Study: Mars Had Drizzle and Dew

Liquid water on Mars may have once drizzled from the sky or collected as dew on the ground.
The falling water left signs in the Martian soil measured by NASA's Viking, Pathfinder, and rover missions, a new study suggests.
"By analyzing the chemistry of the planet's soil, we can derive important information about Mars' climate history," said Ronald Amundson, UC Berkeley ecologist and the study's lead author.
It was already known that it snows around the north pole of Mars. And there is ample evidence that liquid water used to well up from beneath the surface, as hot springs or groundwater.
But water falling from the Martian sky is something that's never been proven.
The frigid climate on Mars has locked the planet's water in ice, but scientists agree that a warmer climate 4.6 billion to 3.5 billion years ago allowed for liquid water in lakes and rivers. Now the new study suggests that liquid water still existed in the Martian atmosphere even more recently, from 3.5 billion to 1.8 billion years ago.
The study will be detailed online in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta this month and in a print issue in August.
Amundson's team saw evidence that the Martian soil had lost much of the elements in the original rock fragments which formed the soil. That pattern suggests water once moved downward through the dirt and washed those elements away.
The Mars record also shows a long period of drying out, as seen in surface patterns in the sulfate-rich soil. The researchers compared that to very similar patterns in Chile's Atacama Desert, the driest region on Earth with just 1 millimeter of annual rainfall on average.
"The Atacama Desert and the dry valleys of Antarctica are where Earth meets Mars," Amundson said. "I would argue that Mars has more in common geochemically with these climate extremes on Earth than these sites have in common with the rest of our planet."Sulfates appear to have accumulated on the surface with layers of chloride salt beneath — a pattern suggesting water fell onto the soil from the Martian atmosphere. Because sulfates are less soluble in water than chloride, they tend to separate out from water first. That means water moving downward would carry chlorides further beyond the sulfates.
Scientists still debate how much Earth's climate can compare to that of Mars, but Amundson argues that the Martian soil stands as a "museum" containing the history of water on the planet. Looking to Earth may help unlock that record.
"It seems very logical that a dry, arid planet like Mars with the same bedrock geology as many places on Earth would have some of the same hydrological and geological processes operating that occur in our deserts here on Earth," Amundson saidLiquid water on Mars may have once drizzled from the sky or collected as dew on the ground.
The falling water left signs in the Martian soil measured by NASA's Viking, Pathfinder, and rover missions, a new study suggests.
"By analyzing the chemistry of the planet's soil, we can derive important information about Mars' climate history," said Ronald Amundson, UC Berkeley ecologist and the study's lead author.
It was already known that it snows around the north pole of Mars. And there is ample evidence that liquid water used to well up from beneath the surface, as hot springs or groundwater.
But water falling from the Martian sky is something that's never been proven.
The frigid climate on Mars has locked the planet's water in ice, but scientists agree that a warmer climate 4.6 billion to 3.5 billion years ago allowed for liquid water in lakes and rivers. Now the new study suggests that liquid water still existed in the Martian atmosphere even more recently, from 3.5 billion to 1.8 billion years ago.
The study will be detailed online in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta this month and in a print issue in August.
Amundson's team saw evidence that the Martian soil had lost much of the elements in the original rock fragments which formed the soil. That pattern suggests water once moved downward through the dirt and washed those elements away.
The Mars record also shows a long period of drying out, as seen in surface patterns in the sulfate-rich soil. The researchers compared that to very similar patterns in Chile's Atacama Desert, the driest region on Earth with just 1 millimeter of annual rainfall on average.
"The Atacama Desert and the dry valleys of Antarctica are where Earth meets Mars," Amundson said. "I would argue that Mars has more in common geochemically with these climate extremes on Earth than these sites have in common with the rest of our planet."Sulfates appear to have accumulated on the surface with layers of chloride salt beneath — a pattern suggesting water fell onto the soil from the Martian atmosphere. Because sulfates are less soluble in water than chloride, they tend to separate out from water first. That means water moving downward would carry chlorides further beyond the sulfates.
Scientists still debate how much Earth's climate can compare to that of Mars, but Amundson argues that the Martian soil stands as a "museum" containing the history of water on the planet. Looking to Earth may help unlock that record.
"It seems very logical that a dry, arid planet like Mars with the same bedrock geology as many places on Earth would have some of the same hydrological and geological processes operating that occur in our deserts here on Earth," Amundson said

scource:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080625-mars-rainfall.html

What we have here is a typically Russian paradox: although this country was the first to try out space tourism, it has failed to develop it further, letting other countries reap the fruits of this endeavor.
Furthermore, the ways in which Roskosmos (Russian Federal Space Agency) has been trying to branch out into tourism has no benefits for our national space program.
So far nine Russians have booked a space flight aboard a private vehicle Spaceship-2. It was developed by the British-U.S. company Virgin Galactic, which is part of the Virgin Group holding run by Sir Richard Branson. The company is going to demonstrate the first prototype of this spaceship in July.
The managers of Virgin Galactic, the world's first space travel agency with headquarters in the United States, believe that during the first 12 years hundreds of thousands of people may travel into space. True, the flight in zero-gravity conditions will last for just a few minutes, but at $200,000 it's still a bargain.
The American agency is going to set up a fleet of 40 to 45 tourist vehicles. In a decade, three to four spaceships with six tourists on board will be able to travel every day on a two-hour suborbital tour from the spaceport, currently under construction in New Mexico.
Today, the tickets for the first tours have already been sold, and about 85,000 people are ready to make advance payments.
The leaders of Russian cosmonautics started planning to develop space tourism in the age of the Mir orbital complex. But Roskosmos managed to translate its dream into reality only in 2001, when it sent Denis Tito, an American citizen, to the International Space Station (ISS) with the mediation of the U.S. company Space Adventures.
Since then, what we consider space tourism have been the flights to the ISS aboard the veteran spaceship Soyuz.
Needless to say, Roskosmos's dream for flights on a mass scale has not come true. So far, only five people have visited the station. The average cost of a weekly flight was more than $20 million.
But the very idea of a fun flight to the ISS is coming to an end. The station's crew will be increased to six people next year. Considering that U.S. shuttles will be put out of operation by 2010, a three-seat Soyuz will be the only spaceship for bringing crews to the ISS and back, and there will be simply no room for tourists.
But what if we cannot do without wealthy tourists in orbit?
Pavel Vinogradov, a pilot-cosmonaut and deputy head of the Energia Rocket Space Corporation, says: "Regrettably, space tourism is a big headache for us today. It does not resolve any financial problems, and undermines the foundations of our cosmonautics. We have to replace young cosmonauts with tourists... They are all good people but they are not professionals. Regrettably, we can only find room for them at the expense of professionals."
But Roskosmos is not giving up. If tourists cannot fly with the crew, they will have to be provided with a separate Soyuz spaceship. Space Adventures reports that the agreement on the first commercial flight was signed with Roskosmos in the first half of June.
What this means is that the weak industrial capacities will have to be diverted from the construction of spaceships for the bigger ISS crews. But this is no problem although it takes more than a year to build a space vehicle.
This time, Sergei Brin, one of the founders of the Google search engine and a new Space Adventures' investor, is going to fly into space. Let others judge what he will contribute to the ISS program.
But one thing is clear. Much to our regret, mass space tourism is leaving Russia. We could have kept it if Roskosmos had supported a project of the Myasishchev design bureau to develop a tourist spaceship on the basis of the high-altitude M-55 aircraft. But it remained on paper.
It is much easier to lash out at the lucky neighbor. Early this year, an anonymous source made a tell-tale statement about Virgin Galactic's plans: "Such short-term voyages into the near space, which last minutes and even seconds, cannot even compare with space trips of tourists to the ISS. Moreover, no respectable agency will collect money from hundreds of people if it cannot afford such flights."
This is an emphatic statement but it has nothing to do with reality

source:http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Options_For_Space_Tourists_999.html

Essel Group India Chooses AsiaSat 4 To Launch First HITS Platform In India

Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat) and the Essel Group have announced the signing of an agreement for the use of multiple C-band transponders on AsiaSat 4 for a new digital Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) delivery platform to distribute pay TV signals to all cable operators, serving millions of cable homes throughout India.
Through this platform on AsiaSat 4, cable operators can receive up to 150 digital television channels which will give a great impetus to the digitalisation of the cable networks in India. Headend-in-the-Sky (HITS) is a delivery model that allows cable operators to sell a readily encrypted high quality digital package of channels received from a single satellite to their subscribers.

This arrangement will enable the cable operators to offer a greater choice of channels with a small investment.

It will also help the content providers to have more transparency on audience penetration. An Essel Group company, WWIL plans to convert its existing analogue cable service to those using HITS service distribution in all the existing cities and targeted new cities across India.

Speaking on the development, an Essel Group official spokesman pointed out that digitalisation of cable services is on the highest priority list of the Government of India and is likely to be the face of the new cable industry in a country with over 70 million cable and satellite homes.

"As a leader in digital cable space, we strongly believe in introducing a new level of products and services for our enhancing the TV viewing experience for our consumers.

The latest offering is in tune with our commitment to provide a win-win proposition for the local cable operators and subscribers. Our tie-up with AsiaSat 4, a high performance satellite with exceptionally high power and superior look angle, will be an ideal platform to support the country-wide implementation of HITS."

"We are extremely pleased that the Essel Group has selected AsiaSat 4 as its prime satellite platform for its HITS project across India.

"We are excited to support Essel Group to become the first in India to launch HITS, and to play a major role in WWIL's strategy of digitising its cable infrastructure and extending its distribution services to all cable operators throughout the country," said Peter Jackson, Chief Executive Officer of AsiaSat
source:http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Essel_Group_India_Chooses_AsiaSat_4_To_Launch_First_HITS_Platform_In_India_999.html

Life on Mars in 2020

Click on this link to view an animation on life on Mars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0

NASA and Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, reached another milestone Friday with the successful test firing of a critical safety component for the Orion crew exploration vehicle, NASA's next generation of spaceships.
A 36-inch-long igniter for the abort motor of Orion's launch abort system was fired at ATK's facility in Promontory, Utah.
Orion is part of the Constellation Program of spacecraft and systems NASA is building to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and conduct sustained human exploration of the moon.
The abort motor, the primary motor in the launch abort system, is designed to pull the crew capsule away from the Ares I launch vehicle in an emergency situation while on the pad or during the first 300,000 feet of ascent after launch.
In less than a second, the igniter generated approximately 21,000 pounds of thrust and produced combustion gas temperatures of more than 5,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Engineers will use the test firing to evaluate the igniter's ballistic properties and pressure created inside its chamber. Preliminary data indicate the igniter performed as expected.
The igniter is designed to fit inside the aft end of the abort motor for Orion's launch abort system. In the event of an emergency, it will be used to ignite the solid propellant inside the abort motor casing. The motor uses a unique reverse flow technology with four nozzles mounted on the forward end.
Once ignited, it will produce nearly a half-million pounds of thrust within milliseconds to pull the Orion crew module safely away from the Ares I rocket.
Friday's test was the first in a series of three igniter open air tests scheduled for 2008. A full-scale abort motor ground test will be conducted in September. In December, the entire Orion launch abort system will be demonstrated during a flight test at the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
The abort system is a key element in NASA's continuing efforts to improve safety as the agency develops the next generation of spacecraft to return humans to the moon. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., manages the launch abort system design and development effort with partners and team members from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
Langley's Launch Abort System Office performs this function as part of the Orion Project Office located at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., is building the launch abort system for Lockheed Martin Corporation of Bethesda, Md., the prime contractor for Orion.

Satellite Launched For Olympic TV Broadcast

China launched a new communications satellite, Zhongxing-9, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern Sichuan Province at 8:15 p.m. (Beijing Time) Monday.
The satellite was shot into space aboard the Long March-3B rocket carrier. It was the 107th launch mission for the Long March series of carrier rockets.
Zhongxing-9, a satellite ordered by China Satcom from the France-based Thales Alenia Space, would be used for live television broadcast and put into use before the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
Audiences would be able to watch live broadcasts of Olympic events via the satellite. The quality and coverage of the country's television and broadcasting services were to be increased, and people in remote regions of China would receive clear television programs.
The China Great Wall Industrial Corporation (CGWIC), the contractor of the satellite launch, signed the launch service contract with China Satcom in November 2005.
As the only company engaged in international commercial satellite launching services, CGWIC has launched 34 foreign satellites for 28 services.China launched a new communications satellite, Zhongxing-9, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern Sichuan Province at 8:15 p.m. (Beijing Time) Monday.
The satellite was shot into space aboard the Long March-3B rocket carrier. It was the 107th launch mission for the Long March series of carrier rockets.
Zhongxing-9, a satellite ordered by China Satcom from the France-based Thales Alenia Space, would be used for live television broadcast and put into use before the Beijing Olympic Games in August.
Audiences would be able to watch live broadcasts of Olympic events via the satellite. The quality and coverage of the country's television and broadcasting services were to be increased, and people in remote regions of China would receive clear television p

rograms.
The China Great Wall Industrial Corporation (CGWIC), the contractor of the satellite launch, signed the launch service contract with China Satcom in November 2005.
As the only company engaged in international commercial satellite launching services, CGWIC has launched 34 foreign satellites for 28 services.

scource:http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Satellite_Launched_For_Olympic_TV_Broadcast_999.html

Russia Eyeing New Launch Services Deal With US

Russia and the United States are expected to announce a preliminary deal on Russian transport services to the International Space Station for the U.S.
Russian space specialists are currently in Houston to discuss contracts for 2011-2013, Mark Bowman, the manager of NASA'S Moscow Technical Liaison Office, said after the U.S. Discovery shuttle's launch to the ISS on Monday.
Any deals reached will be subject to approval from Congress, which will announce its decision later in the summer, he said.
Russia charges around $50 million for each American astronaut delivered to the orbital station.
As well as deliveries of NASA astronauts to the ISS in Soyuz vehicles, the sides may also agree on American freight deliveries in unmanned Russian Progress rockets.
NASA is set to suspend launches to the space station from 2010, and will be forced to use Russian launch services to continue its participation in the ISS project.
In October 2005, Congress permitted the resumption of space deals with Russian space agency Roscosmos after amending the Iran Nonproliferation Act.
The act had banned such deals due to Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran, which Washington accuses of pursuing a covert atomic weapons program.
source:http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Russia_Eyeing_To_Launch_Launch_Services_Deal_With_US_999.html

news

A soil sample from the Martian arctic dug up by the Phoenix probe appears to be too firmly clumped to deliver any particles into the spacecraft's main test instrument, mission experts said.
Apparently no testable bits from the 200 milliliters (12 cubic inches) of Martian permafrost which researchers hope will provide clues to whether the planet was once habitable for microbial life passed through a screen into Phoenix's thermal and evolved gas analyzer (TEGA), Phoenix team experts at the University of Arizona said Saturday.
That deduction came after TEGA failed to signal it had received any material from the sample, following its retrieval from the Mars polar surface by Phoenix's articulated robot arm.
"I think it's the cloddiness of the soil and not having enough fine granular material," Ray Arvidson, one of the mission's lead scientists, said in a statement.
"In the future, we may prepare the soil by pushing down on the surface with the arm before scooping up the material to break it up, then sprinkle a smaller amount over the door," he said.
Phoenix relayed images Friday that showed the clump resting on a screen over the TEGA sample port.
The screen is designed to allow through it particles measuring one millimeter (0.04 inch) or less. Inside the port there is an infrared beam which is to determine if particles enter the machine.
Phoenix, which landed on the stark terrain of Mars' north pole region on May 25, collected the sample on Thursday.
The clump of ground was topped by a white crust that set NASA scientists debating whether it is ice or salt deposits from evaporated water.
Phoenix mission chief scientist Peter Smith called it a good sample Friday.
"This is really an important occasion for us, to be poised to make a measurement for the first time of the polar soil that will tell us how much water is in the soil, and secondly what the minerals are that make up the soil," said Smith.
It is the first sample take in the three month project to inspect Mars' soil for the right combination of water in its ice form and minerals that would demonstrate the planet could or can support basic microbial life.
Once it gets a sample, the TEGA instrument spends several days analysing its content, first testing for the level of water content, and then heating it gradually to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit) the better assess the mineral composition.

source:http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mars_lander_Phoenix_struggles_with_soil_sample_999.html

news 9/6/08

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have received a $1 million grant from the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) to boost the safety and performance of fuel used in thousands of satellites, space vehicles, rockets and missiles.
The UMass team will study the spray and combustion of gelled hypergolic propellants, formed from a fuel and an oxidizer that ignite spontaneously when mixed, so there is no need of an ignition mechanism to bring about combustion. Hypergolic propellants have been used for decades, and were mentioned in the movie Apollo 13 as the fuel used in the lunar module.
David Schmidt and Phillip Westmoreland will focus on fluid flow and chemistry in hypergolic propellants. The UMass Amherst research is part of a larger, interdisciplinary collaboration with Purdue and Iowa State Universities that was awarded $6.4 million by the DoD. Stephen Heister of Purdue is the principal investigator for the entire project.
"Hydrogolic fuel is related very specifically to the thruster rockets that act as guidance mechanisms on a spacecraft," says Westmoreland, a professor of chemical engineering. "The lunar module is a prime example, but also satellites that have thrusters to help them maintain their proper orbits."
The research will be applied very quickly by the DoD and NASA, resulting in significant payoffs in the safety and performance of rocket propellants, such as better spray patterns, enhanced mixing, shortened ignition times, controlled reaction rate, elimination of hard starts and safer storage. These improvements will also mean increased rocket efficiency and range, and increased vehicle safety.
Adding a gelling agent to hypergolic fuels is a new idea designed to prevent spills and unintentional ignition from fuel tank punctures and improve the performance of the propellants. But scientists still lack a fundamental understanding of how the newly formed gels will behave during the mixing and combustion process because liquid and gelled hypergolic fuels act very differently from each other.
"You certainly wouldn't throw gelatinized fuel in your car and just hope for the best," says Schmidt, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering. "It's pretty much the same with rockets. Before you add these safer fuels, you have to give some thought to how you're going to have to redesign the rocket engine. One of the things we expect to change is the fuel injection and fuel mixing process. Hopefully, five years from now, we'll have the new knowledge required to redesign the rocket engines to accommodate the gel fuels."
Schmidt and Westmoreland will be studying key issues in the hypergolic propellant mixing system, such as spray atomization in gels, the effect on vapor pressure, droplet collision dynamics and the chemical mechanisms that must be designed to accommodate this gel behavior.
"Once you get into the world of gelling, anything's possible," says Schmidt. "You might get something like Silly Putty in which you stretch or shear the gels and they snap back, demonstrating elasticity. Another example is toothpaste. With toothpaste, you might squeeze a little out of the tube and it gets sucked back in. One more example is a lava lamp. These are the kinds of behavior that we're going to have to study and get to know when hypergolic gels are mixed."
The objective of this effort is to develop a fundamental understanding of the processes and mechanisms that control droplet formation, droplet collision and mixing, ignition and energy release in gelled hypergolic propellants. The UMass Amherst engineers will be studying these issues by applying various computer modeling and simulation tools used by engineers, and then comparing their results with laboratory tests conducted by the team of collaborators from Purdue and Iowa State.
The project is a special kind of DoD grant called a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative or MURI, a high-profile grant obtained by forming collaborations with the very best researchers in the country.
"For UMass Amherst to be part of a successful MURI proposal is a real honor," says Schmidt. "It confirms a level of recognition among our peer institutions and with our sponsors."
"What we're doing is both on the cutting edge of the technology and the cutting edge of the science needed to make those technologies work," says Westmoreland

source:http://www.space-travel.com/reports/Researchers_To_Upgrade_Safety_And_Performance_Of_Rocket_Fuel_999.html

A First For Falcon 9 As Five Go Hot

Space Exploration Technologies conducted the first five-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on Thursday, May 29. At full power the engines generated almost half a million pounds of force, and consumed 1,750 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second.
This five-engine test again sets the record as the most powerful test yet on the towering 235-foot tall test stand.
The test of the five Merlin 1C engines, arranged in a cross pattern like the Saturn V moon rocket, is the last step before firing the full complement of nine engines, scheduled for this summer. With all engines operating, the Falcon 9 generates over one million pounds of thrust in vacuum - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.
"This is the first time that we've added more than one engine at a time, and all phases of integration and testing went smoothly," said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. "As with previous tests, we saw no unexpected interactions between the engines, and are on schedule for adding four more engines."
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral by the end of 2008. The next flight of SpaceX's smaller Falcon 1 rocket is scheduled for late June or July of 2008Space Exploration Technologies conducted the first five-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor on Thursday, May 29. At full power the engines generated almost half a million pounds of force, and consumed 1,750 lbs of fuel and liquid oxygen per second.
This five-engine test again sets the record as the most powerful test yet on the towering 235-foot tall test stand.
The test of the five Merlin 1C engines, arranged in a cross pattern like the Saturn V moon rocket, is the last step before firing the full complement of nine engines, scheduled for this summer. With all engines operating, the Falcon 9 generates over one million pounds of thrust in vacuum - four times the maximum thrust of a 747 aircraft.
"This is the first time that we've added more than one engine at a time, and all phases of integration and testing went smoothly," said Tom Mueller, Vice President of Propulsion for SpaceX. "As with previous tests, we saw no unexpected interactions between the engines, and are on schedule for adding four more engines."
The first Falcon 9 will arrive at the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral by the end of 2008.
source:http://www.space-travel.com/reports/A_First_For_Falcon_9_As_Five_Go_Hot_999.html

news7/6/2008

Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.
"We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm. "We'll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera. We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.
"Full confirmation of what we're seeing will come when we excavate and analyze layers in the nearby workspace," Arvidson said.
Testing last night of a Phoenix instrument that bakes and sniffs samples to identify ingredients identified a possible short circuit. This prompted commands for diagnostic steps to be developed and sent to the lander in the next few days.
The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer. It includes a calorimeter that tracks how much heat is needed to melt or vaporize substances in a sample, plus a mass spectrometer to examine vapors driven off by the heat. The Thursday, May 29, tests recorded electrical behavior consistent with an intermittent short circuit in the spectrometer portion.
"We have developed a strategy to gain a better understanding of this behavior, and we have identified workarounds for some of the possibilities," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead scientist for the instrument.
The latest data from the Canadian Space Agency's weather station shows another sunny day at the Phoenix landing site with temperatures holding at minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) as the sol's high, and a low of minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit).
The lidar instrument was activated for a 15-minute period just before noon local Mars time, and showed increasing dust in the atmosphere.
"This is the first time lidar technology has been used on the surface of another planet," said the meteorological station's chief engineer, Mike Daly, from MDA in Brampton, Canada. "The team is elated that we are getting such interesting data about the dust dynamics in the atmosphere."
The mission passed a "safe to proceed" review on Thursday evening, meeting criteria to proceed with evaluating and using the science instruments.
"We have evaluated the performance of the spacecraft on the surface and found we're ready to move forward. While we are still investigating instrument performance such as the anomaly on TEGA [Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer], the spacecraft's infrastructure has passed its tests and gets a clean bill of health," said David Spencer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy project manager for Phoenix.
"We're still in the process of checking out our instruments," Phoenix project scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL said.
"The process is designed to be very flexible, to respond to discoveries and issues that come up every day. We're in the process of taking images and getting color information that will help us understand soil properties. This will help us understand where best to first touch the soil and then where and how best to dig."Scientists have discovered what may be ice that was exposed when soil was blown away as NASA's Phoenix spacecraft landed on Mars last Sunday, May 25. The possible ice appears in an image the robotic arm camera took underneath the lander, near a footpad.
"We could very well be seeing rock, or we could be seeing exposed ice in the retrorocket blast zone," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., co-investigator for the robotic arm. "We'll test the two ideas by getting more data, including color data, from the robotic arm camera. We think that if the hard features are ice, they will become brighter because atmospheric water vapor will collect as new frost on the ice.
"Full confirmation of what we're seeing will come when we excavate and analyze layers in the nearby workspace," Arvidson said.
Testing last night of a Phoenix instrument that bakes and sniffs samples to identify ingredients identified a possible short circuit. This prompted commands for diagnostic steps to be developed and sent to the lander in the next few days.
The instrument is the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer. It includes a calorimeter that tracks how much heat is needed to melt or vaporize substances in a sample, plus a mass spectrometer to examine vapors driven off by the heat. The Thursday, May 29, tests recorded electrical behavior consistent with an intermittent short circuit in the spectrometer portion.
"We have developed a strategy to gain a better understanding of this behavior, and we have identified workarounds for some of the possibilities," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead scientist for the instrument.
The latest data from the Canadian Space Agency's weather station shows another sunny day at the Phoenix landing site with temperatures holding at minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit) as the sol's high, and a low of minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit).
The lidar instrument was activated for a 15-minute period just before noon local Mars time, and showed increasing dust in the atmosphere.
"This is the first time lidar technology has been used on the surface of another planet," said the meteorological station's chief engineer, Mike Daly, from MDA in Brampton, Canada. "The team is elated that we are getting such interesting data about the dust dynamics in the atmosphere."
The mission passed a "safe to proceed" review on Thursday evening, meeting criteria to proceed with evaluating and using the science instruments.
"We have evaluated the performance of the spacecraft on the surface and found we're ready to move forward. While we are still investigating instrument performance such as the anomaly on TEGA [Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer], the spacecraft's infrastructure has passed its tests and gets a clean bill of health," said David Spencer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy project manager for Phoenix.
"We're still in the process of checking out our instruments," Phoenix project scientist Leslie Tamppari of JPL said.
"The process is designed to be very flexible, to respond to discoveries and issues that come up every day. We're in the process of taking images and getting color information that will help us understand soil properties. This will help us understand where best to first touch the soil and then where and how best to dig."

« Scattering Life Through the Cosmos
Near-Term Concepts for a Fast Ticket Outward »
Black Holes in Intergalactic Space?
Physicists have recently theorized that the merger of two black holes would create gravitational waves that could eject the resultant object from its galaxy. Now such a black hole event has been observed for the first time. Theory predicted that the gravitational waves would be emitted primarily in one direction, pushing the newly enlarged black hole in the opposite, and that is what we seem to be looking at, according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE).
We can’t see black holes themselves, nor have we yet directly detected gravitational waves. But we can observe the interactions around black holes, in this case the broad emission lines of gases carried with the recoiling black hole as it exits its galaxy, which contrast with the narrow emission lines of the gases the object left behind. These data allowed the object’s speed — a scorching 2650 kilometers per second — to be measured. The recoil caused by the merger is pushing the black hole, which masses several hundred million times the mass of the Sun, completely out of the galaxy it once called home.
What would cause two enormous black holes to encounter each other? The most likely event is a collision between two galaxies. Early calculations and later simulations of such events predicted that such mergers could produce velocities of up to a few hundred kilometers per second, but working out the numbers for spinning black holes produced much higher velocities, up to the several thousand kilometers per second found by Stefanie Komossa’s team at MPE. With speeds like this, exceeding the escape velocity of even massive elliptical galaxies, we have to ponder the consequences for galaxy evolution absent the central black hole. The work also implies an intergalactic population of black holes.
Finding the first ever candidate for a recoiling black hole, thus verifying theory and simulation, is quite a catch. It’s also noteworthy given the distances involved. Komossa’s team first detected X-ray emissions from the black hole’s accretion disk from a gigantic ten billion light years away. The observation of gravitational waves through experiments like LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and the space-based LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) may one day soon provide data that will help us refine our model of such events, as well as other black hole activity. We’ll also find out whether Einstein was right that gravitational waves and light waves travel at the same speed.

source:http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1854