Great Image: Helix Nebula

It is almost as if the universe was looking back at us in this Spitzer Space Telescope image.  The Helix nebula is about 650 light years away.  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides more details:

A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core. 

This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius. Also known by the catalog number NGC 7293, it is a typical example of a class of objects called planetary nebulae. Discovered in the 18th century, these cosmic works of art were erroneously named for their resemblance to gas-giant planets.

And should you want more images from Spitzer to view throughout the year, check out this digital calendar.  NASA is celebrating the 12th anniversary of the space telescope. 

Get Ready for The Martian

What happens when you are left behind on Mars for four years?  And no, this is not a Mars One scenario.  Instead, it is the new film The Martian with Matt Damon.  Take a look at the trailer to see what's in store for you. 

The film will be released October 2nd.  Unlike last year's film Interstellar, also starring Matt Damon, this film is a little closer to home and reality.  Mars enthusiasts, prepare yourselves!

Help Name the Exoplanets

If you are looking to name something outside the solar system, a few exoplanets await you. The International Astronomical Union has a list of 20 exoplanets in need of a name.  All you need to do is visit this site to vote. 

For instance, four planets orbit mu Arae above and the voting allows you to vote in clusters, naming both the sun and orbiting planets.  One of the naming clusters is shown below and has a Portuguese theme.   

Voting is open until October 31 and the winners will be announced in November (the timeline and rules are here).  Here is your chance to impact a whole new world. 

Pluto: Let the Mapping Begin

The naming of Pluto's features has already begun, as you can see above.  Visit Our Pluto for the map above as well as the ongoing efforts to bring definition to the dwarf planet's surface.  It appears these names have been submitted to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for consideration, so nothing is official yet. 

Last month the site noted:

Today we are pleased to announce our initial slate of names to be proposed to the IAU. We received so many great suggestions that winnowing down the list was a real challenge. Nevertheless, we limited our proposal to about ten names in each theme so as not to overwork the IAU nomenclature working group too heavily. There will be many more features to name, so rest assured that the names that didn't make the initial list will be used eventually. If your favorite name is not on these lists, please be patient!

Take a look at this IAU press release from 2013 regarding the naming of Pluto's new moons for more on the naming process:

After the discovery, the leader of the research team, Mark Showalter (SETI Institute), decided to call for a public vote to suggest names for the two objects. To be consistent with the names of the other Pluto satellites, the names had to be picked from classical mythology, in particular with reference to the underworld — the realm where the souls of the deceased go in the afterlife. The contest concluded with the proposed names Vulcan, Cerberus and Styx ranking first, second and third respectively. Showalter submitted Vulcan and Cerberus to the IAU where the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) and the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) discussed the names for approval.

The Backside of the Moon

We now have another perspective of our home planet, and this time it includes the backside of the moon, which we never get to view here on Earth.  Our planet is certainly a bright, shiny object compared to its moon.  The new view comes from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) placed between the Earth and sun to provide warning about incoming solar storms, thereby giving government agencies and the private sector time to prepare. 

DSCOVR was launched last February on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.  Now located 1 million miles from Earth at a point where the Earth and Sun's gravity cancel one another out (called L1), it operates as a partnership between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, and the U.S. Air Force. 

Go here for more information on the DSCOVR mission and you can also learn more about the mission via this video.

Image Credits:  NOAA

Great Image: Group of Galaxies

The image above provides a nice assortment of galaxies from spiral to elliptical.  They almost seem to be lined up and showing off in this image.  It is fascinating to see.  Here is NASA's story: 

Sometimes galaxies form groups. For example, our own Milky Way Galaxy is part of the Local Group of Galaxies. Small, compact groups, like Hickson Compact Group 87 (HCG 87) shown above, are interesting partly because they slowly self-destruct. Indeed, the galaxies of HCG 87 are gravitationally stretching each other during their 100-million year orbits around a common center. The pulling creates colliding gas that causes bright bursts of star formation and feeds matter into their active galaxy centers. HCG 87 is composed of a large edge-on spiral galaxy visible near the image center, an elliptical galaxy visible to its right, and a spiral galaxy visible near the top. The small spiral near the center might be far in the distance. Several stars from our Galaxy are also visible in the foreground. Studying groups like HCG 87 allows insight into how all galaxies form and evolve.

The image below is another group of galaxies, this time VV166.  You can learn more about the image here.

 Top Image Credit: GMOS-S Commissioning Team, Gemini Observatory
 Bottom Image Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA

$100 Million More for SETI

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) advanced the other week when Yuri Milner (named after Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space) pledged $100 million to assist with this ongoing work.  He made his money in international investing and now he wants to help science in an area of thin funding.  The project is part of his ongoing Breakthrough Initiatives project.

Mr. Milner has pledged the funds over a 10-year period in a project called Breakthrough Listen.  The funds will go to covering 10 times more area in the sky than current SETI programs using three primary telescopes – the 100 Meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the USA (“Green Bank Telescope”), and the 64-metre diameter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia (“Parkes Telescope”).

The increased flow of data will be fed into the existing SETI@home program and its millions of linked volunteer computers from around the world to more rapidly analyze the information for signs of intelligent communication.

A separate project, Breakthrough Message, pledges  $1 million to those who can craft digital message representing all of us here on Earth to be sent out into the universe.

It is interesting to see Dr. Stephen Hawking at the kickoff given his fears about alien intelligence. He is probably fine with listening, but any message would probably be "please stay away." It is also great to see Frank Drake and Ann Druyan helping to lead this program.

One telescope that was considered for use is the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.  However, it was not to be. You can read the long drawn-out story in ScientificAmerican.  The last paragraph in the article says it all - we have a choice to learn and grow or bury our knowledge in a hole in the ground.

Spaceship Two: Now We Know

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found the crash related to Virgin Galactic's Spaceship Two was the result of pilot error.  The NTSB press release on the investigation stated:

the co-pilot’s premature unlocking of the spaceship’s feather system as a result of time pressure and vibration and loads that he had not recently experienced.

Virgin Galactic later tweeted:

We thank the @NTSB for their professionalism, expertise, and insight, and we welcome the results of their investigation.

 and then: 

With impartial experts from @NTSB having found the #SpaceShipTwo design fundamentally sound, we move forward with confidence.

The question now is whether the next spacecraft can avoid these human issues. And new questions have come up regarding the location of the crash near population centers, including a high school, indicating greater Federal oversight of future flights may be required.  

This "Earth" is a Little Closer

Why go 1,400 light years to exoplanet Kepler-452b when HD 219134b is only 21 light years away? In fact you can see it with the naked eye - well the star it orbits, that is. The exoplanet was detected by the Spitzer Space Telescope. 

Here is the tale from NASA:

This artist's rendition shows one possible appearance for the planet HD 219134b, the nearest confirmed rocky exoplanet found to date outside our solar system. The planet is 1.6 times the size of Earth, and whips around its star in just three days. Scientists predict that the scorching-hot planet -- known to be rocky through measurements of its mass and size -- would have a rocky, partially molten surface with geological activity, including possibly volcanoes.

Okay, so it is not that promising as a candidate for extraterrestrial life, but it is nearby.  In fact, it is the closest exoplanet spotted to date.

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Twitter Images from Scott Kelly

The image above comes from astronaut Scott Kelly on the International Space Station.  It shows the Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon more or less aligned.  It is one of many on his twitter account that you might want to see for yourself.  With a full year on the station, I expect we will get a lot of great shots from Mr. Kelly.

Kepler Finds Another Earth-like Exoplanet

The discoveries keep coming.  NASA recently announced the discovery of a new exoplanet, Kepler-452b. The exoplanet, about 1,400 light years away,  is a close match with Earth in terms of size and proximity to the sun.  That means the light we are seeing from this exoplanet dates back to a time when Europe was starting to recover from a  plague that wiped out half the continent's population. That would have been a good time to look for a safe and distant harbor. Other runner-up Earth-like candidates spotted by the Kepler space telescope are provided in the image above. 

Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel

The Periodic Table Explained in a Different Way

I noticed the image above when visiting Dr. Brian Cox's tweets.  It shows the periodic elements as well as the country where they were first discovered.  It was created by UK PhD student Jamie Gallagher. In a Smithsonian SmartNews interview, he stated he had a particular affinity for the story behind polonium, discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie: 

Working together they isolated this element and later named it Polonium after Marie’s home country. (A country, I may add, that turned her away from her pursuit of education as she was a politically interested female). It was her hope that by naming the element after Poland she could generate interested in the independence (from Germany) campaign for the country. Yet the victory comes in under the French flag where the work was carried out.

As you can see from the table above, the UK, Sweden, and Germany were the three countries that led the pack in the discovery of elements.

Professor Cox: No Time for Fools

"I've said it before and I'll say it again - if you don't think Apollo 11 landed on Moon you are a colossal nob end & should get a new brain."

--Tweeted by professor Brian Edward Cox, English physicist and professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, in conjunction with 46th anniversary since the first humans setting foot on the moon.  Dr. Cox was the presenter on the BBC series Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe, both of which are terrific programs. 

You Knew It Was Coming: The Pluto Petition

Now that New Horizons has provided us with a fascinating view of the dwarf planet Pluto, some are thinking it is time to restore Pluto to its rightful place among the full planets.  If you agree, you might want to visit change.org, which has a petition with about 4,300 names on it as of today.  

And what does this group want?  Hopefully, the petitioners can capture the attention of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which is the same culprit that knocked Pluto off the planetary list:

The IAU meets again for its general assembly in August 2015. And in the coming weeks, New Horizons will collect unprecedented amounts of data about the Pluto system, calling in to question the definition set forth by the IAU.

I am wondering if I need to start a petition for Eris, also floating out there with Pluto, or even Ceres (shown below), now being studied by the Dawn spacecraft.  With the five dwarf planets, we would have 13 officials planet for now.  I say the more the merrier. 

More on the Falcon 9 Mishap

SpaceX's Elon Musk earlier in the week announced that Falcon 9 failure was due to a faulty strut that did not properly contain a helium bottle within  the rocket's liquid oxygen tank.  This is certainly better news than an engine failure.  Mr. Musk is still hopeful his company can start sending humans into space in about two years.

This video by Scott Manley, the Scott astronomer, gives you a colorful explanation of the accident and cause.  He noted that the strut supplier will probably not be used again, which is a good idea. He also discusses accelerometers placed around the rocket tracking vibrations and waves that helped to pinpoint the area of failure.

The most important point is that the Dragon capsule survived the explosion, indicating that a human mission facing a similar mishap might have had a safe landing.  SpaceX is working on software and additional safety features in anticipation of such a need.  That is very encouraging. 

Noteworthy Quote: Everything Changed

"We've established something fundamental in planetary science...In one fell swoop, in 10 minutes, we got the image, we knew: Everything changed."

-- Pluto mission head Dr. Alan Stern in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. He was making reference to the 100 million years old mountains on the dwarf planet's surface, which was unexpected for what was thought to be a long dead frozen world. In response to a question about Pluto's demotion from the realm of planets, he noted it was as dumb as only naming seven mountains on Earth.

Image Credit:  New Horizons image (top) showing 12 miles of plain nicknamed "Sputnik Planum."  The bottom photo shows the location of the plain.

Great Image: Mountains on Pluto

Now that the flyby of Pluto is done, we have some great shots of the surface of the dwarf planet.  Images will continue to be broadcast from New Horizons to NASA for at least another 16 months, so prepare for many more pictures.  The image above shows relatively young mountains near Pluto's equator.

Here is the story from NASA:

A new close-up image of an equatorial region near the base of Pluto’s bright heart-shaped feature shows a mountain range with peaks jutting as high as 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) above the surface of the icy body.
The mountains on Pluto likely formed no more than 100 million years ago -- mere youngsters in a 4.56-billion-year-old solar system. This suggests the close-up region, which covers about one percent of Pluto’s surface, may still be geologically active today.

“This is one of the youngest surfaces we’ve ever seen in the solar system,” said Jeff Moore of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.
“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer at SwRI.

 Image Credit:  NASA/JHU APL/SwRI

New Horizons Back Online

The New Horizons flyby of Pluto has been  a success, with the spacecraft communicating again yesterday after coming within 7,800 miles of the dwarf planet's surface.  Images from the mission will be coming back to Earth for some time to come as NASA continues to analyze the treasure trove of new information.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden stated:

I know today we’ve inspired a whole new generation of explorers with this great success, and we look forward to the discoveries yet to come...This is a historic win for science and for exploration. We’ve truly, once again raised the bar of human potential.

Pluto Mission Broadcast on Television

In addition to watching the NASA website, you can see a number of television specials this week to mark the Pluto flyby.  Tomorrow on the National Geographic Channel, you can see Mission Pluto, where the scientists at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA discuss the events leading up to New Horizons' historic arrival at the former planet Pluto.  You can also see a trailer for the new show on the website. 

And on July 15th, PBS's NOVA will be showing Chasing Pluto:

On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft, one of the most advanced ever built, is scheduled to fly by Pluto to take the very first detailed images of the dwarf planet. After nine years and 3 billion miles, we will finally get a close look at this strange, icy world, but only if the craft can survive the final, treacherous leg of its journey, which could take it through a dangerous field of debris. If it does, New Horizons is poised to make dramatic new discoveries, not just about Pluto, but about the vast realm of icy bodies lurking beyond Neptune, relics of the earliest days of the solar system’s formation. Back on Earth, the planetary scientists who have spent decades working on this mission anxiously await a signal from their spacecraft. Our cameras will be there to witness the moment. If all goes well, we’ll see Pluto’s mysterious surface in unprecedented detail and learn new secrets about other alien worlds at the far limits of our solar system.

A Mountain on Ceres?

While all of the attention is on Pluto at the moment, let's not forget that the Dawn spacecraft is exploring Ceres, another dwarf planet.  The image above of Ceres' surface was taken in mid June and demonstrates continuing mysteries on the planet's surface beyond those strange bright spots.  But what I find most interesting about the story below is how Dawn will be orbiting this dwarf planet for millions of years.  Now that is impressive.

Here is the story as told by NASA on June 30th:

What created this large mountain on asteroid Ceres? No one is yet sure. As if in anticipation of today being Asteroid Day on Earth, the robotic spacecraft Dawn in orbit around Ceres took the best yet image of an unusually tall mountain on the Asteroid Belt's largest asteroid. Visible at the top of the featured image, the exceptional mountain rises about five kilometers up from an area that otherwise appears pretty level. The image was taken about two weeks ago from about 4,400 kilometers away. Although origin hypotheses for the mountain include volcanism, impacts, and plate tectonics, clear evidence backing any of these is currently lacking. Also visible across Ceres' surface are some enigmatic light areas: bright spots whose origin and composition that also remain an active topic of investigation. Even though Dawn is expected to continue to orbit Ceres, officially dubbed a dwarf planet, for millions of years, the hydrazine fuel used to point Dawn's communications antenna toward Earth is expected to run out sometime next year.

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS/DLR/IDA

Another Red Planet: Pluto

With New Horizons set to make the long-awaited July 14th fly by of Pluto, we are getting an unprecedented view of this distant dwarf planet.   And now we can clearly see we have one more red planet (see the NASA image above), the color attributed to hydrocarbon molecules formed from the interaction of cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet light with Pluto's methane atmosphere and surface.

New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, recently stated:

Pluto’s reddish color has been known for decades, but New Horizons is now allowing us to correlate the color of different places on the surface with their geology and soon, with their compositions...This will make it possible to build sophisticated computer models to understand how Pluto has evolved to its current appearance.

While Dr. Stern may believe everyone knew Pluto was a red planet, I am not sure that was the case with everyone in the past.  Take a look at solar system illustration below and you will see it was not a red planet for everyone.  Yet now we know, and I expect future graphics will be somewhat different. 

Supplies Aboard the Space Station

After numerous attempts, the International Space Station finally has been resupplied by a Russian Soyuz capsule.  The Progress 60 mission (shown above) successfully docked with the station earlier today, bringing water, spare parts, propellant, oxygen, and more.  You can watch the docking process here. 

I imagine all of this is more excitement that Astronaut Scott Kelly was anticipating when he signed up to spend a year on the station.  If the purpose of the mission is to test his reaction to stress, NASA is doing a great job piling it on. 

Update: Speaking of Mr. Kelly, he shared his experiences recently with CBS Evening News.  He compared his time on the space station to time in prison:

...no matter what happens, you're not going home. We don't get to go outside, so that's a little bit different. I would imagine in a lot of jails people get fresh air. You don't get that here. And you don't get real sunlight. ... The big difference, though, is we're here by choice. So that makes, I guess, the situation a little bit better.

But he also discussed the importance of his research, giving an example concerning why NASA needs to study the impact of long-term space travel on the eyes:

 You wouldn't want some astronauts to get on Mars after a year and a half, or longer when they're coming home, and not be able to see...It's something we don't understand, but it's something we're working hard at understanding and mitigating the effects. We've done a lot of research up here since I've been here to better understand that.

Amazing Image of Pluto and Charon

The film above shows us that New Horizons has arrived at Pluto and is already sending back amazing imagery.  Here is the story from NASA concerning the film above:

This is the first movie created by New Horizons to reveal color surface features of Pluto and its largest moon Charon. “It’s a bit unusual to see so much surface detail at this distance,” said New Horizons co-investigator William McKinnon of the Geology and Geophysics Investigation Team, Washington University in Saint Louis. “What’s especially noteworthy is the level of detail in both bodies. It’s certainly whetting our appetite for what’s to come.”

The images were taken between June 23 and June 29, 2015, as New Horizons’ distance to Pluto decreased from a distance of 15 million to 11 million miles (24 million to 18 million kilometers). Six high-resolution black-and-white images from New Horizons’ LORRI instrument were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to produce the movie.

Russia to the Rescue: New Supplies Heading to the Space Station

Earlier today the Russians launched the Progress 60 resupply mission aboard a Soyuz rocket.  The International Space Station (ISS) will soon have its supplies while SpaceX and NASA decide the next steps for future Falcon/Dragon resupply missions.  SpaceX's next resupply mission to the ISS was scheduled for September, but that has been put on hold pending the investigation results.

SpaceX: The Knives Are Out

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal had an editorial penned by retired USAF General William Shelton, who served as the commander of the Air Force Command as late as August 2014.  Titled National Security After the SpaceX Explosion, he makes the point that the explosion "should give everyone pause about jettisoning a dependable arrangement vital to U.S. security."  Of course, that "arrangement" is with United Launch Alliance (UAL), a continual foe of SpaceX, which continues to argue that it needs access to Russian rockets.  

I do not doubt General Shelton's interest in obtaining the best assets for military and space missions.  Early last year, in reference to Elon Musk, he stated, "I don’t doubt that guy anymore, by the way...What he says, he’s going to do."

That said, the General goes on to boast about the ULA rockets, noting:

Current U.S. space policy is implemented by buying both the Atlas V and Delta IV rockets from the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.  Both rockets have a 100% success record - 83 launches without failure.

I think the General has very selective memory and forgot the difficulties any rocket maker will experience as they develop new approaches and technology.  Maybe he does not remember this headline from almost 30 years ago - Delta Rocket Failure Cripples Nation`s Space Program.  The article states:

The accident effectively guts the nation`s space program. This is why:  The most dependable launch vehicles, the Delta rockets, are now grounded indefinitely...The $30 million rocket, considered the most dependable and described as the workhorse of NASA`s fleet, was carrying a $57.5 million weather satellite that was to help forecasters track Atlantic Ocean hurricanes. The satellite was destroyed...The Delta rocket has been launched 178 times since 1960, with 12 failures during that time. Until Saturday`s accident, there had been 43 successful launches since 1977.

What makes this Delta explosion eerily similar is this statement that accompanied the article:  

It was the third space-related accident in three months, leaving the space program with no reliable means of getting satellites, or people, into orbit.

Well, here we are again General, and this time it is SpaceX finding its legs after a disaster.  And while I agree with need some redundancy in the space program, I would rather it be US-based rocket redundancy.  Maybe we still will need some Russian rockets, and maybe Congress should be a little more flexible on the issue, but we should be working full speed on multiple alternatives to the Russian option.  Why does a South African-born entrepreneur running a US rocket company seem to appreciate this argument more than a USAF general?