The Great Beyond

Given that the weather on our own planet is always such a huge topic of conversation (unusually hot and sunny in London this week, by the way), I can see that the weather might be intrinsically interesting even on other planets. All the more reason then, perhaps, to just play the news straight. So why do so many stories about space weather get jazzed up with newly-invented words or over-stretched metaphors?

Last night we had news of ‘iron snow’ on Mercury. Cool. Iron snow, really? We’ve had methane rain (on Titan), so I read on excitedly to hear about this devastating weather phenomenon, imagining lumps of metal whacking into the ground, or flakes of it gliding softly to a rusty blanket of iron. But no. This snow is apparently inside the planet’s core. Come on. You can’t have snow INSIDE a planet. That’s just silly. (But still kind of cool, so here are some links to the story: Discovery; Innovations)

We’ve also seen ‘smust’ on Titan (Nature), and, back on Earth this week, ‘vog’ in Hawaii (AP).

Posted by Nicola Jones on May 09, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Canada is set to launch the first dedicated space satellite to watch for near-Earth objects (Vancouver Sun). The question is: do we really need one?

A number of Earth-bound telescopes are already used to spot and track near-Earth objects (NEO), including under the auspices of Nasa’s NEO Project. Commentators in New Scientist argue that the space-based telescope (called NEOSSat) will have better luck spotting asteroids that are within Earth orbit: these also tend to stay in line with the Sun, meaning they are only visible in the sky close to sunset or sunrise, when background light tends to drown them out. But they are also more likely to hit us, the article says.

But ground-based satellites can spot these too, even if it is a little harder. Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute in Boulder Colorado, US, told New Scientist he doesn’t think the project will add too much to what’s already available.

But hey, it’s only costing $10 million. And statistically Canada (the second largest country after Russia) has a lot of area sitting waiting to be struck by an asteroid, so maybe that makes them keen to get in on the game… even if there aren’t that many people actually living in most of it.

Posted by Nicola Jones on May 06, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Under the slightly risqué headline ‘Galaxies gone wild!’ the Hubble Space Telescope team has released a series of images of hot galaxy merging action.

In total 59 candid snaps of colliding galaxies have been released, most of which are products of the GOALS project, combining data from the Spitzer, Hubble, Chandra and GALEX instruments.

More of our favourites from the 59 below the fold. Click on images for description.

Continue reading "Today’s space pics: ‘Galaxies gone wild’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 24, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Astronomers say they have peered for the first time into the massive jet of particles fired out of a ‘blazar’ – the most energetic type of black-hole at the centre of a galaxy.

Blazars have opposite plasma jets firing out from a black hole at near-light speed. According to theoretical predictions these jets are powered by magnetic fields twisted by rotation of the hole’s ‘accretion disk’, the collection of material pulled inward towards the hole.

In this week’s Nature Alan Marscher and colleagues report observations that appear to support these predictions (covered by the BBC, Scientific American, Reuters).

“We have gotten the clearest look yet at the innermost portion of the jet, where the particles actually are accelerated, and everything we see supports the idea that twisted, coiled magnetic fields are propelling the material outward,” says Marscher, a researcher at Boston University (press release). “This is a major advance in our understanding of a remarkable process that occurs throughout the Universe.”

The full story of this paper can be heard on this week’s Nature podcast, which also features part of Marscher’s song about blazars, one of a whole host of science songs he’s written.

Be warned though, Marscher says ‘Superluminal Lover’ is “a hot love song ... with a Latin beat, that links activity in blazars with human passion ... beware: it is beyond X-rated, it's GAMMA-RATED!”

Image: artist’s conception of region near supermassive black hole / Marscher et al., Wolfgang Steffen, Cosmovision, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 24, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Steven Hawking has called for a new focus on space exploration to ensure a future for humanity.

At a speech marking 50 years of Nasa he compared the current situation to Europe before America was discovered (press notice). “Spreading out into space will have an even greater effect. It will completely change the future of the human race and maybe determine whether we have any future at all,” AFP quotes him saying.

“If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will probably have to go where nobody has gone before,” he added, according to ABC.

Continue reading "Get us off this planet, says Hawking" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 22, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (1)

A Russian Soyuz capsule landed nearly 500 kilometres off course on Saturday.

Most reports say American Peggy Whitson, Ukrainian Yuri Malenchenko and Korean So-yeon Yi were unhurt. However the Korea Times later reported that Yi had been taken to hospital to recover.

The Soyuz seems to have come into Earth’s atmosphere at a steeper-than-planned angle, a so-called ballistic descent. According to Space.com such ballistic descents are not unknown. Soyuz experienced similar problems before, for example in last year and in 2003. A number of reports note that this would have subjected the astronauts to higher than planned G-forces and caused the capsule to land way off target (eg PA, NASA press release).

It also meant it took rescuers a while to get to the crash site, where a Reuters cameraman described seeing a smoking capsule with its side 30 cm deep in the earth and its parachute aflame.

“Don’t be late next time, please,” Yi said (Korea Times).

Exactly what caused this problem, and the similar previous problems, is not entirely clear. With all the money spent on space you’d think they could land on target. It’s not exactly rocket science. Oh, wait...

Image: the Soyuz shortly after undocking / NASA TV

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 21, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This composite image of the Southern Pinwheel galaxy is almost too perfect. It looks like the cover from a gaudy sci-fi novel rather than combined ultra violet data from some very expensive pieces of kit.

The main spiral is the pink and blue section. In the outer arms (the red bits) stars are forming. This region is along way from the centre of the galaxy and rather empty. Until the initial discovery of stars in these regions in 2005 it was thought not enough material existed there to create stars. These stars may help us understand star formation in the early universe, when there were fewer heavier elements and less dust.

“Even with today’s most powerful telescopes, it is extremely difficult to study the first generation of star formation. These new observations provide a unique opportunity to study how early generation stars might have formed,” says Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena.

Press release.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/VLA/MPIA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 17, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nasa has crushed the teenage dreams of a young German by rubbishing claims that he detected an error in its asteroid collision calculations.

A number of press sources ran with a story from the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten that Nico Marquardt calculated there is a 1 in 450 chance the Apophis asteroid will smash Earth, a chance Nasa puts at 1 in 45,000. These stories even claimed that Nasa had told the European Space Agency Marquardt was right.

But NASA says:

Contrary to recent press reports, NASA offices involved in near-Earth object research were not contacted and have had no correspondence with a young German student, who claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher than the current estimate.

Continue reading "Nasa beats German teen (at maths)" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 17, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The world’s nicest nation™ has finally found something to get wound up about. Canada’s government has triggered a row by blocking a US company’s attempt to take over its biggest space-tech company.

MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, builder of the megalomaniac Dextre space robot, was to be sold for $1.3 billion to Alliant Techsystems (who seem to be called ATK these days). As the Toronto Star notes, “It was a high-stakes decision, because the space division of MacDonald Dettwiler includes Radarsat-2, a unique radar imaging satellite designed to protect Canada’s sovereignty and built with the help of $445 million in Canadian taxpayers’ money.”

But the government has decided the takeover is not “likely to be of net benefit to Canada” (AFP). The Register thinks this is all about Radarsat-2, which the government currently has free access to imagery from.

Continue reading "Canada blocks American space takeover" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 16, 2008
Categories: Policy, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

We’ve really made a mess of space. Recently released by the European Space Agency, these images show the trackable objects in orbit round Earth (apart from the Moon, obviously).

Since Sputnik in 1957 and the start of this year we’ve put around 6,000 satellites into orbit, according to the agency. Around 800 are currently operational, which leaves a lot of junk.

“Space debris comprise the ever-increasing amount of inactive space hardware in orbit around the Earth as well as fragments of spacecraft that have broken up, exploded or otherwise become abandoned,” says ESA. “About 50 percent of all trackable objects are due to in-orbit explosion events (about 200) or collision events (less than 10).”

More images below the fold

Continue reading "Somebody clean this mess up" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 15, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

There was much cooing in the Nature office this morning. Not over news of our colleague’s new baby, but over these pictures of Martian moon Phobos.

The HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter snapped these pictures of Phobos on March 23.

“Images from previous spacecraft have been of smaller pixel scale ..., but the HiRISE images have greater signal-to-noise, making the new data some of the best ever for Phobos,” says the team behind the shots (see more photos here).

If you want to get involved you will soon be able to suggest where HiRISE should be pointed next, on the NASA website.

The Bad Astronomy blog highlights some more of the good stuff that HiRISE has come up with:

The crater Stickney on the right is huge compared to the moon; if the impactor had been any bigger or moving faster it would have shattered the moon. The long parallel grooves were probably formed as stress fractures in the impact. Check out the awesome image of the crater itself. Wow.

And if that’s not enough, pull out your red/green glasses and take a gander at the 3D anaglyph they made. The tiny craters really stand out… uh, I mean, stand in. Whatever. They’re cool, so take a look.

Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 10, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A surprising number of quite dramatic stories today – one big round-up post will have to do for them all.

Dextre, the Canadian space agency’s new robot, is meant to be helping construct the ISS. Instead it’s making outlandish demands:
In a surprising and potentially troubling request, the new space station robot known as Dextre demanded that astronauts refer to it in the future at ‘Dextre the Magnificent.’ Brandishing power tools that would make any handyperson blush, the mobile servicing system thanked humans for creating it and promised a glorious future where humans would retain an important role in the new robot order.

Virgin and Google are going to Mars. They want YOU to join them (if you can score highly enough on their selection questionnaire that is).

Continue reading "A chemist, a physicist, and a biologist walk into a bar" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 01, 2008
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, Physics & Mathematics, Policy, Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“NGC 2397, pictured in this image from Hubble, is a classic spiral galaxy with long prominent dust lanes along the edges of its arms, seen as dark patches and streaks silhouetted against the starlight.”

This image was requested by astronomers at Queen’s University Belfast for a study of supernovae. It includes a view of supernova SN 2006bc taken when its brightness is decreasing.

The Queen’s team will tell this week’s National Astronomy Meeting that it seems stars with masses seven times the mass of the Sun can explode as supernovae while the most massive stars “may collapse to form black holes either without producing a supernova or by producing one that is too faint to observe”.

ESA press release.

Image: NASA, ESA & Stephen Smartt (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 31, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After last week’s news that organic material had been found in the atmosphere of a planet in a totally different solar system I find it hard to get hugely excited about organic molecules being found by the Cassini mission orbiting Saturn; but NASA scientists are apparently over the moon. (press release).

The moon in question is Enceladus, which is getting so much attention these days Saturn’s other satellites are said to be getting quite upset. Hunter Waite, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, explains the latest reason for the scientist’s fawning devotion to the winsome lump of ice:

A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what's coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet. To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system.

This implication is that Enceladus might have formed in a slightly different way to the rest of the moons and planets.

Continue reading "Saturn’s moon does comet impression" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 27, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The space shuttle Endeavour landed at Kennedy Space Center late yesterday, in a near-dark touchdown. In the process it provided us with this rather fine picture (credit NASA).

Only about a fifth of landings take place in the dark, according to AP.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 27, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Katharine Sanderson

Nature today carries an article about the detection of methane in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet, HD 189733b, using the Hubble space telescope. This is nicely spun as “organic matter found on alien Earth” by ESA.

“This is a crucial stepping stone to eventually characterising prebiotic molecules on planets where life could exist”, said Mark Swain of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, USA, in the press release.

Hang on, let’s not get overexcited here: this is a great result, and hats off to the researchers for getting such a tricky measurement. Detecting anything so far away and so obscured by the brightness of its parent star, is a major achievement.

But I would urge caution, if not a few pinches of salt.

Continue reading "First organic molecule found on extrasolar planet" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 19, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka aged 90. Science has lost not just one of its great popularisers but also one of its great minds.

As well as his immensely popular books, Clarke came up with ideas that have had a profound influence on our lives – such as geo-stationary satellites – and introduced his readers others that may yet be just as influential – such as the space elevator.

Nature had the honour of Clarke writing the first science fiction story to be published in our journal. Improving the neighbourhood details another species’ relief at the destruction of humanity, whose history contains “countless episodes of violence, against their own species and the numerous others”.

It also notes: “It is quite surprising what they were able to achieve, as massive individual entities exchanging information at a pitiably low data rate — often by very short-range vibrations in their atmosphere!”

The Earth has now lost one of our most thoughtful ‘individual entities’ and the information he exchanged with us will be sorely missed.

Nature’s podcast team put together an item for his 90th birthday last year, which we are making available again today as a celebration of his life.

Much more below the fold

Continue reading "RIP Arthur C. Clarke" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 19, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Two different bits of hi-tech space kit have malfunctioned embarrassingly this week.

First up: the flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus turns out not to have been the total success it first appeared. A software hiccup meant the Cassini probe’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer failed to collect data when it flew through a geyser spewing from the moon (see Nature’s pre flyby coverage for more on the mission). The other four instruments measuring fields and particles did work, according to Reuters.

“An unexplained software hiccup with Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument prevented it from collecting any data during closest approach, although the instrument did get data before and after the approach,” explains NASA (press release).

Continue reading "Call the space repair man" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 14, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is just too cruel. Ko San was unveiled as Korea’s first astronaut last year to great fanfare. Now he has been dropped for breaching Russia’s strict training facility rules, apparently accidentally.

According to Associated Press Ko committed two offences: accidentally sending his training manual home (and thus outside the training facility) and obtaining another manual he was not supposed to have via a Russian colleague. “The Russian space agency has stressed that a minor mistake and disobedience can cause serious consequences,” Lee Sang-mok, a minister at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology says.

According to the BBC the Russian Federal Space Agency requested Ko be dropped.

This is good news for Yi So-yeon, who has been selected in his place.

Continue reading "Russia forces Korea to replace astronaut" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 11, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

NASA has taken snapshots of avalanches down a steep Martian slope. Researchers were actually looking at the Northern-spring thaw in the planet’s carbon dioxide frost when they spotted the cloud of dust and ice resulting from the rock and ice fall (NASA press release, news coverage from USA, China, Australia).

This cloud can be seen in the middle of the right hand side of this false colour picture. The top of the cliff is on the left of the picture – the white stuff is carbon-dioxide frost). Slightly lower down the slope, to the right of the frost, the pink/brown layers are ice and dust (more details from NASA).

Continue reading "Avalanche on Mars: Film at 11" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 04, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The press seems to be finally picking up on news that NASA’s Mars Space Laboratory (MSL), designed to look at mineralogy on the red planet and hunt for signs of life, is in trouble.

AP reports that Mike Griffin, NASA Administrator, told a congressional hearing on 13 Feb that the heat shield on the craft’s rover will have to be redesigned, pushing costs up and possibly delaying the craft’s proposed 2009 launch. Interested parties picked up the copy (Mars Society; Space.com).

It seems surprising that NASA, of all organisations, can’t get a heat shield right (this one was originally modeled on the space shuttle, apparently).

Aviation Week were on the case at the time of the hearing, although they don’t put a price on the extra work, which AP says will be between $20 and $30 million.

Aviation Week also followed up with a bleak prediction about the spiralling cost of the mission, now expected to hit $2 billion.

Apart from that, there wasn’t much coverage between the hearing itself and the AP copy – perhaps because the news was overshadowed by the United States deciding to shoot down a spy satellite (Nature News).

Posted by Nicola Jones on February 29, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The UK government has reached an agreement with the Gemini Observatory that will allow British astronomers to retain access to both of its 8-metre telescopes.

In November, the government shocked astronomers by announcing its intent to withdraw from the project. Subsequent negotiations to retain access to just one telescope, located atop Maneau Kea in Hawaii, failed. By early this year, British astronomers feared that their access to Gemini might be lost forever.

Those fears were premature, as neither side really wanted to break up the partnership. According to an agreement announced last night, the UK government will stay in the collaboration. But they'll sell some of their £3.5 million worth of annual observing time in order to save money.

That means that the UK's astronomers will have less time to peer through Gemini, but they won't have to give it up all together.

credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on February 28, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After 17 year’s of service, solar mission Ulysses is at its end. The craft, which has been circling the Sun since 1992 tracing solar wind and studying the Sun’s poles, is about to run out of power and fall below a critical temperature of 2 degrees Celsius, at which point its hydrazine fuel will freeze.

Sadly a cleverly hatched plan to try and save power in the aging craft hasn’t worked out for NASA.

Mission scientists decided to temporarily turn off the craft’s transmitter, hoping to shunt this power over to the scientific instruments and the heater. They planned to turn the transmitter back on only when data was ready to be sent back to Earth. This would have made it possible to run Ulysses for up to another two years.

Unfortunately, this cunning plan proved to be a dud. A test revealed that the transmitter couldn’t be turned back on. And, to make matters worse, the fault seemed to lie with the power source of the transmitter, meaning there was no extra power to shunt over to the heater after all. "The decision to switch the transmitter off was not taken lightly. It was the only way to continue the science mission," said Richard Marsden, ESA project scientist and mission manager (press release). Its life expectancy is now down to only a few months.

New Scientist points out the irony of a spacecraft orbiting the Sun freezing to death. Discovery News rings the death bell for the craft. Elsewhere the annoying habit of humanizing inanimate objects continues, as the lump of metal is tagged as ‘brave’ (AFP).

Last time we heard from the Ulysses team the craft was bagging some good data from the solar cycle switch by flying over the pole at an opportune time.

Posted by Nicola Jones on February 26, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The US Defense Department (DoD) says they've completely destroyed an errant spy satellite, which they shot down last week.

President Bush ordered the shoot down amid fears that the satellite's unused hydrazine fuel posed a potential health risk to anyone who happened to be in the area where it came down. Nobody would dispute that hydrazine is dangerous, but a lot of experts doubted that the stuff would land anywhere near populated areas.One independent analysis puts the chances at one in several thousand.

It now appears that the hydrazine menace has been safely contained. The same cannot be said for the political debris created by the satellite. A few stories are talking about the diplomatic fallout from the hit. Interestingly, it appears that the US is going to try and smooth some ruffled feathers by sharing its data with China.
credit: DoD

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on February 25, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A total eclipse of the moon will take place tonight (Wednesday 20th Feb), or tomorrow morning if you’re reading this in Europe, Africa or western Asia. Find out if you can see it using NASA’s handy Javascript Lunar Eclipse Explorer or check the map.

“You don’t have to stay up until dawn or anything obnoxious like that,” David Morrison, of the Lunar Science Institute at the NASA/Ames Research Center, says in The Mercury News’s coverage.

Starting at 8:43 pm Eastern time a shadow will begin to creep across the face of the Moon as its eastern edge moves into the Earth’s shadow. Total eclipse begins at 10:01pm and lasts just under 50 minutes (NASA Lunar Eclipse page).

USA Today has a comprehensive viewer’s guide. Sky and Telescope also has a nice outline of what you can expect to see.

Image: lunar eclipse seen from Apollo 15 / NASA

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 20, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bad news for alien hunters looking for little green things on Mars: the planet is simply too salty for life (or at least ‘most life as we know it’), according to results beamed back from NASA’s Opportunity rover. And it has been for billions of years.

Researchers simulated conditions on the Red Planet based in part on minerals found by Opportunity. They now believe the quantity of minerals dissolved in water would have made life on Mars hard, to say the least.

“This tightens the noose on the possibility of life,” says Andrew Knoll, a member of the rover science team (press release). “Life at the Martian surface would have been very challenging for the last 4 billion years. The best hopes for a story of life on Mars are at environments we haven’t studied yet – older ones, subsurface ones.”

On reading this it instantly springs to mind that there are extreme bacteria on Earth that love salt. Surely something like that could have lived it up in these conditions? Not really - the Red Planet, according to Knoll, is more like the Dead Planet.

Continue reading "Is there life on Mars? No." »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 18, 2008
Categories: Space and astronomy | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)