Kentucky Space

Flooding on Mercury

A picture returned from the last Mercury flyby by MESSENGER appears to show a crater, lower left in the image, flooded by lava. The extent to which volcanism has affected the innermost planet is becoming clearer.

Wayne

New Mercury image

MESSENGER acquired this image of Mercury 78 minutes prior to closest approach, capturing the stark division between the sun-facing and the dark side of the planet referred to as the "terminator."

Wayne

NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Navigating Relativity

Pointing to a paper recently accepted for publication, Paul Gilster explains how the best ideas for fast space travel must cope with another, non-technological, constraint.

For example, while "sundiving" missions designed to place a solar sail-powered craft near the sun for maximum outward acceleration - one study suggests that deployment at .1 AU could send such a craft to 200 AU in only 2.5 years! - might be accomplished, designers would have to account for General Relativistic effects in their craft's navigation or find it potentially millions of kilometers off course by the time it reaches the Oort Cloud. As one commenter points out, MESSENGER's flight calculations have also taken General Relativity into account. And another points to this Technology Review blog entry on "relativistic navigation."

Wayne  

Images being posted from MESSENGER'S third Mercury flyby

Swooping by at an altitude of just 141.7 miles, images from MESSENGER'S third flyby of Mercury this week are now being posted. The surface in the lower right corner of this image is near Mercury's terminator, the line between the day and night side of the planet.

The craft will settle into orbit around Mercury beginning on March 18, 2011.

Wayne

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Carnival of Space: Planetary issue, "Sounds of Saturn"

The very latest Carnival of Space is devoted to planetology and includes the sounds of Saturn, as well as a story on the first direct observation of an exoplanet. Check it out.

Wayne

MESSENGER: maneuvering with the "soft breath" of the sun

Nice quote below. By orienting the craft toward the sun, the MESSENGER team was able to use the resulting solar pressure - in effect, a solar sailing technique - to fine tune the trajectory of the spacecraft on its second flyby of Mercury, achieving a record for precision. It missed its targeted altitude by only .6 kilometers, according to the blog, Musings of a MESSENGER Fellow.

The quote:

That’s pretty remarkable targeting, given that MESSENGER has traveled 668 million kilometers since its last deep space maneuver in March, [MESSENGER Mission Design Lead Jim] McAdams says. 'It’s as if we shot an arrow from New York to a target in Los Angeles – nudged it three times mid-stream with a soft breath – and arrived within the width of the arrow’s shaft at the target.'

Above is an artist's impression of the long, steep cliffs that extend for hundreds of kilometers on Mercury¹s surface in both Mariner 10 and MESSENGER images. These giant cliffs are believed to have formed when Mercury's interior cooled and the entire planet shrank slightly as a result.

Credit: Michael Carroll/Alien Volcanoes by Lopes and Carroll, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Wayne

MESSENGER obtains "First global perspective of the planet"

The team operating MESSENGER has imaged sections of the planet never before seen by spacecraft, including this closeup of the planet minutes before closest approach. Complete information about this second close flyby may be found here.

From yesterday's press release:

'The MESSENGER team is extremely pleased by the superb performance of the spacecraft and the payload,' said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. 'We are now on the correct trajectory for eventual insertion into orbit around Mercury, and all of our instruments returned data as planned from the side of the planet opposite to the one we viewed during our first flyby. When these data have been digested and compared, we will have a global perspective of Mercury for the first time.'

Public release of the data and images will be made on Oct. 29.

Wayne

MESSENGER Mercury pics being released

Here is a beautiful image of Mercury from yesterday's second flyby of the planet, which sent MESSENGER skimming a mere 120 miles above the surface of the planet. As of very early this morning, data is being received and released to the public. This image (click to enlarge) was taken 90 minutes following closest approach - closeups are expected soon.

See this gallery for more.

Wayne

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Why Mercury?

This is one of the better images captured by MESSENGER on its recent flyby of Mercury. An October rendezvous will take the craft to within 124 miles of the surface before it eventually settles into orbit.

If you're wondering why anyone would want to explore Mercury, NASA supplies some answers here.

Wayne

Carnival of Space No. 50

My name is Wayne Hall and I work with the Kentucky space program. Huh? Kentucky what?!

Suffice it to say that a group of talented people are out to change the perception of what's possible in the commonwealth of Kentucky by doing hands-on space science. The very first project of this ambitious enterprise is a cooperative, student-led effort to design, build and fly a CubeSat that kids from the eastern mountains to the western Mississippi river shore can figuratively reach out and touch from classrooms all over the state. The first of many planned efforts, it will rocket to orbit sometime late this year or early next. And with that,

Welcome to the 50th edition of the Carnival of Space! From rocket racing to astronomy to particle physics to the search for intelligent life, this week features a wide variety of space-related topics. So let's dive right in.

New Frontiers has news about the Rocket Racing League and its announcement about upcoming exhibition race dates. Meanwhile, Space Transport News discusses Red Bull air races and the differences and similarities to rocket racing as well as taking some notes from the news conference.

At Altair VI, David S. F. Portree writes about the old NASA Office of Exploration Mars' and Moon vision for space exploration and has something to say about space tourism.

The Planetary Society's Emily Stewart Lakdawalla notes the stunning images of Phobos available from the Mars Express image catalog. A Babe in the Universe follows suit, pointing out that the crater Stickney is 9 km across on a moon only 22 km long. Speaking as a blogger who makes liberal use of CICLOPS and HiRISE images, the pictures coming from current robotic missions are spectacular. I'm looking forward to what MESSENGER and New Horizons might reveal.

Speaking of the planets, Stuart Atkinson at Cumbrian Sky reports on one suggestion to send monkeys to Mars. You read that right. He also provides some images of Pheonix's landing spot on the planet.

Fraser explains why Pluto is no longer a planet. Let's just say that the region beyond Neptune is awfully interesting.

Of the many satellites that dance around Sun, Neptune's Triton is probably not a world that tickles one's imagination when envisioning space colonization. But while it may be ignored as scientists chase after Mars and Titan, Neptune's Triton may in the distant future become a prime location at the edge of our solar system. Colony Worlds asks: Neptune's Triton: Is It Worth Billions, Or Trillions?

This week's Space Video at Space Feeds is the eighth episode of Firefly, Out of Gas.

At Next Big Future, Brian Wang asks whether a $153 million Thin Film Dome inflated over cities might protect against nuclear weapons or perhaps substitute for communication satellites. Russian inventor and researcher Alexander Bolonkin has developed an interesting technology that suggests all kinds of commercial possibilities.

Can Dark Matter be directly detected? Anticipating such an announcement, astrophysicist Ethan Siegel expresses his doubts at Starts with a Bang! It's a question I've also put to Star Stryder, Pamela Gay.

Astronomer Robert Simpson at Orbiting Frog contributes a post to the 50th carnival on Nebulae in 3D. He nominated another post about the late John Wheeler from Daniel Holz at the wonderful group blog Cosmic Variance. Holz movingly recalls his time with the physicist, who was conversant in biology, history and poetry. Please give it a read.

At Out of the Cradle, Ken Murphy continues his look at growing plants on the Moon with a review of the book "Lunar Base Agriculture" in part II of his article "Of a Garden on the Moon".

At Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster, who is surely link-weary from the attention this blog has paid to him, posts a story about "Life as Rarity in the Cosmos," which looks at new research suggesting that we are living rather late in the history of Earth's biosphere. If so, it might have implications for the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere. Bottom line: we might find that life itself is rather common, but intelligent life? Not so much.

Do we have anything to worry about from the Large Hadron Collider? Ian O'Neill explains that "an Earth-eating black hole is pretty much impossible."

Ever-prepared, Scouts Canada describes a variety of methods for finding direction without a compass or GPS by using the sun, stars and moon. In practical fashion, Scouts blogger Mang also lends some context to astronomical distances - the discussion includes a scale overlay of the solar system on the City of Toronto using a standard marble for Earth - and writes about modeling a micro-satellite, the Microvariability & Oscillations of STars (MOST) satellite. The MOST team has opened target proposals to the public.

Space Cynics, meanwhile, wonders how prepared Gen-Y is to contribute to the national space program.

Tyler Nordgren is educating visitors about what they learn about the solar system and universe through what they can see for themselves in the dark starry skies above the parks, as well as on the ground around them in the wonderful geological processes and features the parks protect. The most recent entry from this week at Arches National Park is found here.

Finally, at Music of the Spheres, Bruce Irving asks Why Space?, a theme that the Martian Chronicles also picks up on this week, along with providing some great Cape Verde images as seen from everyone's favorite Martian rover.

Why explore indeed! And since it's THAT time again, perhaps it's appropriate that John Benac contribute a post about Political Action for Space, the first space political action committee.

It's been a blast to host the carnival at Kentucky's space program blog this week. KySat hopes to make its own news in the near future. So please come back and please visit all the great blogs and bloggers you see listed here!

Wayne