Frida Space

Apparently, Ceres severely lacks big impact basins. Scientists suspect these have all been wiped out. This erosion process might have been made easier by the abundance of ice in the subsurface layers and/or by cryovulcanic activities. Also, the three planitiae spotted by Dawn could be the remnants of these huge and ancient impact basins. www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/the-case-of-the-missing-ceres-craters

Tomorrow at 9 UT mission managers will switch off the radio transmitter on Rosetta that was in charge of communicating with Philae. http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2016/07/26/farewell-silent-philae/

So, we now have a few details regarding Rosetta's landing on comet 67P. Who? ESA's Rosetta mission What? Rosetta will soon land on the surface of comet 67P, similarly to what Philae did in Nov. 2014 When? Touchdown will occur at 10:30 UT on Sept. 30, 2016 Where? Ma'at region, on 67P's smaller lobe Why? Having reached perihelion in August last year, 67P is now getting further and further away from the Sun, so much so that Rosetta's old solar panels soon won't be able to power the spacecraft anymore How? Rosetta doesn't have any harpoons or anchoring mechanism, but it will touchdown very gently - around 0.5 m/s.

A few, excting updates from this past week on what are bound to be some of the main actors in space exploration in a few years time. NASA's Solar Probe Plus mission, launching on July 30th, 2018, has entered the assembly, integration, test and launch phase, which includes finishing the spacecraft bus, installing the scientific instruments, testing everything under launch and deep space conditions, and liftoff. NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which will embark on a two-way trip to asteroid Bennu on September 8th, 2016, has passed its latests tests, which were aimed at simulating the communications with the spacecraft once it will be millions of miles away. The tests were performed at MIL-71 at KSC. ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo mission, Mercury-bound, will soon undergo its last acceptance tests ahead of its shipping to the launch site. Weirdly, the latest update says the mission remains on track for its launch window in April 2018; however, the update prior to that said the launch had been postponed to the beginning of 2017, so I'm assuming it has been postponed again to April 2018 without any official press release (or at least, one that I could find).

So yea, the Dawn team asked NASA to depart from Ceres orbit in October this year and flyby asteroid Adeona in May 2019; NASA, however, didn't approve this scenario and simply extended Dawn's stay at Ceres. Dawn is in a stable orbit and therefore will remain at Ceres "indefinitely" (a.k.a. centuries at least, if not millenia). Recently in the news, Dawn identified several spots in Ceres' northern hemisphere which haven't been reached by sunlight in perhaps a billion years or more. Temperatures in these regions can reach -151 °C. They cover 1800 square kilometers, or 0.13% of the hemisphere. This is similar to Mercury; however, being Ceres much further away from the Sun, it's likely that these regions on Ceres represent cold traps (spots were water ice is stable) even at relatively low latitudes, whereas such regions on Mercury exist only in the very close proximity of the poles. Scientists estimate that, throughout a Ceres year (1682 Earth days), around 14 water molecules out of 10 thousand get trapped in these regons. At this rate, a macroscopic ice deposit would take about a hundred thousand years to accumulate.

The Junocam isn't a proper instrument - it will be able to take images only when the other instruments aren't collecting data (they have the priority), plus it's not fully shielded against radiation, so it's expected it will fail after some seven-eight orbits (but let's hope it stays on a bit more than that). Furthermore, it's more of an educative/outreach effort than a proper scientific camera. From my understanding, instruments will be turned on around the second capture orbit, so some 52 days after the insertion burn, but I'm not sure if that applies to Junocam too. Let's hope we get some bonus early picture

Regarding my previous post on this thread (quoted here above), there have been several changes to the flight plan following updated models on Jupiter's magnetosphere - Instead of achieving a 107-day-period preliminary orbit, Juno will execute a slightly more fuel-intensive (542 vs 480 m/s) insertion burn (JOI) to achieve a capture orbit of 53.5 days. The s/c will complete two of these capture orbits, going for a test run of its scientific campaign on the second orbit - After two capture orbits, a period reduction manoeuvre will lower Juno onto its scientific orbits. The original 10.9-day-period orbits are now 14 days long, allowing the scientists to have more time to react to unexpected discoveries and better plan the observations - Longer orbits mean longer mission (20 months instead of 15), but we will have a global picture of Jupiter (however basic) as soon as orbit number 8 The fact that they want to get a global picture sooner, together with a recent talk given by Fran Bagenal ("we don't know how long the s/c will survive, if we only get 10 orbits we will learn a lot about Jupiter"), suggests to me that the scientists fear the radiation dose felt by Juno will be worse than predicted. Of course it's probably only a "hey, don't expect us to survive ten years" call, but still, I find it pretty remarkable that they've chosen to make such important changes to the flight plan so late on in the mission. Godspeed Juno

New Horizons Collects First Science on a Post-Pluto Object www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-collects-first-science-on-a-post-pluto-object

I don't know if you mistyped the date or if the website has been updated; either way, it now says May 23rd at 0930 (I'm guessing IST, which would be 0400 UTC). Thanks for the link

The launch of the second phase of the ExoMars mission (i.e. ESA rover + Roscosmos science platform) has been delayed to 2020. This was quite expected - ESA's DG had even written "ExoMars 2018/2020" in one of his slides on ExoMars 2016 launch day - but it's still pretty sad to hear the confirmation. But I guess it's better to delay and do it right than do it on time but fail The next launch window, after that of 2018, is in July 2020. http://exploration.esa.int/mars/57789-second-exomars-mission-moves-to-next-launch-opportunity-in-2020

No problem! I'd be happy to help in any way I can

As part of my project I'm only looking at the period of oscillation and the apparent magnitude of each star, no more, although I'm aware there are several other parameters (e.g. metallicity, as you say) that can influence the relationship... However, as it is my first project of this type, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible EDIT: oh, were you referring to the supernovae? Unfortunately our facilities currently allow us to perform only photometric and astrometric analysis

Seems cool! I'm currently working on two research projects. I founded with a few friends from school an extragalactic supernovae hunt project. We take weekly images of a dozen patches of sky with 2-6 galaxies in each and compare the images we take every week and see if a supernova shows up! We haven't been able to discover one yet but we've already performed follow-up observations of more than a dozen supernovae, which is still valuable science stuff. We're currently building our first supernova lightcurve. If anyone's interested, you can track our progress here: www.facebook.com/ardinglynova (I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules by doing shameless self-advertisement?) Sometimes we also take pretty pictures of nebulas and planets. One of our most recent supernovae: In addition, I'm working by myself on a project to measure the period-luminosity relationship in Classical Cepheids (DCEPs) variable stars in the near-infrared (NIR) bandpass. I'm focusing on DCEPs in the Large Magellanic Cloud: being all at the same distance, any difference in apparent magnitude between them is indicative of a direct difference in absolute magnitude. The same obviously cannot be said for the Milky Way's Cepheids: one may appear to be much brighter than another one, but it might just be much closer and in reality dimmer. By considering extragalactic DCEPs in the LMC, I know that they are all more or less at the same distance from us. I'm also using raw data online to enrich my database, as I don't have enough time to perform direct photometric analysis of hundreds of stars. I'm sorry I cannot post any images or graphs but, especially for the second project, it's part of an external assessment, and so I don't want to release any stuff on the web before submitting it, or else I might be found guilty of plagiarism or things like that. But once I've had it reviewed, I'll definitely make a post to help others trying to do the same, as it is a very, very exciting project available to anyone really.

Either that, which would make it similar to Charon, or it's a captured KBO, probably like Triton. The hape of its orbit should tells us (circular = collision, elongated = capture)

Hello fellow Kuiper-belt lovers! Meet the new member of the solar system's distant and frigid outskirts: Just a few minutes ago, NASA announced the discovery of the first moon around dwarf planet, KBO and plutoid Makemake. The discovery was made from images taken by Hubble's WFC3 in April 2015. Preliminary data says the moon is some 160 km wide (8.7 times less than its parent body), 1300x dimmer than Makemake, and orbits in a roughly circular and edge-on orbit (as seen from Earth) with a period of at least 12 days. Further observations will allow better precision. Cool things you can do with a moon: calculate the system's total mass and therefore put constraints on its formation and evolution scenarios (e.g., Charon's discovery made astronomers realise Pluto was 100x less massive than expected from the 1930s observations) generate a density profile for Makemake and compare it to Pluto's internal structure to see whether the similarities between these two worlds (both are rich in methane ice) extends beyond their frozen surfaces too and much more! Quite surprisingly, S/2015 (136472) 1 (its provisional name) or MK 2 (its provisional informal name) is charcoal-black, whereas Makemake is snow white. This could explain the mysterious dark patches seen in the infrared on Makemake's surface a few years go. Preliminary speculation says the moon's gravity might not be strong enough to hold on to the ices once they've sublimated, exposing the darker, subsurface material. Interestingly, of the four dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt (that is, all dwarf planets except for Ceres), Makemake was the only one without a known moon, obviously until now.

Main info: Between 24/6 and 11/7/2014, VEX used its accelerometres to measure the atmospheric drag and trace a density profile between 130 and 140 km of altitude The data reveals the atmosphere above the poles - never studied in situ before - has an average temperature of 114 K, i.e. 70 K lower than predicted. The density is also very low: at 130 and 140 km, the density is 22% and 40% less than predicted, respectively. At 180 km, the atmosphere is half as dense as we thought VEX also discovered two types of waves: atmospheric gravity waves (ripples in density profile) thought to have formed some 40-50 km lower than VEX's altitude, and planetary waves (pushed by the planet's rotation) with a period of around 5 days The data is promising because, throughout 2017, ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter will perform aerobraking manoeuvres at Mars, and so will be able to study the Martian atmosphere in a similar way for an entire year, monitoring how these waves and conditions change with distance from the Sun and trace any seasonal pattern

Thanks for the interesting table. I'm sorry if this was a bit off-topic but it's an important issue to me personally

If you take away the Space Shuttle, NASA spent somewhere between 25-50 bln dollars. For as much as I loved the space shuttle, it devoured budget over budget Also, you cannot compare the expense of the different partners without putting them in relation to one another. In 2000, NASA's budget was almost 7 times that of ESA (it currently is slightly less than 4x). And in 2000, NASA's budget was 76 times - 76 TIMES!! - that of Russia. How do you expect them to spend the same amount of money?

ESA and Russia have played a crucial role in the ISS, just as much as the US. Over 50% of the habitable volume of the ISS was built in Italy alone. And without Russia, the US and ESA wouldn't even be able to take their astronauts up there. Canada has provided the Canadarm. Japan the HTVs. Every partner has contributed equally and is of fundamental importance. Sorry for the slight off topic, but, while I love NASA, I don't want people to say that it built the ISS by itself. That's as far from true as something can be.

It absolutely was a chain of events that took the satellite down. It was a catastrophe of programming errors really. Obviously it's easy to say in hindsight what should have been done, but I'm quite surprised by some of the minor problems that led to the failure -- e.g., how can you miscalculate the centre of mass by so much? But obviously even NASA can mix up metric and imperial values and crash a probe in the Martian atmosphere, so anything's possible really. That just goes to prove how hard rocket science is. But it's in a certain sense easier to accept a failure when it is caused by something almost 100% unpredictable, which is not the case with this satellite. True, failure is sometimes necessary to succeed, but it's not as easy as you say, "a new satellite can be launched". For example, this is like the sixth time the SXS X-Ray instrument either fails in orbit, explodes, dives into the ocean following a launch mishap or doesn't even make it onto a satellite because of financial problems. Japan has been trying to launch that instrument for a decade now without success. Failure is sometimes useful, but so many failures probably aren't. Astro-H was indeed the replacement for Astro-E, which dived head first into the Pacific. Nevertheless, I hope Japan decides to launch a "replacement for the replacement" -- its scientific potential is very very high and I couldn't wait to see its first science results. Good luck JAXA!

True, but it was the computer who made the mess. At the time of the anomaly, the satellite wasn't communicating with Earth, so the only thing they could have done to prevent the anomaly (given what we know so far) is have uploaded correct software for the IRU and the thrusters and activated the star trackers.

Apparently there haven't been any new radio contacts, so I'm assuming so. JAXA said it will keep trying to salvage the mission for at least a few months. I don't want to call it dead, I'd rather refer to it as an 11-pieced, non-transmitting satellite

Due to the incredible distance of New Horizons, power limitations, transmission limitations etc., only 55% of the Pluto flyby data has been downloaded so far! All of the images however have already arrived, but we should still be getting some pretty good data. The proposal was submitted to NASA just a week ago. For me it's pretty much a no-brainer decision but obviously due to all the economics involved, it will take them until June or July to decide. The burns were executed within the primary mission, with NASA's permission, because if they had waited until NASA's approval for the extended mission, the burns would have become too expensive delta-V-wise.

Okay, we have a lot more info now. A preliminary investigation into the failure yielded a chain of events that were likely responsible for the event. I won't repeat all the times and dates of the various events, communication windows etc, because they remain largely unchanged from the ones posted above. The only major change is that the 6-second radio signal received at Santiago at 1533 UT on March 29th wasn't actually from Hitomi, or what was left of it at that time anyway. The light curve of the main piece of debris (presumably the main spacecraft bus) suggests a rotation period of 5.2 seconds. The telescope started an attitude manoeuvre to switch from the Crab nebula to Markarian 205. The manoeuvre took place from 18:01 to 18:22 UTC on March 25th. At around 19:10, the Inertial Reference Unit (IRU) detected a non-existent roll about the Z-axis. Usually, the star tracker data has the priority over the IRU data, which in this case was faulty, but star trackes were not being used at the time of the failure. The IRU data indicated a 21.7 degree/hour roll. The flight control system tried to counter the roll by entering a roll of 20 degree per hour in the opposite direction. The torque was induced by the reaction wheels. The momentum continued to build up from 20:49 to 01:04 UTC. The magnetic torquers attempted to dump momentum, but were ineffective. At 112 newton-meter-second, the spacecraft was near its saturation momentum of 120 Nms. With the IRU faulty data still showing a large roll rate, Hitomi switched to Safe Mode to use its sun sensor to dermine the solar vector and thus the attitude. The system should have then used the thrusters to point the solar arrays to the sun. At this point, another error was introduced. The software uploaded after the deployment of the Extensible Optical Bench prevented the sun sensor from working correctly. Furthermore, the thruster algorithms were not correctly updated to match the new center of mass. The thrusters fired and increased even more the roll of the spacecraft. Consequently, at 1:31-1:53, the spacecraft began shedding at least 10 pieces. Likely pieces are the extended optical bench and the outer portions of the solar panels. Sources: press briefing handout, spaceflight101

An update on the status of the New Horizons mission. New Horizons is 5.23 bln km from Earth and 330 mln km from Pluto. All systems are healthy. So far, just over 50% of the Pluto data has been donwloaded. Data transmission from the flyby will end in October-November 2016. If the extended mission proposal won't be approved, the mission will end in December due to lack of funding. The extended mission proposal was submitted to NASA last week. A response should arrive by June or July 2016. The extended mission features a 3,000 km flyby of 2014 MU69 on January 1st, 2019; performing remote observations of 20+ KBOs between 2016 and 2020 to determine their shapes, albedos, and search for any moons or rings; continuing to sample the plasma, gas and dust environment until 2021, when NH will be at 50 AU from the Sun. New estimates put the diameter of 2014 MU69 between 21 and 40 km. It's located about 1.5 bln km past Pluto. Its low orbital eccentricity (0.036) makes it a classical KBO, or cubewano. Its low orbital inclination (1.9°) makes it a cold cubewano. By flying so close to it, New Horizons will reach much better spatial resolutions than during the Pluto flyby (102 m/pixel with Ralph/MVIC; 25 m/pixel with LORRI!) As you probably know already, New Horizons already completed 4 burns in October-November 2015 which provided some 57 m/s of Delta-V required to turn towards MU69. MU69 was selected last August from five potential targets (PTs). The other finalist was 2014 PN70, a slightly larger world which required a bit more fuel to be reached. MU69 is 1,000x more massive than comet 67P, but 500,000x less massive than Pluto, making it an intermediate-mass object which would be very useful to study if we want to better understand the formation of the solar system. The scientific goals of MU69's flyby are: mapping the global surface in high res and color, mapping the composition of the surface, determining the surface's properties, looking for moons and studying its atmosphere or exosphere, if there is one. If approved, the flyby operations will start 100 days prior to the encounter, in September 2018. The data transmission will require at least 20 months, ending at the end of 2020. A few images: The spatial resolution during MU69's flyby simulated using Mars' moon Phobos. The plan for remote observations of 20+ KBOs between 2016 and 2020.