NASA’s TESS Spacecraft Starts Science Operations

NASA - Tess Mission logo.

August 2, 2018

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has started its search for planets around nearby stars, officially beginning science operations on July 25, 2018. TESS is expected to transmit its first series of science data back to Earth in August, and thereafter periodically every 13.5 days, once per orbit, as the spacecraft makes it closest approach to Earth. The TESS Science Team will begin searching the data for new planets immediately after the first series arrives.

Image above: An artist’s illustration of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

“I’m thrilled that our new planet hunter mission is ready to start scouring our solar system’s neighborhood for new worlds,” said Paul Hertz, NASA Astrophysics division director at Headquarters, Washington. “Now that we know there are more planets than stars in our universe, I look forward to the strange, fantastic worlds we’re bound to discover.”

TESS is NASA’s latest satellite to search for planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. The mission will spend the next two years monitoring the nearest and brightest stars for periodic dips in their light. These events, called transits, suggest that a planet may be passing in front of its star. TESS is expected to find thousands of planets using this method, some of which could potentially support life.

How NASA's Newest Planet Hunter Scans the Sky

Video above: Animation showing how TESS will observe the sky. TESS will watch each observation sector for at least 27 days, before rotating to the next one, covering first the southern then the northern hemisphere to build a map of 85 percent of the sky. Video Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

For the latest updates on TESS, visit https://www.nasa.gov/tess

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Rob Garner/Goddard Space Flight Center/Claire Saravia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA Mars Exploration Rover Status Report

NASA - Mars Exploration Rover B (MER-B) patch.

August 2, 2018

t's the beginning of the end for the planet-encircling dust storm on Mars. But it could still be weeks, or even months, before skies are clear enough for NASA's Opportunity rover to recharge its batteries and phone home. The last signal received from the rover was on June 10.

Scientists observing the global event -- which is actually caused by a series of local and regional storms throwing dust into the Martian atmosphere -- say that, as of Monday, July 23, more dust is falling out than is being raised into the planet's thin air. That means the event has reached its decay phase, when dust-raising occurs in ever smaller areas, while others stop raising dust altogether.

Graphic above: This graphic compares atmospheric opacity in different Mars years from the point of view of NASA’s Opportunity rover. The green spike in 2018 (Mars Year 34) shows how quickly the global dust storm building at Mars blotted out the sky. A previous dust storm in 2007 (red, Mars Year 28) was slower to build. The vertical axis shows atmospheric opacity and the horizontal axis shows the Martian season, which is measured by where the Sun is in the Martian sky compared to its apparent position on Mars’ northern spring equinox. Graphic Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/TAMU.

Surface features in many areas are beginning to re-appear as seen from orbit. This should even be apparent through telescopes on the ground: Next week, Mars will make its closest approach to Earth since 2003 -- a particularly good time for observing the Red Planet.  Meanwhile, in Gale Crater, the nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover has noted a decline in dust overhead.

Temperatures in the middle atmosphere of Mars are no longer rising, and in some areas are starting to decrease. That indicates less solar heating by the dust.

Mars Exploration Rover. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Calttech

The changes were spotted by the Mars Color Imager (MARCI), a wide-angle camera, and by the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS), a temperature profiler, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). MARCI is managed by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego. MSL, MRO and MCS are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

All of NASA's Mars spacecraft have been observing the storm, both to support the Opportunity mission and to collect unique science about this global phenomenon.

Related articles:

Martian Dust Storm Grows Global: Curiosity Captures Photos of Thickening Haze
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2018/06/martian-dust-storm-grows-global.html

NASA Encounters the Perfect Storm for Science
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2018/06/nasa-encounters-perfect-storm-for.html

Shades of Martian Darkness
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2018/06/shades-of-martian-darkness.html

Related link:

Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/index.html

Image, Graphic (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL/Andrew Good.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Hubble Images Milky Way’s Big Sister

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

August 2, 2018

This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) shows a beautiful spiral galaxy called NGC 6744. At first glance, it resembles our Milky Way albeit larger, measuring more than 200,000 light-years across compared to a 100,000-light-year diameter for our home galaxy.

NGC 6744 is similar to our home galaxy in more ways than one. Like the Milky Way, NGC 6744 has a prominent central region packed with old yellow stars. Moving away from the galactic core, one can see parts of the dusty spiral arms painted in shades of pink and blue; while the blue sites are full of young star clusters, the pink ones are regions of active star formation, indicating that the galaxy is still very lively.

In 2005, a supernova named 2005at (not visible in this image) was discovered within NGC 6744, adding to the argument of this galaxy’s liveliness. SN 2005at is a Type Ic supernova, formed when a massive star collapses on itself and loses its hydrogen envelope.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

For more information about Hubble, visit:

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

Image, Animation,  Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA; acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt/Text Credits: ESA (European Space Agency)/NASA/Rob Garner.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Planetary Defense Has New Tool in Weather Satellite Lightning Detector

Asteroid Watch logo.

August 2, 2018

NASA's efforts to better understand asteroid impacts has found unexpected support from a new satellite sensor designed to detect lightning. New research published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science finds that the new Geostationary Lightning Mapper, or GLM, on two weather satellites is able to pick up signals of meteors in Earth's atmosphere.

"GLM detects these meteors when they become brighter than the full Moon," says lead author and meteor astronomer Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. "Meteors that bright are called 'bolides' and they are caused mainly by the impact of small asteroids."

Image above: On December 29, 2017, the Geostationary Lightning Mapper, an instrument flying on board two weather satellites, detected a bright meteor in Earth’s atmosphere over the western Atlantic Ocean. Image Credits: NASA/Lockheed Martin.

Jenniskens' work on meteors contributes to the NASA Ames Asteroid Threat Assessment Program, which helps improve information for impact prediction warnings by studying how asteroids fragment as they travel through the atmosphere.

"The range of altitudes over which asteroids deposit their kinetic energy — the energy of their motion — determines how dangerous the shock waves are that can cause damage on the ground," says Eric Stern, a research scientist at Ames who is the entry modeling lead for the program. "The light profiles derived from GLM data are slated now to be used in a future version of NASA’s automated bolide reporting system."

The Geostationary Lightning Mapper, built by Lockheed Martin, was designed for mapping lightning flashes over vast geographic regions. The instrument captures 500 images per second of Earth from geostationary orbit, in which the satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth, more than 22,000 miles up.

Image above: The bright flash produced by the December 2017 meteor was picked up by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper. This image shows one moment of that meteor event, which released three kilotons of energy into the atmosphere. In the image inset, red represents the bright meteor, while blue indicates the faint light reflected off the ocean surface and the signal caused by the instrument recovering from the bright exposure. Image Credits: NASA/Lockheed Martin.

"The instrument views Earth in only a narrow range of wavelengths of light," said Samantha Edgington, GLM chief scientist at Lockheed Martin, who led the effort to develop the processing pipeline that now provides lightning data to weather forecasters. "Since most of the light is blocked, we were surprised to see how readily the instrument detected the meteors."

GLM is one of several instruments onboard the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites-16 and -17, which are operated by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.

"Although most lightning flashes are very brief, the relatively long-duration signals of bolides are not filtered out of the data," said NOAA physical scientist Scott Rudlosky. "That’s because GLM also was designed to measure a longer-lasting lightning type that is known to play a key role in lightning-ignited wild fires."

The ten bolides discussed in the paper were observed with the first GLM instrument on board GOES-16, which was launched in November 2016.

Animation above: Slow-motion movie of the December 2017 meteor impacting Earth's atmosphere. Individual pixels in the Geostationary Lightning Mapper's sensor are illuminated in successive frames. Animation Credits: NASA/Lockheed Martin.

"The first bolide we found in GLM data was on Feb. 6, 2017; more than 500 people reported seeing this event over Wisconsin that day," said Jenniskens. "Meteorites likely fell in Lake Michigan but were never recovered."

Other detected bolides show different manners of fragmentation. They include one that caused a meteorite fall in Canada and another large, explosive event over the western Atlantic Ocean of a rare size that occurs only once a year.

The Asteroid Threat Assessment Program is funded by the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The scientific paper is available online in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/maps.13137

Related links:

Asteroids: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/main/index.html

Meteors & Meteorites: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/watchtheskies/index.html

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at these sites:

https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Abigail Tabor.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

60 Years and counting: President Eisenhower signs NASA into existence

NASA 60 Years logo / NASA logo.

August 2, 2018

Although NASA is best known for 60 years of engineering and scientific achievements, it originally came into being as a matter of national security. After the Soviets flew the first two Sputniks in 1957 and Sputnik 3 in 1958, the U.S. government saw space as important new political, if not military, battlefield and began to lay the course for a long-term space plan.

Image above: President Dwight D. Eisenhower (center) appoints T. Keith Glennan (right) NASA's first administrator and Hugh L. Dryden its first deputy administrator. Image Credit: NASA.

“It was almost as if a bomb had fallen” on Capitol Hill, Congressional staffer Eilene Galloway said in a 2000 oral history interview, “because we were so surprised that the Soviet Union was first. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had space projects in the International Geophysical Year, but our project was very small. It was a satellite that weighed a little more than three pounds, and the Soviet satellite [weighed 184 pounds and] really opened up outer space as the new environment, added to land, sea and air.”

Scientists pushed President Eisenhower to make any new agency charged with overseeing space exploration a civilian agency, fearing military control would mean research only into military priorities.

NASA 60th: How It All Began

Congressional hearings on the matter, chaired by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX), began in November 1957 and continued for six weeks. Johnson asked Galloway, a defense analyst with the Legislative Reference Service, to summarize the Congressional testimony. Her report, titled “The Problems of Congress in Formulating Outer Space Legislation,” recommended several options including creation of a new civilian agency to lead America’s space efforts.

On April 2, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent a draft law to Congress that called for a civilian National Aeronautics and Space Agency, based on the existing National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), to oversee the US space program. Twelve days later both the Senate and the House introduced versions of a bill to establish such an organization, with hearings beginning the next day. Galloway successfully lobbied to designate the new organization an Administration rather than an Agency to give it broader authority to coordinate with many other government agencies.

Images above: Senator Johnson (left); Legislative Reference Service analyst Galloway (middle); President Eisenhower addressing Congress. (right). Image Credit: NASA.

The House bill passed on June 2 and the Senate version on June 16. Senator Johnson chaired a bipartisan panel to produce a joint version of the bill, and met with the President following the July 4th holiday to resolve the remaining issues. Congress passed the final version of the bill, the National Aeronautics and Space Act, on July 16 and President Eisenhower signed it into law on July 29, 1958. The bill established eight objectives for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA):

- The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;

- The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles; Tea

- The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space;

- The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes;

- The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;

- The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defense of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control nonmilitary aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency;

- Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results thereof;

- The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities and equipment

Although the Act has been amended over the years, these eight objectives still describe the major functions of NASA today.

Image above: Dryden (at left) and Glennan (second from right) being sworn in as President Eisenhower (second from left) looks on. Image Credit: NASA.

On Aug. 8, President Eisenhower nominated T. Keith Glennan, President of Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio, and Hugh L. Dryden, Director of the NACA, to be NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator, respectively. The Senate confirmed them a week later and they were sworn in at the White House on Aug. 19. NASA officially opened for business on Oct. 1, 1958, with its Headquarters at first occupying temporary office space at the Dolley Madison House in Washington, DC.

Related links:

NASA: 60 Years and Counting – an overview of the agency’s achievements of the last six decades: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/60counting/index.html

The Birth of NASA: A history of how the agency came to be: https://history.nasa.gov/monograph10/nasabrth.html

JSC History Office: https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/

Images (mentioned), Video (NASA), Text, Credits: NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Mars Express detects liquid water hidden under planet's south pole

ESA - Mars Express Mission patch.

26 July 2018

Radar data collected by ESA’s Mars Express point to a pond of liquid water buried under layers of ice and dust in the south polar region of Mars.

Evidence for the Red Planet’s watery past is prevalent across its surface in the form of vast dried-out river valley networks and gigantic outflow channels clearly imaged by orbiting spacecraft. Orbiters, together with landers and rovers exploring the martian surface, also discovered minerals that can only form in the presence of liquid water.

Mars Express detects water buried under the south pole of Mars

But the climate has changed significantly over the course of the planet’s 4.6 billion year history and liquid water cannot exist on the surface today, so scientists are looking underground. Early results from the 15-year old Mars Express spacecraft already found that water-ice exists at the planet’s poles and is also buried in layers interspersed with dust.

The presence of liquid water at the base of the polar ice caps has long been suspected; after all, from studies on Earth, it is well known that the melting point of water decreases under the pressure of an overlying glacier. Moreover, the presence of salts on Mars could further reduce the melting point of water and keep the water liquid even at below-freezing temperatures.

Mars Express with its two 20 m-long radar booms

But until now evidence from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument, MARSIS, the first radar sounder ever to orbit another planet, remained inconclusive.

It has taken the persistence of scientists working with this subsurface-probing instrument to develop new techniques in order to collect as much high-resolution data as possible to confirm their exciting conclusion.

Ground-penetrating radar uses the method of sending radar pulses towards the surface and timing how long it takes for them to be reflected back to the spacecraft, and with what strength. The properties of the material that lies between influences the returned signal, which can be used to map the subsurface topography.

The radar investigation shows that south polar region of Mars is made of many layers of ice and dust down to a depth of about 1.5 km in the 200 km-wide area analysed in this study. A particularly bright radar reflection underneath the layered deposits is identified within a 20 km-wide zone.

Detecting buried water with radar

Analysing the properties of the reflected radar signals and considering the composition of the layered deposits and expected temperature profile below the surface, the scientists interpret the bright feature as an interface between the ice and a stable body of liquid water, which could be laden with salty, saturated sediments. For MARSIS to be able to detect such a patch of water, it would need to be at least several tens of centimetres thick.

“This subsurface anomaly on Mars has radar properties matching water or water-rich sediments,” says Roberto Orosei, principal investigator of the MARSIS experiment and lead author of the paper published in the journal Science today.

“This is just one small study area; it is an exciting prospect to think there could be more of these underground pockets of water elsewhere, yet to be discovered.”

ExoMars image of layered deposits at the south pole of Mars

 “We’d seen hints of interesting subsurface features for years but we couldn’t reproduce the result from orbit to orbit, because the sampling rates and resolution of our data was previously too low,” adds Andrea Cicchetti, MARSIS operations manager and a co-author on the new paper.

“We had to come up with a new operating mode to bypass some onboard processing and trigger a higher sampling rate and thus improve the resolution of the footprint of our dataset: now we see things that simply were not possible before.”

The finding is somewhat reminiscent of Lake Vostok, discovered some 4 km below the ice in Antarctica on Earth. Some forms of microbial life are known to thrive in Earth’s subglacial environments, but could underground pockets of salty, sediment-rich liquid water on Mars also provide a suitable habitat, either now or in the past? Whether life has ever existed on Mars remains an open question, and is one that Mars missions, including the current European-Russian ExoMars orbiter and future rover, will continue to explore.

“The long duration of Mars Express, and the exhausting effort made by the radar team to overcome many analytical challenges, enabled this much-awaited result, demonstrating that the mission and its payload still have a great science potential,” says Dmitri Titov, ESA’s Mars Express project scientist.

“This thrilling discovery is a highlight for planetary science and will contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Mars, the history of water on our neighbour planet and its habitability.”

Mars Express launched 2 June 2003 and celebrates 15 years in orbit on 25 December this year.

Notes for editors:

“Radar evidence of subglacial liquid water on Mars” by R. Orosei et al is published in the journal Science: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/07/24/science.aar7268.full

The MARSIS instrument was funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and NASA and developed by the University of Rome, Italy, in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Related links:

Mars Express: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express

ExoMars orbiter and future rover: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/Markus Bauer/Dmitri Titov/Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica/Andrea Cicchetti/Roberto Orosei/Context map: NASA/Viking; THEMIS background: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University; MARSIS data: ESA/NASA/JPL/ASI/Univ. Rome; R. Orosei et al 2018/ATG medialab; Mars: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO/Roscosmos/CaSSIS.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

New satellite launch extends Galileo's global reach

ESA - Galileo Programme patch.

 26 July 2018

Four more Galileo satellites were launched today by an Ariane 5. Their arrival in orbit brings the Galileo constellation to 26 satellites, extending the global coverage of the constellation.

Galileo liftoff

Ariane 5 flight VA244, operated by Arianespace under contract to ESA, lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 11:25 GMT (13:25 CEST, 08:25 local time), carrying Galileo satellites 23–26. The first pair of 715 kg satellites was released almost 3 hours 36 minutes after liftoff, while the second pair separated 20 minutes later.

They were released into their target 22 922 km-altitude orbit by the dispenser atop the Ariane 5 upper stage. In the coming days, this quartet will be steered into their final working orbits by the French space agency CNES, under contract to the Galileo operator SpaceOpal for the European Global Navigation Satellite System Agency (GSA). There, they will begin around six months of tests by SpaceOpal to verify their operational readiness so they can join the working Galileo constellation.

Galileos atop Ariane 5

“Galileo is ESA’s largest ever satellite constellation, built up to its present size in rapid time, with 22 Full Operational Capability satellites added within just the last four years,” remarked Jan Wörner, ESA’s Director General.

“We must thank our industrial partners OHB (DE) and SSTL (GB) for the satellites, as well as Thales Alenia Space (FR/IT) and Airbus Defence and Space (GB/FR) for the ground segment and all their subcontractors throughout Europe for their continued support to the programme. Together with ESA, the entire industrial team has worked hard for the point at which we now are and this cooperation have proven to be very successful, as we can show in the excellent performance of Galileo.”

Galileo's Ariane 5

Paul Verhoef, ESA’s Director of Navigation, added, “Galileo has been providing Initial Services on a worldwide basis since 15 December 2016, and today has more than 100 million users, and rapidly increasing. Today’s satellites will increase the global coverage of Galileo with a performance that is widely recognised as excellent.

“This is the end of the current phase of Galileo deployment, but our pace is not slacking. A further 12 Galileo ‘Batch 3’ satellites are in preparation as in-orbit spares and as replacements for the oldest Galileo satellites, first launched in 2011, in order to keep the system working seamlessly into the future.

Galileo quartet placed atop Ariane 5

“Then a new generation of Galileos are planned for the middle of the next decade, offering improved performance and added features, maintaining Galileo as a permanent feature of the global GNSS landscape.”

About Galileo:

Galileo is Europe’s civil global satellite navigation system. Once complete, the system will consist of 24 operational satellites plus orbital spares, and the ground infrastructure for the provision of positioning, navigation and timing services. But the system is already available to users with recent receivers which combine the Galileo and GPS navigation messages for a more precise positioning.

The Galileo programme is funded and owned by the EU. The European Commission has the overall responsibility for the programme, managing and overseeing the implementation of all programme activities.

Galileo satellites

Galileo’s deployment, the design and development of the new generation of systems and the technical development of infrastructure are entrusted to ESA. The definition, development and in-orbit validation phases were carried out by ESA, and co‑funded by ESA and the European Commission.

Galileo 23–26 – Liftoff replay

GSA is ensuring the uptake and security of Galileo. Galileo operations and provision of services were entrusted to the GSA in July 2017.

Related links:

What is Galileo?: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Navigation/Galileo/What_is_Galileo

EC Galileo website: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/sectors/space/galileo/index_en.htm

European GNSS Agency: http://www.gsa.europa.eu/

Navigation: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Navigation

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/Pierre Carril, 2017/CNES/Arianespace/Optique Video du CSG/P Baudon/OHB System AG.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch