The wonders of space: Mars, comets and more...

Time for an update from… space! For example, the Cassini probe, nearing the end of its remarkable journey, has just passed through the plumes of salty water vapor shooting out into space from Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. 

== The Briney miracle of Mars ==

Recent and recurring water flows on Mars? The secret "sauce" that enables this to happen, despite subzero temperatures and low atmospheric pressures is... brine.  High salt/mineral content enables brine-y fluids to survive surface conditions for short periods and -- possibly underground -- even sustain life?  How cool is that? Well, speaking as someone who is already rather brin-ey....

Now dig these pics of a crater on Mars that reveals that this region of the planet - bigger than Texas - features a huge slab of water ice, very near the surface.

Read a fascinating and well-written popular article on NASA's newly released "Roadmap to Mars." It is so good to see progress in the bureaucracy adapting to ideas some of us were bruiting decades ago -- like in-situ production - on Mars - of the water and fuel and oxygen astronauts will need, instead of expensively hauling them all from Earth. (Note this concept was largely absent from The Martian.) It also includes testing our methods with asteroid retrieval projects that could wind up benefitting humanity and Earth more than the Mars missions would!  Certainly it is good to see the plan almost completely leave out our sterile/useless (for now) moon.  Been there. There's nothing (for now) there. 

A stressed moon: Grooves across the surface of Phobos indicate that this Martian moon is (slowly) starting to crack under pressure... over the next 50 million years.

== Comets and more wonders ==

In my last space posting I commented that this last 12 months might count as humanity's best year out there... ever... including the late sixties.  And it just keeps pouring in.

ESA's Rosetta mission celebrated one year at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The latest comet images are magnificent. Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy column on Slate reveals a selection of photos recovered from the Philae lander as it approached the comet. More vivid and detailed, with now-named features as small as a few centimeters, as one of the images was taken from just nine meters away!  See the track-path that they now believe Philae followed when it failed to stick its landing and went bouncing across the surface, like characters did, in Heart of the Comet! 

And Rosetta now shows 67/P finally being comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. And behaving precisely as predicted in my doctoral dissertation, way back in 1981. Take this recent Philae result: “Scientists suspect the surface is partly shaped by a form of hail that occurs when gas ejections from the comet push out coarse particles that then fall back to the ground.” Yep!

“Rosetta has also discovered that the interior of 67P is extraordinarily light. At least 75% of it is empty space. Scientists speculate that much of its interior material may have been vented into space as the comet has warmed up during previous close encounters with the Sun.”   ice, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide below the surface evaporate and vent into space, carrying with them dust that covers the comet. “Often this produces deep pits into which surface ice and dust collapse, creating sinkholes all over the comet,” said Mark McCaughrean, a senior scientist at the European Space Agency.  

Now, there's the surprising discovery of a high proportion of oxygen molecules in Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko -- which may have originated early, even before the formation of the solar system.

As for the organic compounds found by the Philae lander: Four out of 16, including acetone, hadn’t been detected on a comet before. “It’s not yet known whether the complex molecules found in 67P were made in the early solar system and then incorporated into the comet or formed there later, he said. “Either way, it seems that comets are pretty good places to find the building blocks of molecules which later on could be used for life.” 

Yes, but so far, there are just those two theories.  Either the stuff cooked before the comet formed… or else on the surface, under solar ultraviolet. No one mentions a third idea.  That early comets contained radioactively-melted interiors, within which lots of liquid organic chemistry might take place.  

Geez, what does it take?  We now know between 6 and 12 worldlets in our system with partly molten water zones. Is it truly so hard to imagine the same thing might have happened, four billion years ago, when fresh aluminum26 cooked a trillion iceballs, turning them into bubbling test tubes? But then, it's just a theory.

As Rosetta orbits at a (relatively) safe distance, it is being pelted by dust grains that also confuse its star tracker. Still, scientists are hopeful that: (1) the exhalations from the surface of 67/P might be strong enough to rock the Philae lander into a better position to absorb sunlight and transmit data… without pushing so strongly that the lander is sent tumbling into space… and…

… (2) that the narrow neck of the 67P “rubber duck” nucleus might even break apart, this round, giving Rosetta a ringside seat for a spectacular show!

The closest view is yet to come: Touchdown next September! The historic Rosetta mission will end when ESA crashes (as gently as possible) the orbiter onto the comet's icy surface.

Stay tuned.

And finally....

NASA is regularly haunted by cases of paranoid pareidolia, or folks "seeing" signs of either technology or living things in pictures returned from outer space, especially Mars.  Occasionally, one of the images makes me go "huh?" and wish I could send the rover back, for another look… the way another look finally debunked the long-infamous "Face" of Cydonia.  Or else to check out something I just don't understand.

Now see this article for an image of the "spoon" whose lengthy shadow certainly does seem to suggest more supporting strength of a cantilever than you normally expect from mere rock-- okay, this one piques my curiosity!  Nevertheless, many of the "aha!" UFO style declarations are 99% silliness.  Especially the premise that NASA would first share with us these images then pooh-pooh and suppress talk of legitimate signs of ET life.  Um… why share with us the image stream so quickly, in that case? 

In fact, that is an eminently practical openness on their part. What they want is many keen eyes pointing out stuff to look at! And some of the amateur anomaly spotters have been truly useful.  Though not (so far) when they have pointed at (imaginary) faces and lizards n' such.

Oh and I know some of these folk. They are paladins of openness.  

News from/about space

What's happening?  Suddenly, there’s been a wave of … inspiration! 

As if in tempo with Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR, several short movies aggressively confront the cynical theme that’s dominated this dismal century, so far. (The way so many of you have given in to the seductive propaganda of limitations and despair.) These gorgeous pieces fight back by offering us visions of wondrous possibility.

First… try on this spectacular ode to courage – and our outward spirit – Cinema Space Tribute by Max Shishkin, using the Interstellar score as background, taking us on a tour of vivid SF cinema images of space.  

Even better is one off the finest things I have ever watched, period. Invest four minutes in Wanderers by Eric Wernquist! These amazing scenes all taken (or extrapolated) from reality*, not sci fi!  This is what being human must be about... or else, why bother?

(* Almost all of the places depicted here are real. Many of them extrapolated from photos taken already by our robot emissaries. “We” have already been to these wondrous spots. We are already titans!  On our way to unimaginable greatness. (Though I will keep trying to imagine.))

And see this: From Rosetta to Curiosity and Orion: Highlights from an amazing -- and inspiring -- year in space -- summarized in 60 seconds. 

Coda: I’ve oft said that centuries tend to change direction dramatically, in their fourteenth year.  Could this wave of "confidence porn" be indicative of our next sudden veer?  Backing away from the cliffs of cynical despair and getting back on trajectory toward ambition, daring and wonder?

Make it so.

== Comets and more comets! ==

Hot on the heels of the European Rosetta Mission’s success at landing on Comet 67P – (incidentally proving my doctoral thesis) -- the Japanese Space Agency announced plans to do a second endeavor to collect samples from an asteroid. The original Hayabusa mission, intended as a technology demonstration, returned samples from a rock-rich S-type asteroid called Itokawa in 2010. 

The new Hayabusa would aim at an accessible – Earth-orbit crossing – asteroid of the carbonaceous chondrite variety, very black and filled with water and organics. “It’s trying to understand the relationship of these (different types of) asteroids, how that fits into the formation of the solar system and how it may have influenced life on our planet.”

The spacecraft carries four rovers that will be deployed to the surface, plus a small impactor probe that will smash into the surface to excavate a fresh crater.  If all goes well, Hayabusa 2’s sample return capsule should land in Australia in December 2020.  Very exciting… and necessary steps toward the goal of getting out there and mining millions of floating rocks, creating so much wealth that Earth can be a park.

More on comets!  This attempt to give Comet 67P’s true color -- and it's not gray!

And... First samples of comet dust found in Antarctica. Much more promising than the old way: “-Until recently, the only way scientists could collect “chondritic porous interplanetary dust particles,” or comet dust, without going to space has been by flying research planes high in the stratosphere. It’s painstaking work: Several hours of flying time typically yield one particle of dust.” 

Oh, yes.  Did I mention results pour in, verifying my doctoral dissertation... on comets? ;-) 

== More space! ==

After a nine year voyage, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has awakened, and is ready to collect data on its approach to Pluto. 

See the One Earth Message -- beamed to the New Horizons probe. Jon Lomberg has partnered with the Arthur C. Clarke Center  on a project to upload messages to the future, doing in software, (once the mission is mostly completed) what the Voyager disk did in hardware.  Sign up to participate at One Earth: New Horizons Message.

28 Months on Mars: See these incredible time-lapse images from Curiosity. 

Watch 3D Printer-bots build the lunar colony of 2050 -- in this ESA video. Actually, we seed funded much of this at NASA-NIAC.  In fact, while 3-D building may be a useful technique, astronauts staying for extended periods may use the cavities we’ve discovered, that appear to lead into underground ancient lava tubes.

The ESA and Russia may partner for joint robotic missions to the moon.

NASA engineers propose combining a rail gun and a scram jet to fire spacecraft into orbit!

The fastest stars in universe may approach light speed.

Some astronomers suggest that dark matter,’ the cosmic scaffolding on which our Universe is built,’ is being slowly erased, swallowed up by dark energy. This conversion could explain why the universal expansion seems to have been slowed down by gravity, some billions of years ago, but now appears to be speeding up… toward eventual dispersal in a vast Big Chill.

  

Which leads us to... A breakthrough in the detection of dark matter?

And finally, from Kepler to Cassini: Fifteen ongoing space missions you should know about.