NASA Trapped Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Subsurface Water

She may be down, but she’s not out – out of the discovery department, anyway. Data from the Spirit Mars rover – currently in hibernation – shows evidence that water, perhaps as snow melt, trickled into the subsurface fairly recently and may be doing so on a continuing basis.

The area where Spirit became stuck in sandy soil in April of 2009 was churned up by her spinning wheels as engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory attempted to drive her out of a veritable sand trap. This wheel-churning brought subsurface soil layers — which include the water soluble mineral ferric sulfate — up to the surface. Under a thin covering of windblown sand and dust, relatively insoluble minerals such as hematite, silica and gypsum are concentrated near the surface and more-soluble ferric sulfates have higher concentrations below that layer. This pattern suggests water has moved downward through the soil, dissolving and carrying the ferric sulfates.

In combination with another recent discovery — that underground aquifers may have fed ancient seas on Mars — shows a water cycle likely was present in the past on the Red Planet, and may even be present today.

The deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rover, Ray Arvidson and his team say that thin films of water may have entered the ground from frost or snow. (The Phoenix lander saw evidence of current snowfall.) The seepage could have happened during cyclical climate changes in periods when Mars tilted farther on its axis.

“The lack of exposures at the surface indicates the preferential dissolution of ferric sulfates must be a relatively recent and ongoing process since wind has been systematically stripping soil and altering landscapes in the region Spirit has been examining,” said Arvidson.

This isn’t the first time that Spirit’s wheels have churned up interesting stuff. Back in 2008, researchers said Spirit’s bum front wheel uncovered signs minerals that are found in hot springs, similar to what is at Yellowstone National Park on Earth, and similar hot springs may have once bubbled or steamed on Mars.

But there’s been no word from the rover since March 22, 2010, after she went into cold-induced hibernation. Because Spirit was stuck, the rover drivers could not get her in the best position to receive maximum sunlight.

“With insufficient solar energy during the winter, Spirit goes into a deep-sleep hibernation mode where all rover systems are turned off, including the radio and survival heaters,” said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. “All available solar array energy goes into charging the batteries and keeping the mission clock running.”

While she was stuck and still awake, researchers took advantage and examined in great detail soil layers the wheels had exposed, and also neighboring surfaces, making comparisons between the two. While trying to drive back out of her predicament, Spirit made 13 inches of progress in its last 10 backward drives before energy levels fell too low. Those drives exposed a new area of soil for possible examination if Spirit does awaken and if its robotic arm is still usable.

However, it is thought that the aging Spirit rover experienced the coldest temperatures ever, and it may not survive. Everyone is still holding out hope that the rover may yet make contact through one of the orbiting spacecraft and the Deep Space Network.

If Spirit does get back to work, the top priority is a multi-month study that can be done without driving the rover. The study would measure the rotation of Mars through the Doppler signature of the stationary rover’s radio signal with enough precision to gain new information about the planet‘s core.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of Mars, the rover Opportunity has been making steady progress toward a large crater, Endeavour, which is now approximately 8 kilometers (5 miles) away.

Hubble predict the future of Omega Centauri

The globular star cluster Omega Centauri has caught the attention of sky watchers ever since the ancient astronomer Ptolemy first catalogued it 2,000 years ago. Ptolemy, however, thought Omega Centauri was a single star. He didn't know that the "star" was actually a beehive swarm of nearly 10 million stars, all orbiting a common center of gravity.

The stars are so tightly crammed together that astronomers had to wait for the powerful vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the core of the "beehive" and resolve individual stars. Hubble's vision is so sharp it can even measure the motion of many of these stars, and over a relatively short span of time.

A precise measurement of star motions in giant clusters can yield insights into how stellar groupings formed in the early universe, and whether an "intermediate mass" black hole, one roughly 10,000 times as massive as our Sun, might be lurking among the stars.

Analyzing archived images taken over a four-year period by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers have made the most accurate measurements yet of the motions of more than 100,000 cluster inhabitants, the largest survey to date to study the movement of stars in any cluster.

"It takes high-speed, sophisticated computer programs to measure the tiny shifts in the positions of the stars that occur in only four years' time," says astronomer Jay Anderson of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., who conducted the study with fellow Institute astronomer Roeland van der Marel. "Ultimately, though, it is Hubble's razor-sharp vision that is the key to our ability to measure stellar motions in this cluster."

Adds van der Marel: "With Hubble, you can wait three or four years and detect the motions of the stars more accurately than if you had waited 50 years on a ground-based telescope."

The astronomers used the Hubble images, which were taken in 2002 and 2006, to make a movie simulation of the frenzied motion of the cluster's stars. The movie shows the stars' projected migration over the next 10,000 years.

Identified as a globular star cluster in 1867, Omega Centauri is one of roughly 150 such clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy. The behemoth stellar grouping is the biggest and brightest globular cluster in the Milky Way, and one of the few that can be seen by the unaided eye. Located in the constellation Centaurus, Omega Centauri is viewable in the southern skies.

India Joins Thirty Meter Telescope Project

The Minister of Science and Technology of India, Mr. Prithviraj Chavan, announced the decision of India to join the Thirty Meter Telescope Project (TMT) as an Observer. TMT is the next-generation astronomical observatory that is scheduled to begin scientific operations in 2018 on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

Observer status is the first step in becoming a full partner in TMT and participating in the engineering development and scientific use of what will be the world’s most advanced and capable astronomical observatory.

“India is well recognized and respected as one of the top-ranking countries in the field of basic research,” said Henry Yang, chairman of the TMT board and Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara. “As part of TMT, India will be an integral part of the next generation of astronomical research. We welcome their collaboration on this exciting project.”

"The government and people of India recognize the importance of embarking on world-class, international science collaborations," said Thirumalachari Ramasami, Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, during a ceremony in Washington. “We believe the Thirty Meter Telescope will enable us to continue and expand our role as an international leader in technology development and fundamental research.”

“The TMT and its partners are extremely pleased that India has selected TMT as their next-generation astronomical research project,” said Edward Stone vice chair of the TMT board and Caltech’s Morrisroe Professor of Physics. “As an Observer, we can now begin exploring the specific areas where India can contribute to the project and look forward to their becoming a full partner with a formal agreement and commitment for funding.”

“We look forward to working with India on the international Thirty Meter Telescope Project,” said Professor Ray Carlberg, the Canadian Large Optical Telescope project director and a TMT board member. “By broadening the TMT partnership, we bring greater expertise and the potential for additional government endorsement to the table, which will certainly benefit the entire project.”

The TMT project plans to begin work on-site late next year and achieve first light in 2018, at which time it will be the first of the next generation of ground-based optical observatories. This revolutionary telescope will integrate the latest innovations in precision control, segmented mirror design, and adaptive optics to correct for the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere.

Building on the success of the twin Keck telescopes, the core technology of TMT will be a 30-meter segmented primary mirror. This will give TMT nine times the collecting area of today's largest optical telescopes and three times sharper images.

The TMT has begun full-scale polishing of the 1.4-meter mirror blanks that will make up the primary mirror. TMT also has developed many of the essential prototype components for the telescope, including key adaptive optics technologies and the support and control elements for the 492 mirror segments.

The TMT project has completed its $77 million design development phase with primary financial support of $50 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $22 million from Canada. The project has now entered the early construction phase thanks to an additional $200 million pledge from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Caltech and the University of California have agreed to raise matching funds of $50 million to bring the construction total to $300 million, and the Canadian partners propose to supply the enclosure, the telescope structure, and the first light adaptive optics.

The TMT project is an international partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) joined TMT as a Collaborating Institution in 2008. The National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences joined TMT as an Observer in 2009.

Earth and Moon view from MESSENGER

From the Earth, we can see seven planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They look fabulous when observed through telescopes like phases of Mercury and Venus, ice capped Mars, mighty Jupiter with its four satellites, beautiful Saturn with its magnificent rings, blue worlds of Uranus and Neptune. Now you may ask the question how our Earth looks from the distance space? Is anybody has seen the Earth from the remote space? Yes, there is one, who looked at the Earth from the remote space. It is MESSENGER a satellite on mission to study the Mercury. Above image taken by the satellite on 6 May 2010. In the lower left portion of this image the Earth can be seen, as well as the much smaller Moon to Earth's right. MESSENGER took this image from 183 million kilometers. To provide context for this distance, the average separation between Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers.

This image was acquired as part of MESSENGER's campaign to search for Vulcanoids, small rocky objects that have been hypothesized to exist in orbits between Sun and Mercury. The MESSENGER spacecraft is in unique position to look for smaller and fainter Vulcanoids than has ever before been possible. Vulcunoids are named after the hypothetical planet Vulcan which was proposed to exists between Mercury and Sun by the 19th century astronomers to attempt explanation in peculiarities of Mercury's orbit. No such planet was ever found.

MESSENGER is a unique mission of NASA to study the Mercury planet after Marinar-10. It was launched on 3 August 2004 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The name comes from 'MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging' highlighting the project broad range of scientific goals and it is perfect to study Roman mythological messenger of the gods.

AMOL KATE

:image credits to NASA/John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington

Solar Tsunami

Last year solar astronomers observed quietest Sun in almost a century. In 2008, there were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008. Sunspot counts for 2009 were almost same as previous year 260 spotless days (71%). Many astronomers said that our sun is now passing through the deepest solar minimum. But, a few days ago suddenly the Sun emitted a massive belch in to space, astronomers christen it Solar Tsunami.

On August 1st at 8:55 Universal Time, orbiting satellites witnessed a sizable flare erupting from the large sunspot region designated 1092. The strength of this outburst was pegged at C3, modest as flare go, but it still triggered an impressive coronal mass ejection, or CME, that shot out from the solar disk at more than 1000 km per second. The CME hit Earth's magnetic field on August 3rd at 1740 Universal Time. The impact sparked a G-2 class geomagnetic storm that lasted nearly 12 hours--time enough for auroras to spread all the way from Europe to North America.

CMEs are the result of strong solar activity or solar storms. It is a large cloud of charged particles that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours and carry up to ten billion tons of plasma. They expand away from the Sun at speed as high as a thousand kilometres in second. A CME can make the 150 million kilometres journey to Earth in just two to four days. This CME will have noticeable consequences beyond producing an aurora. Stronger solar storms could cause adverse impacts to space based satellites, space station and technological infrastructure on Earth.

The Sun goes through a regular activity cycle about 11 years long. The last solar maximum occurred in 2001 and its recent extreme solar minimum was particularly weak and long lasting. Experts don't expect solar activity to peak until mid-2013, but these kinds of eruptions are one of the first sign that after oversleeping for more than a year, our star is finally stirring from hibernation and heading toward anther solar maximum expected in the 2013 time frame.

AMOL KATE

Astronomy for Everyone

I am writing this from the Science Express. Science express is a state of the art exhibition train which was started in the year 2007 as a joint venture of Govt. of India and Govt. of Germany. After having the phenomenal response from the people of India this train run now for at least six months. During the journey of science express I visited many cities and places in India and met more than 5 million people and I got opportunity to communicate astronomy to those people. OK! I forgot to tell you my job on science express is to communicate science to the people. Apart from the exhibition on the train, during second and third phase of science express in the year 2009 we started visiting school and institutes for astronomical program and with that we started our fantastic journey of spreading astronomy among people of various community.

The year 2009 was so significant to make people aware of astronomy because, 2009 was designated as International Year of Astronomy. Exactly 400 years ago from 2009, the Universe changed or, at least, our perception of it did, thanks to Galileo Galilei's scrutiny of the night sky with a telescope. Within a couple of years, his observation of the Moon, phases of Venus and satellites of Jupiter shattered the old Ptolemic model of our Solar System. To the church's dismay, Earth assumed its rightful place as one of several planets orbiting the Sun. Marking Galileo's anniversary, the International Year of Astronomy seeks to remind us of the humbling nature of gazing at the heavens.

So what is astronomy? What does it mean to people in developing regions like India? Well, firstly it must be acknowledge that astronomy belongs to us all. Virtually every culture in the world had already established a relationship with the stars, moon and sun hundreds if not thousands of years ago. In fact, for as long as human beings have walked on the Earth we have looked up at the night sky and wondered about the objects we saw. In India, people have used the stars for centuries, be it for navigation, agriculture, or even story telling. Today, Astronomy as a field of study has developed into something that attempts to answer some of the biggest question imaginable. It is a field that challenges the limits of human understanding and yet never ceases to expand on it. Astronomy, as I have seen on the faces of children, is also a spark that triggers the curiosity and wonder.

During the journey in science express I experienced that in many part of country scientific knowledge amongst the public is not very strong. In many cases traditional knowledge or superstitions dominate, leading to many misconceptions. In this case astronomy can play a key role in addressing this often sensitive relationship between traditional and scientific knowledge systems. Astronomy is often a very interesting topic of conversation and an easy way to start a gradual process of introducing a person to modern understanding of the Universe. By bringing to the public the things we know about the Universe and more importantly, how we know them ( technologies employed, scientific method, etc ), we can spread knowledge of science and technology.

I stress, that the conversation must go both the ways, and an acknowledgement of indigenous knowledge is important and essential in building the relationship and pride of a people. Indigenous astronomical knowledge in India, such as how farmer use constellation and position of sun for harvesting, or mathematical calculation of planets, moon, and sun in Panchang.

In India, many state board education syllabuses either astronomy subject is not included or omitted from from it, therefore understanding of this subject in the school student is very less, so we designed our programs according to need of students.

Our astronomy programs included planetarium show and lectures during day time and during day time & during night time we conduct telescopic observation sessions. I still do this activity on train. Till today more than 45000 students have already participated in this activity. This program is not restricted to the students, we also took this program to the central jails, army camps and many villages. Our aims are as below.

1. Enhance the interest of astronomy among school children.

2. Enhance the practical knowledge of astronomy in university students.

3. Increase the awareness and knowledge of astronomy amongst the people.

Having said this, one may still ask the question "Why are you doing this? Do you really believe that looking at the stars can make a difference to a person living a hard life in India?"

My response is simple. I believe that it, because I've experienced it!

I worked with some of the poorest schools and communities in India I've seen the wonder on a child's face when they look through a telescope for the first time. I've watched youth change their career plans after a long conversation about the Universe - and I've seen the naughty ones stop their games and listen. I've seen the smiles on wrinkled faces as they grasp the mechanism of eclipses for the first time after long lives of fear and misconception.

I've seen people smile peacefully when presented with a view of the earth from space - an earth with no boarders, no nationalities, no wars or anger - simply a little blue planet, a part of the Universe - with life, life that belongs to the Earth as much as the Earth belongs to it! Astronomy is a powerful tool. It is some thing that can alter one's perception of the Universe. It can make one realize how fragile our lives are!Above all, astronomy is a subject that makes one think. It broadens the minds and allows us to appreciate different perspectives - to appreciate the diversity of people and of life - and it is certainly something that is to be celebrated by everyone.

AMOL KATE

Annular Experience

I had been to the Dhanushkodi on 15 January 2010 for observing annular solar eclipse. Dhanushkodi is small village of fishermen nearly 17 kilometer away from Rameshwaram in Tanil Nadu. Dhanushkodi was only place in India, which lies in the central line of eclipse where the Moon passed directly in front the Sun, leaving a ring of fire hanging in the afternoon sky for 10 minutes and 11 seconds. It was an awesome experience seeing such eclipse. Last annular eclipse was seen from Srinagar, Siliguri and Agartala on 23 November 1965 and will not be seen again from India until 2019.

An eclipse of the Sun is caused when the Moon comes in between the Earth and the Sun so that the shadow of the Moon sweeps across the surface of the Earth. This shadow consist of two parts, the umbra or total shadow, a cone in which no direct sunlight penetrates and the penumbra, or half shadow, which is reached by the light from some parts of the Sun's luminous disk. To an observer within the penumbra; the Sun's disk will appear to be partially covered.
From the above, it will be understood that a solar eclipse can occur only at new moon when the Moon is conjuction with the Sun. Had the plane of the Moon,s orbit around the Earth coincided with ecliptic ( that is the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun ), an eclipse of the Sun would have taken place at every new moon's orbit is inclined by about five degrees to the ecliptic and it is only at those times when the Moon happens to be at or near one of the Moon and the Earth are nearly in the same line and a solar eclipse can occur at other times the shadow of the Moon just disappears into space.

The kind of eclipse that will result, total or anular, is governed by the fact that orbit of the Moon around the Earth is not perfectly circular but is elliptical, with the result that the Moon is sometimes nearer to the Earth than at other times. When the Moon in is orbit is nearest to the Earth, this phenomenon is known as perigee, and when it is farthest from the Earth, it is known as apogee. The distance of the Moon from earth at perigee is 3,63,300 km and at apogee is 4,05,500 km. As the distance from the Earth to the Moon varies, so does the apparent size of the Moon in our skies. When it is closest, it appears larger in the sky than the Sun and can completely obscure the solar disk, but when it is at its farthest point, it smallest is not enough to cover the disk of the Sun.

In an annular solar eclipse the umbra of shadow cannot reach the EArth, instead a third type of shadow is born; the antumbral, or negative shadow. An annular solar eclipse is visible where the antumbral sweeps across the Earth's surface; this is known as the path of annularity. From within this region, the Moon's dark is centered on the Sun but unable to obscured all its light, leaving a brilliant ring of fire, or "annulus" of light, around the edge of the Moon in the sky. Unfortunately, the Sun's chromosphere and corona, which are visible during a total solar eclipse, are lost in the glare of of an annular eclipse and as such no scientific investigational work, as is carried out during a total solar eclipse is possible during an annular eclipse. But, of course this type of eclipse has its own beauty. I missed first contact of moon and sun, but observed annular phase and able to take some photographs.

There are so many misconceptions about solar eclipse, that we should not eat anything, should not stay outside during eclipse and not to see eclipse. Many people think it is bad omen. But I tell you one thing that solar eclipse is not visible from most planets in the solar system. We are so lucky in that case because nature already has made special arrangement for us, so that we could enjoy this shadow play. It is so happens that disk of the Sun is 400 times larger than that of the Moon and that coincidently the distance of the Sun from the Earth is about 400 times the distance of the Moon from the Earth, so that Sun and Moon have nearly equal angulur diameter of 0.5 degree. Thus, our Moon is just the right size to cover the bright disk of the Sun and cause a solar eclipse.

First, I thought that may be I was the only person from my group who was observing his first annular solar eclipse but, then I came to know that every one from my group were seeing the annular eclipse for first time. That's why we distributed chocolates among us to celebrate our first annular eclipse.