NASA Mars Curiosity Rover: Two Years and Counting on Red Planet

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) logo.

August 5, 2014

NASA’s most advanced roving laboratory on Mars celebrates its second anniversary since landing inside the Red Planet’s Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, 2012, EDT).

During its first year of operations, the Curiosity rover fulfilled its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. Clay-bearing sedimentary rocks on the crater floor in an area called Yellowknife Bay yielded evidence of a lakebed environment billions of years ago that offered fresh water, all of the key elemental ingredients for life, and a chemical source of energy for microbes, if any existed there.

"Before landing, we expected that we would need to drive much farther before answering that habitability question," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "We were able to take advantage of landing very close to an ancient streambed and lake. Now we want to learn more about how environmental conditions on Mars evolved, and we know where to go to do that."

Image above: This image from the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows wheel tracks printed by the rover as it drove on the sandy floor of a lowland called "Hidden Valley" on the route toward Mount Sharp. The image was taken on Aug. 4, 2014. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

During its second year, Curiosity has been driving toward long-term science destinations on lower slopes of Mount Sharp. Those destinations are in an area beginning about 2 miles (3 kilometers) southwest of the rover's current location, but an appetizer outcrop of a base layer of the mountain lies much closer -- less than one-third of a mile (500 meters) from Curiosity. The rover team is calling the outcrop "Pahrump Hills."

For about half of July, the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, drove Curiosity across an area of hazardous sharp rocks on Mars called "Zabriskie Plateau." Damage to Curiosity's aluminum wheels from driving across similar terrain last year prompted a change in route, with the plan of skirting such rock-studded terrain wherever feasible. The one-eighth mile (200 meters) across Zabriskie Plateau was one of the longest stretches without a suitable detour on the redesigned route toward the long-term science destination.

Curiosity self portrait. Image, Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech

Another recent challenge appeared last week in the form of unexpected behavior by an onboard computer currently serving as backup. Curiosity carries duplicate main computers. It has been operating on its B-side computer since a problem with the A-side computer prompted the team to command a side swap in February 2013. Work in subsequent weeks of 2013 restored availability of the A-side as a backup in case of B-side trouble. In July, fresh commanding of the rover was suspended for two days while engineers confirmed that the A-side computer remains reliable as a backup.

To help prepare for future human missions to Mars, Curiosity incudes a radiation detector to measure the environment astronauts will encounter on a round-trip between Earth and the Martian surface. The data are consistent with earlier predictions and will help NASA scientists and engineers develop new technologies to protect astronauts in deep space.

In 2016, a Mars lander mission called InSight will launch to take the first look into the deep interior of Mars. The agency also is participating in the European Space Agency's (ESA’s) 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 orbiter and a critical element of the astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover.

Image above: Two Years Ago, Curiosity Rover Lands on Mars, Captures Image of Mount Sharp. Image, Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech.

Additionally, NASA recently announced that its next rover going to Mars in 2020 will carry seven carefully selected instruments to conduct unprecedented investigations in science and technology, as well as capabilities needed for humans to pioneer the Red Planet.

Based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, the new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct geological assessments of the rover's landing site, determine the potential habitability of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life.

Scientists will use the Mars 2020 rover to identify and select a collection of rock and soil samples that will be stored for potential return to Earth by a future mission. The Mars 2020 mission is responsive to the science objectives recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.

The Mars 2020 rover will help further advance our knowledge of how future human explorers could use natural resources available on the surface of the Red Planet. An ability to live off the Martian land would transform future exploration of the planet. Designers of future human expeditions can use this mission to understand the hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate technology to process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce oxygen. These experiments will help engineers learn how to use Martian resources to produce oxygen for human respiration and potentially as an oxidizer for rocket fuel.

The Mars 2020 rover is part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program, which includes the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, the Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft currently orbiting the planet, and the MAVEN orbiter, which is set to arrive at the Red Planet in September and will study the Martian upper atmosphere.

NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing the human spaceflight capabilities needed for future round-trip missions to Mars.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Follow our progress on NASA's Journey to Mars at: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration and http://www.nasa.gov/mars

For more information about Curiosity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

Related article:

NASA Announces Mars 2020 Rover Payload to Explore the Red Planet as Never Before: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2014/07/nasa-announces-mars-2020-rover-payload.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Dwayne Brown / JPL / Guy Webster.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

SpaceX - Falcon 9 launch AsiaSat 8

SpaceX - Falcon 9 / AsiaSat 8 Mission patch.

Aug. 5, 2014

Falcon 9 rocket carrying AsiaSat 8 ready for launch

SpaceX successfully launched their 11th Falcon 9 rocket today and 4th of 2014, at 08:00 UTC, August 5th 2014. This rocket carried the ASIASAT 8 television broadcasting satellite into orbit, ASIASAT 8 will be located at 101 degrees East and has 24 Ku and 1 Ka band transponder for transmission of direct to home television and internet connectivity for China, India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

SpaceX Launch of ASIASAT 8 on SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral

This Falcon 9 v1.1 did not include landing legs as to maximize payload capacity for the customer. The next flight to attempt another propulsive landing will be flight 13 which will carry the next Dragon to the International Space Station.

AsiaSat 8 satellite

For more information about SpaceX, visit: http://www.spacex.com/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: SpaceX / Gunter Space Page.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

CERN - ISOLDE back on target after shutdown

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Aug. 4, 2014

Today the ISOLDE installation restarted its physics programme with beams from the Proton Synchrotron Booster. After a shutdown of almost a year and a half, there was a real buzz in the air as the first beam of protons hit the target of the first ISOLDE experiment.

Many improvements have been made to the ISOLDE installation during the first long shutdown (LS1) of CERN's accelerator complex. One of the main projects was the installation of new robots for handling the targets (see photo below). “Our targets are bombarded by protons from the Proton Synchrotron Booster’s beams and become very radioactive,” says Maria Jose Garcia Borge, spokesperson for the ISOLDE collaboration. “They therefore need to be handled carefully, which is where the robots came in. The robots we had until now were already over 20 years old and were starting to suffer from the effects of radiation. So LS1 was a perfect opportunity to replace them with more modern robots with electronic sensor feedback."

Image above: One of the new target-handling robots installed by ISOLDE during LS1 (Image: ISOLDE/CERN).

On the civil engineering side, three ISOLDE buildings have been demolished and replaced with a single building to house the ISOLDE team. It includes a new control room, a data storage room, three laser laboratories, a biology and materials laboratory, and a room for visitors, from which they can admire the ISOLDE hall in comfort. Another building has been extended to house the MEDICIS project, and two more – completed at the end of 2012 – are gradually being equipped with new electrical systems as well as the cooling and ventilation systems needed for the future HIE-ISOLDE.

In the ISOLDE hall itself, new permanent experimental stations have also been installed. “One of the permanent stations – called IDS or ISOLDE Decay Station (see photo below) – is dedicated to nuclear spectroscopy,” says Borge. “It will allow us to study beta decay and to measure the lifetime of excited states. The other permanent station – VITO – will be used for combined material measurements and biological analyses."

Image above: The ISOLDE Decay Station (IDS), one of ISOLDE’s two new permanent experimental stations (Image: ISOLDE/CERN).

As for the experiment that started this week, it is picking up where the promising analyses carried out in 2012 left off: “Just before LS1, we carried out a medical physics experiment on terbium, directed by Institut Laue-Langevin (link is external) (ILL) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (link is external) (PSI),” says Borge. “It involved in vivo studies of the use of terbium isotopes for both detecting and treating cancerous tumours. Generally, two different chemical elements are used for diagnosis and therapy. Using isotopes of a single chemical element could be very useful in improving the reliability of the process."

For the remainder of 2014, the ISOLDE programme is already very busy: almost 40 low-energy experiments are already planned between now and December. At the same time, the necessary infrastructure for the HIE-ISOLDE superconducting accelerator will continue to be installed. Its first cryomodule is due to be installed in spring 2015, ready for high-energy physics to begin in the autumn of the same year.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Related links:

ISOLDE experiment: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/isolde

Proton Synchrotron Booster’s: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/accelerators/proton-synchrotron-booster

MEDICIS project: http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2012/14/News%20Articles/1434420?ln=en

Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL): http://www.ill.eu/

Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI): http://www.psi.ch/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN / Anaïs Schaeffer.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

A Hellacious Two Weeks on Jupiter's Moon Io

W. M. KECK Observatory logo / GEMINI Observatory logo.

August 4, 2014

Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter's moon Io within a two-week period in August of last year. This led astronomers to speculate that such "outbursts," which can send material hundreds of miles above the surface, might be much more common than they thought.

"We typically expect one huge outburst every one or two years, and they're usually not this bright," said Imke de Pater, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of one of two papers describing the eruptions. "Here we had three extremely bright outbursts, which suggest that if we looked more frequently we might see many more of them on Io."

Io, the innermost of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons, is about 2,300 miles across (3,630 kilometers). Aside from Earth, it is the only known place in the solar system with volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava like that on Earth. Because of Io's low gravity, large eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space.

Image above: Jupiter’s moon Io saw three massive volcanic eruptions within a two-week period last August. This Aug. 29, 2013, outburst on Io was among the largest ever observed on the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Image Credit: Katherine de Kleer/UC Berkeley/Gemini Observatory.

De Pater's long-time colleague and coauthor Ashley Davies, a volcanologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said that the recent eruptions match past events that spewed tens of cubic miles of lava over hundreds of square miles in a short period of time.

"These new events are in a relatively rare class of eruptions on Io because of their size and astonishingly high thermal emission," Davies said. "The amount of energy being emitted by these eruptions implies lava fountains gushing out of fissures at a very large volume per second, forming lava flows that quickly spread over the surface of Io."

All three events, including the largest, most powerful eruption of the trio on Aug. 29, 2013, were likely characterized by “curtains of fire” as lava blasted out of fissures perhaps several miles long.

The papers, one with lead author Katherine de Kleer, a UC Berkeley graduate student, and coauthored by UC Berkeley research astronomer Máté Ádámkovics, and the other coauthored by Ádámkovics and David R. Ciardi of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute/California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, have been accepted for publication in the journal Icarus.

Ciardi is an astronomer who studies exoplanets, but while imaging at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, he took infrared imaging for de Pater that was involved in this research.

“I saw this as a nice opportunity to more closely connect one end of solar system formation/evolution to another,” he said. “Understanding our solar system will help understand all the other systems we are finding and vice versa.”

Images above: These images show Jupiter’s moon Io obtained at different infrared wavelengths (in microns, μm, or millionths of a meter) with the W. M. Keck Observatory's 10-meter Keck II telescope on Aug. 15, 2013 (a-c), and the Gemini North telescope on Aug. 29, 2013 (d). Image Credit: Imke de Pater and Katherine de Kleer/UC Berkeley/Gemini/Keck.

De Pater discovered the first two massive eruptions on Aug. 15, 2013, in Io’s southern hemisphere, using the near-infrared camera (NIRC2) coupled to the adaptive optics system on the Keck II telescope, one of two 10-meter telescopes operated by the Keck Observatory. The brightest, at a caldera named Rarog Patera, was calculated to have produced a 50-square-mile (130-square-kilometer), 30-foot-thick (10-meter) lava flow. The other eruption, close to another caldera called Heno Patera, produced flows covering 120 square miles (310 square kilometers).

De Pater discovered a third and even brighter eruption – one of the brightest ever seen on Io – on Aug. 29, using both the Near-Infrared Imager with adaptive optics on the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, and the SpeX near-infrared spectrometer on NASA's nearby Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). De Kleer used the fortuitous detection of this outburst simultaneously at Gemini and the IRTF to show that the eruption temperature is likely much higher than typical eruption temperatures on Earth today, "indicative of a composition of the magma that on Earth only occurred in our planet’s formative years," she said.

Davies has developed models to predict the volume of magma erupted based on spectroscopic observations. "This will help us understand the processes that helped shape the surfaces of all the terrestrial planets, including Earth, and the moon."

Image above: Image of Io taken by Galileo probe showing dark spot produced by an eruption in Pillan Patera in 1997. Image Credits: NASA/JPL.

Volcanoes were first discovered on Io in 1979, and subsequent studies by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which first flew by Io in 1996, and ground-based telescopes show that eruptions and lava fountains occur constantly, creating rivers and lakes of lava. Only 13 large eruptions were observed between 1978 and 2006, in part because only a handful of astronomers, de Pater among them, regularly scan the moon.

The eruptions on Io are likely similar to those that shaped the surfaces of inner solar system planets such as Earth and Venus in their youth.

"We are using Io as a volcanic laboratory, where we can look back into the past of the terrestrial planets to get a better understanding of how these large eruptions took place, and how fast and how long they lasted," Davies said.

In a third paper accepted by Icarus, de Pater, Davies and their colleagues summarize a decade of Io observations with the Keck II and Gemini telescopes. Their map of the surface of Io pinpointed more than two dozen hot spots whose spatial distribution changed significantly between 2001 and 2010.

The team hopes that monitoring Io's surface annually will reveal the style of volcanic eruptions there, constrain the magma composition, and accurately map the spatial distribution of the heat flow and potential variations over time. This information is essential to better understand the physical processes involved in the heating and cooling processes on Io, de Pater said.

The work is funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA's Outer Planets Research and Planetary Geology and Geophysics Programs. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. JPL managed the Galileo mission for NASA.

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / Elizabeth Landau / Gemini Observatory / Peter Michaud / W. M. Keck Observatory / Steve Jefferson / University of California, Berkeley / Robert Sanders.

For more information about KECK Observatory, visit: http://www.keckobservatory.org/

For more information about GEMINI Observatory, visit: http://www.gemini.edu/

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

United Launch Alliance Successfully Launches Two Rockets in Just Four Days

ULA - Atlas V / GPS IIF-7 Launch poster.


Aug. 2, 2014

Image above: A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the seventh Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF (GPS IIF-7) satellite.

A United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying the seventh Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF (GPS IIF-7) satellite for the U.S. Air Force launched at 11:23 p.m. EDT yesterday from Space Launch Complex-41. This is the second successful ULA launch in just four days.

“Congratulations to the U.S. Air Force and all of our mission partners on the successful launch of the Atlas V carrying the GPS IIF-7 satellite,” said Jim Sponnick, ULA vice president, Atlas and Delta Programs. “ULA launch vehicles have delivered all of the current generation of GPS satellites, which are providing ever-improving capabilities for users around the world.”

Atlas V GPS IIF-7 Launch Highlights

This mission was launched aboard an Atlas V Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) 401 configuration vehicle, which includes a 4-meter-diameter payload fairing.  The Atlas booster for this mission was powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine, and the Centaur upper stage was powered by a single Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10A engine.

“This launch marks the third time this year ULA has successfully launched two missions within a week,” said Sponnick “The ULA team’s focus on mission success, one launch at a time, allows us to be ready when our customers are ready to launch.”

GPS IIF-7 is the seventh in a series of next-generation GPS satellites and will join a worldwide timing and navigation system utilizing 24 satellites in six different planes, with a minimum of four satellites per plane positioned in orbit approximately 11,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. The GPS IIF series provides improved accuracy and enhanced performance for GPS users.

GPS satellite

ULA's next launch is the Atlas V WorldView-3 mission for DigitalGlobe scheduled for Aug. 13 from Space Launch Complex-3 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The EELV program was established by the United States Air Force to provide assured access to space for Department of Defense and other government payloads. The commercially developed EELV program supports the full range of government mission requirements, while delivering on schedule and providing significant cost savings over the heritage launch systems. 

With more than a century of combined heritage, United Launch Alliance is the nation’s most experienced and reliable launch service provider. ULA has successfully delivered more than 80 satellites to orbit that provide critical capabilities for troops in the field, aid meteorologists in tracking severe weather, enable personal device-based GPS navigation and unlock the mysteries of our solar system. ULA – Bringing rocket science down to Earth.

For more information on ULA, visit the ULA website at http://www.ulalaunch.com

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ULA / The Gunter Space Page.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s MESSENGER Spacecraft: 10 Years in Space

NASA - MESSENGER Mission to Mercury patch.

August 1, 2014

Ten years ago, on August 3, 2004, NASA’s MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a risky mission that would take the small satellite dangerously close to Mercury’s surface, paving the way for an ambitious study of the planet closest to the Sun.

The spacecraft traveled 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion kilometers) — a journey that included 15 trips around the Sun and flybys of Earth once, Venus twice, and Mercury three times — before it was inserted into orbit around its target planet in 2011.

MESSENGER Flies Over Mercury

Video above: In celebration of the 10th anniversary of its launch, the MESSENGER team released this movie showing a flyover of Mercury. The movie is sped up by a factor of seven for ease of viewing. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

“We have operated successfully in orbit for more than three Earth years and more than 14 Mercury years as we celebrate this amazing 10th anniversary milestone,” said MESSENGER Mission Operations Manager Andy Calloway, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). “The MESSENGER spacecraft operates in one of the most challenging and demanding space environments in our Solar System, and we have met that challenge directly through innovation and hard work, as exemplified by the stunning discoveries and data return achievements. Our only regret is that we have insufficient propellant to operate another 10 years, but we look forward to the incredible science returns planned for the final eight months of the mission.”

MESSENGER is only the second spacecraft sent to Mercury. Mariner 10 flew past it three times in 1974 and 1975 and gathered detailed data on less than half the surface. MESSENGER took advantage of an ingenious trajectory design, lightweight materials, and miniaturization of electronics, all developed in the three decades since Mariner 10 flew past Mercury.

Image above: MESSENGER captured the images in the flyover movie during this flight path over Mercury's north polar region. Image Credit: NASA.

“It was quite challenging to design and execute a trajectory that could culminate in Mercury orbit,” said Mission and Spacecraft Systems Engineer Dan O’Shaughnessy, of APL. “Designing an attendant spacecraft that was light enough to carry the necessary propellant to execute such a trajectory with enough room left over for a payload capable of global characterization of the planet is an impressive accomplishment.”

Additionally, he said, “the team’s concept of operations that streamlines planning while optimizing the use of our payload — despite substantial thermal and power constraints — is an amazing feat.”

MESSENGER Deputy Principal Investigator Larry Nittler, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said that the mission has rewritten scientists’ understanding of the planet “and given us plenty of surprises.”

“Geochemical measurements have revealed a surface poor in iron, but rich in moderately volatile elements such as sulfur and sodium,” said Nittler. “These results rule out some long-standing theories put forward to explain Mercury’s anomalously high density compared with the other planets in the inner solar system,” he explained. “Maps of elemental abundances show that the interior is highly chemically heterogeneous, providing important clues to the early geological history of the planet.”

Image above: A closeup view from the 50 meters per pixel strip of images MESSENGER took during it's flyover of Mercury's north polar region. Image Credit: NASA.

View Full Flyover Image Strip: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/MESSENGER_flyover_movie_mosaicstrip_50mpp.jpg

“MESSENGER observations have also shown that Mercury’s surface was shaped by volcanic activity, identified unique landforms shaped by loss of volatile materials, and confirmed the presence of large amounts of water ice protected from the Sun’s heat within permanently shadowed impact craters near the planet’s poles,  said Nittler.

“We have found that the complex interplay of the interplanetary magnetic field with that of Mercury results in a remarkably dynamic electromagnetic environment surrounding the planet, including unexplained bursts of electrons and highly variable distributions of different elements in the thin exosphere,” Nittler added. “Over the next few months, MESSENGER will observe Mercury at lower altitudes and thus smaller spatial scales than ever before, and this is sure to result both in exciting scientific discoveries and new puzzles about our solar system’s enigmatic innermost planet.”

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of its launch, the MESSENGER team has released a movie acquired during an early stage of MESSENGER’s low-altitude campaign. The movie provides a bird’s-eye view of what the spacecraft sees as it flies over the planet at close range and was assembled from 214 images taken by the narrow-angle camera (NAC) on June 8, 2014. The NAC’s field of view looked toward the horizon along the direction of MESSENGER's motion as the probe crossed the terminator into night.

Image above: Infographic with statistics on the MESSENGER mission. Image Credit: NASA.

“This view is what a traveler on the MESSENGER spacecraft might see during low-altitude operations in the coming year,” noted MESSENGER Co-Investigator Scott Murchie of APL. “During the final phase of its mission, MESSENGER's science instruments will use low-altitude operations like this to explore the surface and subsurface of Mercury at unprecedented resolution.”

The image frames were taken once per second while MESSENGER was at altitudes ranging from 115 to 165 kilometers, traveling at a speed of 3.7 kilometers per second relative to the surface. The movie is sped up by a factor of six for ease of viewing.

The images have resolutions ranging from 21 to 45 meters/pixel. Higher-resolution images of Mercury’s surface are possible if the camera is pointed directly below the spacecraft rather than looking to the horizon, and such operations will be the routine approach for low-altitude imaging in the coming year. The movie starts in the far north, east of the large crater Gaudí, passes over two unnamed craters just north of the crater Yoshikawa, over the large impact basin Lismer, north of the crater Van Dijck, and ends in the plains between the craters Nizami and Jókai. Many craters in this polar region are believed to host water ice in their permanently shadowed interiors.

“Our spacecraft team is delighted to celebrate the 10th anniversary of MESSENGER’s launch,” adds MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “In the past decade, observations by our resilient probe have deepened our understanding of both rocky planets and the dynamics of the inner heliosphere. As the new video demonstrates, however, some of the most exciting observations from the mission are still to come. We can expect new surprises as we view the innermost planet and its environment from closer range than ever before achieved by spacecraft.”

For more information about MESSENGER Mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Rosetta’s Comet: Imaging the Coma

ESA - Rosetta Mission logo.

1 August 2014

Less than a week before Rosetta's rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, images obtained by OSIRIS, the spacecraft's onboard scientific imaging system, show clear signs of a coma surrounding the comet's nucleus.

A new image from July 25, 2014, clearly reveals an extended coma shrouding 67P's nucleus. "Our coma images cover an area of 150 by 150 square kilometers (90 by 90 square miles)," said Luisa Lara from the Institute of Astrophysics in Andalusia, Spain. Most likely these images show only the inner part of the coma, where particle densities are highest. Scientist expect that 67P's full coma actually reaches much farther.

Image above: The nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimernko as seen by Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument from a distance of 1,210 miles (1,950 kilometers) on July 29, 2014. Image Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM.

In the current image, the hazy, bright, circular structure to the right of the comet's nucleus is an artifact of the OSIRIS optical system. The center of the image located around the position of the nucleus is overexposed here.

Other new images of the comet's nucleus confirm the collar-like appearance of the neck region, which appears brighter than most parts of the comet's body and head. Possible explanations range from differences in material or grain size to topological effects.

Image above: This Rosetta OSIRIS image of the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken on July 25, 2014. It covers an area about 90 miles (150 kilometers) across. Image Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM.

Rosetta is a European Space Agency mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.

The scientific imaging system, OSIRIS, was built by a consortium led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Germany) in collaboration with Center of Studies and Activities for Space, University of Padua (Italy), the Astrophysical Laboratory of Marseille (France), the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, CSIC (Spain), the Scientific Support Office of the European Space Agency (Netherlands), the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (Spain), the Technical University of Madrid (Spain), the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Uppsala University (Sweden) and the Institute of Computer and Network Engineering of the TU Braunschweig (Germany). OSIRIS was financially supported by the national funding agencies of Germany (DLR), France (CNES), Italy (ASI), Spain, and Sweden and the ESA Technical Directorate.

Rosetta's Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by DLR, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, CNES and ASI. Rosetta will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the sun, and deploy a lander to its surface.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, a division of the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena, manages the U.S. participation in the Rosetta mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Rosetta carries three NASA instruments in its 21-instrument payload.

For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit: http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov

More information about Rosetta is available at: http://www.esa.int/rosetta

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Dwayne Brown / JPL / Preston Dyches / European Space Agency / Markus Bauer / Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research / Birgit Krummheuer.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch