Pluto’s Heart: Like a Cosmic ‘Lava Lamp’

NASA - New Horizons Mission logo.

June 1, 2016

Combining computer models with topographic and compositional data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft last summer, New Horizons team members have determined the depth of this layer of solid nitrogen ice within Pluto's distinctive "heart" feature – a large plain informally known as Sputnik Planum – and how fast that ice is flowing. The study is published in the June 2 issue of the journal Nature.

Mission scientists used state-of-the-art computer simulations to show that the surface of Sputnik Planum is covered with icy, churning, convective "cells" 10 to 30 miles (16 to 48 kilometers) across, and less than one million years old. The findings offer additional insight into the unusual and highly active geology on Pluto and, perhaps, other bodies like it on the outskirts of the solar system.

Image above: Scientists from NASA’s New Horizons mission used state-of-the-art computer simulations to show that the surface of Pluto’s informally named Sputnik Planum is covered with churning ice "cells" that are geologically young and turning over due to a process called convection. The scene above, which is about 250 miles (400 kilometers) across, uses data from the New Horizons Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), gathered July 14, 2015. Image Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

“For the first time, we can determine what these strange welts on the icy surface of Pluto really are,” said William B. McKinnon, from Washington University in St. Louis, who led the study and is a co-investigator on the New Horizons science team. “We found evidence that even on a distant cold planet billions of miles from Earth, there is sufficient energy for vigorous geological activity, as long as you have ‘the right stuff,’ meaning something as soft and pliable as solid nitrogen.”

McKinnon and colleagues believe the pattern of these cells stems from the slow thermal convection of the nitrogen-dominated ices that fill Sputnik Planum. A reservoir that’s likely several miles deep in some places, the solid nitrogen is warmed by Pluto’s modest internal heat, becomes buoyant and rises up in great blobs – like a lava lamp – before cooling off and sinking again to renew the cycle.

The computer models show that ice need only be a few miles deep for this process to occur, and that the convection cells are very broad. The models also show that these blobs of overturning solid nitrogen can slowly evolve and merge over millions of years. Ridges that mark where cooled nitrogen ice sinks back down can be pinched off and abandoned, resulting in Y- or X-shaped features in junctions where three or four convection cells once met.

“Sputnik Planum is one of the most amazing geological discoveries in 50-plus years of planetary exploration, and the finding by McKinnon and others on our science team that this vast area—bigger than Texas and Oklahoma combined – is created by current day ice convection is among the most spectacular of the New Horizons mission,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado. 

These convective surface motions average only a few centimeters a year – about as fast as your fingernails grow – which means cells recycle their surfaces every 500,000 years or so. While slow on human clocks, it’s a fast clip on geological timescales. 

“This activity probably helps support Pluto’s atmosphere by continually refreshing the surface of ‘the heart,’” McKinnon said. “It wouldn’t surprise us to see this process on other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to find out someday with future exploration missions there.”

New Horizons spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA

New Horizons could also potentially take a close-up look at a smaller, more ancient object much farther out in the Kuiper Belt – the disk-shaped region beyond the orbit of Neptune believed to contain comets, asteroids and other small, icy bodies. New Horizons flew through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, making the first close observations of Pluto and its family of five moons. The spacecraft is on course for an ultra-close flyby of another Kuiper Belt object, 2014 MU69, on Jan. 1, 2019, pending NASA approval of funding for an extended mission.

For more information about New Horizons, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tricia Talbert.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

The Little Fox and the Giant Stars

NASA & ESA - Herschel Mission patch.

May 31, 2016

New stars are the lifeblood of our galaxy, and there is enough material revealed by this Herschel infrared image to build stars for millions of years to come.

Situated 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula -- Latin for "little fox" -- the region in the image is known as Vulpecula OB1. It is a "stellar association" in which a batch of truly giant "OB" stars is being born. O and B stars are the largest stars that can form.

The giant stars at the heart of Vulpecula OB1 are some of the biggest in the galaxy. Containing dozens of times the mass of the sun, they have short lives, astronomically speaking, because they burn their fuel so quickly. At an estimated age of 2 million years, they are already well through their lifespans. When their fuel runs out, they will collapse and explode as supernovas. The shock this will send through the surrounding cloud will trigger the birth of even more stars, and the cycle will begin again.

O stars are at least 16 times more massive than the sun, and could be well over 100 times as massive. They are anywhere from 30,000 to 1 million times brighter than the sun, but they only live up to a few million years before exploding. B-stars are between two and 16 times as massive as the sun. They can range from 25 to 30,000 times brighter than the sun.

OB associations are regions with collections of O and B stars. Since OB stars have such short lives, finding them in large numbers indicates the region must be a strong site of ongoing star formation, which will include many more smaller stars that will survive far longer.

The vast quantities of ultraviolet light and other radiation emitted by these stars is compressing the surrounding cloud, causing nearby regions of dust and gas to begin the collapse into more new stars. In time, this process will "eat" its way through the cloud, transforming some of the raw material into shining new stars.

The image was obtained as part of Herschel's Hi-GAL key-project. This used the infrared space observatory's instruments to image the entire galactic plane in five different infrared wavelengths.

These wavelengths reveal cold material, most of it between -220º C and -260º C. None of it can be seen in ordinary optical wavelengths, but this infrared view shows astronomers a surprising amount of structure in the cloud's interior.

The surprise is that the Hi-GAL survey has revealed a spider's web of filaments that stretches across the star-forming regions of our galaxy. Part of this vast network can be seen in this image as a filigree of red and orange threads.

In visual wavelengths, the OB association is linked to a star cluster catalogued as NGC 6823. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1785 and contains 50 to 100 stars. A nebula emitting visible light, catalogued as NGC 6820, is also part of this multi-faceted star-forming region.

Herschel Space Observatory

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. While the observatory stopped making science observations in April 2013, after running out of liquid coolant as expected, scientists continue to analyze its data. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu,http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel.
Hi-GAL key-project: https://hi-gal.ifsi-roma.inaf.it/higal/

Image, Text,  Credits: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project/Tony Greicius.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

In Formation

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

May 31, 2016

Saturn's moons Janus and Mimas coast in their silent orbits beyond the rings in this view from NASA's & ESA's Cassini spacecraft. The ansa, or outer edge of the rings, is visible at left. Janus hangs above center, while Mimas shines at right. Owing to its irregular shape, Janus’ terminator – that line which separates day from night – is jagged, while Mimas’ smooth terminator belies its round shape and larger size.

The image was taken in green light with Cassini's narrow-angle camera on Oct. 27, 2015.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 598,000 miles (963,000 kilometers) from Janus and at a Sun-Janus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 86 degrees. Image scale at Janus is 3.6 miles (5.8 kilometers) per pixel. The distance to Mimas was 680,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) for an image scale of 4.1 miles (6.6 kilometer) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org and ESA's website: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Tony Greicius.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Born in a golden cloak

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

May 30, 2016

This young star is breaking out. Like a hatchling pecking through its shell, this particular stellar newborn is forcing its way out into the surrounding Universe.

The golden veil of light cloaks a young stellar object known only as IRAS 14568-6304. It is ejecting gas at supersonic speeds and eventually will have cleared a hole in the cloud, allowing it to be easily visible to the outside Universe.

Stars are born deep in dense clouds of dust and gas. This particular cloud is known as the Circinus molecular cloud complex. It is 2280 light-years away and stretches across 180 light-years of space. If our eyes could register the faint infrared glow of the gas in the cloud, it would stretch across our sky more than 70 times the size of the full Moon. It contains enough gas to make 250 000 stars like the Sun.

IRAS 14568-6304 was discovered with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, launched in 1983 as a joint project of the US, the UK and the Netherlands to make the first all-sky infrared survey from space.

This particular image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is a combination of just two wavelengths: optical light (blue) and infrared (golden orange). The dark swath running across the image is the Circinus molecular cloud, which is so dense that it obscures the stars beyond.

At longer infrared wavelengths, this darkness is filled with point-like stars, all deeply embedded and which will one day break out like IRAS 14568-6304 is doing.

Hubble and the sunrise over Earth

Indeed, IRAS 14568-6304 is just one member of a nest of young stellar objects in this part of Circinus, each of which is producing jets. Put together, they make up one of the brightest, most massive and most energetic outflows that astronomers have yet observed. In years to come, they will be a beautiful, brightly visible star cloud.

For images and more information about Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

    https://www.spacetelescope.org/
    http://hubblesite.org/
    http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Image, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgements: R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), S. Meunier.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Long March 4B launch Ziyuan-3 Earth Observer

CASC - China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation logo.

May 30, 2016

Long March 4B launch Ziyuan-3 Earth Observer

China’s Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center on Monday, carrying into orbit the Ziyuan-3-02 Earth Observation satellite and a pair of microsatellites for Argentina.

The 46-meter tall rocket, conducting the fifth Chinese launch of the year, lifted off around 3:17 UTC and reached its planned polar orbit within ten minutes of liftoff.

China's Ziyuan-III 02 Geological Mapping Satellite Launched

Ziyuan-3-02 is the second in China’s third generation of Earth Observation Satellites, following the ZY-3-01 satellite orbited in 2012 and now approaching the end of its five-year service life. The first Ziyuan satellite was launched in 1999 to initiate a civilian Earth Observation Program for the collection of data useful for map generation, environmental monitoring and urban planning, however, the first two generations of ZY satellites were also employed for reconnaissance purposes.

The Ziyuan-3-02 satellite

The Ziyuan-3-02 satellite weighs in at around 2,640 Kilograms and hosts a pair of Earth imaging instruments, a Three-Line Array Camera and a Multispectral Camera.

For more information about China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), visit: http://english.spacechina.com/n16421/index.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: CASC/Xinhua/CCTV+/Günter Space Page/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ROSCOSMOS deploys another GLONASS-M spacecraft via Soyuz 2-1B launch

ROSCOSMOS - GLONASS patch.

May 29, 2016

Launch of Russian Soyuz carrying a Glonass-M navsat #53 from Plesetsk

A Russian Soyuz 2-1B has launched the latest GLONASS-M Global Navigation satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Launch occurred from Pad 43/4 at the spaceport, with T-0 reported as 08:44 UTC on Sunday. The spacecraft was launched with the designation of Glonass n°53, ahead of being renamed Kosmos-2516 once operational in orbit. Spacecraft separation occurred at 12:16 UTC.

Launch of Soyuz 2-1b configuration with a Fregat upper stage carrying Glonass M

The Russian GLONASS Global Navigation Satellite System – operated by the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces – is currently the only global alternative to the American GPS fleet in operation that has global coverage of comparable precision.

Development of GLONASS began in the Soviet Union in 1976. By the turn of the decade, GLONASS had achieved 100 percent coverage, with the full orbital constellation of 24 satellites operational in 2011.

Glonass M navigation satellite

The K Series are an advanced improvement of the previous M second-generation satellites, with longer lifespans and better accuracy. Based on the Ekspress-1000A bus, the satellite utilizes L-Band navigation signals. Those satellites will be eventually replaced by operational K series satellites, known as GLONASS K-2.

Sunday’s launch involves a spacecraft from the GLONASS-M range, named GLONASS-M n°53. It follows on from a previous GLONASS-M launch in February.

For more information about GLONASS network, visit: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/uragan.html

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ROSCOSMOS/Nasaspaceflight.com/Chris Bergin.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

BEAM Fully Expanded and Pressurized

ISS - International Space Station logo.

May 29, 2016

Expanding Technology Aboard the ISS

Pressurization of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) began Saturday May 28 at 4:34 p.m. EDT, and the eight tanks filled with air completed full pressurization of the module 10 minutes later at 4:44 p.m. BEAM’s pressure will be equalized with that of the International Space Station, where it will remain attached for a two-year test period.

The module measured just over 7 feet long and just under 7.75 feet in diameter in its packed configuration. BEAM now measures more than 13 feet long and about 10.5 feet in diameter to create 565 cubic feet of habitable volume. It weighs approximately 3,000 pounds.

Image above: The space station now hosts the new fully expanded and pressurized Bigelow Expandable Activity Module attached to the Tranquility module. Image Credit: NASA.

During the next week, leak checks will be performed on BEAM to ensure its structural integrity. Hatch opening and NASA astronaut Jeff Williams’ first entrance into BEAM will take place about a week after leak checks are complete.

BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of the commercial use of space. The project is co-sponsored by NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Division and Bigelow Aerospace.

Image above: The BEAM expansion took several hours today as astronaut Jeff Williams sent two dozen pulses of air into the expandable module. Image Credit: NASA TV.

Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a spacecraft but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. This first test of an expandable module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat performs and specifically, how well it protects against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space.

For more information about BEAM, visit: http://bigelowaerospace.com/beam/

For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/NASA TV/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch