Curiosity Mars Rover Begins Study of Ridge Destination

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) logo.

July 12, 2017

The car-size NASA rover on a Martian mountain, Curiosity, has begun its long-anticipated study of an iron-bearing ridge forming a distinctive layer on the mountain's slope.

Since before Curiosity's landing five years ago next month, this feature has been recognized as one of four unique terrains on lower Mount Sharp and therefore a key mission destination. Curiosity's science team informally named it "Vera Rubin Ridge" this year, commemorating astronomer Vera Cooper Rubin (1928-2016).

View Toward 'Vera Rubin Ridge' on Mount Sharp, Mars

Image above: This early 2017 look ahead from the Mastcam of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover includes four geological layers to be examined by the mission, and higher reaches of Mount Sharp beyond the planned study area. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

"Our Vera Rubin Ridge campaign has begun," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Curiosity is driving parallel to the ridge, below it, observing it from different angles as we work our way toward a safe route to the top of the ridge."

A major appeal of the ridge is an iron-oxide mineral, hematite, which can form under wet conditions and reveal information about ancient environments. Hematite-bearing rocks elsewhere on Mars were the scientific basis for choosing the 2004 landing site of an older and still-active rover, Opportunity. Studies of Mount Sharp with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, identified hematite in the ridge and also mapped water-related clay and sulfate minerals in layers just above it.

Wide 'Vera Rubin Ridge' Ahead of Curiosity Mars Rover

Image above: This panorama from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows details of "Vera Rubin Ridge," which stretches about 4 miles (6.5 kilometers), end-to-end, on the northwestern flank of lower Mount Sharp. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Vera Rubin Ridge stands about eight stories tall, with a trough behind it where clay minerals await. Curiosity is now near the downhill face, which forms an impressive wall for much of the ridge's length of about 4 miles (6.5 kilometers).

"In this first phase of the campaign, we're studying the sedimentary structures in the wall," said JPL's Abigail Fraeman, a Curiosity science-team member who helped plan these observations.

'Ireson Hill' on Mount Sharp, Mars

Image above: This view from the Curiosity Mars rover's Mastcam shows a dark mound, called "Ireson Hill," which rises about 16 feet above redder layered outcrop material on lower Mount Sharp, Mars, near a location where Curiosity examined a linear sand dune in February 2017. Image Credits:NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

This summer's investigations also seek information about the boundary zone between the material that makes up the ridge and the geological unit that Curiosity has been studying since late 2014: the Murray formation of lower Mount Sharp, which holds evidence of ancient lakes. The Murray formation has variable levels of hematite, but whether the hematite in it and in the ridge accumulated under similar environmental conditions is unknown. The planned ascent route will provide access to closer inspection of the hematite-bearing rocks.

"We want to determine the relationship between the conditions that produced the hematite and the conditions under which the rock layers of the ridge were deposited," Fraeman said. "Were they deposited by wind, or in a lake, or some other setting? Did the hematite form while the sediments accumulated, or later, from fluids moving through the rock?"

'Nathan Bridges Dune' on a Martian Mountain

Image above: A rippled linear dune of dark Martian sand, "Nathan Bridges Dune," dominates this full-circle panorama from the Mastcam of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.

Deciphering the history of the ridge's hematite may shed light on whether the freshwater environments that deposited the layers of the older Murray formation were turning more acidic by the time the layers of the ridge formed. The mission also will be watching for clues about whether a gradient in oxidation levels was present, as that could have provided a potential energy source for microbial life.

Terrain near the base of the ridge is rife with boulders and sand, creating challenging conditions for navigation, as well as opportunities to add to the mission's studies of sand dunes and ripples. The largest sand dunes were at lower elevations, including a linear dune informally named "Nathan Bridges Dune" in memory of Nathan Bridges (1966-2017), a Curiosity team member who helped lead the mission's dune studies.

Mid-2017 Map of NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Mission

Image above: This map shows the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, from the location where it landed in August 2012 to its location in July 2017 (Sol 1750), and its planned path to additional geological layers of lower Mount Sharp. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

During the first year after its landing on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, EDT and Universal Time), the Curiosity mission accomplished a major goal by determining that billions of years ago, a Martian lake offered conditions that would have been favorable for microbial life. Curiosity has since traversed through a diversity of environments where both water and wind have left their imprint. The upcoming exploration of Vera Rubin Ridge and the higher clay and sulfate layers provides opportunities to learn even more about the history and habitability of ancient Mars. For more about Curiosity, visit: https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

Status of Curiosity's Drill

The rover team will not have Curiosity's rock sampling drill available in the first phase of studying "Vera Rubin Ridge." The drill feed mechanism, which moves the bit forward or back, faulted on Dec. 1, 2016, and no rocks have been drilled since then. While continuing to test possible ways to move the bit with the drill feed mechanism, rover engineers are also now studying alternative ways to drill. For the 15 rocks that Curiosity has sampled with its drill so far, two stabilizer posts, one to each side of the bit, were placed against the rock before the bit was extended with the feed mechanism.

"We are investigating methods to drill without using the stabilizers," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Steve Lee, of JPL. "Instead of using the feed mechanism to drive the bit into the rock, we may be able to use motion of the arm to drive the bit into the rock." Adaptation in delivering the resulting rock powder to laboratory instruments is also under study, such as use of the arm's soil scoop.

Related links:

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO): https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/

Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars: http://crism.jhuapl.edu/

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

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Magnetic Cell Studies and AC Repairs on Orbit Today

ISS - Expedition 52 Mission patch.

July 11, 2017

International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA

The orbiting Expedition 52 trio continued exploring magnetized cell structures today and worked on advanced repair tasks. Also, a new crew is in Moscow getting ready for its launch in less than three weeks.

Astronaut Peggy Whitson was back at work Tuesday running the Mag 3D cell culturing experiment all day. She peered at magnetic three-dimensional cell cultures through a microscope, specifically looking at the borders of the biocell structures. The biocells were then stowed in a science freezer before being injected with magnetic 3D culture media. Mag 3D observations may improve cell and tissue culture capabilities and research on orbit.

Image above: Expedition 52 flight engineers Paolo Nespoli, left, Sergey Ryazanskiy, center, and Randy Bresnik visit Red Square prepare to lay roses at the site where Russian space icons are interred as part of traditional pre-launch ceremonies. Photo Credits: (NASA/Bill Ingalls).

Though the space station is an orbiting laboratory, it is also a home that needs regular maintenance. Flight Engineer Jack Fischer put on his repairman’s hat today replacing a failed water separator inside the Tranquility module. The water separator is part of the Common Cabin Air Assembly that controls the station’s temperature and humidity.

Three upcoming station crew members are spending their final week in Moscow before heading to the launch site in Kazakhstan on Sunday. The experienced space trio will launch to space aboard the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft July 28 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Expedition 52-53 crew members Randy Bresnik, Paolo Nespoli and Sergey Ryazanskiy will live aboard the station for 4-1/2 months.

Related links:

Expedition 52: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition52/index.html

Mag 3D experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1929.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Catherine Williams.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Hidden Stars May Make Planets Appear Smaller

NASA - Kepler Space Telescope patch.

July 11, 2017

In the search for planets similar to our own, an important point of comparison is the planet's density. A low density tells scientists a planet is more likely to be gaseous like Jupiter, and a high density is associated with rocky planets like Earth. But a new study suggests some are less dense than previously thought because of a second, hidden star in their systems.

As telescopes stare at particular patches of sky, they can't always differentiate between one star and two. A system of two closely orbiting stars may appear in images as a single point of light, even from sophisticated observatories such as NASA's Kepler space telescope. This can have significant consequences for determining the sizes of planets that orbit just one of these stars, says a forthcoming study in the Astronomical Journal by Elise Furlan of Caltech/IPAC-NExScI in Pasadena, California, and Steve Howell at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

Image above: This cartoon explains why the reported sizes of some exoplanets may need to be revised in cases where there is a second star in the system. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

"Our understanding of how many planets are small like Earth, and how many are big like Jupiter, may change as we gain more information about the stars they orbit," Furlan said. "You really have to know the star well to get a good handle on the properties of its planets."

Some of the most well-studied planets outside our solar system -- or exoplanets -- are known to orbit lone stars. We know Kepler-186f, an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of its star, orbits a star that has no companion (the habitable zone is the distance at which a rocky planet could support liquid water on its surface). TRAPPIST-1, the ultra-cool dwarf star that is home to seven Earth-size planets, does not have a companion either. That means there is no second star complicating the estimation of the planets' diameters, and therefore their densities.

But other stars have a nearby companion, high-resolution imaging has recently revealed. David Ciardi, chief scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) at Caltech, led a large-scale effort to follow up on stars that Kepler had studied using a variety of ground-based telescopes. This, combined with other research, has confirmed that many of the stars where Kepler found planets have binary companions. In some cases, the diameters of the planets orbiting these stars were calculated without taking the companion star into consideration. That means estimates for their sizes should be smaller, and their densities higher, than their true values. 

Previous studies determined that roughly half of all the sun-like stars in our sun's neighborhood have a companion within 10,000 astronomical units (an astronomical unit is equal to the average distance between the sun and Earth, 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers). Based on this, about 15 percent of stars in the Kepler field could have a bright, close companion -- meaning planets around these stars may be less dense than previously thought.

The Transit Problem for Binaries

When a telescope spots a planet crossing in front of its star -- an event called a "transit" -- astronomers measure the resulting apparent decrease in the star's brightness. The amount of light blocked during a transit depends on the size of the planet -- the bigger the planet, the more light it blocks, and the greater the dimming that is observed. Scientists use this information to determine the radius -- half the diameter -- of the planet.

If there are two stars in the system, the telescope measures the combined light of both stars. But a planet orbiting one of these stars will cause just one of them to dim. So, if you don't know that there is a second star, you will underestimate the size of the planet.

For example, if a telescope observes that a star dims by 5 percent, scientists would determine the transiting planet's size relative to that one star. But if a second star adds its light, the planet must be larger to cause the same amount of dimming.

If the planet orbits the brighter star in a binary pair, most of the light in the system comes from that star anyway, so the second star won't have a big effect on the planet's calculated size. But if the planet orbits the fainter star, the larger, primary star contributes more light to the system, and the correction to the calculated planet radius can be large -- it could double, triple or increase even more. This will affect how the planet's orbital distance is calculated, which could impact whether the planet is found to be in the habitable zone.

If the stars are roughly equal in brightness, the "new" radius of the planet is about 40 percent larger than if the light were assumed to come from a single star. Because density is calculated using the cube of the radius, this would mean a nearly three-fold decrease in density. The impact of this correction is most significant for smaller planets because it means a planet that had once been considered rocky could, in fact, be gaseous.

The New Study

In the new study, Furlan and Howell focused on 50 planets in the Kepler observatory's field of view whose masses and radii were previously estimated. These planets all orbit stars that have stellar companions within about 1,700 astronomical units. For 43 of the 50 planets, previous reports of their sizes did not take into account the contribution of light from a second star. That means a revision to their reported sizes is necessary.

Kepler Space Telescope. Animation Credit: NASA

In most cases, the change to the planets' reported sizes would be small. Previous research showed that 24 of the 50 planets orbit the bigger, brighter star in a binary pair. Moreover, Furlan and Howell determined that 11 of these planets would be too large to be planets if they orbited the fainter companion star. So, for 35 of the 50 planets, the published sizes will not change substantially.

But for 15 of the planets, they could not determine whether they orbit the fainter or the brighter star in a binary pair. For five of the 15 planets, the stars in question are of roughly equal brightness, so their densities will decrease substantially regardless of which star they orbit.

This effect of companion stars is important for scientists characterizing planets discovered by Kepler, which has found thousands of exoplanets. It will also be significant for NASA's upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which will look for small planets around nearby, bright stars and small, cool stars.

"In further studies, we want to make sure we are observing the type and size of planet we believe we are," Howell said. "Correct planet sizes and densities are critical for future observations of high-value planets by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. In the big picture, knowing which planets are small and rocky will help us understand how likely we are to find planets the size of our own elsewhere in the galaxy."

Related links:

Astronomical Journal: https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.01942

Kepler and K2: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html

For more information about exoplanets, visit: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Martin Perez/JPL/Elizabeth Landau.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Juno Spacecraft Completes Flyby over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

NASA - JUNO Mission logo.

July 11, 2017

Image above: This illustration depicts NASA's Juno spacecraft soaring over Jupiter’s south pole. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

NASA's Juno mission completed a close flyby of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot on July 10, during its sixth science orbit.

All of Juno's science instruments and the spacecraft's JunoCam were operating during the flyby, collecting data that are now being returned to Earth. Juno's next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on Sept. 1.

Raw images from the spacecraft’s latest flyby will be posted in coming days.

"For generations people from all over the world and all walks of life have marveled over the Great Red Spot," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "Now we are finally going to see what this storm looks like up close and personal."

Image above: This illustration depicts NASA's Juno spacecraft in orbit above Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The Great Red Spot is a 10,000-mile-wide (16,000-kilometer-wide) storm that has been monitored since 1830 and has possibly existed for more than 350 years. In modern times, the Great Red Spot has appeared to be shrinking.

Juno reached perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter's center) on July 10 at 6:55 p.m. PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops. Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno had covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers), and was passing directly above the coiling crimson cloud tops of the Great Red Spot. The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the clouds of this iconic feature.

On July 4 at 7:30 p.m. PDT (10:30 p.m. EDT), Juno logged exactly one year in Jupiter orbit, marking 71 million miles (114.5 million kilometers) of travel around the giant planet.

Image above: Measuring in at 10,159 miles (16,350 kilometers) in width (as of April 3, 2017) Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is 1.3 times as wide as Earth. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Christopher Go.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Early science results from NASA's Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena. More information on the Juno mission is available at: https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.org

The public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

https://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno

https://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Martin Perez/JPL/DC Agle.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Accelerating particles - but not just for the LHC

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

July 10, 2017

Image above: Distribution of protons delivered by the accelerator chain to the different installations. (Image: Daniel Dominguez/CERN).

This week, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was in technical stop, but particles continued to circulate in the other accelerators. This is because the chain of four injectors that feed the LHC also supplies particles to myriad experiments across several experimental areas.

In fact, even when the LHC is running, the other experimental areas consume almost all the particles, as the diagram shows. The large collider uses less than 0.1% of the protons prepared by the injector chain. That’s primarily because the LHC is a storage ring: the same beams circulate in the ring for hours at a time, producing collisions with every circuit they complete. That’s not the case for CERN’s other machines, which send beams to fixed targets – an operation that has to be repeated every time data is taken.

All the protons start their journey in the linear accelerator Linac2, before being launched at a third of the speed of light into the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). At that point, their paths diverge.

Image above: The journey of protons begins in the linear accelerator Linac 2, where they are boosted to one third of the speed of light.(Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN).

More than half of the protons are sent to ISOLDE, a nuclear physics research facility. ISOLDE supplies various experimental areas hosting numerous experiments each year in fields ranging from fundamental physics to materials sciences and the production of isotopes for medical applications. Last year, ISOLDE supplied particles to 46 experiments.

The remainder of the particles leaving the PS Booster go to the Proton Synchrotron (PS), which supplies three other experimental areas: the Antiproton Decelerator (AD), used for antimatter experiments, the East Area, which notably is home to the CLOUD experiment dedicated to studying the formation of clouds, and finally n_TOF, another nuclear physics facility.

Image above: Miniball, one of the experimental set-ups of the nuclear research facility ISOLDE. The Isotope Mass Separator On-Line facility (ISOLDE) uses more than a half of the protons prepared in the CERN accelerator complex to carry out numerous experiments in fields ranging from fundamental physics to materials sciences and the production of isotopes for medical applications. (Image: Julien Ordan / CERN).

The PS sends a small portion of its protons to the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), which in turn sends most of them to the North Area, where several fixed-target experiments including COMPASS and NA62 take data. Thus, in the end, the LHC receives only a tiny proportion of the particles that started the journey.

In 2016, CERN’s accelerator complex accelerated 134 billion billion protons (1.34 x 1020). This number corresponds to a minuscule quantity of matter, roughly equivalent to the number of protons in a grain of sand, but protons are so small that this amount is enough to supply all the experiments.

Image above: The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) is the last link in the accelerators chain before the LHC. It also feeds the North Area where a test hall for future equipment is located and where several experiments take data. (Image: Piotr Traczyk/CERN).

The LHC will resume operation tonight. After a week-end of tuning, the LHC physics programme should restart on Monday.

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 22 Member States.

Related links:

Large Hadron Collider (LHC): http://home.cern/topics/large-hadron-collider

Linac2: http://home.cern/about/accelerators/linear-accelerator-2

Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB): http://home.cern/about/accelerators/proton-synchrotron-booster

ISOLDE: http://home.cern/about/experiments/isolde

Proton Synchrotron (PS): http://home.cern/about/accelerators/proton-synchrotron

Antiproton Decelerator (AD): http://home.cern/about/accelerators/antiproton-decelerator

CLOUD experiment: http://home.cern/about/experiments/cloud

n_TOF: http://home.cern/about/experiments/ntof

Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS): http://home.cern/about/accelerators/super-proton-synchrotron

COMPASS: http://home.cern/about/experiments/compass

NA62: http://home.cern/about/experiments/na62

For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: http://home.cern/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Corinne Pralavorio.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Crew Starts Week with Emergency Drill and Magnetic Cell Study

ISS - Expedition 52 Mission patch.


July 10, 2017

The three Expedition 52 crew members practiced evacuating the International Space Station today in the unlikely event of an emergency. The trio also set up an advanced life science study and continued the upkeep of the orbital complex.

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin joined Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer for an emergency evacuation drill Monday morning. The crew practiced quickly donning safety gear and entering the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft before simulating an emergency undocking and descent to Earth.

Afterward, Whitson spent the rest of the day exploring magnetic cell cultures and bio-printing for the Mag 3D experiment. The new research which just started in April is exploring how magnetic tools may enhance cell and tissue culture capabilities on orbit.

Fischer pressurized the Japanese Kibo lab’s airlock and checked for leaks ahead of an external experiment set to begin next week. Fischer later worked on light plumbing duties and checked on the condition of a science freezer.

Image above: Expedition 52 flight engineers Paolo Nespoli, left, Sergey Ryazanskiy, center, and Randy Bresnik visit Red Square to lay roses at the site where Russian space icons are interred as part of traditional pre-launch ceremonies on July 10 in Moscow. Photo Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

Back on Earth, another three Expedition 52 crew members are getting ready for their July 28 launch to the space station. The experienced space trio of Randy Bresnik, Paolo Nespoli and Sergey Ryazanskiy, visited Red Square in Moscow for traditional ceremonies on Monday. They will head to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan July 16 for final pre-launch training.

Related links:

Expedition 52: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition52/index.html

Mag 3D experiment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1929.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Catherine Williams.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Weekly Recap From the Expedition Lead Scientist, week of July 3, 2017

ISS - Expedition 52 Mission patch.

July 10, 2017

(Highlights: Week of July 3, 2017) - The week on the International Space Station began with the safe return of the SpaceX-11 Dragon spacecraft to Earth on July 3, and concluded with an investigation into new methods to keep astronauts safe on long space voyages.

Crew members changed the filter on the Long Duration Sorbent Testbed (LDST) which scientists are using to create a more efficient life support system for long-duration, crewed space missions. A silica gel is currently used on the space station to remove humidity or water from the air, which allows life support hardware to more efficiently filter out carbon dioxide. The CO2 is processed with filtered hydrogen from the oxygen generator, converting the two waste products into water, a precious commodity in space.

Image above: International Space Station crew members captured this image looking back at the southern part of Africa as the station crossed into night on July 4. The edge of the atmosphere can clearly be seen above the curve of Earth. Image Credit: NASA.

After a year, that silica gel loses up to 75 percent of its capacity to absorb water, making it necessary to replace it. This investigation is studying 12 potential replacements for the gel to determine which would be most effective for use on long-duration missions. Data from the study will help determine the best material to use to build better filters, which would reduce the number of replacements sent on deep-space missions, leaving more cargo space available for other payloads. Ground crews will conduct a similar experiment in a laboratory on Earth using the same materials for comparison.

A fresh hard drive was installed to record new images taken for the Meteor Composition Determination (Meteor) investigation. Scientists use a spectrograph to analyze high-resolution video and photos of space rocks falling through Earth's atmosphere to determine the chemical composition of these meteors.

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon capsule begins its descent toward the Pacific Ocean July 3 soon after release from the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA.

Meteors are relatively rare, and are difficult to monitor from the ground because of the interference created by Earth’s atmosphere. Investigating the elemental composition of meteors is important to our understanding of how planets developed. Continuous measurement of meteors and their interaction with Earth's atmosphere could help spot previously undetected or unnoticed meteors as they descended toward the ground. The investigation is installed in the station's Window Observational Research Facility (WORF).

The station crew began thawing out cell cultures to begin a new investigation in microgravity. In space, these cultures will already spontaneously grow in three dimensions. Magnetic 3D Cell Culture for Biological Research in Microgravity (Magnetic 3D Cell Culturing) uses magnetized cells and tools to make it easier to handle microscopic cultures and observe how they grow and function while testing new technology to improve the ability to reproduce experiments and confirm results.

Image above: The Japanese Experiment Module-Small Satellite Orbital Deployer (J-SSOD) on the space station releases small cubesats for Japan, Ghana, Mongolia, Bangladesh and Nigeria. The satellites – no larger than a loaf of bread – are part of a multi-national project for non-space faring countries. Image Credit: NASA.

If this technology proves successful, it may be possible to observe cell cultures on the ground using magnetic tools to levitate them and see them from all angles. Capturing this information in space and on Earth could potentially accelerate drug development and reduce costs.

Other investigations showing progress this week included Genes In Space-3, Rodent Research-5, Fine Motor Skills, Habitability, and Fluid Shifts.

Space to Ground: Celebrating Freedom: 07/07/2017

Video above: NASA's Space to Ground is a weekly update on what is happening on the International Space Station. Social media users can post with #spacetoground to ask questions or make a comment. Video Credit: NASA.

Related links:

Long Duration Sorbent Testbed (LDST): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/long_duration_sorbent_testbed

Meteor Composition Determination (Meteor): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1323.html

Window Observational Research Facility (WORF): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/358.html

Magnetic 3D Cell Culturing: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1929.html

Genes In Space-3: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2461.html

Rodent Research-5: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2283.html

Fine Motor Skills: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1767.html

Habitability: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1772.html

Fluid Shifts: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1257.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Kristine Rainey/Jorge Sotomayor, Lead Increment Scientist Expeditions 51 & 52.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch