Elon Musk: Car Trouble

Elon Musk seems to be having much better luck in space than down here on Earth.  While SpaceX has been a great success proving his abilities to service the International Space Station (ISS) with a homemade rocket, his Telsa Motors car enterprise has gotten off to a rocky start. 

Telsa Motors is still recovering from a bad review of its Model S in The New York Times.  On February 8th, John M. Broder wrote an article titled "Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway" where he listed all of the problems he encountered with the car and charging stations during a drive from Newark, Delaware, to Milford, Connecticut.  Mr. Musk did not take the review very well, noting on his company blog that Telsa Motors was "played for a fool":

When Tesla first approached The New York Times about doing this story, it was supposed to be focused on future advancements in our Supercharger technology. There was no need to write a story about existing Superchargers on the East Coast, as that had already been done by Consumer Reports with no problems! We assumed that the reporter would be fair and impartial, as has been our experience with The New York Times, an organization that prides itself on journalistic integrity. As a result, we did not think to read his past articles and were unaware of his outright disdain for electric cars. We were played for a fool and as a result, let down the cause of electric vehicles. For that, I am deeply sorry.

If Mr. Musk wanted attention for his new car he got it. 

This is just one of many battles being fought by Mr. Musk as he rolls out his cars nationwide.  Last October the Los Angeles Times discussed Telsa Motors struggle to bypass traditional franchise networks and sell directly to customers.  In the article titled "Shock to the System," the South African owner of Telsa Motors questioned the U.S. approach for selling cars:

"Existing franchise dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between selling gasoline cars," Musk said. "It is impossible for them to explain the advantages of going electric without simultaneously undermining their traditional business."

State automobile dealer associations are now suing Telsa Motors to halt his direct sales.  Again, the feisty Mr. Musk is making a name for himself for himself and his cars. 

With all of this, SpaceX is still on schedule to send a Dragon capsule to the ISS on March 1 for its second resupply mission.  Let's hope no one from The New York Times is on capsule rating the ride. 

Meteorite Damage in Russia

While 2012 DA14 safely passed the earth on Friday, another unexpected rock plummeted to Earth and struck Russia (again) the very same day.  More than 100 years after the Tunguska, Siberia, meteor strike, a new meteor struck Russia in the Chelyabinsk region (see map below).  The two regions are about 3,000 miles apart.

The meteor was estimated to be about 55 feet and weighing approximately 10,000 tons. The incoming explosion released nearly 500 kilotons of energy and early estimates indicate 1,000 people where injured, primarily from broken glass as windows shattered.

According to the Associated Press, 

The explosions broke an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, city officials said.

Chelyabinsk health chief Marina Moskvicheva, said Friday that 985 people in her city had asked for medical assistance. The Interfax news agency quoted her as saying 43 were hospitalized. Athletes at a city sports arena were among those cut up by the flying glass.

NASA stated that such occurrences are to be expected every 30 years or so, and noted that this event and the 2012 DA14 asteroid were unrelated:

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

The trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, which hours later made its flyby of Earth, making it a completely unrelated object. 
 
It is understandable that people will conflate the two events occurring on the same day.  I would like to know the odds of this event happening.  

In a February 14 editorial in The Wall Street Journal, the authors provided additional estimates on the likelihood of future meteor strikes,

The chance of another Tunguska-size impact somewhere on Earth this century is about 30%. That isn't the likelihood that you will be killed by an asteroid, but rather the odds that you will read a news headline about an asteroid impact of this size somewhere on Earth. Unfortunately, that headline could be about the destruction of a city, as opposed to an unpopulated region of Siberia.

The chance in your lifetime of an even bigger asteroid impact on Earth—with explosive energy of 100 megatons of TNT—is about 1%. Such an impact would deliver many times the explosive energy of all the munitions used in World War II, including the atomic bombs. This risk to humanity is similar to an individual's odds of dying in a car accident.

This was published one day before the meteor struck Russia.  I wonder if the authors would update their estimates today (or turn in their car keys).

How Do We Protect the Milky Way Galaxy from a Collision?

Just one idea from the comic site Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

Asteroids: Post-Valentine's Day Massacre? Not Really

With the pending approach of a large asteroid the day after Valentine's Day, one which will come between us and the moon, it is reasonable to ask if we are prepared.  The asteroid in question is called 2012 DA14, and is about 150 feet across in size and traveling at a speed of 17,450 miles per hour.

NASA scientists have told us that there is nothing to be worried about (I remember a similar statement in the movie Melancholia, though that did not work out too well).  Even in the worst case scenario we are not looking at a 6-mile wide asteroid like the one that hit 66 million years ago (the effect of which is being questioned), but this is quite an event.  The closest the asteroid should get will be about 17,200 miles above the Earth's surface, or about one-tenth the distance between Earth and moon.  To date, the only Earth objects threatened by this large rock would be some of the weather and communications satellites circling the Earth.  The International Space Station orbits well below the expected path of 2012 DA14 at an altitude of 240 miles.  You can see some of the risk calculations in the box below from NASA (good luck). 

NASA noted that this asteroid was only discovered recently: 

2012 DA14 has not been in our catalogs for very long -- it was discovered in February 2012 by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey program in southern Spain and reported to the Minor Planet Center. The asteroid had just made a fairly distant passage by the Earth, about 7 times farther than the distance to the Moon when it was first detected by the Spanish group. Since 2012 DA14's orbital period around the Sun has been about 368 days, which is very similar to the Earth's, the asteroid made a series of annual close approaches, this year's being the closest. But this encounter will shorten 2012 DA14's orbital period to about 317 days, changing its orbital class from Apollo to Aten, and its future close approaches will follow a different pattern. The close approach this year is the closest the asteroid will come for at least 3 decades. 

This passage of 2012 DA14 by the Earth is a record close approach for a known object of this size. A few other known asteroids have flown by the Earth even closer, but those asteroids were smaller. On average, we expect an object of this size to get this close to the Earth about once every 40 years. An actual Earth collision by an object of this size would be expected much less frequently, about once every 1200 years on average. 

This all sounds very reassuring, until you also read:
 
Scientists believe there are approximately 500,000 near-Earth asteroids the size of 2012 DA14. Of those, less than one percent have been discovered...

Asteroid 2012 DA14 will not impact Earth, but if another asteroid of a size similar to that of 2012 DA14 (about 150 feet across) were to impact Earth, it would release approximately 2.5 megatons of energy in the atmosphere and would be expected to cause regional devastation.

A comparison to the impact potential of an asteroid the size of 2012 DA14 could be made to the impact of a near-Earth object that occurred in 1908 in Tuguska, Siberia. Known in the asteroid community as the "Tunguska Event," this impact of an asteroid just slightly smaller than 2012 DA14 (approximately 100 – 130 feet/30-40 meters across) is believed to have flattened about 750 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of forest in and around the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. 

Good grief! Do you feel better now?

Update:  All is well.  2012 DA14 safely passed by Earth with no damage to those below. NASA provided the image below from the telescope known as the iTelescope.net Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.

Great Image: The Storm on Saturn That Ate Itself

This Cassini image captures a massive storm on the surface of Saturn that lasted about 267 days before petering out last summer.  Here is a little more on the storm from NASA:

In a new paper that provides the most detail yet about the life and death of a monstrous thunder-and-lightning storm on Saturn, scientists from NASA's Cassini mission describe how the massive storm churned around the planet until it encountered its own tail and sputtered out. It is the first time scientists have observed a storm consume itself in this way anywhere in the solar system.

"This Saturn storm behaved like a terrestrial hurricane - but with a twist unique to Saturn," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, who is a co-author on the new paper in the journal Icarus. "Even the giant storms at Jupiter don't consume themselves like this, which goes to show that nature can play many awe-inspiring variations on a theme and surprise us again and again." 

By Aug. 28, after 267 days, the Saturn storm stopped thundering for good. While Cassini's infrared detectors continue to track some lingering effects in higher layers of Saturn's atmosphere, the troposphere -- which is the weather-producing layer, lower in the atmosphere - has been quiet at that latitude. 

"This thunder-and-lightning storm on Saturn was a beast," said Kunio Sayanagi, the paper's lead author and a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Virginia. "The storm maintained its intensity for an unusually long time. The storm head itself thrashed for 201 days, and its updraft erupted with an intensity that would have sucked out the entire volume of Earth's atmosphere in 150 days. And it also created the largest vortex ever observed in the troposphere of Saturn, expanding up to 7,500 miles [12,000 kilometers] across."

Notes on Cassini:  The mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.  At the time of launch, Cassini-Huygens had two parts - the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. In 2004, Cassini-Huygens reached Saturn and its moons. At that point, the Cassini spacecraft began orbiting the system in July 2004, while Huygens entered the murky atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, and descended via parachute onto its surface.

Space Launches: Monkeys in Space

These past few weeks have seen a number of space launches, including:

--  Japan:  On January 27, Japan launched a two satellites into space, including one that will keep tabs on the North Koreans (who launched their own rocket back in December). 

-- South Korea:  On January 30, South Korea successfully launched a weather satellite.  The Nara rocket used in the launch was built with the assistance of the Russian space agency.  This was the country's first successful attempt to put a satellite into orbit with one of its own rockets. 

-- United States:  On January 30, NASA successfully launched the first of three Tracking and Data Relay Stations to improve communications with the International Space Stations, the Hubble Space Telescope, and other space missions.

-- Russia: On February 1, the Russian-owned, Pacific-based Sea Launch AG rocket (Ukrainian-built) failed to put an Intelsat 27 satellite into orbit.  In a press release, Sea Launch reported:

"We are very disappointed with the outcome of the launch and offer our sincere regrets to our customer, Intelsat, and their spacecraft provider, Boeing,” said Kjell Karlsen, president of Sea Launch AG. “The cause of the failure is unknown, but we are evaluating it and working closely with Intelsat, Boeing, Energia Logistics Ltd. and our Zenit-3SL suppliers. We will do everything reasonably possible to recover from this unexpected and unfortunate event.”

However, the real news story of the past week or so was Iran's launch of a monkey into space.  On January 28, Iran announced the successful rocket launch.  However, no one could independently confirm the launch, which is pretty strange given the number of nations currently monitoring (aka "spying on") the country.  And now there are more stories about two different pictures of the space monkey, something the Iranians attribute to confusion by the Iranian press.  Of course, the Iranians have lost credibility over the years with false statements, such as 2008 doctored images of a Revolutionary Guards missile launch. 

Iran is credited for earlier launches including a rat, two turtles and a worm (it also tried a monkey with no luck in 2011), as well as two Earth-observing satellites back in 2011 and 2012, so they are not new to this. Iranian space officials see the early tests as part of plans to send a human into space by 2020, and maybe even place an astronaut on the moon by 2025.  The moon may be very crowded in the 2020s if all of the countries aiming for it meet their goals. 

Launch Image Above:  March 19, 2008 Zenit-3SL rocket launch by the Sea Launch Co.

PBS: Columbia Shuttle 10th Anniversary

Tonight on PBS you can see Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope, marking the 10th anniversary of the shuttle disaster.  The PBS special will primarily highlight the life of  Colonel Ilan Ramon, a fighter pilot and son of Holocaust survivors who became the first astronaut from Israel.  Here is PBS's description of tonight's program: 

Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope goes behind the scenes to explore the “mission within the mission” for Ramon, who carried into space a miniature Torah scroll that had survived the horrors of the Holocaust, given to a boy in a secret bar mitzvah observed in the pre-dawn hours in the notorious Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. The bar mitzvah boy grew up to become Israel’s lead scientist for the mission, Joachim “Yoya” Joseph.

The film follows the scroll’s path into Ramon’s hands, and the dramatic moment when he tells its story live to the world from the flight deck of Columbia. From the depths of hell to the heights of space, his simple gesture would serve to honor the hope of a nation and to fulfill a promise made to generations past and future. 

Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope includes drawings from the concentration camp made in secret by a camp inmate, and archival NASA footage of the astronauts as they prepared for their mission. Interviewees include Ilan Ramon’s widow, Rona Ramon, and other Columbia crew family members; astronaut Garrett Reisman and other members of NASA’s space program; Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean; former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and many others. The film was shot on location throughout the world, from Jerusalem to the Kennedy Space Center to Washington, D.C. 

Space Art: The Visions of Children

If we want to have a future in space, we need to educate and motivate the children of today. One way to motivate children is to let them share their vision of the future.  The accompanying image was created by Zoya Baakza from The City School, P.A.F. Chapter, in Karachi, Pakistan.  He won third place among the 6th-8th grade entries in the 2012 Space Foundation Student Art Contest.  Go here for all of the 2012 winners. And go here for a video showing the winning entries narrated by astronauts.

The 2013 winners will be selected from the 4,735 entries as part of the International Student Art Contest at the April 8-11, 2013, Space Foundation's 29th National Space Symposium, to be held in Colorado Springs, CO, this year.

Below I provide more art, this time from the 2011 contest winners.

Emilee Ullom, Peyton Elementary, Peyton, Colo.: Second Place, Grades 6-8 Multimedia

 Joann Wong, Sand Creek High School, Colorado Springs, Colo: Second Place, Grades 9-12 Multimedia

Great Image: Spirit on Mars

With all of the attention on Curiosity, we sometimes forget about the earlier Mars rover Spirit that was rolling around on the Red Planet's surface from 2004 to 2010 (when we lost communication).  Above is an 360-degree panoramic image from Spirit while nestled in its "Winter Haven."  Below is the rest of the story from NASA:

This 360-degree view, called the "McMurdo" panorama, comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. From April through October 2006, Spirit stayed on a small hill known as "Low Ridge." There, the rover's solar panels were tilted toward the sun to maintain enough solar power for Spirit to keep making scientific observations throughout the winter on southern Mars. This view of the surroundings from Spirit's "Winter Haven" is presented in approximately true color.

The Pancam began shooting component images of this panorama during the 814th Martian day, or sol, of Spirit's work on Mars (April 18, 2006) and completed the part shown here on Sol 980 (Oct. 5, 2006).

This beautiful scene reveals a tremendous amount of detail in Spirit's surroundings. Many dark, porous-textured volcanic rocks can be seen around the rover, including many on Low Ridge. Two rocks to the right of center, brighter and smoother-looking in this image and more reflective in infrared observations by Spirit's miniature thermal emission spectrometer, are thought to be meteorites. On the right, "Husband Hill" on the horizon, the rippled "El Dorado" sand dune field near the base of that hill, and lighter-toned "Home Plate" below the dunes provide context for Spirit's travels from mid-2005 to early 2006.

Left of center, tracks and a trench dug by Spirit's right-front wheel, which could no longer rotate, exposed bright underlying material. This bright material is evidence of sulfur-rich salty minerals in the subsurface, providing clues about the watery past of this part of Gusev Crater.
A version of the McMurdo panorama without the rover deck, but including a supplemental figure with landscape features labeled, is at PIA01907.

Silly Questions Keep NASA Hopping

Do you remember the calls to NASA back in 2011 related to the non-existent Apollo 18 mission following the movie by the same name? NASA responded as follows:

There never was a DoD-dedicated Apollo mission and no astronauts named Anderson, Walker or Grey were ever selected for NASA's astronaut corps, as the movie depicts, or failed to return from the moon...And for the record, [the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter] LRO found no evidence of an Apollo 18 mission. 

Then last year NASA spent time explaining to the public that the world would not end on December 21, 2012, as part of a Mayan calendar prediction.   Luckily, we are still here to discuss the matter, which further supports NASA's comments that such predictions were silly. 

So now 2013 rolls around and new questions arise concerning the possible construction of a Death Star by the United States government.  Yes, some are petitioning for such a contraption.  Specifically, about 34,000 individuals signed a petition at the We the People site, which stated:

Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016.

By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

The White House, with NASA's assistance, responded in part by stating:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

Okay, I believe in this case at least that the authors of this position, and hopefully most of those signing it, were having a little bit of fun.  And the Administration was smart to use this opportunity to educate the public about the International Space Station, Mars rovers, Voyager spacecraft and more.  In noting the lack of a Death Star, the White House stated:

However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky -- that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -- American, Russian, and Canadian -- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. 

So, should we expect more such questions?  Maybe, but getting them through the system may be more difficult now that the We the People website has upped the number of required signatures from 25,000 to 100,000.  Here is another petition idea that was still floating around as of today: Publicly admit and disclose all information about extra-terrestrial beings, our true history, and peaceful technologies.  This one may require a combined response from NASA and the Department of Defense, though the petition has only 1,833 signatures and a week to go under the 30-day deadline.  However, in response to a similar petition concerning the existence of extraterrestrial life, the White House responded:

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.

By the way, our solar system already has a Death Star, according to NASA.  The image below of Saturn's moon Mimas seems to be a pretty close replica and therefore earned the nick name in the accompanying press release. 

NASA for Sale - Everything Must Go

The story in the Orlando Sentinel starts this way:
 

Does anyone need a 15,000-foot landing strip? How about a place to assemble rocket ships? Or a parachute-packing plant? An array of aerospace tracking antennas? A launchpad?

Make us an offer, says NASA, which is quietly holding a going-out-of-business sale for the facilities used by its space-shuttle program.

If you thought the budget cuts in Washington would be avoided, you have yet to speak with NASA. The space agency needs every penny it can find and it has no time (or money) for nostalgia, such as holding onto the roots of the U.S. space program at the Kennedy Space Center

According to Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, the marketplace will determine the fate of the Space Center:

"The facilities are not the end game; the market is," DiBello said. "If the infrastructure helps you reach market, then it has value. If it doesn't, then it's just a building, it's just a launchpad, and nobody wants it."

Not the most inspiring thought as we plan for more missions to the moon and Mars.

Kepler: The Planet Finder

I really should have put the Kepler Space Telescope on my list of Great Accomplishments in 2012 since the little spacecraft was very busy in 2012 identifying more possible Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Launched in March 2009, Kepler has already investigated the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, identified more than 2,400 planet candidates, and confirmed more than 100 planets.  Many of these planets are Earth-sized and many are within the "habitable zone."  As part of its next mission, Kepler will begin to focus on Earth-like candidates in 1-year orbits around stars similar to our sun. 

At a January 7, 2013, press conference during the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Long Beach, CA, we learned that we are far from alone:

A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there.

This is a pretty amazing discovery from this little spacecraft.  We went from guessing about our lonely status only a few years back to confirming that we are only one of billions of planets in a similar scenario - talk about a "Kepler moment."  Carl Sagan's book Cosmos provides this quote from the first Kepler that sums it up:

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

You can get more information on this latest announcement by viewing the accompanying paper on Kepler.

Scary Images: Mars Storm on Earth?

While I already mentioned some of the devastating dust storms of the past, I was surprised to see red dust storms happening here on Earth right now.  The recent fires in Australia have created some massive dust storms off the coast of Western Australia that have to be seen to be believed.  Below is an image of a "red wave" provided by The Newcastle Herald. The paper noted that "The Bureau of Meteorology said the incredible sight of a 'red wave' at sea was created  as wind and rain caused the storm to dump the sand and dust it had taken from the land." 

You can find more images here, such as the two below.

Special Delivery: Martian Meteorite

While we are spending significant resources putting rovers on the surface of Mars, we are finding that the very treasure we are seeking is literally in our own back yard.  A Martian meteorite that found in the Sahara desert back in 2011, called "black beauty" due to its coal-like coloring, is estimated to be about 2 billion years old and provides evidence of a wetter Mars.  The News International noted:

The abundance of water molecules in the meteorite -- about 6,000 parts per million, 10 times more than other known rocks -- suggests water activity persisted on the Martian surface when it was formed.

The baseball size meteorite is officially known as NWA 7034 because of where it was found - Northwest Africa.  The basalt rock is from a volcanic past, the same period being studied by the Opportunity and Spirit rovers. 

In terms of such space rocks, The Guardian story on the meteorite stated:

About 65 Martian rocks have been recovered on Earth, mostly in Antarctica or the Sahara. The oldest dates back 4.5bn years to a time when Mars was warmer and wetter. About half a dozen Martian meteorites are 1.3bn years old and the rest are 600m years or younger.

Here is the more scientific statement on the meteorite from the authors of a paper titled Unique Meteorite from Early Amazonian Mars: Water-Rich Basaltic Breccia Northwest Africa 7034:

We report data on the martian meteorite, Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, which shares some petrologic and geochemical characteristics with known martian (SNC, i.e., Shergottite, Nakhlite, and Chassignite) meteorites, but also possesses some unique characteristics that would exclude it from the current SNC grouping. NWA 7034 is a geochemically enriched crustal rock compositionally similar to basalts and average martian crust measured by recent rover and orbiter missions. It formed 2.089 ± 0.081 Ga, during the early Amazonian epoch in Mars' geologic history. NWA 7034 has an order of magnitude more indigenous water than most SNC meteorites, with up to 6000 ppm extraterrestrial H₂O released during stepped heating. It also has bulk oxygen isotope values of Δ¹⁷O = 0.58 ± 0.05‰ and a heat-released water oxygen isotope average value of Δ¹⁷O = 0.330 ± 0.011‰, suggesting the existence of multiple oxygen reservoirs on Mars. 

I think my summary was easier to digest.

Great Accomplishments in 2012

Before we get too far into 2012, I wanted to highlight some of the great space-related achievements from last year.  While there were many noteworthy events, a few come to mind as setting the stage for years to come.  Here are four that I have selected.

-- SpaceX:  The company's successful resupply mission to the International Space Station has created a new relationship between the U.S. space program and the private sector.  Today private companies are in a position to replace NASA for routine missions.  The question now is whether they someday supplant NASA.

-- Higgs Bosom:  The discovery of this mysterious particle explaining most of the universe will keep scientists busy for years.  Brian Cox, the English professor and particle physicist, stated in The Guardian:

The hubristic nature of daring to imagine it, of daring to say: "This is how I think the universe works", is truly brilliant. It's difficult for anyone to get their head around – it's only a century ago that Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus. We didn't even know that atoms existed 150 years ago. This will speed up our understanding of the universe rapidly.

-- Voyager Exiting the Solar System:  The two Voyager spacecraft are crossing the border between home and the unknown as they exited our solar system and began a new journey.  They are still part of the protecting heliosphere of our system, but not for much longer. What is amazing beyond this feat is that we can still communicate with both spacecraft 35 years after their launch. According to NASA, the signal from Voyager 1 takes approximately 17 hours to travel to Earth. The durability of these craft and ingenuity of our space program is pretty amazing. 

-- Curiosity on Mars:  The successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars was a solid accomplishment for NASA and mankind.  With its cluster of sophisticated instruments, we have a chance to learn much more about the Red Planet and its origins.  With the success of Curiosity, NASA is planning a second rover.  Nothing breeds optimism (and duplication) like success. 

Update:  Scientific American released its own list of Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.  We certainly agree on many topics.

Great Image: A Gathering of Galaxies

This Hubble Space Telescope image is labeled "A Day in the Lives of Galaxies" on the hubblesite.org website.  Here is the rest of the story: 

Like a photographer clicking random snapshots of a crowd of people, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken a view of an eclectic mix of galaxies. In taking this picture, Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was not looking at any particular target. The camera was taking a picture of a typical patch of sky, while Hubble's infrared camera was viewing a target in an adjacent galaxy-rich region. 

The jumble of galaxies in this image, taken in September 2003, includes a yellow spiral whose arms have been stretched by a possible collision [lower right]; a young, blue galaxy [top] bursting with star birth; and several smaller, red galaxies.

But the most peculiar-looking galaxy of the bunch – the dramatic blue arc in the center of the photo — is actually an optical illusion. The blue arc is an image of a distant galaxy that has been smeared into the odd shape by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. This "funhouse- mirror effect" occurs when light from a distant object is bent and stretched by the mass of an intervening object. In this case the gravitational lens, or intervening object, is a red elliptical galaxy nearly 6 billion light-years from Earth. The red color suggests that the galaxy contains older, cooler stars.

The distant object whose image is smeared into the long blue arc is about 10 billion light-years away. This ancient galaxy existed just a few billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was about a quarter of its present age. The blue color indicates that the galaxy contains hot, young stars.
Gravitational lenses can be seen throughout the sky because the cosmos is crowded with galaxies. Light from distant galaxies, therefore, cannot always travel through space without another galaxy getting in the way. It is like walking through a crowded airport. In space, a faraway galaxy's light will travel through a galaxy that is in the way. But if the galaxy is massive enough, its gravity will bend and distort the light.

Long arcs, such as the one in this image, are commonly seen in large clusters of galaxies because of their huge concentrations of mass. But they are not as common in isolated galaxies such as this one. For the gravitational lens to occur, the galaxies must be almost perfectly aligned with each other.
Gravitational lenses yield important information about galaxies. They are a unique and extremely useful way of directly determining the amount of mass, including dark matter, in a galaxy. Galaxies are not just made up of stars, gas, and dust. An invisible form of matter, called dark matter, makes up most of a galaxy's mass. A study of this newly discovered system, dubbed J033238-275653, was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. This study, together with similar observations, may allow astronomers to make the first direct measurements of the masses of bright, nearby galaxies.

A New Earth Like Planet

Scientists have discovered a new Earth like planet, but do not worry - it is not Nibiru.  The new planet, dubbed Tau Ceti e, is about four times the size of the Earth and orbits within the "habitable zone" of its sun Tau Ceti.  The star itself is only 12 light years from Earth, making it the closest Earth like planet located thus far.  Not to say it 12 light years is just a skip away. 

James Jenkins, an astronomer from the Universidad de Chile and Visiting Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, noted in a recent paper:

Tau Ceti is one of our nearest cosmic neighbours and so bright that we may be able to study the atmospheres of these planets in the not too distant future. Planetary systems found around nearby stars close to our Sun indicate that these systems are common in our Milky Way galaxy.

In the same paper, Steve Vogt from the University of California Santa Cruz stated:

This discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such potentially habitable Earth-sized planets. They are everywhere, even right next door! We are now beginning to understand that Nature seems to overwhelmingly prefer systems that have a multiple planets with orbits of less than one hundred days. This is quite unlike our own solar system where there is nothing with an orbit inside that of Mercury. So our solar system is, in some sense, a bit of a freak and not the most typical kind of system that Nature cooks up.

And we thought we might be the model for other planetary systems. I guess our ideas needed to start somewhere.

As far as locating a promising planet around Tau Ceti, this would not be all that surprising to science fiction writers such as Asimov, Heinlein, and Niven.  For example, in Larry Niven's 1968 story A Gift from Earth, he discusses the planet of Plateau circling Tau Ceti, as noted in this Wikipedia summary:

Plateau, a colony in the Tau Ceti system, was settled by humans some 300 years before the plot begins. The colony world itself is a Venusian type planet with a dense, hot, poisonous atmosphere. It would be otherwise uninhabitable, except for a tall monolithic mesa that rises 40 miles up into a breathable layer in the upper atmosphere. This gives the planet a habitable area about half the size of California.

Man's imagination can be quite a source of inspiration for later science.

Note:  Not to say it is always inspirational.  Here is the description of Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream:

In this satirical alternate history, Adolph Hitler emigrates as a youth to the United States, where he becomes first a pulp science fiction illustrator, then a hack genre author of distinctly limited talents. In a story-within-a-story he pens a potboiler novel entitled Lord of the Swastika, which culminates in legions of seven-foot, blond, superintelligent male SS clones being shipped off to Tau Ceti where they will establish a colony as the first step to a literal thousand-year reich and galactic domination.

Russian Rocket Problems

With all of the attention earlier this month directed at the North Korean rocket launch, most of the newspapers were ignoring a Russian rocket launch that went awry.  On December 8th, a Russian Proton rocket failed to place a satellite into correct orbit.  This was the third such failure in the last 16 months. 

The communications satellite, built by France's Thales Alenia Space, belonged to Russian oil giant Gazprom.  The Proton rocket's upper stage failed after launch, placing the satellite outside its intended orbit.  While the Russian government ordered an investigation of the mishap, Thales Alenia Space was working to get the satellite into its proper slot by firing on-board thrusters, though this is expected to reduce the life of the spacecraft. 

The satellite is expected to be in its proper orbit and functioning as intended by January 8, 2013. 

Mars News: New Rover and More

Earlier this month, NASA announced plans to send a new rover to Mars as well as other initiatives designed to better understand Mars and prepare for a human mission.  Here is the key part of NASA's Mars announcement:  

On Dec. 4, NASA announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover based on the Curiosity design set to launch in 2020. The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA's 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication radios to ESA's 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover. With InSight, there will be a total of seven NASA missions operating or being planned to study and explore our Earth-like neighbor. 

The 2020 mission will constitute another step toward being responsive to high-priority science goals and the president's challenge of sending humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s. 

What is interesting is that the "multi-year" plan discusses putting human in "orbit" around Mars in the 2030s.  I cannot imagine we would send humans all that way just to take pictures from above.  I think robotic missions can do that just as well.  We need humans on the surface. 

I was also surprised to see NASA contributions to ExoMars after the space agency pulled out of the mission earlier this year because of funding difficulties.  Maybe NASA found funds, since it now has plans to support ExoMars and build another Mars rover, though the ExoMars mission was to include an orbiter and rover.  Here is what NASA originally planned to do, which can still be found on its website here:

The ExoMars/Trace Gas Orbiter mission was a joint mission proposed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. This mission was proposed as the first in a series of joint missions to Mars for ESA and NASA. The two space agencies signed the Mars Exploration Joint Initiative agreement in 2009. Under the former proposed plan, NASA would have supplied the launch vehicle, four science instruments, and a communications system. This joint mission is not currently in NASA’s Mars Exploration Program plans. See information on ESA’s ExoMars mission: http://exploration.esa.int/.

 After NASA has walked away from ExoMars, our European friends reached out to Russia for support.  Under a new agreement, Roscosmos with provide the European Space Agency with two launch vehicles.  The Voice of Russia shared more:   

The Naples meeting was crucial for Russian space research as it was to approve the ExoMars mission deal between ESA and Russia’s Roskosmos space agency. The project has been approved and the deal will be sealed November 27.

Thus, Russia got another chance to explore Mars, five years after the Phobos mission failure. The first phase of the ExoMars mission is planned for 2016 and Russia’s Academy of Sciences has already begun research to design equipment for the Trace Gas Orbiter robotic orbit carrier which includes ACS spectrometers and the FREND neutron detector to study water distribution on the Mars surface. It also includes the EDL demonstrator module to exploit the entry descent and landing. Russia is also expected to contribute its Proton carrier rocket to the project.

The second ExoMars phase will be the launch of the Pasteur rover scheduled for 2018. Russia is providing a carrier rocket and a landing platform with research equipment as well as two gadgets for the rover.

The Secret Shuttle is Airborne Again

On December 11, 2012, the U.S. Air force launched its X-37b unmanned shuttle on its third mission.  It is interesting how the shuttle went up one day before the North Korean's launched their rocket to place a satellite in orbit.  However, it appears to be a coincidence since the X-37b was initially scheduled to launch on October 25, 2012, but was delayed due to rocket problems.

Even so, could the U.S. be monitoring this North Korean mission as well as others?  We may never know since the X-37b missions are classified.  However, the U.S. has other assets in the region and in orbit that can do this work just fine.  As noted by Wired magazine:

The US has at least two infrared sensors in HEO orbits as part of the Space-Based Infrared System. Open source information indicates that they are hosted on two classified satellites, USA 184 and USA 200. The same satellites are also believed to carry a signals intelligence payload that can collect electromagnetic emissions. Observations from amateur satellite observers indicate that their orbits "hang" over Asia, indicating that they likely could have been used to monitor the launch site and observe the launch.