Exploring the Cosmos

Check out this beautiful crystal structure.  It’s actually a close up of a salt crystal (sodium chloride) that was grown on the International Space Station.  The crystals were kept  in a water bubble inside a 50 millimeter metal loop that was part of an experiment in the Destiny laboratory.

If you didn’t manage to see the launch of Atlantis, you can see it below.  Also if you are on Twitter check out what the Space Tweeps have been saying that were invited to experience the launch themselves.  All you need to do is search for #nasatweetup

Spirits view of Mars Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Spirit, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover has used it’s navigation camer to capture this fantastic image on the right.  The image was taken on8 April 2009, or on 1,871 Martian day’s since the rover landed.

The mound on the horizon in the upper left is informally called ‘Von Braun’ and is one of the features that rover team has listed as a possible investigation site for future months.  From the location where Spirit was when the image was taken, Von Braun is about 525 feet, or 160 meters, away.

On 17 June 2009 NASA will launch two satellites that will go to the Moon.  The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will be launched together on an Atlas V rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

The LRO is expected to identify safe landing sites for future human explorers as well as locating potential resources.  It will also characterise the enviromental radiation as well as testing new technology.  LCROSS is to search for the presence of water ice at the lunar poles

The instruments onboard LRO will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it in the far ultraviolet spectrum. The satellite’s instruments will help explain how the lunar radiation environment may affect humans and measure radiation absorption with a plastic that is like human tissue.

LRO’s instruments also will allow scientists to explore the moon’s deepest craters, look beneath its surface for clues to the location of water ice, and identify and explore both permanently lit and permanently shadowed regions. High resolution imagery from its camera will help identify landing sites and characterise the moon’s topography and composition. A miniaturised radar will be used image the poles and test the system’s communications capabilities.

While most Centaurs complete their work after boosting payloads out of Earth’s orbit, the LCROSS Centaur will journey with the spacecraft for four months and be guided to an impact in a permanently shadowed crater at one of the moon’s poles. The resulting debris plume is expected to rise more than six miles. It presents a dynamic observation target for LCROSS as well as a network of ground-based telescopes, LRO, and possibly the Hubble Space Telescope. Observers will search for evidence of water ice by examining the plume in direct sunlight. LCROSS will also increase knowledge of the mineralogical makeup of some of the remote polar craters that sunlight never reaches. The satellite represents a new generation of fast development, cost capped missions that use flight proven hardware and off the shelf software to achieve focused mission goals.

LRO and LCROSS are the first missions launched by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. Their data will be used to advance goals of future human exploration of the solar system. LRO will spend at least one year in low polar orbit around the moon, collecting detailed information for exploration purposes before being transferred to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to continue collecting additional scientific data.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The image on the left shows an artist’s idea of a hypothetical young planet circling  a cool star.  Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have hinted that planets around cool stars, the M-dwarfs and brown dwarfs that are very widespread thoughtout our galaxy may possess a different mix of life-forming than our young Earth.

Some of the chemicals that created life on Earth are thought to have been carried by meteorites that crash landed.  Other chemicals are thought to have come from dust and gas swirling around a young Sun

Astronomers don’t know if these same life-generating processes are taking place around stars that are cooler than our sun, as the Spitzer observations show their disk chemistry to be different.  Spitzer detected a prebiotic molecule ( a molecule that is believed to be involved in the process leading to the origin of life), called hydrogen cyanide.  This was found in the disks around yellow stars like our Sun, but none where discovered around cooler, less massive, reddish stars.  Hydrogen cyanide is a carbon-containing, or organic compound.  Five hydrogen cyanide molecules can join up to make adenine — a chemical element of the DNA molecule found in all living organisms on Earth.

Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

As summer approaches the annual Mars hoax does the rounds again.  It appears in the form of a PowerPoint attachment in an email entitled “Mars Spectacular”, unfortunately no one knows were it originated from.It first appeared during the summer of 2004.

The email claims that on the night of 27 August, Mars will come closer to Earth than it has in the past 60,000 years, thereby offering spectacular views of the red planet.  It even claims that Mars will appear as large as the full moon.  Now that comment alone should be a give away.  How can Mars which is 189 million miles away from Earth appear as large as the Moon, which is 238,000 miles from Earth?  Despite Mars being larger (approximately 4,213 miles, or 6,780 km. in diameter) than the Moon (about 2,160 miles, or 3,475 km) because of it’s great distance from Earth it’s never going to appear as large as the Moon.

Mars has passed relatively close to Earth, but this happened on 27 April 2003.  The Hubble Space Telescope took some snap shots, but viewed from Earth, Mars still appeared as nothing more spectacular than a rather bright yellowish-orange star.

This year, Mars is actually much dimmer and far-less conspicuous than in 2003.