Highlights for 2008

Cassini takes a pass at Titan on February 22 (already having made a pass this year on January 5th).

Soon after Titan, Cassini performs a truly unexpected maneuver and flies directly through the plumes of Enceladus on March 12th. This is a somewhat risky task for the probe as the particles it will surely encounter may pose some kind of impact threat to the spacecraft. Mission planners expect the risk to be low as they intend to turn the spacecraft around and let the less delicate side of Cassini bear the brunt of the material and photograph the geysers as it moves away from Enceladus. It should make for some of the most exciting planetary science planned for this year.

Cassini has another go at Titan on March 25.

Yup – you guessed it. Cassini at Titan again on May 12th.

The Phoenix lander arrives at Mars on May 25th and (hopefully) makes good on the failure of the Mars Polar Lander. It will be the first time a probe will attempt a landing on the Martian pole and will conduct a series of experiments looking for the existence of water ice.

You can never have too much of a good thing. Cassini at Titan again on May 28th as well as July 31.

Chandrayaan becomes India’s first planetary probe as it leaves for the moon in Early July (was April).

The extended Cassini mission has made Enceladus a prime target of investigation and the new encounters begin on Aug 11th and comes within 54km of the surface.

Rosetta still on its way for an encounter with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014, will make a close pass at an asteroid named 2867 Steins on Sept 5th at a distance of only 1700 km. Steins is a small asteroid measuring only a few kilometers in size and the craft will be traveling at a relatively slow speed which should allow for some good resolution images to be acquired during the encounter.

Messenger (having just completed the first encounter in 33 years this past week) has another go at Mercury on Oct 6th and flies past more uncharted territory on its way to eventual orbit insertion in 2011.

Two more close flybys of the Saturnian moon Enceladus on Oct 9 and Oct 31. The first at hair-raising distance of 25km and the second around a more reasonable 200km.

In an effort to recognize the International Lunar Decade (and intended manned Lunar missions within 15 years), the United States returns to the moon with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on Nov 3rd. It is expected to begin its scientific goals only 3 days after launch and is expected to look for possible deposits of water ice in permanently shadowed craters near the Lunar poles.

And finally more Titan flybys on Nov 3, Nov 19, Dec 5 and Dec 21.

All this is in addition to the ongoing work of Opportunity and Spirit on the surface of Mars. Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance in orbit around Mars. Cassini’s non-targeted continuing tour of other icy Saturnian moons. And who knows, maybe we will see more than 2 or 3 reports coming from the ever quiet Venus Express mission currently at Venus.

Sadly, some very exciting missions will be quietly traveling en route to their targets and are not expected to be heard from in 08 like the Dawn Mission to the Asteroid Belt, New Horizons mission to Pluto/Charon, the newly re-targeted Deep Impact mission (now known as Epoxi) as well as Stardust now on its way to a follow-up visit to Tempel 1 the comet that was smacked by Deep Impact in 2005.

Unusual Stains on Mars

Link to story

The iPhone Set 01: Bodies of Major Interest

If I am going to keep making these things… I’d be a fool to not include a set for the Apple iPhone. Coincidentally, when you purchase your iPhone and do not yet have a phone service, the phone displays a full-disc image of the Earth pretty much displayed exactly as these do when uploaded to your iPhone. So in the spirit of continuity, you can now opt instead to have Mercury, Venus, Earth, The Moon (Luna), Mars, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Saturn, Enceladus, Titan, Iapetus, Hyperion, Uranus, Miranda, Neptune or Triton grace your screen instead of the default Earth.

The easiest way to install wallpapers to your iPhone is to make a special set in iPhoto and simply drag all the files to that folder. Then in iTunes have your iPhone sync that folder to your photos collection. After that it is as simple as opening the “Photos” area of your iPhone. Go to your new folder of images and open whichever image you want. Then tap on the image just once and assign it as a wallpaper using the “Use as Wallpaper” button in the lower left corner of the screen.

If you have a PC I have no idea in hell how the hell you get images into your iPhone. I would buy a Mac… you have an iPhone and use iTunes… you are half-way there.

For a version of these with no graphics see this link.

Wallpaper 2560x1600 Set 03: The Planets

The planets – the complete set for collectors! While there are literally thousands of images of the planets to choose from… full globe high resolution images are actually fairly rare. They usually require many exposures to be stitched together to make one large complete image. This is not only difficult to work out across the great distances of space, but also soaks up a large amount of valuable spacecraft time and energy. This set represents the best available images of each planet in our Solar System.

Sorry, no Pluto for more than one reason.

Big Red Marble

Just thought this was a pretty view of Mars taken by Hubble. It seems “shiny” like a marble. The orignal was found at this Flickr account.

While We Were Away

So, the bottomless pit on Mars is not bottomless (although still a hefty 78 meters deep)

And the Martian rovers survive the dark dust storm of 2007 and resume their extended missions. The only question remaining is… what exactly (if anything) can destroy these everlasting robots! Below is a recently returned image of the Martian surface as it appears today.

Martian Skies Will Clear Up

Put on a happy face.

The robotic arm on Spirit has begun operations again. The dust storm has been breaking up and allowing sunlight to recharge its batteries enough to resume some scientific activity on the surface. Apparently things are not quite so clear yet on Opportunity’s side of the planet, but it is starting to look as if things will be back to normal soon enough for Spirit at the very least.

Wallpaper: Martian North Pole

Since the Mars Phoenix Lander has now been successfully launched, and is on its way to potentially making the first ever successful landing in the Martian polar region… Here is a great image of the region taken from the Mars Recon Orbiter’s archives.

On a side note, there was one previous mission called the Mars Polar Lander which was to touch down in the region in 1999. Communication was lost with the lander just prior to the designated arrival date and the whereabouts of the probe have been a mystery ever since. Recently the Opportunity and Spirit rovers, the old Viking Landers and even the original Pathfinder components had been clearly imaged from orbit by the Mars Global Surveyor and that raised hopes we might finally make a visual connection with the remains of the doomed lander. Initially some hopeful findings had been made, but they later panned out and as of this date MPL still remains lost.

Wallpapers: 1024x768 Set 05

Managed to make the more common wallpaper size 1024x768 for the 14 most recent wallpaper posts (started with set 05 images, 1-4 to come). Download zip file here. Some were not produced as they just didn’t translate so easily into the format. However, the opposite is true in some cases such as for this image of the Martian south pole. Its resolution was hopelessly low for the larger landscape format, so now with the smaller size it was possible (just barely) to get it posted as a wallpaper.

Included in the set for download are the images pictured at the top and for the sake of google search, here they are listed out:

• 1024x768 Wallpaper of CALLISTO at half view, moon of JUPITER
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of EARTH from APOLLO landing site
• 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of EUROPA, moon of JUPITER
• 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of JUPITER
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of MARS region of DEUTERONILUS (not shown)
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of MARS surface at HUSBAND HILL
• 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of MARS
• 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of PHOEBE, moon of SATURN
• 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of RHEA, moon of SATURN
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of SATURN, crescent view (not shown)
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of SATURN from above the NORTHERN POLE
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of SATURN globe
• 1024x768 Wallpaper of SPACE WALK
• 1024x768 Wallpaper portrait of TETHYS, moon of SATURN

Phoenix Lander Ready for Launch

Phoenix Lander ready for launch tomorrow. Its destination is the Martian Arctic Pole, hopefully realizing the hopes of the lost Mars Polar Lander. See website for news.

Martian Dust Devil as Seen from Orbit

What Might the Dust Storm Look Like on Mars?

The above image was generated by “hortonheardawho” for unmannedspaceflight.com and represents some of the earlier days of the Martian dust storm currently enveloping the planet. This is Mars as seen from the Opportunity Rover who seems to be suffering under the storm worse than Spirit on the opposite side of the globe. While these skies are somewhat dark take a look at what it might have looked like around July 15 (or Martian day #1235 of the mission since arriving).

Using an image developed by Jim Bell to show the relative brightness of the dust storm at Opportnity’s position, the above image was artistically re-interpreted to show what that same scene might have looked like a few weeks later. The rovers have since been shut-down almost completely to try and conserve power and word has it that at present it is even darker than suggested here. The loss of light reaching the surface of Mars at Opportunity’s position is currently more than 99% and should these storms go on for too long the rovers will run out of energy with no light reaching their solar panels and that would finally spell the end of these long-running missions. Even though all operations that use any kind of power have been shut-down, the rovers do need to constantly use enough power to stay warm. As of this time, there is so little energy being replenished that just running the heaters is using up more energy than can be regenerated from the solar collectors.

While the situation does seem dire, most specialists expect the rovers to make it through this situation and expect to carry on after the storm dissipates. Coincidentally, Opportunity was just about to enter the Victoria crater and thankfully it had not as that would have surely spelled doom for that mission. The solar energy collectors would not only have had to deal with the low-light situation, but would have suffered under crater wall shadows as well.

Old Tyme Mariner 6 Film Reel

Similar... no?

Old Tyme Mariner 7 Film Reel

Ted Stryk, over at unmannedspaceflight.com (see “imager portfolios” in the right hand column), performed some handy work on these old Mariner 7 images on its approach to Mars. After the image clean-up work was completed he posted the files for download on the forum and wanderingspace worked the animation so that the trip to Mars would appear smoother. The result is very much as Ted describes as having, “a turn-of-the century nickelodeon look”, which is a pretty cool effect for an actual trip to Mars clip.

Mariner 7 was launched in March of 1969 and arrived in August of that same year. Shortly before arriving a battery exploded on board Mariner 7 and despite this near disaster, the Mariner team managed to get the spacecraft in fine working order just in-time for the encounter. A sister craft, Mariner 6, had flown by Mars only days before 7’s encounter and I intend to take a shot at arranging those frames for animation as well.

The Mars Laser and the Future of Space Exploration

The coming Mars Science Lab mission will be employing a most unusual device for examining the surface of another planet. When MSL reaches Mars around 2010 it will be rolling about the surface of Mars zapping rocks and soil with an on-board laser beam generator. The beam is part of a science package that practices laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS for short. First, scientists on the ground will determine which objects or features imaged with normal on-board cameras seem worthy of further examination. Once a target is selected, a beam is generated and focused upon a small area of that target. This will burn or superheat the material into a plume of particles that expands at supersonic speeds as it cools. It is at this cooling time that the spectrometer will image the cloud and use the widest range of electromagnetic wavelengths possible — from infrared light through visible light and all the way to the ultraviolet. Since every element we know of has a signature of some wavelength within that wide range, the spectrometer will be able to determine all the materials present in the sample (even to simple trace amounts) by detecting and imaging the specific wavelength signatures present in the cloud.

What is most exciting about the instrument is that it is yet another example of NASA really employing non-traditional methods of exploring space. Gone are the old flyby probes of the 70’s and 80’s that simply pick a target and speed by with 95% of its mission goals completed in hours. So far this decade, NASA has chased a comet and collected comet dust in a grid of aerogel; intentionally slammed a heavy probe into a comet to form a man-made crater; they delivered 2 rovers to the surface of Mars that got there from a bounce landing; performed an impromptu landing of a non-lander type probe on the surface of an asteroid and now we will be shooting rocks on Mars. It provides us hope that once we are through the current financial speed bump of retiring the Shuttle fleet and completing our International Space Station commitments we can expect some really exciting new missions to our extended Solar System family. Some have already suggested such missions like air-probes on Mars and Saturn’s Titan; more aerogel collector type missions at Saturn’s Enceladus to collect geyser dust and most exciting of all would be a tunneling probe that could melt its way through the icy crust at Jupiter’s Europa in order to release a submarine type probe into Europa’s vast underground ocean.

It is stunning when you consider the near perfect scorecard for NASA’s unmanned space missions in the last 10-15 years and yet the organization is currently saddled with the image of being ineffective, stodgy and even sloppy. All these perceptions are coming from the manned side of its operations which hasn’t really done anything inspirational since apollo and the initial shuttle years. If only NASA was able to transfer some of the bold ambitions of the unmanned wing of its operations to the manned side of things, then maybe this image could just go away. I propose that even with the occasional tragedy and loss of life (which is inevitable on such endeavors) people would be much more accepting of such losses if astronauts died in the pursuit of doing something remarkable like going to Mars or even the moon for a second time. I mean, who wants to die so that we might hand deliver another component to the space station?

It is high time for us to be inspired by something again… on a grand scale. Time to focus at least some of our attention on something other than the fear of being blown up by terrorists or waging another war on a culture we know so little about. It is truly time to forget about Paris Hilton, forget about reality television and all the other pointless distractions that keep us from dreaming. In many ways it is bigger than just doing science in space — we need to give the next generation something better to think about. Something so exciting that the trivialities of the day that seem to dominate the national consciousness will at least be challenged by something so great that it will be hard to ignore.

We need to get going.

My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past II

Scored another one. This time it is hi-res and I think this came out around 1996. I also just happened to get a copy of “Mars Underground” (unrelated) on DVD just yesterday which is about Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” concept of getting men (and women!) on Mars. I am thinking perhaps now this may finally be embraced as NASA’s Mars 2.0 plan going forward?

Wallpaper: Deuteronilus Mensae on Mars

It is believed that these valleys may have originated from flash flood waters which came from melting ice many ages ago. But the conditions on Mars do not allow water to stay liquid for very long. That water would have frozen pretty quickly and then flowed down any depressions… which when you think of it - sort of makes an “instant glacier”.

Telescopic Views of Our Moon and Other Planets

I stumbled across an image of Mars and our moon a while back, either on Universe Today or just from looking for great images of Mars on google. Anyway, it never occured to me that you can get such great detail of Mars while still being able to see a limb of the Moon in the same view. I thought it was a Photoshop job until I looked up “occult+Saturn+moon” and found similar images. For some reason, Jupiter images are more a rarity. What is unmistakable is that the above Moon/Mars image by Ron Dantowitz is pretty incredible for its clarity and detail.

I couldn’t find any of the moon and a tiny blue dot of Uranus, but you can always use your imagination.

U. Gordan just sent me one of Venus too

Mars Science Lab Animation

The coming Mars Science Lab mission video is available with various resolution options here (they are also downloadble!). This animation doesn’t focus as much on the trip to Mars as the MAAS ones have in the past, I would imagine that NASA wanted to highlight all the advanced science this mission will be performing instead of focusing on the long cruise to get there.

Take a look especially at the part of the mission where apparently they actually shoot a laser beam at various targets and take measurements of, what I would imagine, are the gasses emitted from such a burn. It also illustrates the process by which MSL will be taking soil and rock samples for in-depth investigations. This mission is exactly what it claims to be… a roving Science Lab on Mars. This is as close to having astronauts on the surface as our current technology can allow… that is… without actually sending someone… which our current technology does allow.

WTF?

I just updated this post with a higher resolution image of this hole in Mars. Click on the image for an even higher resolution version.

The darkness of this hole in Mars is not due to limitations of the cameras. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is usually always able to detect details even in dark shadow. But blowing this image out to reveal details shows nothing. No side walls, no bottom… leading most to consider that this is a sinkhole that fell into a large Martian cavern. Most likely the total lack of detail probably means that the surface around this hole is actually over-hanging a deep pit.

Maybe this is where all the ancient running Martian water drained to. Better watch your step.