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BepiColombo
October 4, 2021 in Science, Space | Tags: BepiColombo, craters, ESA, exploration, flyby, JAXA, Mercury, mission, secrets | by Wayne | Leave a comment
Today we have some exciting news from out there in the solar system [checks notes] er, excuse me, I guess I mean "in there" in the solar system, since today's news concerns from the planet closest to the sun. Yet, even though it is first, Mercury is shockingly unknown compared to the other planets of the solar system. This past Friday (October 1st 2021), the joint ESA/JAXA space mission BepiColombo (which launched back in 2018) finally made it to the innermost world. Since 2018, the transfer module has been slaloming around Earth and Venus in order to make it to Mercury. Indeed, the mission is named after the brilliant Italian astrophysicist who first proposed interplanetary gravity assist maneuvers as a mechanism for altering the velocity and trajectory of interplanetary spacecraft. BepiColombo took the picture at the top of this post, a view of part of Mercury's northern hemisphere taken at a distance of about 2,420 kilometers (1,500 miles) from the world.
In 2025, the spacecraft will deploy two orbiters to truly comprehensively map Mercury and attempt to unlock the mysteries of the planet's ancient face. Mercury's surface seems to be made of a very dark lava which has been bombarded by meteorites for the last several billion years. Although Mercury is dinky in volume (smaller than some of the solar system's moons) it is quite dense and presumably contains a metallic core suitable for a much larger planet. Interestingly (albeit unsurprisingly, for anyone who lives here) the densest planet in the solar system is Earth!
Not since the end of the Messenger mission has Mercury been the thrilling center of attention in astronomy. I can hardly wait for subsequent discoveries about the fast, hot, tiny planet. Some of the secrets of the making of the solar system have been locked away on the little world, waiting billions of years for the right orbiter to come along.
Mars 2020 Mission
July 30, 2020 in China, Invaders, Opinion, Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: 2020, core, drill, fossils, geology, helicopter, Life, Mars, mission, NASA, Persevererance, plutonium, probe, rover, samples | by Wayne | Leave a comment
What with all of the excitement in the world, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture…and of good things which are still happening during these troubled times. This morning at 7:50 a.m. EDT, NASA launched an Atlas V-541 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 41. On board the rocket is a Martian lander containing the most sophisticated Martian rover yet "Perseverance" along with its robotic helicopter sidekick "Ingenuity."
Artist's Conception of Perseverance and Ingenuity on Mars
If the mission continues to go according to plan, the lander will reach Mars in February 2021. Coincidentally, Mars will be crowded that month, since a Chinese orbiter & lander, and a UAE orbiter are also slated to arrive. After much trial-and-error, I have faith in NASA's sky crane landing system but it will be most interesting to see if the Chinese rover can "stick the landing"or if it is eaten by the ghosts of Mars (I hope not: humankind needs the Chinese data too, and NASA needs some competition to keep the creative juices and the congressional funding flowing).
The ultimate destination of the Mars 2020 mission is the Jezero Crater, a nearly circular crater 49 km (30 miles) in diameter. The ancient crater is now partially filled with sediments–including a fan delta of ancient clays. It is believed that if evidence of ancient life is to be found anywhere on Mars this is as likely a place as any to discover the ancient fossils.
Jezero Crater
Perseverance has onboard a 4.8 kilograms (11 lb) pellet of plutonium dioxide which will provide the vehicle (and the miniature helicopter) with abundant energy for traveling, communicating with orbiters/Earth, assaying rocks, and operating a core drill for gathering geological samples of ancient Martian rock. Additionally the rover will conduct material experiments concerning the potential toxicity of Martian dust and the production of pure oxygen from Martian atmospheric CO2. Perhaps most excitingly, the rover will also carefully organize and cache the precious samples it gathers in preparation for a future retrieval mission. Such a mission would involve landing, building and launching a Mars ascent vehicle from the Martian surface up to our proposed next generation Mars orbiter which would then load the samples on am Earthbound craft. So the Mars 2020 mission is a tremendous step towards discovering whether life ever gained a toehold on Mars AND towards building next-generation space faring capabilities (for the dull and incurious earthcentric crowd that always decries space exploration–as though Earth is located somewhere other than space!– it should be noted that such engineering breakthroughs generally confer military, technological, and economic supremacy here).
Also, special thanks to our brilliant Norwegian, Spanish, French, and Italian friends!
So best wishes for the entire armada which has left our planet this month headed for Mars, but particular good wishes to Perseverance and Ingenuity! Let's hope we can discover some perveverance here to make it all the way to February 2021 (right now that sounds like it might as well be some HG Wells date in the impossible future).
The Chinese Found Green Blobs on the Dark Side of the Moon
July 16, 2020 in China, Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: Chinese, far-side, gel-like, Green, hard, igneous, impact, mission, moon, rocks, rover, shiny, Yutu-2 | by Wayne | 3 comments
While we sort things out here on Earth, let's take a little break and check out how everything is going at a place which is so far away and yet so close–the dark side of the moon. Back at the very end of 2018 the Chinese Space Agency successfully landed a lunar probe on the far side of the moon (the first "soft" landing in that hemisphere ever). China has been diligently working on lunar exploration and, prior to this landing they had already launched a relay satellite named "Queqiao" into operational orbit about 65,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) beyond the moon so that their far-side probe would be able to communicate with Earth. Since the beginning of 2019, Chinese scientists have been exploring the moon's dark side (which isn't actually dark per se, but which is largely unknown to Earth's inhabitants since the moon is tidally locked).
As the Chinese Yutu-2 rover was exploring terrain near the Von Kármán crater (a large impact site with a diameter of around 180 kilometers (110 miles)), the radio controlled vehicle found something interesting. The ground was covered in strange glistening green blobs which looked like something from H.G. Wells' moon or from moon mission comic books of the 40s.
I couldn't find a good photo, so I will use this fantasy illustration instead. Keen eyed viewers will spot salient geopolitical trends in the drawing.
Geologists and astrophysicists have been speculating as to the nature of these amorphous lumps (which stand out dramatically on the monochrome surface of the moon–not that that is evident in any of the photos I could find) and they now believe they have an explanation. The glossy lumps are probably a mixture of of pagioclase, iron-magnesium silicate, olivine and pyroxene. These minerals are known to be found on the moon thanks to NASA's manned missions 5 decades ago. Speculation is that an intense impact melted them together into glass-like amorphous nodules of thesort which are foundin high energy events here on Earth (apologies to everyone who was hoping it was alien eggs or lunar bio-slime). There is still a mystery though: the regolith of the Von Kármán crater is not composed of these materials, so lunar scientists are still trying to understand where the glossy green rocks came from.
Back to Ryugu
March 7, 2019 in Mascots, Opinion, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: Asteroid, bullet, Hayabusa2, hopping, JAXA, mascot, mission, probes, projectile, Ryugu, Space | by Wayne | Leave a comment
I have been trying to spruce up my online presence by building some new web pages (more about that soon) and by fixing the site I already have which everybody loves [crickets], um, which is to say Ferrebeekeeper! Unfortunately trying new things doesn't always work…so kindly forgive me if yesterday's post looks a bit peculiar. We will work with the web guru to get it all taken care of. In the mean time, speaking of experimenting with new things, let's check back in on JAXA spaceship Hayabusa2.
Artist's conception of Hayabusa2 touching down on Ryugu
When last we checked in with Hayabusa2, the Japanese spaceprobe had entered orbit around Asteroid Ryugu (a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, which is believed to be composed of pristine materials left over from the dawn of the solar system). Hayabusa2 was deploying tiny 1.1 kilograms (2.4 pounds) hopping droids to jump around the ancient ball of rock and snow and learn whatever they could. These robots would be followed by a larger robot probe, Mascot, which would study the asteroid in depth before Hayabusa2's glorious showstopping signature move–a descent to the surface in order to fire a projectile into the asteroid (in order to collect an asteroid sample). That's right: while Americans have been utterly transfixed by the bloviations of our felonious leader, the Japanese have dispatched a spacefaring robot to drop hopping mechanized lice on a primeval space snowball and then to pop a cap in it! Respect to the Land of the Rising Sun!
The probe arrived in perfect condition back in September of 2018, but the next phase of the mission got off to a rocky start…literally! JAXA expected Ryugu to be covered with fine powder, but it was covered with jagged rocks. The tiny hopping bots MINERVA-II1 A and B were really meant to test the conditions for MASCOT, a shoebox like robot-probe with real scientific instruments. On a prior mission these hopping probes were too enthusiastic and, after a single touchdown, they hopped magnificently but suicidally into the infinite void (presumably yelling inaudible robot slogans of honor). Although conditions on Ryugu were not as expected, the second generation Minervabots did a better job this time: they delivered the necessary telemetry, astrionics, and surface conditions to bring the mission to the next phase. Mascot was duly dispatched back in October and it operated faultlessly for 17 hours before its battery ran out and the active phase of its mission ended. [As an aside, I am finding it challenging to describe all of the things happening on a planetoid inhabited entirely by various sorts of robots]
Animation of Mascot probe hopping around Ryugu…such balletic grace!
On February 22nd 2019, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft descended to the surface of the asteroid and physically collected a substantial sample of the regolith by shooting the asteroid with a small projectile. You can watch the video of the brief encounter here. There are a lot of pebbles and shards flying around, but apparently the craft was fine and is now back in orbit while the ground crew looks for a final site to sample in April.
The Surface of Ryugu as imaged by a robot probe (JAXA)
This mission is super exciting, but the precious samples aren't home yet. We will keep you updated here on Ferrebeekeeper (and we will keep working on our own tech project of building a better site).
Hayabusa2 and 2 MinervaII robots
September 22, 2018 in Invaders, Mascots, Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: Asteroid, Hayabusa2, hopping, Japanese, lander, MinervaII, mission, probe, Ryugu, success | by Wayne | Leave a comment
Congratulations to the Japanese Space Agency! On Friday morning (EST) the Japanese space probe Hayabusa2 dropped two adorable little hopping rover bots ("hoppers"? "hop-overs"? "hop-bots"? um, we'll work on it…) onto the surface of Asteroid Ryugu. The spacecraft arrived at the near-Earth asteroid back in June when the sort-of-octahedral space rock was passing near to our home planet. The twin "MinervaII" probes ("Micro Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid") are 18 centimeter (7 inch) disks which weigh 1.1 kilograms (2.4 pounds) each. Making use of the asteroid's exceedingly low gravity, the tiny robots will hop to their location and deliver readings about the composition of the ancient icy rock, which will hopefully provide insight into the formation of the solar system. Additionally, more stirring action is on the way in October when Hayabusa II will deliver a larger lander (named Mascot!) and then a third Minerva lander. This flurry of activity is in preparation to collect asteroid material which will be returned to Earth!
Hopefully….the MinervaII probes are (unsurprisingly) the second in a line of Minerva probes. The first Minerva hopping robot met an inglorious fate during the first Hayabusa mission to the asteroid Itokawa in 2005. That (smaller) Minerva rover was deployed a bit early and hopped ignominiously into the void of space. Sadly I don't have pictures, but imagine a hockey puck falling into infinite blackness.
I will follow up with more news about this mission as it becomes available, but for now let us celebrate!
A Picture of Cassini's Death
September 12, 2017 in Art, Invaders, Opinion, Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: Art, atmosphere, Cassini, crash, drawing, final, image, into, mission, NASA, plunge, probe, robotic, Saturn | by Wayne | 1 comment
This Friday September 15th is the final day of the astounding Cassini mission. The robotic space probe just took a final picture of Titan (which was arguably the site of the mission's most breathtaking discoveries) and now the little spacecraft turns towards Saturn's north pole and the grand finale…a plunge into the crushing atmosphere of the gas giant planet. A joint effort between NASA and the Italian space agency, Cassini launched in 1997 (the year I came to New York) and for 20 years it has sailed the solar system. In 2004, the craft reached Saturn and it has been discovering moons, taking pictures, and otherwise exploring the system ever since. Cassini even launched a lander to the surface of Titan, a super moon with a thick atmosphere and methane oceans.
All good things must end though, and Cassini is out of fuel. Mission scientists did not wish to leave the craft orbiting for thousands of years and they also hoped to get a last trove of data (and jolt of publicity) from the mission…so the controllers opted to fly Cassini straight into the planet to learn whatever they can before the minivan sized probe blows apart and/or is crushed. Sadly there is no camera to record this melodramatic demise (which the denizens of Earth will want to see) so I have created my own rendition of the craft's final descent using the magic of art (image at top). Since Saturn does not have an oxidizing atmosphere (probably?) and Cassini does not talk (probably?) I took a few artistic liberties, however I think I got the great hexagonal storm on the gas giant pretty well and I also captured some of the endearing personality of an astonishing robot explorer which will be dearly missed.
More Photos from Jupiter
May 25, 2017 in Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: beautiful, cyclones, exploration, gas giant, Juno, Jupiter, mission, photos, probe, Space, stunning, weather | by Wayne | Leave a comment
There are more pictures coming in from NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter and they are amazing. The plucky space probe has entered an orbital pattern which causes it to swoop from one pole of the gas giant to the other in 2 short hours (that may not sound like a short period…but Jupiter is enormous). As it passes close to the gas giant, Juno has been able to photograph and record hitherto unknown features of the fifth planet from the sun—such as a magnetic field twice as powerful as predicted and intricate and heterogeneous ammonia weather systems.
Perhaps the most stunning aspect of this new trove of data comes from Jupiter's previously unexplored poles which are filled with intricate webs of cyclones—each up to 1400 kilometers in diameter. You can see them here on astonishing photos. Scientists are eager to learn more about the storms—and what lies beneath them. The coming months will feature even more beautiful images from the solar system's grandest planet—and maybe we will get some answers too concerning what is under the clouds and what powers these colossal storms on our breathtaking neighbor.
Mission to 16 Psyche
January 4, 2017 in Art, Deities of the Underworld, Opinion, Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: 16, 2020s, Asteroid, core, ferrous, iron, M-type, metal, mission, NASA, probe, Psyche, robot | by Wayne | Leave a comment
M-type asteroids are high albedo (i.e shiny) asteroids made partially or mostly of metal. Of all of M-type asteroids currently known in the solar system, 16 Psyche is the most massive. It is a hunk of iron and nickel (and other heavy metals?) which has a diameter of 250 kilometers. Psyche orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter and is believed to be the exposed core of a planet approximately the size of Mars which was obliterated by a catastrophic impact. The asteroid is named after the intrepid mortal who found love and ultimately apotheosis in an "Eyes Wide Shut" type Greek myth of great suspense, horror, and beauty.
Are you curious to know more about 16 Psyche based on this description? I certainly hope you are, because NASA has just announced future missions for the 2020s and 16 Psyche is on the list. As currently conceived, the Psyche exploration mission will send a robot probe powered by solar electric propulsion out to the obliterated core to examine the planetoid. The probe will be equipped with a magnetometer and a gamma-ray spectrometer to find out more about the composition and history of the enigmatic relic.
Of course other long term aspects of the mission are of interest as well. Although we have not yet mastered nuclear fusion, safe comprehensive control of such boundless energy is probably only 20 years or so away [winky icon]. What if humankind had sophisticated manufacturing robots and near infinite energy? In such circumstances 8 million cubic kilometers of steel might come in very handy indeed. So far the good news keeps rolling in for 2017. This Psyche mission can't happen fast enough for my taste.
The Galactic Ghoul
October 19, 2016 in Space, Uncategorized | Tags: Curse, destroyed, ESA, ExoMars, failure, ghoul, Mars, mission, probe, Schiaparelli, Soviets, Space, Trace Gas Orbiter | by Wayne | 3 comments
As we proceed further into the Halloween season, a long dormant specter has unexpectedly emerged from the past to claim another victim. In the early era of space exploration a shockingly high number of Mars missions were complete failures. This led space agencies to talk about the "Galactic Ghoul" a malevolent (and wholly imaginary!) entity which devours Mars probes. Well, actually the phrase "Galactic Ghoul" was coined in the nineties…before that, this high failure rate was attributed to "the Curse of Mars" which isn't quite as vivid a personification of failure but which still effectively evokes a malevolent supernatural thing out in the darkness between worlds. The ghoul (or curse) was particularly hard on Soviet craft and a shockingly large number of Soviet missions just vanished into the void for no reason as detailed in this dramatic chart (which is worth looking at for all sorts of reasons).
The curse even manifested in the late nineties when NASA screwed up the distinction between matric and non-metric units of measurement and fired the Mars Climate Orbiter straight into the Martian atmosphere where it disintegrated (although that seems like it could be chalked up to a different old nemesis: being bad at math). At any rate, the ghoul has been quiescent for a while as NASA learned to operate on the red planet (and triple check their numbers).
Today though brings more grim news from the Red Planet. The ESA and the Russian space agency collaborated on ExoMars a joint mission in which the two teams sent an orbiter and a lander to Mars together. The Trace Gas Orbiter is the real scientific component of the mission. It will assay Mars for methane sources (we would like to know where the atmospheric methane of Mars comes from since it should be scrubbed from the thin Martian atmosphere faster than it can build up). The lander was named for Giovanni Schiaparelli, the 19th-century Italian astronomer who popularized the idea of Martian canals (a concept long since disproven but bearing elements of truth).
Schiaparelli's only scientific payload was a small weather station that would have run for a few days before running out of batteries. It was really a lander designed to test out Martian landing capabilities, however, as of press time, the lander had proceeded into the Martian gravity well and then went ominously and completely silent. Is the galactic ghoul now sated or will it need to feed on the next charismatic lander headed to the red planet? Elon Musk may want to do some animal sacrifice and appeasement dances before he launches his colony ship!
Rosetta Remembered
October 3, 2016 in Opinion, Science, Space, Uncategorized | Tags: amazing, comet, crash, elegy, ESA, harpoons, ice, lander, mission, over, Philae, Rosetta | by Wayne | Leave a comment
Last week I meant to include an elegiac post to Rosetta, an astonishing space mission, which stretched out over a dozen years and logged 4.9 billion miles of travel. Rosetta was launched way back in 2004. It was originally supposed to rendezvous with comet 46P/Wirtanen in 2011, but problems with the launch in Guyana caused the probe to miss the launch window for the primary mission. The ESA changed the mission parameters so that the spacecraft ended up exploring Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko instead (this second comet was functionally the same as the first—except for a much more difficult-to-say name). During its journey to the comet, Rosetta also flew by Mars and two asteroids. After flying by Mars in February of 2007, the craft flew by Earth in November of 2007. It caused a miniature panic when astronomers of the Catalina sky survey spotted it and misidentified it as a 20 meter near-Earth asteroid on a possible collision path with Earth!
The spacecraft arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August of 2014 and the most famous…and infamous…part of the mission took place in November of that same year, when Rosetta launched the Philae lander to harpoon itself to the comet. Although Philae (which was named after a Rosetta-like obelisk with the same text in Greek and Egyptian) succeeded in landing and not bouncing off into the void, sadly the little lander came down in a miserable crevasse. Scientists intimately studied pictures of the comet (from Rosetta) until they found the lander in the icy chaos. It was a pretty ghastly scene which reminded me of my sock drawer (if it were dropped from space onto Tungnafellsjökull glacier).
(See it there at bottom right?)
Rosetta's long and mostly successful mission came to an end last Friday in a truly operatic fashion. Mission controllers chose to use the last vestiges of power to smash the orbiter into the comet! Well, although I am saying "smashed" what actually happened was more like a grandmother walking into a snowbank. The lander was lowered onto the comet at about one mile per hour. Except, despite the fact that Rosetta traveled more than 5 billion miles ("uphill both ways") it was not designed for landing and its last communication was a photo just above the comet surface. RIP Rosetta, you were one good probe!