% of the globe about 3 billion years ago. Credit: NASA/GSFC

It’s hard to believe it now looking at Mars’ dusty, dessicated landscape that it once possessed a vast ocean. A recent NASA study of the Red Planet using the world’s most powerful infrared telescopes clearly indicate a planet that sustained a body of water larger than the Earth’s Arctic Ocean.
If spread evenly across the Martian globe, it would have covered the entire surface to a depth of about 450 feet (137 meters). More likely, the water pooled into the low-lying plains that cover much of Mars’ northern hemisphere. In some places, it would have been nearly a mile (1.6 km) deep. 

Three of the best infrared observatories in the world were used to study normal to heavy water abundances in Mars atmosphere, especially the polar caps, to create a global map of the planet’s water content and infer an ancient ocean. Credit: NASA/ GSFC

Now here’s the good part. Before taking flight molecule-by-molecule into space, waves lapped the desert shores for more than 1.5 billion years – longer than the time life needed to develop on Earth. By implication, life had enough time to get kickstarted on Mars, too.

A hydrogen atom is made up of one proton and one electron, but its heavy form, called deuterium, also contains a neutron. HDO or heavy water is rare compared to normal drinking water, but being heavier, more likely to stick around when the lighter form vaporizes into space. Credit: NASA/GFSC

Using the three most powerful infrared telescopes on Earth – the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the ESO’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility – scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center studied water molecules in the Martian atmosphere. The maps they created show the distribution and amount of two types of water – the normal H2O version we use in our coffee and HDO or heavy water, rare on Earth but not so much on Mars as it turns out.

Maps showing the distribution of H20 and HDO (heavy water) across the planet made with the trio of infrared telescopes. Credit: NASA/GSFC

In heavy water, one of the hydrogen atoms contains a neutron in addition to its lone proton, forming an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium. Because deuterium is more massive than regular hydrogen, heavy water really is heavier than normal water just as its name implies. The new “water maps” showed how the ratio of normal to heavy water varied across the planet according to location and season. Remarkably, the new data show the polar caps, where much of Mars’ current-day water is concentrated, are highly enriched in deuterium.

It’s thought that the decay of Mars’ once-global magnetic field, the solar wind stripped away much of the planet’s early, thicker atmosphere, allowing solar UV light to break water molecules apart. Lighter hydrogen exited into space, concentrating the heavier form. Some of the hydrogen may also departed due to the planet’s weak gravity. Credit: NASA/GSFC

On Earth, the ratio of deuterium to normal hydrogen in water is 1 to 3,200, but at the Mars polar caps it’s 1 to 400.  Normal, lighter hydrogen is slowly lost to space once a small planet has lost its protective atmosphere envelope, concentrating the heavier form of hydrogen. Once scientists knew the deuterium to normal hydrogen ratio, they could directly determine how much water Mars must have had when it was young. The answer is A LOT!

Goddard scientists estimate that only 13% of Mars’ original water reserves are still around today, concentrated in the icy polar caps. The rest took off for space. Credit: NASA/GSFC

Only 13% of the original water remains on the planet, locked up primarily in the polar regions, while 87% of the original ocean has been lost to space. The most likely place for the ocean would have been the northern plains, a vast, low-elevation region ideal for cupping huge quantities of water. Mars would have been a much more earth-like planet back then with a thicker atmosphere, providing the necessary pressure, and warmer climate to sustain the ocean below.

Mars at the present time has little to no liquid water on its cold, desert-like surface. Long ago, the Sun almost certainly saw its reflection from wave-rippled lakes and a northern ocean. Credit: NASA/GSFC

What’s most exciting about the findings is that Mars would have stayed wet much longer than originally thought. We know from measurements made by the Curiosity Rover that water flowed on the planet for 1.5 billion years after its formation. But the new study shows that the Mars sloshed with the stuff much longer. Given that the first evidence for life on Earth goes back to 3.5 billion years ago – just a billion years after the planet’s formation – Mars may have had time enough for the evolution of life.
So while we might bemoan the loss of so wonderful a thing as an ocean, we’re left with the tantalizing possibility that it was around long enough to give rise to that most precious of the universe’s creations – life.
To quote Charles Darwin: “… from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Illustration showing Mars evolving from a wet world to the present-day where liquid water can’t pond on its surface without vaporizing directly into the planet’s thin air. As Mars lost its atmosphere over billions of years, the remaining water, cooled and condensed to form the north and south polar caps. Credit: NASA/GSFC

Rosetta blog: Comet flyby: OSIRIS catches glimpse of Rosetta’s shadow

Posted Yesterday

Images from the OSIRIS scientific imaging camera taken during the close flyby on 14 February have now been downlinked to Earth, revealing the surface of Comet 67P/C-G in unprecedented detail, and including the shadow of the spacecraft encircled in a wreath of light.

Close-up view of a 228 x 228 m region on the Imhotep region on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, as seen by the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera during Rosetta’s flyby at 12:39 UT on 14 February 2015. The image was taken six kilometres above the comet’s surface, and the image resolution is just 11 cm/pixel. Rosetta’s fuzzy shadow, measuring approximately 20 x 50 metres, is seen at the bottom of the image.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

This OSIRIS shape model is marked with the position of the narrow-angle camera field of view taken during the 14 February flyby. Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The image released today shows an area near the edge of the comet’s “belly” close to the Imhotep-Ash regional boundary, where a mesh of steep slopes separates smooth-looking terrains from a craggier area. The image was taken from a distance of 6 km from the comet’s surface and has a resolution of 11 cm/pixel. It covers an area of 228 x 228 m.
To better identify the exact region on the comet, in the graphic below we compare the new OSIRIS narrow-angle camera image with a wider view of the comet, along with the NAVCAM image taken at 14:15 UT,  noting that there are uncertainties in the distance to the surface and change in perspective between the images. Indeed, while the match on the smooth-looking region at the bottom of the NAC image in the displayed orientation is good, it is harder to match the upper half because of the lack of shadows in the NAC image, and because the geometry/viewing perspective has changed between the images. This means that the NAC image would have to be distorted and “draped” over the surface to fit the NAVCAM properly. To better understand the relationship of the images, you can download a short movie that fades through the images here.

The OSIRIS narrow-angle camera image from the close flyby shown here in context with a NAVCAM image. Note the region outlined in the upper left is approximate due to the change in perspective.
Credits: NAVCAM: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0;
OSIRIS: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

During the flyby, Rosetta not only passed closer by the comet than ever before, but also passed through a unique observational geometry: for a short time the Sun, spacecraft, and comet were exactly aligned. In this geometry, surface structures cast almost no shadows, and therefore the reflection properties of the surface material can be discerned.
“Images taken from this viewpoint are of high scientific value,” says OSIRIS Principal Investigator Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. “This kind of view is key for the study of grain sizes.”
As a side effect of this exceptional observational geometry, Rosetta’s shadow can be seen cast on the surface of Comet 67P/C-G as a fuzzy rectangular-shaped dark spot surrounded by a bright halo-like region.

Graphic to illustrate the difference between how a sharp shadow is generated by a point source (left) and a fuzzy shadow by a diffuse source (right). Credits: Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab. Comet background: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

The shadow is fuzzy and somewhat larger than Rosetta itself, measuring approximately 20 x 50 metres. If the Sun were a point source, the shadow would be sharp and almost exactly the same size as Rosetta (approximately 2 x 32 m). However, even at 347 million km from 67P/C-G on 14 February, the Sun appeared as a disc about 0.2 degrees across (about 2.3 times smaller than on Earth), resulting in a fuzzy “penumbra” around the spacecraft’s shadow on the surface. In this scenario and with Rosetta 6 km above the surface, the penumbra effect adds roughly 20 metres to the spacecraft’s dimensions, and which is cast onto the tilted surface of the comet.
If you were standing on the surface with Rosetta high above you, there would be no place in the shadow where the entire Sun would be blocked from view, which explains why there is no fully dark core to the shadow.
Rosetta is not the first spacecraft to capture its own shadow in this way. In 2005, JAXA’s Hayabusa spacecraft captured its shadow on asteroid Itokawa. However, because Hayabusa was only a few tens of metres above the surface, the penumbral effect was much less, resulting in a sharper and darker shadow of the spacecraft.
Also, the comet surface surrounding Rosetta’s shadow on Comet 67P/C-G appears significantly brighter than the rest of the surface seen in the image. Scientists refer to this effect as the ‘opposition surge’ and it is commonly observed when highly-structured regolith surfaces on planets and moons are illuminated directly behind the observer. For example, astronauts on the lunar surface saw the effect surrounding their own shadows. The primary cause of opposition surge is ‘shadow hiding’. When the Sun is directly behind the observer, the shadows cast by small grains disappear from the perspective of the observer, hidden behind the grains themselves, leading to a pronounced increase in brightness. There may also be a contribution from coherent backscatter due to the retro-reflective properties of small dust grains.

Source: Rosetta blog

Improved vision for James Webb Space Telescope

Posted Yesterday

Key science elements of the James Webb Space Telescope have been upgraded ahead of the observatory’s launch in 2018.
The telescope, also known as JWST, is a joint project of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. It carries a 6.5 m-diameter telescope and four state-of-the-art science instruments optimised for infrared observations. Europe has led the development of two of the instruments.

Mission accomplished. The final taping of the protective cover is applied and the James Webb Space Telescope NIRSpec instrument is in its final flight configuration and ready to go back into the Integrated Science Instrument Module. From left to right: Ralf Ehrenwinkler (Airbus DS), Frank Merkle (Airbus DS), Kai Hoffmann (Airbus DS), Robert Eder (Airbus DS), Max Speckmaier (Airbus DS) and Maurice te Plate (ESA). Copyright NASA–C. Gunn

As a general-purpose observatory, it will tackle a wide range of topics, including detecting the first galaxies in the Universe and following their evolution over cosmic time, witnessing the birth of new stars and their planetary systems, and studying planets in our Solar System and around other stars.
Installation of the four instruments in the telescope’s Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, was completed last April. Since then, the module has undergone extensive testing to ensure it can withstand the stresses of launch and operation in space.

A critical part of this process saw the instruments complete cryogenic testing in a round-the-clock campaign running for 116 days last summer.

This photo shows NASA engineers at Goddard inspecting an MSA with a low light test. The inspection light source is held by the technician at the front of the picture. Four array quadrants are located within the octagonal frame in the centre of a titanium mosaic base plate. Each quadrant contains a grid of 365×171 micro-shutters, and each micro-shutter measures approximately 100 µm × 200 µm – the width of a human hair. NIRSpec is built by European industry to ESA’s specifications and managed by the ESA JWST Project at ESTEC, the Netherlands. The prime contractor is Airbus Defence and Space in Ottobrunn, Germany. The NIRSpec detector and micro-shutter array subsystems are provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Copyright NASA Goddard/Chris Gunn

Following the campaign, several months were dedicated to replacing key components of some of the instruments already known to require additional work before the next stages.
Europe’s ‘NIRSpec’, the near-infrared multi-object spectrograph, was one of the instruments upgraded. NIRSpec will split infrared light from distant stars and galaxies into its colour components – a spectrum – providing scientists with vital information on their chemical composition, age and distance.
The first generation of JWST’s highly sensitive near-infrared detectors were found to suffer from a design flaw that resulted in a progressive degradation of their performance. New detectors have now been installed in all three near-infrared instruments.
“Excellent detectors are crucial to the outstanding instrument performance needed when you want to look at the extremely distant and faint early stars and galaxies that formed when our Universe was still young, and the new detectors secure this top priority of NIRSpec and JWST,” says Pierre Ferruit, ESA’s JWST project scientist.
Another crucial component of NIRSpec are its microshutter arrays, a new technology developed for JWST by NASA.

James Webb Space Telescope mural image. Artist’s impression. Copyright Northrop Grumman

One of the defining and pioneering features of NIRSpec is its ability to analyse the light from more than 100 astronomical objects at the same time. This is made possible by an assembly of four microshutter arrays, totalling almost a quarter of a million individual shutters.
Armed with a pre-selected list of interesting targets, each shutter can be programmed to open or close individually. The light from the chosen targets passes through the selected open shutters before entering the next stage of the instrument, where it is split into a spectrum and projected onto the detectors for analysis.

But after testing in 2012 designed to simulate the extreme acoustic environment experienced during launch, it was discovered that several thousand microshutters in NIRSpec were jammed closed and could no longer open.
A thorough investigation performed with an engineering model of NIRSpec, including tests at NASA’s acoustic facility, found the root cause of the problem and new arrays were built.
The overall performance of the new microshutter assembly was found to be superior to the old system in many ways, and the delicate replacement operation was completed last month.

“This required the instrument’s outer cover to be opened and therefore an exceptionally strict cleanliness regime was needed to avoid contamination,” says Maurice te Plate, ESA’s JWST system integration and test manager.
“In particular, the microshutters are very sensitive to material such as small polyester fibres that can get stuck inside and prevent them from fully closing.
“We just completed our final checks and we are now ready to install NIRSpec back in to the Module.”
“NIRSpec is in its final flight configuration,” adds Peter Jensen, ESA’s JWST project manager. “We have now completed the endeavour we started 11 years ago – it has not been easy, but through skill, persistence, and dedication, the team has made it.”
Later this year, the module and instruments will resume the extensive programme of environmental tests to reproduce the conditions endured during launch and in space. The module will later be integrated into the JWST observatory for full-scale cryogenic optical and system testing before launch on an Ariane 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.
Source: ESA

Latest Selfie from NASA Mars Rover Shows Wide Context

February 24, 2015

This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Mojave" site, where its drill collected the mission's second taste of Mount Sharp. The scene combines dozens of images taken during January 2015 by the MAHLI camera at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Full image and caption

-- The latest self-portrait covers the key "Pahrump Hills" sites
-- Taken beside January's "Mojave" drilling site, the image also shows the mission's next planned drilling site
A sweeping view of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover has been working for five months, surrounds the rover in Curiosity's latest self-portrait.
The selfie scene is assembled from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover's robotic arm.
Pahrump Hills is an outcrop of the bedrock that forms the basal layer of Mount Sharp, at the center of Mars' Gale Crater. The mission has examined the outcrop with a campaign that included a "walkabout" survey and then increasingly detailed levels of inspection. The rover climbed from the outcrop's base to higher sections three times to create vertical profiles of the rock structures and chemistry, and to select the best targets for sample-collection drilling.
The component images for this self-portrait were taken in late January, while Curiosity was at a drilling site called "Mojave 2." At that site, the mission collected its second drilled sample of Pahrump Hills for laboratory analysis. The first sample was collected in September from a site called "Confidence Hills." Since leaving the Mojave site, Curiosity has driven to another location visible in the scene, where drilling at a site called "Telegraph Peak" is planned.
Curiosity took previous self-portraits with the MAHLI camera at three sites it explored before reaching the base of Mount Sharp.
"Compared with the earlier Curiosity selfies, we added extra frames for this one so we could see the rover in the context of the full Pahrump Hills campaign," said rover team member Kathryn Stack  at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "From the Mojave site, we could include every stop we've made during the campaign."
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions.
Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, developed, built and operates MAHLI. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Monster Black Hole's Mighty Belch Could Transform Entire Galaxy

by Calla Cofield,    February 19, 2015 02:01pm ET

This artist's illustration depicts the furious cosmic winds streaming out from a monster supermassive black hole as detected by NASA's NuSTAR space telescope and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.

A ravenous, giant black hole has belched up a bubble of cosmic wind so powerful that it could change the fate of an entire galaxy, according to new observations.
Researchers using two X-ray telescopes have identified a cosmic wind blowing outward from the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy PDS 456. Astronomers have seen these winds before, but the authors of the new research say this is the first observation of a wind moving away from the center in every direction, creating a spherical shape.
The wind could have big implications for the future of the galaxy: It will cut down on the black hole's food supply, and slow star formation in the rest of the galaxy, the researchers said. And it's possible that strong cosmic winds are a common part of galaxy evolution — they could be responsible for turning galaxies from bright, active youngsters to quiet middle-agers. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]

Big eater

The supermassive black hole at the center of PDS 456 is currently gobbling up a substantial amount of food: A smorgasbord of gas and dust surrounds the black hole and is falling into the gravitational sinkhole.
As matter falls, it radiates light. The black hole at the center of PDS 456 is devouring so much matter, that the resulting radiation outshines every star in the galaxy. These kinds of bright young galaxies are known as quasars: a galaxy with an incredibly bright center, powered by a supermassive black hole with a big appetite.
New observations of PDS 456 have revealed a bubble of gas moving outward, away from the black hole. Using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton, the authors of the new research imaged the galaxy on five separate occassions in 2013 and 2014. The researchers say they can show that the photons of light emitted by the in-falling matter are pushing on nearby gas, creating the wind.
Scientists have studied these cosmic winds before, but the authors of the new research say their work goes a step further.
"It tells us that the shape of the wind is not just a narrow beam pointed in our direction. It is really a wind that is flowing in every direction away from the black hole," said Emanuele Nardini, a postdoctoral researcher at Keele University in Staffordshire, England. "With a spherical wind, the amount of mass it carries out is much larger than just a narrow beam."
According to a statement from NASA, galaxy PDS 456 "sustains winds that carry more energy every second than is emitted by more than a trillion suns." Such powerful winds could change the entire landscape of PDS 456, the researchers say. First, the wind will blow through the disk of matter surrounding the black hole — this disk currently serves as the black hole's food supply. The cosmic wind created by the black hole's appetite could significantly reduce or destroy the disk. In other words, the black hole cannot have its cake and eat it, too.

Bright young things

With no matter left to fall into the black hole, the radiation would cease as well. The brilliant center of the quasar will dim. By diminishing the black hole's food supply, they may turn quasars and other "active galaxies" like PDS 456 into quiescent galaxies like the Milky Way. Theorists have proposed that cosmic winds could explain why there are more young active galaxies than old active galaxies.
"We know that in almost every galaxy, a supermassive black hole resides in the center," said Nardini. "But, most of the galaxies we see today are quiescent, they are not active in any way. The fact that galaxies today are quiescent — we have to find an explanation for that in something that happened a long time ago."
In addition to quenching the radiation from an active black hole, these cosmic winds may slow down star formation in galaxies. The cosmic wind could blow through regions thick with gas and dust, where young stars form, and thin out the fertile stellar soil.
"If you have a black hole with this kind of wind, in millions of years [the winds] will be able to quench star formation and create a galaxy like our own," Nardini said. Stars will still form in the Milky Way, but not at the high rate of many young galaxies.
It's possible that these cosmic winds are a central reason why most galaxies go from being brightly burning active youngsters to quiet middle-agers.