Here is an extended quote from the Preface of a new publication you may find interesting. I thought it was fascinating:

In 1995, the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee on Space Debris wrote,

The threat that orbital debris poses to international space activities is presently not large, but it may be on the verge of becoming significant. If and when it does, the consequences could be very costly–and extremely difficult to reverse. By contrast, the cost of reducing the growth of the hazard can be relatively low….The committee believes that spacefaring nations should take judicious, timely steps now to understand the risk and agree on ways to reduce it.

At that time, no destructive collisions between active spacecraft and debris or meteoroids2 had been recorded. In addition, the amount of debris in orbit did not include the aftermath of the 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision and the 2007 on-orbit destruction by the Chinese of a weather satellite as part of an anti-satellite test. Both of those events greatly increased the amount of debris in the near-Earth space environment, thus pushing the threat posed by orbital debris even further toward what was described more than 15 years ago as “on the verge of becoming significant.”

You can get the report here.

After a journey of almost three years, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached the Red Planet’s Endeavour crater to study rocks never seen before.

On Aug. 9, the golf cart-sized rover relayed its arrival at a location named Spirit Point on the crater’s rim. Opportunity drove approximately 13 miles (21 kilometers) since climbing out of the Victoria crater.

“NASA is continuing to write remarkable chapters in our nation’s story of exploration with discoveries on Mars and trips to an array of challenging new destinations,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “Opportunity’s findings and data from the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory will play a key role in making possible future human missions to Mars and other places where humans have not yet been.”

Details here.

This anaglyph image of Vesta’s equator was put together from two clear filter images, taken on July 24, 2011 by the framing camera instrument aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. The anaglyph image shows hills, troughs, ridges and steep craters. The framing camera has a resolution of about 524 yards (480 meters) per pixel. Use red-green (or red-blue) glasses to view in 3-D (left eye: red; right eye: green [or blue]).

The framing cameras were developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by NASA, the Max Planck Society and DLR. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena.

All the details are here

Observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars.

“NASA’s Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, “and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration.”

Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars’ southern hemisphere.

“The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Science.

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The Herschel Space Observatory’s large telescope and state-of-the-art infrared detectors have provided the first confirmed finding of oxygen molecules in space. The molecules were discovered in the Orion star-forming complex.

Individual atoms of oxygen are common in space, particularly around massive stars. But molecular oxygen, which makes up about 20 percent of the air we breathe, has eluded astronomers until now.

“Oxygen gas was discovered in the 1770s, but it’s taken us more than 230 years to finally say with certainty that this very simple molecule exists in space,” said Paul Goldsmith, NASA’s Herschel project scientist at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Goldsmith is lead author of a recent paper describing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal. Herschel is a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions.

Astronomers searched for the elusive molecules in space for decades using balloons, as well as ground- and space-based telescopes. The Swedish Odin telescope spotted the molecule in 2007, but the sighting could not be confirmed.

Goldsmith and his colleagues propose that oxygen is locked up in water ice that coats tiny dust grains. They think the oxygen detected by Herschel in the Orion nebula was formed after starlight warmed the icy grains, releasing water, which was converted into oxygen molecules.

“This explains where some of the oxygen might be hiding,” said Goldsmith. “But we didn’t find large amounts of it, and still don’t understand what is so special about the spots where we find it. The universe still holds many secrets.”

The researchers plan to continue their hunt for oxygen molecules in other star-forming regions.

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PASADENA, Calif. – Astronomers studying observations taken by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission have discovered the first known “Trojan” asteroid orbiting the sun along with Earth.

Trojans are asteroids that share an orbit with a planet near stable points in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same orbit as the planet, they never can collide with it. In our solar system, Trojans also share orbits with Neptune, Mars and Jupiter. Two of Saturn’s moons share orbits with Trojans.

Scientists had predicted Earth should have Trojans, but they have been difficult to find because they are relatively small and appear near the sun from Earth’s point of view.

“These asteroids dwell mostly in the daylight, making them very hard to see,” said Martin Connors of Athabasca University in Canada, lead author of a new paper on the discovery in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature. “But we finally found one, because the object has an unusual orbit that takes it farther away from the sun than what is typical for Trojans. WISE was a game-changer, giving us a point of view difficult to have at Earth’s surface.”

Read More Here

They won’t let Pluto be a planet but it still bears the responsibility of having moons, and until just now there were three known moons of the tiny non-planet, named Hydra, Charon and Nix.

Now there are four, and the fourth one is called Essslashtwoohoneonepeeone.

They are working on another name. Bad Astronomer has details about the new find.

There is some difficulty in coming up with a name since the theme of the existing names (night-based Roman mythical character) is tapped out. I was thinking it should be called one of the following:

Or, to be more accurate in terms of size and such, maybe just “Pluto’s Kid Brother” or “k.b” for short.

Continue reading Yeah but … how do you pronounce S/2011 P1? →

NASA’s Dawn space ship is getting closer to the asteroid Vesta, and has produced a very short movie. The movie is a compilation of 20 frames, shown here repeating several times:

Continue reading Dawn Closing In on Vesta: The Movie →

NASA is going to send two probes to the moon, later this summer. They are called “GRAIL” which stands for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory. They will orbit the moon in an effort to determine the structure of its interior. They will be launched by a Delta II rocket some time between early September and mid October, depending on the usual factors.

The plan is to generate a highly accurate gravitatoial map of the moon.

The high-resolution gravitational field, especially when combined with a comparable-resolution topographical field, will enable scientists to deduce the Moon’s interior structure and composition, and to gain insights into its thermal evolution–that is, the history of the Moon’s heating and cooling, which opens the door to understanding its origin and development.

My impression is that if you really compared what we know about the Moon’s origin to what we know about various other cosmic issues, it’s kinda embarrassing. The Moon’s origin is a bit up in the air, as it were.

A unique feature of this mission is that NASA wants the two GRAIL probes to fly in precise formation. This has never been attempted before. Also, the probes will carry a camera that will be operated entirely Middle School students. I’m not sure how many Middle School students they are sending up with the camera.

Details here.

The last communication from the Mars Rover Spirit was on March 22, 2010. A few moments ago NASA announced that there would be no more attempts to contact the space robot after a transmission that will end on May 25th.

It is suspected that Spirit’s internal circuitry was damaged by very low temperatures experienced during the Martian winter. While it was hoped that solar panels would allow heaters to bring the robot back to life, this apparently has not happened. The resources that would be needed to continue what seems to be a fruitless attempt at communication are now needed elsewhere. According to NASA,

Engineers’ assessments in recent months have shown a very low probability for recovering communications with Spirit. Communications assets that have been used by the Spirit mission in the past, including NASA’s Deep Space Network of antennas on Earth, plus two NASA Mars orbiters that can relay communications, now are needed to prepare for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission. MSL is scheduled to launch later this year.

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA is releasing the first images and sounds of an electrical connection between Saturn and one of its moons, Enceladus. The data collected by the agency’s Cassini spacecraft enable scientists to improve their understanding of the complex web of interaction between the planet and its numerous moons. The results of the data analysis are published in the journals Nature

Scientists previously theorized an electrical circuit should exist at Saturn. After analyzing data that Cassini collected in 2008, scientists saw a glowing patch of ultraviolet light emissions near Saturn’s north pole that marked the presence of a circuit, even though the moon is 240,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) away from the planet.

The patch occurs at the end of a magnetic field line connecting Saturn and its moon Enceladus. The area, known as an auroral footprint, is the spot where energetic electrons dive into the planet’s atmosphere, following magnetic field lines that arc between the planet’s north and south polar regions.

“The footprint discovery at Saturn is one of the most important fields and particle revelations from Cassini and ultimately may help us understand Saturn’s strange magnetic field,” said Marcia Burton, a Cassini fields and particles scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It gives us the first visual connection between Saturn and one of its moons.”

Read the rest here

The abstract for a recent paper on Titan says:

…We propose a new Cassini state model for Titan in which we assume the presence of a liquid water ocean beneath an ice shell and consider the gravitational and pressure torques arising between the different layers of the satellite….

Titan’s orbit, recently measured to a high degree of accuracy, looks more like an object with an ocean sloshing around than like a solid object. The story is expanded on in this blog post.

Did you year the interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson today?

If not, that’s OK, it’s a podcast.

But first, a hint for those of you who want to do interviews. There’s a trick to make it go well. Interview someone like Dr. Tyson, with his knowledge, enthusiasm, and experience in public media; Ask him a couple/few questions; Sit back and listen to all the good words that come out. Break occasionally for commercials if needed.
Continue reading Did you hear my interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson today? →