Is Mars a Backup Planet?

With all the excitement about a someday trip to Mars, some are voicing caution that we should not be so eager to leave Earth behind.  Astronomer Lucianne Walkowicz from Chicago's Adler Planetarium in Chicago, who worked on NASA's Kepler mission, covered this idea in a recent TED talk titled Let's Not Use Mars as a Backup Planet.  In her March 2015 talk, posted in December, she noted we need to appreciate our home planet more than we do. 

Here is a quick summary of her talk:

Stellar astronomer and TED Senior Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz works on NASA's Kepler mission, searching for places in the universe that could support life. So it's worth a listen when she asks us to think carefully about Mars. In this short talk, she suggests that we stop dreaming of Mars as a place that we'll eventually move to when we've messed up Earth, and to start thinking of planetary exploration and preservation of the Earth as two sides of the same goal. As she says, "The more you look for planets like Earth, the more you appreciate our own planet."

You can get the transcript here.   

You can also learn more about Dr. Walkowicz and see her other talks here.

Good News Continues for SpaceX

Even if SpaceX is still struggling with the barge landing of the Falcon 9 rocket, the company continues to rack up good news in terms of future customers.  Here are just a few of the latest stories about government contracts with SpaceX:

-- On January 25h, the US Air Force certified the latest version of the Falcon 9 rocket, the Falcon 9 Upgrade, to launch national security satellites.  The new rocket can lift 30 percent more mass into orbit.

-- On January 14th, SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada won NASA contracts to resupply the International Space Station through 2024.  The Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) contracts, worth about $14 billion, are for cargo delivery services to the space station and not the transport of astronauts.

-- On January 13th, SpaceX and Orbital ATK were selected by the US Air Force for a $241 million contract for new rocket propulsion systems.  This will help the Air Force end its dependence on the RD-180 rocket from Russia.  

This is a nice string of events for SpaceX and its competitors (unless you are Russia).  The smaller private sector firms are starting to pull their weight in the space race. 

Another Finding on a New Ninth Planet

Poor Pluto.  Even after all the amazing images from the New Horizons spacecraft, telescopes are peering beyond the dwarf planet looking for a ninth "planet," since the solar system is now one short and Pluto does not stack up. 

Researchers  and Mike Brown at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) found indications that a planet about 10 times the size of Earth is lurking further our in our solar system.  This planet would be between the size of Earth and Neptune (shown below). 

One of the researchers is Mike Brown, the scientist that found the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Eris that led to the demotion of Pluto. You can certainly call him determined. 

This assumed planet is so far out that it may take between 10,000 and 20,000 Earth years to circle the sun.  If you don't like winter, you certainly will not like a winter that lasts thousands of years (and any planet that far out would not have much of a summer anyway). 

Also, being about 200 astronomical units from our sun, it is five times more distant than Pluto.  Hence, we can point the New Horizons spacecraft at the proposed planet if we are willing to wait at least another 40 years for an answer (assuming the spacecraft has sufficient fuel and a clear destination). 

Here is a video from Caltech that explains this recent discovery.  You can also view more on the search for the ninth planet on this very helpful site at findplanetnine.com.

Ceres, Part II; Colonization

Space.com had an interesting article recently on Ceres, asking if we would be able to colonize the planet as is done in the SyFy television series The Expanse.  Its an interesting question, just as The Expanse has been a fascinating take on humans expanding into the solar system, including occupying Mars and the asteroid belt.

Here is how the dwarf planet is described in the future on the Syfy website:

The largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the dwarf planet Ceres has become the port city of the Belt. A subterranean city has been bored into the rocky interior of the planetoid, which is home to some 6 million people. Thanks to the spin created by Tycho engineers, the residents of Ceres experience artificial gravity in the form of centrifugal force, which presses away from the core of the planetoid, and out towards the exterior of the station. An endless stream of trade flows through its docks, but the majority of the wealth flows back to Earth and Mars. The closer you travel to Ceres' Core, the more impoverished the living conditions.

It would be nice to have one person on Ceres, never mind 6 million.  The Space.com article discussed the difficulties of living on the surface with only 1/40th the Earth's gravity, noting:

The moon has lava tubes, and some people have talked about repurposing these structures into habitats. An alternate idea for Ceres — a place bereft of the silicate lavas needed to create such tubes — would be to use inflatable habitats (similar to those in development by Bigelow Aerospace) and then bulldoze rocky material over the habitat to serve as a radiation shield.

Living off the land on Ceres may be more difficult than doing so at the moon, but it's hard to say yet as the dwarf planet is just this year getting its first close-up. Still, any water ice on Ceres seems (so far) to be buried in the dwarf planet's interior, despite the discovery of a definitive signature of water ice in Ceres' atmosphere. The water ice on Earth's moon may be a little closer to the surface, at least at the poles.

It is interesting that we are now discussing "any water" on Ceres when back in 2005 Space.com was noting that scientists believed Ceres had more fresh water than the Earth.  The Dawn spacecraft page at NASA still notes the large quantities of water on Ceres, even though the Dawn mission results have been somewhat tentative.  The European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory detected water vapor on and around the dwarf planet, so the water is there, but the quantity still seems to be a guess. 

It is very intriguing to speculate on future mission to Ceres and the asteroid belt.  The existence of water, as well as other resources, is the key reason the colonists in The Expanse are in the belt - to supply the needs of humans living on Mars and elsewhere. Let's just hope the future colonists are a little happier than those in the SyFy series.

Scott Kelly and Stephen Colbert

I am impressed that Stephen Colbert is bringing astronauts and scientists onto his Late Show program.  Most of the other talk shows seem interested in celebrities only and ignore all the other happenings in the world - and off world.  His long-distant interview with astronaut Scott Kelly, who was aboard the International Space Station, was entertaining yet also instructive.  In addition to discussion frequent flier miles, the talk covered potential bone loss due to the lack of gravity.  No, the science was not very deep, but at last NASA had a place on late night television.  Bravo to Colbert!

Space X: Still Trying to Land on That Barge

The launch and Jason-3 satellite placement was a success, but SpaceX continues to have difficulty landing the Falcon 9 rocket on the barge.  An attempt yesterday met with failure again.  Choppy seas did not help.  I guess landing on a more stable surface, such as the ground at Cape Canaveral, is the trick. 

Here is a little more on the Jason-3 payload: 

Jason-3 is the newest satellite in a series designed to maintain long-term satellite altimetry observations of global sea surface height. These data provide critical ocean information that forecasters need to predict devastating hurricanes and severe weather before they arrive onshore.

Over the long term, Jason-3 will help track global sea level rise, an increasing threat to the resilience of coastal communities and to the health of our environment.

Jason-3’s highly accurate altimetry measurements will be used for a variety of scientific, commercial and operational applications, including:

• Hurricane intensity forecasting
• Surface wave forecasting for offshore operators
• Forecasting tides and currents for commercial shipping and ship routing
• Coastal forecasting for response to environmental problems like oil spills and harmful algal blooms
• Coastal modeling crucial for marine mammal and coral reef research
• El Niño and La Niña forecasting

Another Look at Star Wars: Destroying a Planet

Scott Manley's video does a nice job trying to make some sense of the planet destroying creations in the Star Wars movies, from the destruction of Alderaan to the latest film (Spoiler Alert!) that destroys multiple planets.  His video, How Much Power Do You Need to Destroy a Planet?, tosses in plenty of equations along the way discussing the destruction of Earth and Jupiter, but the bottom line is that the necessary energy and resulting destruction would fall outside of what Lucas and Disney have served up.  Of course, no one can be surprised, but it is interesting to speculate. 

However, the bottom line here is that you do not need a spectacular exploding planet to kill off a civilization.  All you need to destroy is the outer 1 percent and nothing will survive.  Why the overkill?  But more to the point, we already have the ability to do to ourselves what the Empire did to others.  That is a scary thought.

Ceres, Part I: New NASA Photos

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has captured some amazing close-up images of the dwarf planet Ceres.  The image above is the younger Kupalo Crater, which is about 16 miles across, shown from an height of 240 miles.  And the image below is the floor of the Dantu Crater.  You can see a brighter spot on the right hand side that appears to be similar to those scientists have been pondering in the Occator Carter, shown in the very bottom image.  It is believed they may represent brine that came to the surface.

Notable Quote: Has NASA Lost its Way?

"There is no big aspirational purpose.”

--Presidential candidate Jeb Bush responding to a 13-year olds question about the role of NASA. Or was Mr. Bush describing his campaign? 

Archaeology from Space

Last Friday Stephen Colbert hosted Dr. Sarah Parcak, space archaeologist, as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Dr. Parcak is an associate professor of Anthropology and director of the Laboratory for Global Observation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

She recently won a $1 million 2016 TED prize for her talk on Archaeology from Space. She was an animated guest as she discussed the multiple sites her team has uncovered using satellite infrared imagery, including sites outside Rome and in Egypt.  

Here is the content of her TED talk if you want to learn a little more about her efforts:

When I was a child growing up in Maine, one of my favorite things to do was to look for sand dollars on the seashores of Maine, because my parents told me it would bring me luck. But you know, these shells, they're hard to find. They're covered in sand, they're difficult to see. However, over time, I got used to looking for them. I started seeing shapes and patterns that helped me to collect them. 

This grew into a passion for finding things, a love for the past and archaeology. And eventually, when I started studying Egyptology, I realized that seeing with my naked eyes alone wasn't enough. Because all of the sudden, in Egypt, my beach had grown from a tiny beach in Maine to one eight hundred miles long, next to the Nile. And my sand dollars had grown to the size of cities. This is really what brought me to using satellite imagery. For trying to map the past, I knew that I had to see differently.

So I want to show you an example of how we see differently using the infrared. This is a site located in the eastern Egyptian delta called Mendes. And the site visibly appears brown, but when we use the infrared and we process it, all of the sudden, using false color, the site appears as bright pink. What you are seeing are the actual chemical changes to the landscape caused by the building materials and activities of the ancient Egyptians.

What I want to share with you today is how we've used satellite data to find an ancient Egyptian city, called Itjtawy, missing for thousands of years. Itjtawy was ancient Egypt's capital for over four hundred years, at a period of time called the Middle Kingdom, about four thousand years ago. The site is located in the Faiyum of Egypt, and the site is really important, because in the Middle Kingdom there was this great renaissance for ancient Egyptian art, architecture and religion. Egyptologists have always known the site of Itjtawy was located somewhere near the pyramids of the two kings who built it, indicated within the red circles here, but somewhere within this massive flood plain. This area is huge -- it's four miles by three miles in size. The Nile used to flow right next to the city of Itjtawy, and as it shifted and changed and moved over time to the east, it covered over the city.

So, how do you find a buried city in a vast landscape? Finding it randomly would be the equivalent of locating a needle in a haystack, blindfolded, wearing baseball mitts.

(Laughter)

So what we did is we used NASA topography data to map out the landscape, very subtle changes. We started to be able to see where the Nile used to flow. But you can see in more detail, and even more interesting, this very slight raised area seen within the circle up here which we thought could possibly be the location of the city of Itjtawy.

So we collaborated with Egyptian scientists to do coring work, which you see here. When I say coring, it's like ice coring, but instead of layers of climate change, you're looking for layers of human occupation. And, five meters down, underneath a thick layer of mud, we found a dense layer of pottery. What this shows is that at this possible location of Itjtawy, five meters down, we have a layer of occupation for several hundred years, dating to the Middle Kingdom, dating to the exact period of time we think Itjtawy is. We also found work stone -- carnelian, quartz and agate that shows that there was a jeweler's workshop here. These might not look like much, but when you think about the most common stones used in jewelry from the Middle Kingdom, these are the stones that were used.

So, we have a dense layer of occupation dating to the Middle Kingdom at this site. We also have evidence of an elite jeweler's workshop, showing that whatever was there was a very important city. No Itjtawy was here yet, but we're going to be returning to the site in the near future to map it out. And even more importantly, we have funding to train young Egyptians in the use of satellite technology so they can be the ones making great discoveries as well.

So I wanted to end with my favorite quote from the Middle Kingdom -- it was probably written at the city of Itjtawy four thousand years ago. "Sharing knowledge is the greatest of all callings. There's nothing like it in the land." So as it turns out, TED was not founded in 1984 AD.

(Laughter)

Making ideas actually started in 1984 BC at a not-lost-for-long city, found from above. It certainly puts finding seashells by the seashore in perspective.

 Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

ESA, Europa, and the Moon

So now the European Space Agency wants to join NASA on its trip to Europa.  That is good for international cooperation and funding since ESA may contribute about $550 million related to a separate probe.  NASA already has about $2 billion in funding for the mission.  Alvaro Gimenez, ESA’s director of science and robotic exploration. stated:

We are ready and interested...As I said to my colleague in the U.S., we cannot allow Americans to go to Europa without Europeans. We have to be part of it. We think that it is natural, but certainly we will not lead, so we have to wait.

I am surprised since ESA has its own plans for Europa via the JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE).  Both the NASA mission and JUICE are slated for 2022.  It could make sense for ESA to contribute to the NASA mission and vice versa to double the chances that the two space agencies will get a craft to Europa.

That does not mean both space agencies see eye-to-eye on all future missions, particularly manned missions.  While NASA seems to be aiming for manned missions to Mars, the European Space Agency (ESA) is gunning for the occupation of the Moon.  In this video, Destination: Moon, ESA discusses how we have explored only a part of the Moon, highlights the need to determine how much water is really below the surface, points out the advantages of a telescope outside of Earth's interference, and recommends an international Moon base similar to the arrangement in Antarctica.

While many in the United States would say "been there, done that," ESA makes a convincing argument that more can be learned about the Moon and thereby the Earth.  This would be much better than our decades in low-Earth orbit, but not as sexy as Mars.  Maybe ESA could lead the lunar mission while NASA focuses on Mars.  Of course, with Russia and China also planning manned missions to the Moon, I expect the United States might feel left out.  But we can still be there, if only "leading from behind," with some of our heavy-lift rockets and hard-earned expertise. It has been a long time since we had astronauts on the Moon and a permanent mission sounds like a good idea for everyone involved.

Update: To be fair, ESA contributed about $470 million to the Orion service module, indicating plenty of support for a manned Mars mission. It appears ESA is hoping such support may provide a spot for a European astronaut on the trip to Mars. That is cheaper and smarter than funding a separate mission. 

Top 15 Space and Astronomy Stories from Slate

Phil Plait in Slate put together a helpful video discussing the Top Space and Astronomy Stories in 2015, including New Horizons arriving at Pluto, the Dawn spacecraft over Ceres, and reusable rockets.  He also has time to mention the science in the movie The Martian as well as a cameo by Elon Musk on the Simpsons.  It is quite a list, as it has been quite a year. 

Star Wars Versus Close Encounters

In a recent interview with Smithsonian magazine, Richard Dreyfuss shared his opinion on the 1977 release of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

If Close Encounters had opened first, the idea of space and stories about aliens would have been lifted to a certain level of audience maturity.  And I think that some of the great writers and some of the great screenwriters would have been making films in that genre as opposed to bang-bang Star Wars and Star Wars sequels.  Close Encounters was, from the beginning to the end, about something far more intelligent, or intellectual, or uplifting...The first line for Close Encounters was 'You have nothing to fear by looking up.

It is clear that Star Wars won, as we see with the billion-dollar release of the seventh episode of the franchise.  I don't remember a sequel to Close Encounters.  But that does seem to be the way of the world and Hollywood.  And yet I am hopeful.  The release of The Martian last year was a stunning scientific film that captured everyone's imagination without light sabers and Death Stars.  And let us not forget the movie Contact, putting Carl Sagan's book of the same name onto the silver screen.  And even Star Trek can be said to be a somewhat more realistic take on human expansion into space, or at least a little more hopeful that the Star Wars version of the galaxy (or some other galaxy far, far away), and it precedes Lucas' story by a decade.  So cheer up, Richard. 

Update:  Tom Shone has an informative article in Slate that discusses the overlapping careers of Lucas and Spielberg.  It is worth a look.

Great Image: Mars or Lake Chad

We could be looking at Mars except for the marshes and that blue atmosphere in the background.  Maybe this is what a terraformed Mars may look like someday.  Instead, you are looking at Lake Chad and a dust plume as captured by the International Space Station (ISS).  NASA explains:

This east-looking image, taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station, shows landscapes of the arid Sahara (image left) and the darker vegetation of the wetter semi-arid tropical woodland known as the Sahel (image right). The dark green marshes of Lake Chad stand out in the foreground of this view. Even though it is more than 200 km long, Lake Chad is the small remnant of a vast lake that has repeatedly occupied most of the region in this view in the recent geological past. This lake basin have stretches from the foreground almost 1000 km to the foot of the Tibesti Mountains (image top left). The lowest slopes of the Tibesti show the remnants of great deltas.

The image also captures an active dust plume—partly obscured by the so-called Canada Arm of the Space Station. The dust rises from the white mud flats of the ancient lake bed (image top left). Lofted into the atmosphere by northeasterly winds, dust from this basin often reaches the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of km to the west. Occasionally this dust is even carried by weather systems as far as the Americas.

Check out this photo and 15 others listed among the best ISS Earth images of 2015.