Young, Hot and Blue

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

27 March 2013

Stars in the cluster NGC 2547

Young stars in the open star cluster NGC 2547

This pretty sprinkling of bright blue stars is the cluster NGC 2547, a group of recently formed stars in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). This image was taken using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The Universe is an old neighbourhood — roughly 13.8 billion years old. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is also ancient — some of its stars are more than 13 billion years old (eso0425*). Nevertheless, there is still a lot of action: new objects form and others are destroyed. In this image, you can see some of the newcomers, the young stars forming the cluster NGC 2547.

The open star cluster NGC 2547 in the constellation of Vela

But, how young are these cosmic youngsters really? Although their exact ages remain uncertain, astronomers estimate that NGC 2547’s stars range from 20 to 35 million years old. That doesn't sound all that young, after all. However, our Sun is 4600 million years old and has not yet reached middle age. That means that if you imagine that the Sun as a 40 year-old person, the bright stars in the picture are three-month-old babies.

Most stars do not form in isolation, but in rich clusters with sizes ranging from several tens to several thousands of stars. While NGC 2547 contains many hot stars that glow bright blue, a telltale sign of their youth, you can also find one or two yellow or red stars which have already evolved to become red giants. Open star clusters like this usually only have comparatively short lives, of the order of several hundred million years, before they disintegrate as their component stars drift apart.

Wide-field view of the open star cluster NGC 2547

Clusters are key objects for astronomers studying how stars evolve through their lives. The members of a cluster were all born from the same material at about the same time, making it easier to determine the effects of other stellar properties.

The star cluster NGC 2547 lies in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail), about 1500 light-years from Earth, and is bright enough to be easily seen using binoculars. It was discovered in 1751 by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille during an astronomical expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, using a tiny telescope of less than two centimetres aperture.

Zooming into the open star cluster NGC 2547

Between the bright stars in this picture you can see plenty of other objects, especially when zooming in. Many are fainter or more distant stars in the Milky Way, but some, appearing as fuzzy extended objects, are galaxies, located millions of light-years beyond the stars in the field of view.

A close look at the young stars in the open star cluster NGC 2547

More information:

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

*eso0425: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0425/

Images, Text, Credits: ESO / Richard Hook / IAU and Sky & Telescope / Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin / Videos: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org) Music: movetwo.

For more information about the European Southern Observatory (ESO), visit: http://www.eso.org/public/

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

MAVEN Mars Magnetometer

NASA - MAVEN Mission logo labeled.

March 26, 2013

MAVEN spacecraft in orbit around Mars

When you navigate with a compass you can orient yourself thanks to Earth’s global magnetic field. But on Mars, if you were to walk around with a compass it would haphazardly point from one anomaly to another, because the Red Planet does not possess a global magnetosphere. Scientists think that this lack of a protective magnetic field may have allowed the solar wind to strip away the Martian atmosphere over billions of years, and now NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft will study this process in detail with its pair of ring core fluxgate magnetometers.

MAVEN Magnetometer

MAVEN’s dual magnetometers will allow scientists to study the interaction between the solar wind and the Martian atmosphere, giving us a better understanding of how Mars has evolved from a warm, wet climate to the cold, arid one we see today.

For more information about MAVEN mission, visit: http://science.nasa.gov/missions/maven/

NASA - Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.html

Image, Video, Text, Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Curiosity Resumes Science Investigations

NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.

March 26, 2013

This view of Curiosity's left-front and left-center wheels and of marks made by wheels on the ground in the "Yellowknife Bay" area comes from one of six cameras used on Mars for the first time more than six months after the rover landed. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has resumed science investigations after recovery from a computer glitch that prompted the engineers to switch the rover to a redundant main computer on Feb. 28.

The rover has been monitoring the weather since March 21 and delivered a new portion of powdered-rock sample for laboratory analysis on March 23, among other activities.

"We are back to full science operations," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The powder delivered on Saturday came from the rover's first full drilling into a rock to collect a sample. The new portion went into the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument inside the rover, which began analyzing this material and had previously analyzed other portions from the same drilling. SAM can analyze samples in several different ways, so multiple portions from the same drilling are useful.

The Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) is recording weather variables. The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is checking the natural radiation environment at the rover's location inside Gale Crater.

Like many spacecraft, Curiosity carries a pair of main computers, redundant to each other, to have a backup available if one fails. Each of the computers, A-side and B-side, also has other redundant subsystems linked to just that computer. Curiosity is now operating on its B-side, as it did during part of the flight from Earth to Mars. The A-side was most recently used starting a few weeks before landing and continuing until Feb. 28, when engineers commanded a switch to the B-side in response to a memory glitch on the A-side. The A-side now is available as a backup if needed.

Bluish Color in Broken Rock in 'Yellowknife Bay'

Image above: The Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity showed researchers interesting internal color in this rock called "Sutton_Inlier," which was broken by the rover driving over it. The Mastcam took this image during the 174th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Jan. 31, 2013). The rock is about 5 inches (12 centimeters) wide at the end closest to the camera. This view is calibrated to estimated "natural" color, or approximately what the colors would look like if we were to view the scene ourselves on Mars. The inside of the rock, which is in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Gale Crater, is much less red than typical Martian dust and rock surfaces, with a color verging on grayish to bluish. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ASU.

One aspect of ramping-up activities after switching to the B-side computer has been to check the six engineering cameras that are hard-linked to that computer. The rover's science instruments, including five science cameras, can each be operated by either the A-side or B-side computer, whichever is active. However, each of Curiosity's 12 engineering cameras is linked to just one of the computers. The engineering cameras are the Navigation Camera (Navcam), the Front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) and Rear Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Rear Hazcam). Each of those three named cameras has four cameras on it: two stereo pairs of cameras, with one pair linked to each computer. Only the pairs linked to the active computer can be used, and the A-side computer was active from before landing, in August, until Feb. 28.

"This was the first use of the B-side engineering cameras since April 2012, on the way to Mars," said JPL's Justin Maki, team lead for these cameras. "Now we've used them on Mars for the first time, and they've all checked out OK."

Rear view of Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) "Curiosity". Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Engineers quickly diagnosed a software issue that prompted Curiosity to put itself into a precautionary standby "safe mode" on March 16, and they know how to prevent it from happening again. The rover stayed on its B-side while it was in safe mode and subsequently as science activities resumed.

Upcoming activities include preparations for a moratorium on transmitting commands to Curiosity from April 4 to May 1, while Mars will be passing nearly directly behind the sun from Earth's perspective. The moratorium is a precaution against possible interference by the sun corrupting a command sent to the rover.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory project is using Curiosity and the rover's 10 science instruments to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA / JPL / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Dragon Spacecraft Returns to Earth

SpaceX - Commercial Resupply Services "Dragon" SpX-2 patch.

March 26, 2013

The SpaceX Dragon fired its engines for the last time Tuesday at 11:42 a.m. EDT sending it through the Earth’s atmosphere for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 12:34 p.m. A team of SpaceX engineers, technicians and divers will recover the vehicle and its scientific cargo off the coast of Baja, California, for the journey back to shore which will take about 30 hours.

Dragon's release from Canadarm2 occurred at 6:56 a.m. The Expedition 35 crew commanded the spacecraft to slowly depart from the International Space Station. Ground controllers earlier sent commands to the Canadarm2 to unberth Dragon from the Harmony node at 4:10 a.m.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft just prior to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: SpaceX

Dragon's return date, originally scheduled for March 25, was postponed due to inclement weather developing near its targeted splashdown site in the Pacific Ocean. The additional day spent attached to the orbiting laboratory will not affect science samples scheduled to return aboard the spacecraft. NASA Television will provide coverage of Dragon's departure beginning at 4 a.m. EDT.

The Dragon spacecraft launched atop the Falcon 9 rocket on the SpaceX-2 commercial resupply mission March 1 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Two days later Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn captured the Dragon just 32 feet away from the station with the Canadarm2. Ground controllers then took over Canadarm2 operations and berthed Dragon to the Harmony node.

Hatches to the commercial cargo craft were opened about four hours later beginning three weeks of cargo transfer activities. Station crew members swapped 1,200 pounds of cargo delivered to the station with 2,600 pounds of gear to be returned to Earth.

Read about the research gear delivered aboard Dragon: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/research_rides_dragon.html

Experiment gear and space hardware were delivered for NASA and its Russian, Canadian, European and Japanese space station partners. Over twice as much gear was returned including trash, station hardware and biological samples collected and stored in freezers during the course of research for analysis on the ground.

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon is unberthed from the station's Harmony node as the sun begins to rise over the Earth. Credit: NASA.

Dragon is the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return a significant amount of cargo to Earth. It returned about 2,668 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of science samples, equipment and education activities.

Investigations included among the returned cargo could aid in food production during future long-duration space missions and enhance crop production on Earth. Others could help in the development of more efficient solar cells, detergents and semiconductor-based electronics.

Among the returned investigations was the Coarsening in Solid-Liquid Mixtures (CSLM-3) experiment, which also launched to space aboard this Dragon. CLSM-3 studies how crystals known as dendrites form as a metal alloy becomes solid. The research could help engineers develop stronger materials for use in automobile, aircraft and spacecraft parts.

Dragon Released for Departure, Prepares for Splashdown

Dragon’s rendezvous with the station was delayed by a day after three of four thrusters did not fire as commanded. SpaceX engineers resolved the problem and continued Dragon’s mission to the station after consultation with NASA managers.

A third SpaceX commercial resupply services mission is targeted for launch at the end of September.

Dragon originally performed two demonstration flights, the first in December 2010 for just two orbits and the second in May 2012. The second Dragon demonstration mission actually arrived at the space station, delivered non-essential cargo and stayed for six days after three days of approach and rendezvous tests. Its first official resupply mission under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract was in October 2012 during Expedition 33 and lasted three weeks.

Watch an interview about the CSLM-3 experiment: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=161134741

View the SpaceX Dragon cargo manifest (PDF 93KB): http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/729030main_spacex_2_cargo_manifest.pdf

Images, Video, Text, Credits: SpaceX / NASA / NASA TV.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Successful liftoff of the ILS Proton M Breeze M rocket and the SatMex_8

ILS - SatMex_8 launch poster.


March 26, 2013

 Proton M Breeze M rocket launch

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 23:06:48 MSK (Moscow Time) 3:13 pm (GMT) from the launch complex of the platform 200, liftoff of the Proton M Breeze M rocket and the Satmex 8 satellite.

Launch of SatMex_8 on Proton-M

Successful liftoff of the ILS Proton M Breeze M rocket, which is carrying the Satmex 8 satellite onboard. The three stages of the proton vehicle have performed as planned, and it is up to the Breeze M upper stage to complete the mission.

The Satellite

    Satellite Operator: Satélites Mexicanos S.A. de C.V.
    Satellite Manufacturer: Space Systems/Loral
    Purpose: C- and Ku-band Services
    Platform: SS/L 1300
    Separated Mass: ~5,474 kg
    Satellite Design Life: 15 years

Satmex_8 satellite

Highlights

    1st Satmex Satellite Launched on ILS Proton
    78th ILS Proton Launch Overall
    1st ILS Proton Launch in 2013
    25th Space Systems/Loral Satellite Launched on ILS Proton

An International Launch Services Proton rocket with a Breeze M upper stage will deploy the Satmex 8 satellite. Satmex 8 will provide video distribution, broadband, cellular backhaul and distance learning services in North America and South America.

For more information about International Launch Services (ILS), visit: http://www.ilslaunch.com/

Roscosmos PAO press release: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=19977

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ILS / Roscosmos TV / ILS TV.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Martian treasure

ESA - Mars Express Mission patch.

March 25, 2013

Digging for Hidden Treasure on Mars

ESA’s Mars Express has spent nearly ten years imaging the Red Planet, and there are plenty of hidden treasures buried in the mission’s rich picture archive.

Noctis Labyrinthus mosaic

HRSCview is a web interface to the archive that offers a chance to browse and explore any region of the Red Planet through the eyes of Mars Express with images that have not necessarily been highlighted by formal media releases.

As Planetary Society blogger Bill Dunford puts it: “The glamour shots of the planets that space agencies release are always gorgeous…but sometimes it’s fun to wander out on your own.”

Indeed, Bill took a hike through the maze of valleys in the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars earlier this year using HRSCview as a tour guide, to produce this beautiful mosaic.

Noctis Labyrinthus context map

Noctis Labyrinthus, the ‘Labyrinth of the Night’, is on the western edge of Valles Marineris, the Grand Canyon of Mars. It was first captured by Mars Express in June 2006.

Noctis Labyrinthus is a complex tectonic region intimately linked to uplift of the nearby Tharsis volcanic region, home to the biggest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons.

As the Tharsis bulge swelled upwards, the planet’s crust stretched, resulting in parts of the surface fracturing along parallel fault lines, producing sunken features known as graben.

Some of the graben in this scene are heavily eroded, with rocky debris scattered at their bases. Younger formations are visible on the upper surfaces, with fault lines crossing each other in different directions, suggesting many episodes of tectonic stretching.

ESA's Mars Express

This scene is a composite of around half a dozen images. Bill selected the images he was interested in from HRSCview and stitched them together, filling in a few small gaps in the data by sampling the pixels immediately adjacent. He also brightened the resulting picture.

If you make an expedition through the martian landscape using HRSCview and create images like this, please share them with us via email (scicom[@]esa.int) or Twitter (@esascience). Who knows what treasures you may find?

Related links:

HRSCview: http://hrscview.fu-berlin.de/

Looking at Mars: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express

Mars Webcam: http://blogs.esa.int/vmc

Images Text, Credits: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum) / MOLA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CERN - LHC consolidations: A step-by-step guide

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

March 25, 2013

(Click on the image for enlarge)

Image above: Some of the main consolidation work to be carried out on the LHC during the long shutdown. (Image: CERN).

For its first three years of running, the Large Hadron Colllider (LHC) has been operating below its design capacity of 14 TeV.

Though the 27-kilometre collider provided enough collisions for CERN experiments to find a Higgs boson in 2012, due to the mechanical damage and helium leak of 2008, it has not yet reached its full potential.

The LHC is in its first long shutdown and undergoing a process called "consolidation," which means that engineers and maintenance crews are repairing and strengthening the accelerator elements in preparation for running at higher energy in 2015.

The Large Hadron Collider "LHC" (red circle). Credit: Orbiter.ch Aerospace - Flight Dept.

Over the next few months, CERN will be producing a series of videos to explain each step of this process. The videos will detail the jobs that must be completed in order to boost the LHC into higher gear. See the diagram above for an overview.

These tasks include testing and replacing some of the LHC’s main dipole and quadrupole magnets, which are used to bend the paths of the particles and keep them tightly bunched; adding reinforcing “shunts,” to the current-carrying splices between the magnets; conducting tests to detect any irregularities in the magnets or imperfections in the electrical insulation; and a range of other work to improve the machine.

"Get connected: Consolidating LHC splices"

On 19 September 2008, during powering tests on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a fault occurred in a superconducting interconnection between two magnets – a dipole and a quadrupole – resulting in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel. Proper safety procedures were in force, the safety systems performed as expected, and no-one was put at risk. But the fault did delay work on the LHC by six months.

After the incident, CERN engineers decided that such interconnections should be upgraded to avoid similar electrical faults in future. As a precaution, beams in the LHC were accelerated below the LHC's design limit for the first three years of running. Upgrading the interconnections will be one of the main activities at the LHC during its two-year shutdown, allowing the LHC to run at 7 TeV per beam when it starts up again.

There are 10,000 "splices" – superconducting connections between magnets – on the LHC. Each splice carries 13,000 amps.

In the video above, Jean-Phillipe Tock of the Technology department explains how, over the next 18 months, technicians will add an additional piece – a "shunt" – to each splice. The shunt is a low-resistance connection that forms an alternative path for a portion of the current in the event that the splice loses its superconducting state. A total of 27,000 shunts will be installed in the 27-kilometre accelerator.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Romania is a candidate for accession. Israel is an Associate Member in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

More like this:

Get connected: Consolidating LHC splices 19 Mar 2013: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/03/get-connected-consolidating-lhc-splices

Related links:

Large Hadron Colllider (LHC): http://home.web.cern.ch/about/accelerators/large-hadron-collider

Helium leak of 2008: http://press.web.cern.ch/press-releases/2008/10/cern-releases-analysis-lhc-incident

For more information about CERN, visit: http://home.web.cern.ch/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: CERN / Kelly Ann Izlar /  Cian O'Luanaigh / Orbiter.ch Aerospace - Flight Dept.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch