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LRO Sees Apollo Landing Sites


^{Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle.
Image width: 282 meters (about 925 ft.)}

"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said LROC principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill -- and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."

This photograph shows Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin in front of the lunar module. The photo helps provide a scale to the LROC images shown above. Credit: NASA/Neil Armstrong
› Larger image Although these pictures provide a reminder of past NASA exploration, LRO's primary focus is on paving the way for the future. By returning detailed lunar data, the mission will help NASA identify safe landing sites for future explorers, locate potential resources, describe the moon's radiation environment and demonstrate new technologies.

"Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the moon."

The spacecraft's current elliptical orbit resulted in image resolutions that were slightly different for each site but were all around four feet per pixel. Because the deck of the descent stage is about 12 feet in diameter, the Apollo relics themselves fill an area of about nine pixels. However, because the sun was low to the horizon when the images were made, even subtle variations in topography create long shadows. Standing slightly more than ten feet above the surface, each Apollo descent stage creates a distinct shadow that fills roughly 20 pixels.

The image of the Apollo 14 landing site had a particularly desirable lighting condition that allowed visibility of additional details. The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site, is discernable, as are the faint trails between the module and instrument package left by the astronauts' footprints.

Launched on June 18, LRO carries seven scientific instruments, all of which are currently undergoing calibration and testing prior to the spacecraft reaching its primary mission orbit. The LROC instrument comprises three cameras -- two high-resolution Narrow Angle Cameras and one lower resolution Wide Angle Camera. LRO will be directed into its primary mission orbit in August, a nearly-circular orbit about 31 miles above the lunar surface.

Goddard built and manages LRO, a NASA mission with international participation from the Institute for Space Research in Moscow. Russia provided the neutron detector aboard the spacecraft.

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Op dinsdag 21 juli 2009 15:29 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
schaamteloze tvp

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Op maandag 3 augustus 2009 15:37 schreef Frutsel het volgende:
TV persconferentie van de NASA gepland voor aanstaande donderdag.
Gaat over de bekendmaking van de eerste resultaten van de Kepler missie

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-03-2009/0005070533&EDATE=

Krijgen we groot nieuws? "Did they found water?"

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 08:05 schreef sararaats het volgende:
jeeeeeeeeeeeej, de Perseïden komen er weer aan.

hopelijk is het goed weer

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The Perseids are Coming
July 31, 2009: Earth is entering a stream of dusty debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, the source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Although the shower won't peak until August 11th and 12th, the show is already getting underway.

Brian Emfinger of Ozark, Arkansas, photographed this early Perseid just after midnight on Sunday, July 26th:


"I used an off-the-shelf digital camera to capture this fireball and its smoky trail," says Emfinger. "It was a bright one!"

Don't get too excited, cautions Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "We're just in the outskirts of the debris stream now. If you go out at night and stare at the sky, you'll probably only see a few Perseids per hour."

This will change, however, as August unfolds.

"Earth passes through the densest part of the debris stream sometime on August 12th. Then, you could see dozens of meteors per hour."

For sky watchers in North America, the watch begins after nightfall on August 11th and continues until sunrise on the 12th. Veteran observers suggest the following strategy: Unfold a blanket on a flat patch of ground. (Note: The middle of your street is not a good choice.) Lie down and look up. Perseids can appear in any part of the sky, their tails all pointing back to the shower's radiant in the constellation Perseus. Get away from city lights if you can.

There is one light you cannot escape on August 12th. The 55% gibbous Moon will glare down from the constellation Aries just next door to the shower's radiant in Perseus. The Moon is beautiful, but don't stare at it. Bright moonlight ruins night vision and it will wipe out any faint Perseids in that part of the sky.



Above: Looking northeast around midnight on August 11th-12th. The red dot is the Perseid radiant. Although Perseid meteors can appear in any part of the sky, all of their tails will point back to the radiant. Image copyright: Spaceweather.com, used with permission.

The Moon is least troublesome during the early evening hours of August 11th. Around 9 to 11 p.m. local time (your local time), both Perseus and the Moon will be hanging low in the north. This low profile reduces lunar glare while positioning the shower's radiant for a nice display of Earthgrazers.

"Earthgrazers are meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond," explains Cooke. "They are long, slow and colorful—among the most beautiful of meteors." He notes that an hour of watching may net only a few of these at most, but seeing even one can make the whole night worthwhile.

The Perseids are coming. Enjoy the show.

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Possible Meteorite Imaged by Opportunity Rover
<sup>by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 05, 2009


This image of "Block Island" was taken on July 28, 2009,
with the front hazard-identification camera on
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.</sup>

The Opportunity rover has eyed an odd-shaped, dark rock, about 0.6 meters (2 feet) across on the surface of Mars, which may be a meteorite.
The team spotted the rock called "Block Island," on July 18, 2009, in the opposite direction from which it was driving. The rover then backtracked some 250 meters (820 feet) to study it closer.

Scientists will be testing the rock with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to get composition measurements and to confirm if indeed it is a meteorite.

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Op woensdag 5 augustus 2009 08:05 schreef sararaats het volgende:
jeeeeeeeeeeeej, de Perseïden komen er weer aan.

hopelijk is het goed weer

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Op vrijdag 7 augustus 2009 00:45 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
De meteorenregen lijkt rechtstreeks uit de planeet Perseus te komen en heet daarom Perseïden.

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Op vrijdag 7 augustus 2009 09:05 schreef sararaats het volgende:
klopt iets niet hoor. Perseus is een sterrenbeeld

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Planets collide in deep space

Two distant planets orbiting a young star apparently smashed into each other at high speeds thousands of years ago in cosmic pileup of cataclysmic proportions, astronomers announced Monday.

Telltale plumes of vaporized rock and lava leftover from the collision revealed its existence to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which picked up signatures from the impact in recent observations.

The two-planet pileup occurred within the last few thousand years or so - a relatively recent cosmic timeframe. The smaller of the two bodies - a planet about the size of Earth's moon, according to computer models - was apparently destroyed by the crash. The other was most likely a Mercury-sized-planet and survived, albeit severely dented.

"This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted," said Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Aug. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Researchers believe the planets were moving at about 22,400 mph (10 kilometers per second) before the crash. The violent wreck released amorphous silica rock, or melted glass, and hardened chunks of lava called tektites. Spitzer also spotted large clouds of orbiting silicon monoxide gas created when the rock was vaporized.

This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons," Lisse said. "We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened."

Infrared detectors on Spitzer found the traces of rocky rubble and re-frozen lava around a young star, called HD 172555, still in the early stages of planet formation. The system is about 100 light-years from Earth. One light-year is the distance light travels in a year six trillion miles (9.7 trillion km).

similar fender-bender is thought to have formed Earth's moon more than 4 billion years ago, when a body the size of Mars rammed into Earth.

"The collision that formed our moon would have been tremendous, enough to melt the surface of Earth," said co-author Geoff Bryden of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "Debris from the collision most likely settled into a disk around Earth that eventually coalesced to make the moon. This is about the same scale of impact we're seeing with Spitzer - we don't know if a moon will form or not, but we know a large rocky body's surface was red hot, warped and melted."

In fact, such violent encounters seem to have been common in our own solar system's early history. For example, giant impacts are thought to have stripped Mercury of its outer crust, tipped Uranus on its side, and spun Venus backward.

As recently as last month, a small space rock slammed into Jupiter, making a large black bruise.

In general, rocky planets like Earth coalesce and grow when small rocks crash and clump together, merging their cores.

The system around HD 172555 is a relative baby at only 12 million years old, compared to our solar system's age of 4.5 billion years.

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Op woensdag 12 augustus 2009 00:08 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
knip

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Op woensdag 12 augustus 2009 01:00 schreef star_gazer het volgende:
*meldt

Perseiden zijn al jarenlang zeer tegenvallend. Dit jaar hebben we ook nog eens volle maan, dus verwacht er niet veel van. Wacht liever op de Leoniden in november.

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Op woensdag 12 augustus 2009 00:32 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
En niet vergeten de komende nacht allemaal naar buiten te gaan en naar de sterrenhemel te staren!
de Perseïden komen eraan

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Op donderdag 23 juli 2009 20:02 schreef Meursault het volgende:
Ik lees ook weer mee.

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Op maandag 17 augustus 2009 02:44 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
16-08-2009

Spectaculaire meteoor te zien

-KNIP-

hier baal ik nou echt van!
Ik stond gisteravond de sterren te bewonderen met de sterrenkijker, maar pas vanaf 23:00 uur... Heb ik weer, na de overbewolking tijdens de¨Perseïden, iets spectaculairs gemist

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Scenario 1 is het huidige scenario dat NASA voor ogen heeft: de shuttle blijft vliegen tot 2011 en in 2015 wordt ISS afgedankt. ISS wordt tot 2015 bereikt met behulp van Russische Sojoez raketten, daarna de Orion, die met een Ares-I raket gelanceerd wordt. Later komt de Ares-V raket, die NASA astronauten naar de maan kan brengen. De eerste maanlanding staat dan gepland in 2024 waarna men werkt aan een maanbasis. Het nadeel van dit scenario is een lang gat in de mogelijkheden voor bemande ruimtevaart: van 2011 t/m 2018. Ook het al in 2015 afdanken van ISS ligt politiek gevoelig.

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Op zondag 16 augustus 2009 04:28 schreef ExperimentalFrentalMental het volgende:
15-08-2009

Superreus Betelgeuze blaast bellen uit

[ afbeelding ]

Betelgeuze, een van de grootste sterren die men kent, is bezig zichzelf op te koken. Dat hebben astronomen afgeleid uit de meest gedetailleerde waarnemingen die tot nu toe aan deze ster zijn verricht (binnenkort te verschijnen in Astronomy & Astrophysics). Van Betelgeuze is bekend dat hij grote hoeveelheden gas verliest, de gehele massa van de zon in tienduizend jaar, maar hoe dat precies gebeurt was niet duidelijk. De nieuwe waarnemingen laten zien dat het gas niet overal gelijkmatig uit het oppervlak wegstroomt, maar in de vorm van reusachtige bellen die door dieperliggende convectiebewegingen uit de ster worden weggeduwd.

Betelgeuze is een heldere ster in het sterrenbeeld Orion, op ongeveer 600 lichtjaar van de aarde. Het is een superreus, een heel zware ster die het einde van een kort leven nadert. Hij ontstond enkele miljoenen jaren geleden – toen op aarde de eerste mensachtigen verschenen – en heeft nog enkele (tien)duizenden jaren te gaan. Dan is zijn energie op en explodeert hij. De ster is nu zo groot dat hij op de plaats van de zon gezet tot bijna de baan van Jupiter zou reiken. Vanaf de aarde gezien is het echter toch maar een piepklein schijfje en om dat te bestuderen zijn speciale technieken nodig.

Eén groep astronomen werkte met een 8 meter-telescoop van de Europese Zuidelijke Sterrenwacht in Chili. Die is voorzien van een systeem dat de beeldverstorende werking van de aardatmosfeer opheft. Een tweede groep astronomen combineerde het licht van drie kleinere telescopen, om zo één reuzentelescoop van 48 meter diameter te simuleren. Hierdoor konden details ter grootte van circa 0,01 boogseconde worden onderscheiden: een knikker gezien op een afstand van duizend kilometer.

Zo konden de astronomen waarnemen dat het oppervlak van Betelgeuze plaatselijk met snelheden tot 15 meter per seconde op en neer beweegt. Deze convectiebewegingen – vergelijkbaar met die in een pan kokend water – leiden er toe dat reusachtige gasbellen de ster verlaten, om zich in de ruimte te verspreiden en op te lossen. Rond de ster werden drie uitgestrekte gaspluimen waargenomen die de overblijfselen daarvan zouden zijn. De grootste strekt zich uit tot minstens zes maal de diameter van de ster, ofwel de afstand zon-Neptunus. Het sterfbed van Betelgeuze heeft dus de omvang van ons zonnestelsel.

(nrc)

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Op vrijdag 21 augustus 2009 01:44 schreef Parafernalia het volgende:

[..]

Dat ding is echt zo belachelijk groot

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Glycine In The Grid
<sup>by Staff Writers
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Aug 20, 2009


Comet particle tracks in aerogel.
Credit: Stardust, JPL, NASA</sup>

NASA scientists have discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.
"Glycine is an amino acid used by living organisms to make proteins, and this is the first time an amino acid has been found in a comet," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts."

Elsila is the lead author of a paper on this research accepted for publication in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The research was presented during the meeting of the American Chemical Society at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, August 16.

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Dr. Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute which co-funded the research.

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins.

Stardust passed through dense gas and dust surrounding the icy nucleus of Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt-2") on January 2, 2004. As the spacecraft flew through this material, a special collection grid filled with aerogel - a novel sponge-like material that's more than 99 percent empty space - gently captured samples of the comet's gas and dust.

The grid was stowed in a capsule which detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to Earth on January 15, 2006. Since then, scientists around the world have been busy analyzing the samples to learn the secrets of comet formation and our solar system's history.

"We actually analyzed aluminum foil from the sides of tiny chambers that hold the aerogel in the collection grid," said Elsila. "As gas molecules passed through the aerogel, some stuck to the foil. We spent two years testing and developing our equipment to make it accurate and sensitive enough to analyze such incredibly tiny samples."

Earlier, preliminary analysis in the Goddard labs detected glycine in both the foil and a sample of the aerogel. However, since glycine is used by terrestrial life, at first the team was unable to rule out contamination from sources on Earth.

"It was possible that the glycine we found originated from handling or manufacture of the Stardust spacecraft itself," said Elsila. The new research used isotopic analysis of the foil to rule out that possibility.

Isotopes are versions of an element with different weights or masses; for example, the most common carbon atom, Carbon 12, has six protons and six neutrons in its center (nucleus). However, the Carbon 13 isotope is heavier because it has an extra neutron in its nucleus.

A glycine molecule from space will tend to have more of the heavier Carbon 13 atoms in it than glycine that's from Earth. That is what the team found. "We discovered that the Stardust-returned glycine has an extraterrestrial carbon isotope signature, indicating that it originated on the comet," said Elsila.

The team includes Dr. Daniel Glavin and Dr. Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard. "Based on the foil and aerogel results it is highly probable that the entire comet-exposed side of the Stardust sample collection grid is coated with glycine that formed in space," adds Glavin.

"The discovery of amino acids in the returned comet sample is very exciting and profound," said Stardust Principal Investigator Professor Donald E. Brownlee of the University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. "It is also a remarkable triumph that highlights the advancing capabilities of laboratory studies of primitive extraterrestrial materials."

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Op vrijdag 21 augustus 2009 02:16 schreef intraxz het volgende:

[..]

Plaatje van Betelgeuse
[ afbeelding ]

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NASA Selects Target Crater for Lunar Impact

Sept. 11, 2009: NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is racing toward a double-impact on the moon at 7:30 am EDT on Oct. 9th. Today NASA announced exactly where the crash will take place.

The target crater is Cabeus A. It was selected after an extensive review of the best places to excavate frozen water at the lunar south pole


^{Above: Craters of interest around the lunar south pole. LCROSS is targeting Cabeus A. Image credit: NMSU/MSFC Tortugas Observatory}

"The selection of Cabeus A was a result of a vigorous debate within the lunar science community. We reviewed the latest data from Earth-based observatories and our fellow lunar missions Kaguya, Chandrayaan-1, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter," says Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principle investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. "The team is looking forward to wealth of information this unique mission will produce."

LCROSS will search for ice by plunging its spent upper-stage Centaur rocket into the permanent shadows of Cabeus A, where water might be trapped in frozen form. The LCROSS satellite will then fly into the plume of debris kicked up by the impact and measure the properties of the plume before it also collides with the lunar surface.


Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery

The LCROSS team selected Cabeus A based on a set of conditions that includes favorable illumination of the debris plume for visibility from Earth, where astronomers will be watching closely. Cabeus A also has a high concentration of hydrogen (a constituent of water, H2O) and favorable terrain such as a flat floor, gentle slopes and the absence of large boulders.

Professional astronomers will use many of Earth's most capable observatories to monitor the impacts. These observatories include the Infrared Telescope Facility and Keck telescope in Hawaii; the Magdalena Ridge and Apache Ridge Observatories in New Mexico and the MMT Observatory in Arizona; the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope; and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, among others.

Amateur astronomers can monitor the impact, too. Observing tips may be found here.

"Telescopes participating in the LCROSS Observation Campaign will provide observations from different vantage points using different types of measurement techniques," says Jennifer Heldmann, lead for the LCROSS Observation Campaign at Ames. "These multiple observations will complement the LCROSS spacecraft data to help determine whether or not water ice exists in Cabeus A."

During a media briefing Sept. 11, Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames, provided a mission status update: The spacecraft is healthy and has enough fuel to successfully accomplish all mission objectives. Andrews also announced the dedication of the LCROSS mission to the memory of legendary news anchor, Walter Cronkite, who provided coverage of NASA's missions from the beginning of America's manned space program to the age of the space shuttle.


^{Above: The LCROSS mission has been dedicated to the memory of Walter Cronkite, who covered NASA missions from Mercury through the space shuttle. Image credit: CBS News. [/b]}

"Dad would sure be proud to be part, if just in name, of getting humans back up to the moon and beyond," says Chip Cronkite, son of the famed news anchor.

"We're looking forward to October 9th," Andrews says. "The next 28 days will undoubtedly be very exciting."

Cabeus A, here we come!

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Op dinsdag 15 september 2009 09:02 schreef Bensel het volgende:
Elke witte pixel is zo'n beetje een ster

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Op dinsdag 15 september 2009 00:16 schreef intraxz het volgende:
http://www.eso.org/gallery/d/136986-2/phot-32a-09-fullres.jpg
High res versie.

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Op dinsdag 15 september 2009 12:20 schreef intraxz het volgende:

[..]

Het plaatje is 2000 x 4000. Dat zijn 8 miljoen pixels. En dat komt nog lang niet in de buurt van het geschatte aantal sterren in de melkweg. Kun je nagaan..

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Herschel scans hidden Milky Way

A remarkable view of our galaxy has been obtained by Europe's billion-euro Herschel Space Observatory.

The telescope was put in a special scanning mode to map a patch of sky.

The images reveal in exquisite detail the dense, contorted clouds of cold gas that are collapsing in on themselves to form new stars.

Herschel, which has the largest mirror ever put on an orbiting telescope, was launched in May as a flagship mission of the European Space Agency.

It is tuned to see far-infrared wavelengths of light and is expected to give astronomers significant insights into some of the fundamental processes that shape the cosmos.

Herschel's great advantage is that its sensitivity allows it to see things that are beyond the vision of other space telescopes, such as Hubble.

A prime goal is to understand the mechanisms that control the earliest phases of stellar evolution.

Rich data return

Herschel's special scanning mode means it has to shift its gaze back and forth across an area of sky, which in this case was about 16 times as big as the size of the Moon as viewed from Earth.

The observatory is tuned to see the Universe in the far-infrared
Its 3.5m diameter mirror is the largest ever flown in space
Herschel can probe clouds of gas and dust to see stars being born
It will investigate how galaxies have evolved through time
The mission will end when its helium refrigerant boils off

The telescope was looking towards the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, in the direction of the Southern Cross constellation.

The scanning mode works with two of Herschel's three instruments operating in tandem.

The UK-led Spire camera responds to longer wavelengths of light (250-500 microns - that is about 500-1,000 times longer than the wavelengths of light we detect with our eyes).

The German-led Pacs camera covers shorter wavelengths (70-170 microns).

Their pictures reveal a chaotic scene of gas and dust, and stars in all stages of development.

The material being observed is very cold - typically less than minus 170C (100 kelvin).

Anomaly investigation

Scientists say the images are information-rich.

"Our wavelength coverage is telling us details about the physics," explained Professor Matt Griffin, of Cardiff University, who is the Spire principal investigator.

"Spire is particularly good at seeing the cold and extended material which might correspond, for instance, to the earliest stages of star formation.

"Pacs is slightly more sensitive to what we would call warmer material, although by any normal standards it is still extremely cold; and that material might be closer to regions where stars have already formed and have been heated up by the young stellar objects."

Herschel intends to study large regions of the Milky Way in its combined Spire-Pacs scanning mode. The instruments will, of course, also work independently.

The mission is due to go into routine operations in the next few weeks. However, its third instrument is currently down after experiencing a fault.

Engineers can switch to a back-up system to reactivate the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HiFi), but they do not intend to do that until they have satisfied themselves the cause the anomaly is properly understood.

The Dutch-led HiFi is a spectrometer that will identify elements and molecules in the clouds of gas and dust which give rise to stars.

Bron: BBC.