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[...] space over the last few billion years,” principle investigator Bruce Jakosky told us during a recent press visit to the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. MAVEN will [...]
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Pictured is a Delta IV rocket launch from Cape Canaveral on November 21st, 2010. The image is a 20 second exposure taken at dusk, shot from about 100 miles west of the launch site. The launch placed a classified payload in orbit for the United States Air Force.
Difficult but not impossible to catch against the dawn or dusk sky, spotting an extreme crescent moon can be a challenge. The slender crescent pictured was shot 30 minutes before sunrise when the Moon was less than 20 hours away from New. A true feat of visual athletics to catch, a good pair of binoculars or a well aimed wide field telescopic view can help with the hunt.
The Sun is our nearest star, and goes through an 11-year cycle of activity. This image was taken via a properly filtered telescope, and shows the Sun as it appeared during its last maximum peak in 2003. This was during solar cycle #23, a period during which the Sun hurled several large flares Earthward. The next solar cycle is due to peak around 2013-14.
Located in the belt of the constellation Orion, Messier 42, also known as the Orion Nebula is one of the finest deep sky objects in the northern hemisphere sky. Just visible as a faint smudge to the naked eye on a clear dark night, the Orion Nebula is a sure star party favorite, as it shows tendrils of gas contrasted with bright stars. M42 is a large stellar nursery, a star forming region about 1,000 light years distant.
Orbiting the planet in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) every 90 minutes, many people fail to realize that you can see the International Space Station (ISS) from most of the planet on a near-weekly basis. In fact, the ISS has been known to make up to four visible passes over the same location in one night. The image pictured is from the Fourth of July, 2011 and is a 20 second exposure of a bright ISS pass.
Next to the Sun, the two brightest objects in the sky are the Moon and the planet Venus. In fact, when Venus is favorably placed next to the Moon, it might just be possible to spot the two in the daytime. Another intriguing effect known as earthshine or ashen light is also seen in the image on the night side of the Moon; this is caused by sunlight reflected back off of the Earth towards our only satellite.
A mosaic of three images taken during the total lunar eclipse of December 21st, 2010. The eclipse occurred the same day as the winter solstice. The curve and size of the Earth’s shadow is apparent in the image.
September 2013-Life in the Astro-Blogosphere: Touching Mars
A fragment of the Zagami meteorite!
It’s a long journey, from the shores of the Florida Space Coast to the surface of Mars. This past week, we made the journey from Astroguyz HQ in Florida to the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASC) to attend the New Media Workshop in Boulder, Colorado for the upcoming launch of MAVEN, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission.
As a freelance science writer, we only get to attend these sorts of events a few times a year, and we’re glad we made the effort to attend the MAVEN workshop in person.
MAVEN is probably the Mars mission that you aren’t following, but should be. Orbiters don’t tend to get the same press as laser-equipped, nuclear-powered rovers landed via sky crane. True, there may be no ”moment of terror” or eye-candy imagery, but MAVEN seeks to answer some key questions in the formation and evolution of the Red Planet.
“We want to rewind the movie and see what happened as Mars aged,” said planetary scientist Mehdi Benna. MAVEN will seek to do just that, using a highly elliptical orbit in an attempt to characterize the puzzle that is the Martian atmosphere.
To our surprise, we learned that the familiar picture of an internally cooling Mars which lost its magnetic field, allowing the solar winds to strip its atmosphere away is far from proven. MAVEN will seek to characterize just what an early Mars might’ve been like. We see evidence for flowing water on the surface in the form of erosion… this suggests that atmospheric pressures had to be higher in the past and, just perhaps, life might’ve had time to have taken hold.
We also heard from Janet Luhmann of the Space Physics Research Group at the University of California at Berkeley on how the photo-chemistry process present on Mars is tied to the ebb and flow of the 11-year solar cycle. This is even more crucial than on Earth, as modern day Mars lacks a magnetic field, allowing the solar wind to directly interact with its tenuous atmosphere.
We also got to hear from planetary scientist and author Dr. Nick Schneider and Primary Investigator on the MAVEN mission Bruce Jakosky. In a brief aside with Mr. Schneider, we got to ask him about the necessity of Earth’s Moon in the evolution of life on Earth. He doesn’t pay much credence to the “Rare Earth” hypothesis, noting that a magnetic field, plate tectonics and a large stabilizing Moon might be niceties, but not essentials in the evolution of life on other worlds.
Our tour of the LASP lab conducted by director of Mission Operations and Data Systems Bill Possel was fascinating as well. LASP has fielded instruments to every planet over the past 50 years, and will check off Pluto in 2015 when New Horizons makes its historic flyby. We got to see the control room of the Kepler Space telescope, which may soon be the home of operations receiving data from the B612’s Sentinel space telescope as it hunts for hazardous asteroids. The X-ray Irradiance Sensor (EXIS) was also in the lab, ready to launch on the GOES-R mission set for October 2015.
And all too soon, the weekend was over, as we, like MAVEN, departed Colorado for Florida. But MAVEN’s adventures and our own haven’t stopped there, as we plan to attend the launch of MAVEN from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas V rocket in a 401 configuration on November 18th of this year.
And yes, we got to hold a piece of the Mars Zagami meteorite in our hands! We’d love to report that it brought forth visions of crystalline canals and Bradbury’s golden bee-armed Martians, but in the words of Charlie Brown, it was “just a rock.” But what a rock, when you consider its history and the improbable journey that it took to make it to the LASP conference!
Thanks for a wonderful and informative weekend to all who made the MAVEN new media workshop a huge success!
-Follow MAVEN on Twitter as @MAVEN2Mars.
-Didn’t get your haiku selected? You’ve still got until September 10th to send your name to Mars!