CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.
13 Dec 2011
An event showing four muons (red tracks) from a proton-proton collision in ATLAS. This event is consistent with two Z particles decaying into two muons each. Such events are produced by Standard Model processes without Higgs particles. They are also a possible signature for Higgs particle production, but many events must be analysed together in order to tell if there is a Higgs signal.
In a seminar held at CERN today, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Their results are based on the analysis of considerably more data than those presented at the summer conferences, sufficient to make significant progress in the search for the Higgs boson, but not enough to make any conclusive statement on the existence or non-existence of the elusive Higgs. The main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalising hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire), known as CERN, is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border. Established in 1954, the organization has twenty European member states.
The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2400 full-time employees/workers, as well as some 7931 scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.
The Lost Cosmonauts or Phantom Cosmonauts, are cosmonauts who allegedly entered outer space, but whose existence has never been acknowledged by either the Soviet or Russian space authorities.
Proponents of the Lost Cosmonauts theory concede that Yuri Gagarin was the first man to survive space travel, but claim that the Soviet Union attempted to launch two or more manned space flights prior to Gagarin's, and that at least two cosmonauts died in the attempts. Another cosmonaut, Vladimir Ilyushin, is believed to have landed off-course and was held by the Chinese government. The Soviet government supposedly suppressed this information, to prevent bad publicity during the height of the Cold War, Soviet doctrine was that the "failure does not exist".
The evidence cited to support Lost Cosmonaut theories is generally not regarded as conclusive, and several cases have been confirmed as hoaxes. In the 1980s, American journalist James Oberg researched space-related disasters in the Soviet Union, but found no evidence of these Lost Cosmonauts. However, since the early 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union, much previously restricted information is now available. Even with access to published Soviet archival material and memoirs of Russian space pioneers, no hard evidence has emerged to support the Lost Cosmonaut stories. Some argue that records are still being kept confidential, or were destroyed altogether.
Supposed incidents in space
An article published in the English language edition of Pravda in April 2001, forty years after Gagarin's successful orbit, gave some details about the three cosmonauts reputed to have been lost in earlier missions.
Presumed deadinsub-orbitalflights
Aleksei Ledovsky (late 1957)
In December 1959, a "high-ranking Czech Communist" leaked information about many purported 'unofficial' space 'shots'. Aleksei Ledovsky was mentioned as being launched inside a converted R-5A rocket.
Serenti Shiborin (February, 1958)
Pioneering space theoretician Hermann Oberth claimed in 1959 that a pilot had been killed on a sub-orbital ballistic flight from Kapustin Yar in early 1958. He never provided a source for the story. In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale reported that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czech communist. Among these were Serenti Shiborin, said to have perished in 1958. No other evidence of Soviet sub-orbital manned flights ever came to light.
Andrei Mitkov (January, 1959)
In December 1959, a "High-ranking Czech communist" leaked much information about many of these 'unofficial' launches, and Andrei Mitkov was, like Ledovsky, mentioned as being launched inside of an R-5A conversion.
Mirya Gromova (1959)
In December 1959, again a "High-ranking Czech communist" leaked information about many of these 'unofficial' launches, including that of Mirya Gromova, a woman who purportedly flew "some sort of 'space aeroplane' into oblivion", never to be seen or heard from again. If the story of Gromova is true, her craft most likely disintegrated upon re-entry from a sub-orbital flight. The 'Space Aeroplane' would likely be a Cosmonaut training vehicle, intended for high-altitude operation.
Unknown man (May 15, 1960)
Robert A. Heinlein wrote in his 1960 article "'Pravda' means 'justice'" (reprinted in Expanded Universe) that on 15 May 1960, while traveling in the Soviet Union, in Vilnius (called by its Polish name "Wilno" throughout the article; Vilnius is far away from Soviet rocket launch sites), he was told by Red Army cadets that the Soviet Union had launched a man into orbit that day, but that later the same day it was denied by officials and that no issues of the Pravda national newspaper could be found in Vilnius or, reportedly, other Soviet cities.
Heinlein wrote that there was an orbital launch, later said to be unmanned, on that day, but that the retro-rockets had fired while the vehicle was at the wrong altitude, making recovery efforts unsuccessful.
According to Gagarin's biography these rumours were likely started as a result of two Vostok missions, equipped with dummies and human voice tape recordings, to check if the radio worked, that were made just prior to Gagarin's flight.
"FM-2 Phantom" Soviet dummy
According to the NASA NSSDC Master Catalog, on 15 May 1960, Sputnik 4 with "a self-sustaining biological cabin with a dummy of a man" was launched.
Examples ofimage manipulationsby the Soviets:
Bus or train trip with a photographer in the middle of Russian cosmonauts in the 1960s.
The same photo now, with an cosmonaut "missing" the background to the right.
Presumed deadinorbitalflights
Ivan Kachur (September 27, 1960)
A 1959 edition of Ogonyok carried images of three men, Piotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur and Alexis Graciov(?), testing high-altitude equipment. Kachur is known to have disappeared around this time; his name has become linked to this equipment.
Piotr Dolgov (October 11, 1960)
Piotr Dolgov was a colonel in the Soviet Air Force.
Over the years there have been false reports that Dolgov was actually killed on October 11, 1960, in a failed flight of a Vostok spacecraft. Such a flight would have occurred six months prior to the historic Vostok 1 flight of Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. These reports would make Dolgov a phantom cosmonaut, one of a few whose identity is documented, although he was not a member of the cosmonaut team.
Officially he was killed on November 1, 1962, while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a Volga balloon gondola. Dolgov jumped at an altitude of 28,640 meters (93,970 feet). The helmet visor of Dolgov's Sokol space suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, de-pressurizing the suit and killing him.
Alexis Graciov (December, 1960)
Group photoofUSSRcosmonautsin Sochiin 1961,large group.The picturecomes indifferent versions, up tosixastronautsand less.
In this photo,22 people,16cosmonauts, with therocketengineerKorolioff, his wife,the daughter of theCosmonautPopovich,twoeducators andadoctor.Two morevariants ofthis pictureshowup to 6astronautsleastmanipulatedagain.
V. Zavadovsky (1960/61)
In late 1959, Ogonyok carried pictures of a certain 'Comrade V. Zavadovsky' testing high-altitude equipment (perhaps with Graciov and others). Zavadovsky would later appear on lists of 'dead cosmonauts', without a date of death or accident description.
However, in a US press conference on 23 February 1962, Col. Barney Oldfield revealed that a space cabin had been orbiting the earth since about 1960, as it had become jammed into its booster rocket. Korabl Sputnik 1, as it was known, was a prototype of the later Zenit and Vostok manned launchers. The onboard TDU had ordered the retro rockets to fire, but had instead malfunctioned and done the inverse - putting the craft into a higher orbit. The re-entry capsule was apparently without even a heatshield. The Soviet Union claimed the capsule had been unmanned.
Ludmila and Nikolay/Anatoly Tokovy (1961)
Supposedly a married couple - Ludmila Tokovy and "Nikolay" or "Anatoly" Tokovy
Pair ofCosmonautsareprobably diedwhen theircapsuleto burnat itsre-entry, TASS later reported that an unmanned satellite roughly the size of a London bus had been launched, but had disintegrated during re-entry.
Group photo in Sochi with all the cosmonauts in May 1961. Background: PR Popovich, Nelyuboff GG, GS Titov, VF Bykovsky; foreground: A. G. Nikolayev, Y.A. Gagarin, Chief Engineer of SP Korolioff Vostok, the Director for Education Karpov, parachute teacher NK Nikitin.
The group photo manipulated in Sochi in May 1961, since 1962 approx. : An cosmonaut lack the background: Grigory Grigoryevich Nelyuboff.
The Torre Bert Recordings
Image above: The Judica-Cordiglia brothers put up their antennae on a Turin rooftop. Image courtesy of Judica-Cordiglia brothers.
Regardless of the existence of either Nikolay/Anatoly Tokovy, the Torre Bert listening station in northern Italy purported to have picked up a transmission of a woman's voice, sounding confused and frightened as her craft began to break up upon reentry. Presumably the voice was Ludmila's, though no one knows how or why this name has become attached to the voice on the tape. The interpretation of the tape can be found at the website: http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/
The Torre Bert mobile listening station. Image courtesy of Judica-Cordiglia brothers
Gennady Mikhailov (February 2, 1961)
Alleged first human in orbit, Gennady Mikhailov may have died in orbit due to heart failure. This rumor may have been derived from reports in the French and Italian press, claiming that Sputnik 7 (launched 4 February, not 2) was a manned mission. According to the TASS news agency it was a failed Venus probe. This is believed to be the source of the Torre Bert recording of both heartbeats and breathing. Both files can be found at the Lost Cosmonauts Web site.
Unknown couple (February 24, 1961)
There were reports of a couple launched on February 17 aboard a 'Lunik' spacecraft orbiting the earth, reporting "Everything is satisfactory, we are orbiting the earth" at regular intervals.
On February 24, there were some garbled verbal transmissions about something the couple could see outside their ship, and had to urgently communicate to Earth. What happened is unclear, but communication was lost. Around the same time the listening station at Torre Bert apparently picked up an SOS signal from a craft in space. As the signal got weaker, it was assumed whatever craft it was disappeared into deep space.
Valentin Bondarenko (March 23, 1961)
Valentin Bondarenko, a member of the original cosmonaut program, died in a training accident on the ground when a high-oxygen pressurised chamber he was in caught fire on 23 March 1961. He was erased from official Soviet pictures and descriptive materials of the cosmonaut program, leading to all manner of speculation about him and other cosmonauts whose histories were less than perfectly known. The true nature of his accident was not revealed until the 1980s.
Vladimir Ilyushin (April 7, 1961)
Vladimir Ilyushin, son of Soviet airplane designer Sergey Ilyushin, was a Soviet pilot and is purported to have been a cosmonaut, alleged by some to have actually been the first man in space on 7 April 1961--an honor generally attributed to Yuri Gagarin on 12 April.
The theories surrounding this alleged orbital flight are that a failure aboard the spacecraft caused controllers to bring the descending capsule down several orbits earlier than intended, resulting in its landing in the People's Republic of China. The pilot was then held by Chinese authorities for a year before being returned to the Soviet Union. The international embarrassment that would have resulted from such an incident is cited as the Soviets' reason for not publicizing this flight, instead focusing their publicizing efforts on the subsequent successful flight of Yuri Gagarin.
However, there are reasons to disbelieve this allegation. Although both were Communist governments, relations between the Soviet Union and China were strained. The propaganda value of a Soviet pilot captured flying over Chinese territory would have given little reason for Chinese authorities to cooperate in a cover-up. Also, "bringing the capsule down several orbits earlier than intended" does not make sense, considering that the mission involved a single orbit.
Vladimir Ilyushin
This theory originated on 10 April 1961, with Dennis Ogden, the Moscow correspondent of the British Communist newspaper Daily Worker, and was actually based on Ilyushin's medical treatment and care in China. According to many Soviet sources including the article in Komsomolskaya Pravda dated 11 July 2005, although Ilyushin was a famous test pilot, he was never involved in the space program. On 5 June 1960, his legs were seriously injured in a car accident, and Ilyushin underwent medical treatment for a year in Moscow, then was sent Hangzhou, China, for rehabilitation under specialists in oriental medicine.This explanation was also confirmed by the Soviet defector Leonid Vladimirov, an engineer who had personal contacts with Ilyushin in 1960, in his 1973 book "The Russian Space Bluff", published in Frankfurt (Russian translation of the book).
The theory was lent some credibility in 1999 in a documentary on the subject titled called Cosmonaut Cover-Up. Interviewed in English, Sergei Khrushchev, son of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, said that it was true and that Vladimir Ilyushin was actually held in China for over a year as a "guest" of the People's Republic of China. He was later returned to the Soviet Union, but by then the Gagarin legend was in place and the bizarre incident was covered up. The main reason for concealment was to not let the West see the schism between China and the USSR.
Vladimir Ilyushin, who currently lives in Russia, has never confirmed this theory.
Alexis Belokoniov (November, 1962)
Alexis Belokoniov is reportedly one of three (two men and a woman) cosmonauts aboard a November flight. The Torre Bert tower in Italy allegedly picked up a frantic set of messages relayed by the three occupants. 'Conditions growing worse why don't you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about us . . .
Various (1966)
Sources in Western intelligence claim that at least three undisclosed missions failed in the second half of the 1960s, including a multiple launch in 1966.
Confirmed hoaxes
A number of claims have been confirmed as hoaxes:
Igor Fedrov
A 1998 American urban legend held that during the fall of the Soviet Union, one of their cosmonauts was stranded on the Mir space station. The Soyuz ferry spacecraft had a nominal on-orbit storage life of 180 days. Financial and technical problems, related to the political uncertainty, delayed the launch of replacement crews.
Several times the Soyuz craft remained docked to the station, in orbit, longer than its six-month-rated life. Every time this happened 'experts' would state on television news reports that the crew was 'stranded'. This first happened on the Soyuz TM-15 flight of 1992.
This legend became the basis for the Norwegian short film 'Kosmonaut', directed by Stefan Faldbakken. The film created a sensation at the 2001 Venice Film Festival[citation needed] and told with considerable technical accuracy the story of fictional cosmonaut Igor Fedrov. Plot: on a long duration mission aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, Fedrov is unable to contact ground control during the chaotic period after Gorbachev's overthrow in 1991. Stranded in his Soyuz capsule, unable to receive instructions or update his guidance system, his life support supplies dwindling, he finally attempts a manually guided reentry and dies in the attempt.
Ivan Istochnikov
Officially Soyuz 2 was an 'unmanned spacecraft' that was the docking target for Soyuz 3. However, Mike Arena, an American journalist, found in 1993 that Ivan Istochnikov and his dog Kloka were manning Soyuz 2, and disappeared on 26 October 1968, with signs of having been hit by a meteorite. They had been "erased" from history by the Soviet authorities, who could not tolerate such a failure.
The entire story was a hoax perpetrated by Joan Fontcuberta, a 'modern art exercise' that included falsified mission 'artifacts', various digitally manipulated images, and immensely detailed feature-length biographies which turned out to be riddled with hundreds of historical as well as technical errors. The exhibit was shown in Madrid in 1997 and the National Museum of Catalan Art in 1998. Brown University later purchased several articles, and put them on display themselves.
Mexico's Luna Cornea magazine however, failed to notice this, and ran issue number 14 (January/April 1998) with photos, and a story explaining the tragic and as-yet-untold truth.
The name Ivan Istochnikov is a Russian translation of Joan Fontcuberta's name; translated to English from Russian reads "John of the Source".
On 11 June 2006, Cuarto Milenio, a mysteries program led by Iker Jiménez on the Spanish TV channel Cuatro, presented the story as possibly true.
Japanese singer Akino Arai wrote a song about Istochnikov and Kloka, titled "Sputnik" on her Furu Platinum album.
Andrei Mikoyan
Andrei Mikoyan was reportedly killed together with a second crew member in an attempt to reach the moon ahead of the Americans in early 1969. Due to system malfunction they failed to get into lunar orbit and shot past the moon.
The source of this story was undoubtedly the television series 'The Cape'. The episode 'Buried in Peace' first aired on 28 October 1996. In it a shuttle crew on a mission to repair a communications satellite encounters a derelict Soviet spacecraft with a dead crew - the result of a secret attempt to send a manned mission to the moon 30 years earlier, before the United States. Tom Nowicki played Major Andrei Mikoyan in the story.
Space accidents
NASA Astronaut Memorial Wall
The NASA Astronaut Memorial Wall includes the names of 24 Astronauts who have given their lives in service of the space program. Of these, 17 were lost in space-related accidents and the remaining seven died in aircraft accidents. An additional eight cosmonauts have also perished during the Soviet / Russian space program. A brief biography of each of these lost pioneers is provided: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0114.shtml
This article provides an overview of all acknowledged fatalities and near-fatalities that occurred during manned space missions, accidents during astronaut training and during the testing, assembling or preparing for flight of manned and unmanned spacecraft. Not included are fatalities occurring during ICBM accidents, and Soviet or German rocket-fighter projects of World War II. Also not included are alleged Soviet space accidents (above) that were not reported by the Soviet Union.
Images, Videos, Text, Credit: Roscosmos / Alex Tomlinson / The Torre Bert, Judica-Cordiglia brothers / ARTE TV / Wikipedia / AFP / NASA / Orbiter.ch.
This article has been published on my Myspace blog in 2009.
Proton-M with Russian and Israeli satellites ready for launch
Today with the launch complex area 81 Baikonur launched launch vehicle (ILV) "Proton-M" with the upper block (RB), "Briz-M" and a cluster of spacecraft (SC) "Luch-5A" and "Amos-5".
Luch-5A satellite
At 15.26 GMT the staff was off the rocket motor third-stage separation and the head unit, which included RB "Breeze-M" spacecraft "Luch-5A" and "Amos-5." With the cruise propulsion system head unit is displayed on the reference orbit.
Amos-5 satellite
The Luch-5A satellite will provide communications with the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
Israel's AMOS-5 will join the satellite grouping of AMOS-2 and AMOS-3 to provide various satellite services to customers in the Middle East, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa. Equipped with 18 C-band and 16 Ku-band transponders, the satellite has a life span of 15 years.
Image above: A quartet of Saturn's moons, from tiny to huge, surround and are embedded within the planet's rings in this Cassini composition. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.
In an action-packed day and a half, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be making its closest swoop over the surface of Saturn's moon Dione and scrutinizing the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
The closest approach to Dione, about 61 miles (99 kilometers) above the surface, will take place at about 1:39 a.m. PST (4:39 a.m. EST) on Dec. 12. One of the questions Cassini scientists will be asking during this flyby is whether Dione's surface shows any signs of activity. Understanding Dione's internal structure will help address that question, so Cassini's radio science instrument will learn how highly structured the moon's interior is by measuring variations in the moon's gravitational tug on the spacecraft. The composite infrared spectrometer instrument will also look for heat emissions along fractures on the moon's surface.
Cassini will also be probing whether Dione, like another Saturnian moon, Rhea, has a tenuous atmosphere. Scientists expect a Dionean atmosphere – if there is one – to be much more ethereal than even Rhea's. Research published in journal Geophysical Research Letters and led by Sven Simon, a Cassini magnetometer team member at the University of Cologne, Germany, found magnetic field disturbances around Dione, hinting at a tenuous atmosphere. But scientists hope to get stronger confirmation by "tasting" the space around the moon with Cassini's ion and neutral mass spectrometer.
On Cassini's journey out from Dione toward Titan, the imaging science subsystem will turn back to look at Dione's distinctive, wispy fractures and a ridge called Janiculum Dorsa.
Cassini will approach within about 2,200 milles (3,600 kilometers) of the Titan surface, at about 12:11 p.m. PST (3:11 PM EST) on Dec. 13. At Titan, the composite infrared spectrometer will be making measurements to understand how the seasonal transition from spring to summer affects wind patterns in the atmosphere near Titan's north pole. It will also search for mist.
Cassini spacecraft
The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer and imaging science subsystem will be observing the same equatorial deserts where the imaging science subsystem saw sudden and dramatic surface changes last year, when Titan was experiencing early northern spring. One possibly theory is that rainstorms caused these changes. As Cassini recedes from Titan, the imaging cameras will also continue to observe the moon for another day to monitor any new weather systems. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, 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.
Orbiting 31 miles above the lunar surface, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft will get a "front-row seat" to the total lunar eclipse on Dec. 10, 2011.
LRO's Diviner instrument will record how quickly targeted areas on the moon's day side cool off during the eclipse. The degree of cooling is dependent on factors such as how rocky the surface is, how densely packed the soil is, and its mineral composition. By studying the lunar surface during the eclipse, scientists can learn even more about our nearest celestial neighbor.
Video above: During the December 2011 lunar eclipse, scientists will be able to get a unique view of the moon. While the sun is blocked by the Earth, LRO's Diviner instrument will take the temperature on the lunar surface. Since different rock sizes cool at different rates, scientists will be able to infer the size and density of rocks on the moon. (Video Credit: Christopher Smith, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center).
From beginning to end, the eclipse will last from 11:33 UT (6:33 a.m. EST, 3:33 a.m. PST) to 17:30 UT (12:30 p.m. EST, 9:30 a.m. PST). Totality, the time when Earth's shadow completely covers the moon, will last 51 minutes. All of the United States will see some portion of the eclipse. The West Coast will have a more complete view of this particular eclipse.
The West Coast will see totality as the moon sets and the sun rises. For West Coast viewers, the eclipse begins at 3:33 a.m. PST. The peak, when the moon is a deep red, occurs at 6:30 a.m. PST.
For East Coast residents, the only stage of the eclipse that will be visible is the earliest portion when the moon begins to enter Earth's shadow. This dimming is very slight and may be difficult to see.
Video above: When the moon passes through the Earth's shadow, it causes the moon to look very unusual for a short period of time. This event is called a lunar eclipse, and it occurs roughly twice a year. Learn more about how lunar eclipses work in this video! Credit goes to TheWusa from de.wikipedia.org for the illustrations that this video’s light scattering animations are based on. (Video Credit: Christopher Smith, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center).
A lunar eclipse occurs when Earth is directly between the sun and the moon, blocking the sun's rays and casting a shadow on the moon. As the moon moves deeper and deeper into Earth's shadow, the moon changes color before your very eyes, turning from gray to an orange or deep shade of red.
This 2003 image shows the ruddy appearance typical of the moon during a lunar eclipse. Credit: Fred Espenak.
The moon takes on this new color because sunlight is still able to pass through Earth's atmosphere and cast a glow on the moon. Our atmosphere filters out most of the blue colored light, leaving the red and orange hues that we see during a lunar eclipse. If there are additional dust particles in the atmosphere, the moon will appear to be a darker shade of red.
Unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are perfectly safe to view without any special glasses or equipment. All you need is your own two eyes. Our next opportunity to view a total lunar eclipse from the U.S. is April 15, 2014, so mark your calendars!
Next week marks 100 years since Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. As a team of scientists brave the Antarctic to validate data from ESA’s CryoSat mission, it’s hard to imagine what these first intrepid explorers would have thought of today’s advances in polar science.
The remote and vast expanse of the Antarctic is arguably the most hostile environment on Earth – infamously claiming the lives of Captain Robert Scott and his party all those years ago in their fated race to the South Pole.
Skidoo and corner reflector
While the polar regions are challenging, to say the least, for human survival, they are also very sensitive to climate change. In turn, polar ice plays a crucial role in regulating climate and sea level.
With the effects of climate change becoming more apparent, the CryoSat mission is gathering data on changes in the thickness of ice, both on land and floating in the oceans.
This information is needed to understand exactly how Earth’s ice is responding to climate change and to help predict what will happen if trends continue.
CryoSat
To ensure CryoSat’s data are as accurate as possible, ESA organises numerous research campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctic.
These campaigns involve taking measurements from the air and on the ice to compare with the data from CryoSat orbiting above.
A team of Australian and German scientists from the University of Tasmania, the Australian Antarctic Division and the Alfred Wegner Institute has just finished the first leg a remarkable measurement campaign.
Polar-6 research aircraft
The campaign is being carried out in East Antarctica around Law Dome and Totten Glacier. Law Dome is relatively stable but features steep surface slopes and Totten Glacier is changing rapidly – so both offer ideal locations for validating CryoSat.
CryoSat carries a new generation of altimeter called SIRAL. It is designed to measure very precisely the elevation of polar ice – even around the edges of ice sheets, which are difficult to observe from space because of their steep slopes.
Instruments inside the Polar-6
The campaign involves taking measurements from a Polar-6 aircraft. It carries the ASIRAS radar, which mimics CryoSat’s SIRAL. Ground-truth measurements are also collected for comparison.
Christopher Watson from the University of Tasmania said, “Travelling on skidoo, the team gathered ground measurement over about 250 km transects.
“The skidoos drag GPS to map the height of the ice, which are later compared to the aircraft and satellite measurements.”
“The experiment examines the influence that physical properties of the top snow and ice layer have on the radar signal that CryoSat emits and receives,” explained Veit Helm from the Alfred Wegner Institute.
Sampling snow and ice
“Depending on factors such as snow particle size, the extent to which it has compacted and how it is layered, the radar signal can penetrate deeper or less deep and so is reflected differently.
“If we ignore these factors in the data, it may result in misinterpretations and less accurate maps of the changing Antarctic surface.”
Malcolm Davidson, ESA’s CryoSat Validation Manager, said, “The first attempt in East Antarctica had to be abandoned owing to terrible weather conditions.
ASIRAS data
“This makes the success of this year’s activity highly-value and very welcome – both for ESA and for the scientists carrying out this challenging field work.
“It also provides a welcome opportunity to bring together the Alfred Wegener Institute, the University of Tasmania and the Australian Antarctic Division, whose work will help ensure we have the best-possible data to understand changing polar ice from space.”
NASA- Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity" (MER-B).
Dec. 8, 2011
This color view of a mineral vein called "Homestake" comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.
"This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs."
This close-up view of a mineral vein called "Homestake" comes from the microscopic imager on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / USGS.
The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco.
The vein examined most closely by Opportunity is about the width of a human thumb (0.4 to 0.8 inch), 16 to 20 inches long, and protrudes slightly higher than the bedrock on either side of it. Observations by the durable rover reveal this vein and others like it within an apron surrounding a segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater. None like it were seen in the 20 miles (33 kilometers) of crater-pocked plains that Opportunity explored for 90 months before it reached Endeavour, nor in the higher ground of the rim.
This view from the front hazard-avoidance camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the rover's arm's shadow falling near a bright mineral vein informally named "Homestake." Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Last month, researchers used the Microscopic Imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the rover's arm and multiple filters of the Panoramic Camera on the rover's mast to examine the vein, which is informally named "Homestake." The spectrometer identified plentiful calcium and sulfur, in a ratio pointing to relatively pure calcium sulfate.
Calcium sulfate can exist in many forms, varying by how much water is bound into the minerals' crystalline structure. The multi-filter data from the camera suggest gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate. On Earth, gypsum is used for making drywall and plaster of Paris.
Where Are The Rovers Now? Opportunity's Traverse Map, Sol 2781. Image Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell / University of Arizona.
Observations from orbit have detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.
"It is a mystery where the gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from," said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "At Homestake, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars."
The Homestake deposit, whether gypsum or another form of calcium sulfate, likely formed from water dissolving calcium out of volcanic rocks. The minerals combined with sulfur either leached from the rocks or introduced as volcanic gas, and was deposited as calcium sulfate into an underground fracture that later became exposed at the surface.
The total distance driven on Mars by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover, 21.35 miles by early December 2011, is approaching the record total for off-Earth driving, held by the robotic Lunokhod 2 rover operated on Earth's moon by the Soviet Union in 1973. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Throughout Opportunity's long traverse across Mars' Meridiani plain, the rover has driven over bedrock composed of magnesium, iron and calcium sulfate minerals that also indicate a wet environment billions of years ago. The highly concentrated calcium sulfate at Homestake could have been produced in conditions more neutral than the harshly acidic conditions indicated by the other sulfate deposits observed by Opportunity.
"It could have formed in a different type of water environment, one more hospitable for a larger variety of living organisms," Clark said.
Homestake and similar-looking veins appear in a zone where the sulfate-rich sedimentary bedrock of the plains meets older, volcanic bedrock exposed at the rim of Endeavour. That location may offer a clue about their origin.
"We want to understand why these veins are in the apron but not out on the plains," said the mission's deputy principal investigator, Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis. "The answer may be that rising groundwater coming from the ancient crust moved through material adjacent to Cape York and deposited gypsum, because this material would be relatively insoluble compared with either magnesium or iron sulfates."
Artist concept of Mars Exploration Rover (credit: NASA / JPL)
Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of extended missions and made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity continues exploring, currently heading to a sun-facing slope on the northern end of the Endeavour rim fragment called "Cape York" to keep its solar panels at a favorable angle during the mission's fifth Martian winter.
NASA launched the next-generation Mars rover, the car-sized Curiosity, on Nov. 26. It is slated for arrival at the planet's Gale Crater in August 2012. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about the rovers, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marsrovers and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marsrovers
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
