Ice, Ice, Baby

NASA scientists believe they have proof of water ice on Mars.

Scientists with the Phoenix Mars mission yesterday declared for certain that there is ice on the Red Planet, putting them an essential step closer to answering the question that has driven three decades of Mars exploration and centuries of Earth-bound speculation: Could there have been life there?

Pictures beamed 170 million miles to Earth from the Phoenix lander atop Mars's northern polar plain erased any doubt about the presence of ice, they said.

But the evidence came in a roundabout way. Last Sunday, several dice-size solids were observed at the bottom of a trench that had been dug by Phoenix's robotic arm. On Thursday, they were gone.

The only reasonable explanation, the scientists said, is that the objects were pieces of ice that evaporated into the dry Martian atmosphere through a process called sublimation. And the presence of ice means that Mars might once have had liquid water, which is essential for life — at least as it is known on Earth.

This seems to be a reasonable interpretation of the photographic evidence, which you can see for yourself on the Phoenix Mission homepage. There are definitely several objects visible in one image that are just gone in the second one. The Phoenix lander is having some unfortunate software and hardware issues at the moment. The scientists and engineers are working on resolving those issues. Hopefully, they can get definitive proof soon. But it certainly looks like they found something that behaves like water ice.

Crossed In Space

Legs crossed, actually. The only toilet on the International Space Station has stopped working.

The international space station's lone toilet is broken, leaving the crew with almost nowhere to go.

So Nasa may order an in-orbit plumbing service call when space shuttle Discovery visits next week. Until then, the three-man crew will have to make do with a jury-rigged system when they need to urinate.

While one of the crew was using the Russian-made toilet last week, the toilet motor fan stopped working, according to Nasa.

Since then, the liquid waste gathering part of the toilet has been working on-and-off. Fortunately, the solid waste collecting part is functioning normally.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they only put a single toilet on board. This is a single failure mode that is rather ridiculous. Hopefully, the next shuttle brings a plumber up.

Mars 3-D

Some stunning pseudo-3-d pictures of the surface of mars from the European Space Agency are featured over at the Daily Mail.

The 3D photographs were taken by a high resolution stereo camera on board the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and beamed 43million miles to Earth.

They show Hebes Chasma, an enclosed trough, almost five miles deep, in the Grand Canyon of the Red Planet.

It's worth clicking through to the link. Even more over at the ESA website. Some very nice images if you poke around a bit.

Endeavour Coming Home

Space shuttle Endeavour has fired its main engines and is inbound for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center at 8:39 PM EDT.

Space shuttle Endeavour has fired its engines, slowing it enough to drop out of orbit. Commander Dominic Gorie and Pilot Gregory H. Johnson are guiding the shuttle on its descent to Kennedy Space Center, Fla., where it is scheduled to land at 8:39 p.m. EDT.

STS-123 arrived at the station March 12, delivering the Japanese Logistics Module - Pressurized Section, the first pressurized component of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory, to the station. The crew of Endeavour also delivered the final element of the station’s Mobile Servicing System, the Canadian-built Dextre, also known as the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator.

Safe landing, Endeavour. Well done.

Endeavour Lifts Off

In a rare night launch, space shuttle Endeavour has lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center taking a Canadian-built robot and the first section of a Japanese science laboratory into space. The mission is planned to last an unheard-of 16 days, the longest ever.

Thrust in the form of translucent blue and bright yellow fire ignited a light show over NASA's Kennedy Space Center when Endeavour roared off the launch pad at 2:28 a.m. EDT on March 11.

The first module of the Japanese-built Kibo laboratory complex was packed inside Endeavour's cargo bay, along with a Canadian-built robotics system that will enhance the capabilities of the International Space Station's robotic arm.

The pressurized logistics module for the Kibo complex represents the first manned spacecraft for Japan.

"With this flight, I believe we fully became a real partner in the International Space Station project," said Keiji Tachikawa, president of JAXA, the Japanese space agency.

Dextre is the robotics system that Endeavour lofted into orbit. With it, Canada is making a literal extension to what the nation already built. Canada built both the space shuttle robot arm and the robotic arm used on the International Space Station.

I had the disconcerting pleasure of watching a night launch of a shuttle - from Orlando, Florida - some years back. It is absolutely amazing to be that far away from the launch and yet still see the rockets trail of fire quite clearly.  

Jules Verne Finally Reaches Space

Well, not the long-dead author himself, but the spacecraft named in his honor. The Europea-built robotic freight spacecraft roared into space from the launch facility in French Guiana early this morning. The craft is set to rendezvous with the International Space Station in about two weeks or so. It carries some  7-1/2 tons of supplies for the station. Plans call for it to remain docked  for six months as it is emptied, then refilled with trash from the ISS. Eventually, the freighter will be guided to a safe reentry over the Pacific Ocean, but should burn up before it reaches the earth.

KOUROU, French Guiana (AFP) - The European Space Agency on Sunday carried out the maiden launch of a massive robot freighter designed to rendezvous automatically with the orbital space station.

The Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), a nearly 20-tonne payload the size of a London double-decker bus, blasted into the skies aboard a beefed-up Ariane 5 launcher, an AFP reporter saw.

After being placed in orbit, the cylinder-shaped craft will deploy its solar panels and gently find its way to the International Space Station (ISS) and berth with it.

The launch had initially been scheduled for Saturday but was postponed for further checks.

The ATV will deliver seven and a half tonnes of food, water, pressurised air, fuel and personal items to the ISS crew.

The European Space agency will spend the next two weeks testing the vehicle while waiting for a berth to clear at the ISS. The shuttle Endeavour is scheduled to be taking up the docking facility for a while.  

We Sent Men To The Moon

The United States is the only nation on earth that has sent men to the moon. But in two years we will be reduced to paying the Russians to keep us in space, just as the International Space Station becomes fully operational. The US will have no heavy launch capability whatsoever until 2015 at the earliest.

Tomorrow night, a European spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from French Guiana on its maiden voyage to the international space station, giving NASA and the world a new way to reach the orbiting laboratory.For NASA, however, the launch of the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) also highlights a stark reality: In 2 1/2 years, just as the station gets fully assembled, the United States will no longer have any spacecraft of its own capable of carrying astronauts and cargo to the station, in which roughly $100 billion is being invested. The three space shuttles will be retired by then, because of their high cost and questionable safety, and NASA will have nothing ready to replace them until 2015 at the earliest.

For five years or more, the United States will be dependent on the technology of others to reach the station, which American taxpayers largely paid for. To complicate things further, the only nation now capable of flying humans to the station is Russia, giving it a strong bargaining position to decide what it wants to charge for the flights at a time when U.S.-Russian relations are becoming increasingly testy.

In addition, some fear the price will be paid not only in billions of dollars but also in lost American prestige and lost leverage on the Russians when it comes to issues such as aiding Iran with its nuclear program.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin calls the situation his "greatest regret and greatest concern." For most of the five-year gap, he said, "we will be largely dependent on the Russians, and that is terrible place for the United States to be. I'm worried, and many others are worried."

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), chairman of the subcommittee that oversees NASA, went further. "This is a very serious betrayal of American interests," he said. "This will be the first time since Sputnik when the United States will not have a significant space superiority. I remain dumbfounded that we've allowed this serious threat to our national security to develop."

If the space budget were increased by about $2 billion annually, the gap could be shortened by about two years. The is also an option for SpaceX, the private company to get manned flight operational by 2011 - although they have yet to orbit anything. Read it all, it isn't a pretty picture.

How did we get here? Myopia of the political sort. Looking at glad-handing tax money away on pork barrel projects instead of the long-range interests of the nation itself. Washington should be ashamed - both parties, all branches of government. 

We sent men to the moon once. Too bad our politicians have their heads stuck firmly in the earth. Or someplace else. 

Avalanche!

NASA scientists have captured images of actual, active avalanches - on Mars. 

Pasadena, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. It is one of approximately 2,400 HiRISE images being released today.

Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who works on targeting the camera and has studied hundreds of HiRISE images, was the first person to notice the avalanches. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years."

The camera is looking repeatedly at selected places on Mars to track seasonal changes. However, the main target of the Feb. 19 image was not the steep slope.

"We were checking for springtime changes in the carbon-dioxide frost covering a dune field, and finding the avalanches was completely serendipitous," said Candice Hansen, deputy principal investigator for HiRISE, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

All of the images are available here. One has to wonder what triggered the avalanches. Martian skiers?

Navy Destroys Satellite

The USS Lake Erie launched a single, modified SM-3 missile late last night, hitting a disabled American satellite. The Navy says that they believe they scored a "pretty solid" direct hit on the satellite with the missile's kinetic warhead. 

A missile fired from a Navy cruiser in the Pacific Ocean hit an out-of-control spy satellite falling toward Earth last night, Pentagon officials said.

They said that a single SM-3 missile fired from the USS Lake Erie hit the satellite at 10:26 p.m. Eastern time. The missile struck the dead satellite about 150 miles above Earth as it traveled in orbit at more than 17,000 mph.

Military officials had hoped to rupture the satellite's fuel tank to prevent 1,000 pounds of hydrazine from crashing to Earth, a situation they depicted as potentially hazardous for people on the ground. It was unclear last night whether the missile hit was able to break up the fuel tank, but Pentagon officials said they hope to determine that within 24 hours.

A news conference is scheduled for 7 a.m.

A defense official said last night that the military believes it got a "pretty solid" direct hit on the satellite.

Before last night's intercept, some experts had expressed doubts about the seriousness of the risk and questioned whether the shot was an excuse to perform an anti-satellite test that many people around the world found controversial. Skeptics in the arms-control community have speculated that the administration chose to undertake the shoot-down partly to test missile defense technology.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and satellite tracker, said after the shoot-down that he had not heard any reports of debris spotting but that "I know people are on the lookout." He said that around midnight the debris was probably over Australia, but that it would be over Canada 30 minutes later.

"Due to the relatively low altitude of the satellite at the time of the engagement, debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately," the Pentagon said in a statement. "Nearly all of the debris will burn up on reentry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days." 

China is whining about the shootdown, as expected. The Pentagon insists they did this out of concern for the large amount of hydrazine on the satellite. Regardless, the Navy did a great job, hitting a relatively small target traveling at a very high rate of speed. 

Lunar Eclipse

I just went outside to see the lunar eclipse. It is pretty impressive with the moon well up in the sky. Unfortunately, it is also well below zero outside right now where I live, so the viewing pleasure was very brief. Go take a look if you have clear skies. 

Lunar Eclipse Reminder

Just a reminder that the last total lunar eclipse until 2010 will occur tomorrow night and will be visible over North America, weather permitting.

LOS ANGELES - The last total lunar eclipse until 2010 occurs Wednesday night, with cameo appearances by Saturn and the bright star Regulus on either side of the veiled full moon.

Skywatchers viewing through a telescope will have the added treat of seeing Saturn's handsome rings.

Weather permitting, the total eclipse can be seen from North and South America. People in Europe and Africa will be able to see it high in the sky before dawn on Thursday.

As the moonlight dims — it won't go totally dark — Saturn and Regulus will pop out and sandwich the moon. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo.

Jack Horkheimer, host of the PBS show "Star Gazer," called the event "the moon, the lord of the rings and heart of the lion eclipse."

Wednesday's event will be the last total lunar eclipse until Dec. 20, 2010. Last year there were two.

Best viewing should start around 10 pm EST. Sadly, much of the United States will be overcast as more winter weather sweeps across the country. Good luck, folks.  

Catch Watch A Falling Star

It would not be a good idea to try and catch this particular school bus sized falling star, but there is detailed viewing information available should you want to catch a glimpse of USA 193, the disabled US satellite.

During the next week, a wayward U.S. spy satellite will make passes across North America and western Europe soon after sunset and should be easily visible to the unaided eye.

That's if it doesn't get shot down first.

The falling satellite is named USA 193. It was launched Dec. 14, 2006. It has been described as being similar in size to a school bus and might weigh as much as 10,000 pounds. It carries a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor but the satellite's central computer failed shortly after launch, never reaching its final orbit, and the Pentagon declared it a total loss in early 2007.

Since then, the satellite's orbit has been decaying — slowly at first. But in recent weeks USA 193's nearly circular orbit has been rapidly lowering. Currently, its altitude is approximately 160 miles (260 km) above the Earth.

Unless a proposed plan by the Pentagon is enacted to shoot down USA 193 during the next week, the satellite could conceivably re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up sometime in mid-March.

Today through Feb. 22, USA 193 will make a number of evening passes over North America and western Europe. It's orbit is inclined 58.5-degrees to the equator, a setup that makes it readily observable from most of the Northern Hemisphere.

During this period, USA 193 will move along a general southwest-to-northeast trajectory and pass over a number of cities in the United States, southern Canada and western Europe.

It will not be shot down until the space shuttle lands, so there is still time to see it. (Commenter NortonPete mentioned this is comments yesterday, incidentally.) 

More Satellite Shoot Down Information

The Washington Post has more detail about the attempt by the US to shoot down a disabled satellite sometime later this month. The primary reason given is that there is an almost full tank of hydrazine on board the satellite - which makes semse since the satellite malfunctioned almost as soon as it was launched. The 1,000 pounds of hydrazine could be a real danger if the tank survives reentry. Which has happened before when space shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry. Pentagon officials reject comparisons to the satellite shoot down China conducted.

The difference, Griffin said, "is, one, we are notifying, which is required by treaties and law, okay?" The Chinese satellite was destroyed at a much higher altitude — about 600 miles — creating a field of orbiting space debris that is hazardous for other spacecraft.

The United States and Soviet Union conducted anti-satellite tests in the mid-1980s but stopped once it became clear that the debris from the destroyed spacecraft became a danger to other satellites and even spaceships. Griffin said the low altitude at which the satellite will be targeted — about 150 miles — will minimize orbiting debris.

"The lower we can catch this, the quicker the debris reenters," he said. More than half the pieces will burn up or land before making two revolutions around Earth, and the rest will come down in "weeks, maybe a month, but it's a very finite period of time that we can manage."

Jeffrey said that the fuel tank is the only piece of the craft that was not expected to break up on reentry and that it is hoped that the missile can destroy it in space. If it hits the ground, it could leak gas and cause potentially fatal injury over an area of the size of about two football fields, he said, adding that "this is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings."

Te Post, annoyingly, then says nebulous, unidentified "other experts" dispute that the tank might survive. Despite a hydrazine tank from Columbia surviving reentry. While the Pentagon also disputes contentions that they want to destroy whatever sensitive equipment is on board the satellite, I frankly don't care if they are partially motivated by that.

They are trying for a low-altitude, kinetic energy kill here. The warhead of the missile is not explosive.

US Planning To Shoot Down Disabled Satellite

The Associated Press is reporting that the US is planning to shoot down the broken satellite that is expected to fall to earth sometime in March. The plan calls for a specially modified missile to be fired from a Navy cruiser. 

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a later Pentagon briefing.

The disabled satellite is expected to hit the Earth the first week of March. Officials said the Navy would likely shoot it down before then, using a special missile modified for the task. Other details about the missile and the targeting were not immediately available.

But the decision involves several U.S. agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Defense and the State Department. Shooting down a satellite is particularly sensitive because of the controversy surrounding China's anti-satellite test last year, when Beijing shot down one of its defunct weather satellites, drawing immediate criticism from the U.S. and other countries.

A key concern at that time was the debris created by Chinese satellite's destruction — and that will also be a focus now, as the U.S. determines exactly when and under what circumstances to shoot down its errant satellite.

The military will have to choose a time and a location that will avoid to the greatest degree any damage to other satellites in the sky.

When the existence of the failed satellite was revealed, the AP and others went on and on about how the satellite threatened the earth. Let's face it, the satellite is going to fall and if it is all in one piece when it does so, there is a real chance it could hit something. (It actually isn't all that great a chance, incidentally.) But they may have some idea when and where the satellite may hit now. They may see the shootdown as a "least worst" option, depending on where it is now predicted to hit. There also may be security concerns since about 50% of the satellite is expected to survive reentry.

3-D Mars

The scientists managing the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter are releasing 3-D images of terrain features on Mars.

The towering 3-D features of Martian canyons and highlands are about to stand out like never before, thanks to data from a high-resolution camera on the Mars Express orbiter.

These data, collected by the camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express, are allowing scientists to create so-called Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) to look around the Martian surface from different directions and angles, as opposed to the usual bird's-eye view from above provided by previous Mars orbiter cameras. The new data sets have now been released on the Internet, the European Space Agency announced this week.

"Understanding the topography of Mars is essential to understanding its geology," said Gerhard Neukum, HRSC lead scientist at Freie Universität (FU) in Berlin, Germany.

Creating the data for such digital models requires spacecraft to study the same Martian feature at least twice, each time from a different angle. Most previous efforts to do this have involved spacecraft making two orbital passes over features.

The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) only needs one overhead pass to capture images of a feature from three different angles — on approach, directly underneath and receding into the distance. The camera also obtains altitude measurements for its high-resolution images.

All that data is processed by the German Space Agency (DLR) and FU Berlin for several years before digital models of the Martian surface can start to emerge. Now researchers are selecting the best data to "stitch them together" and develop digital models on a "global scale," Fred Jansen, Mars Express senior manager, told SPACE.com.

They have examples of the images. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an online, searchable viewer for these, or at least none I can find. Maybe someone will stitch one together in the future.