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Space News Update — September 6, 2016 —
Contents
In the News
Story 1:
Philae Found!
Story 2: Jupiter's North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System
Story 3: SpaceX may shift Falcon 9 launches to KSC’s Pad 39A
Departments
The Night Sky
ISS Sighting Opportunities
Space Calendar
NASA-TV Highlights
Food for Thought
Space Image of the Week
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1. Philae Found!
Less than a month before the end of the mission, Rosetta’s high-resolution camera has revealed the Philae lander wedged into a dark crack on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The images were taken on 2 September by the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera as the orbiter came within 2.7 km of the surface and clearly show the main body of the lander, along with two of its three legs.
The images also provide proof of Philae’s orientation, making it clear why establishing communications was so difficult following its landing on 12 November 2014.
“With only a month left of the Rosetta mission, we are so happy to have finally imaged Philae, and to see it in such amazing detail,” says Cecilia Tubiana of the OSIRIS camera team, the first person to see the images when they were downlinked from Rosetta yesterday.
“After months of work, with the focus and the evidence pointing more and more to this lander candidate, I’m very excited and thrilled that we finally have this all-important picture of Philae sitting in Abydos,” says ESA’s Laurence O’Rourke, who has been coordinating the search efforts over the last months at ESA, with the OSIRIS and Lander Science Operations and Navigation Center (SONC, CNES) teams.
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Philae was last seen when it first touched down at Agilkia, bounced and then flew for another two hours before ending up at a location later named Abydos, on the comet’s smaller lobe.
After three days, Philae's primary battery was exhausted and the lander went into hibernation, only to wake up again and communicate briefly with Rosetta in June and July 2015 as the comet came closer to the Sun and more power was available.
However, until today, the precise location was not known. Radio ranging data tied its location down to an area spanning a few tens of metres, but a number of potential candidate objects identified in relatively low-resolution images taken from larger distances could not be analysed in detail until recently.
While most candidates could be discarded from analysis of the imagery and other techniques, evidence continued to build towards one particular target, which is now confirmed in images taken unprecedentedly close to the surface of the comet.
At 2.7 km, the resolution of the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera is about 5 cm/pixel, sufficient to reveal characteristic features of Philae’s 1 m-sized body and its legs, as seen in these definitive pictures.
“This remarkable discovery comes at the end of a long, painstaking search,” says Patrick Martin, ESA’s Rosetta Mission Manager. “We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour.”
“This wonderful news means that we now have the missing ‘ground-truth’ information needed to put Philae’s three days of science into proper context, now that we know where that ground actually is!” says Matt Taylor, ESA’s Rosetta project scientist.
"Now that the lander search is finished we feel ready for Rosetta's landing, and look forward to capturing even closer images of Rosetta's touchdown site,” adds Holger Sierks, principal investigator of the OSIRIS camera.
The discovery comes less than a month before Rosetta descends to the comet’s surface. On 30 September, the orbiter will be sent on a final one-way mission to investigate the comet from close up, including the open pits in the Ma’at region, where it is hoped that critical observations will help to reveal secrets of the body’s interior structure.
Further information on the search that led to the discovery of Philae, along with additional images, will be made available soon.
Source: ESA Return to Contents
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2. Jupiter's North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System
NASA's Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter's north pole, taken during the spacecraft's first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system's gas-giant planets.
Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on Aug. 27 when the spacecraft came about 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter's swirling clouds. The download of six megabytes of data collected during the six-hour transit, from above Jupiter's north pole to below its south pole, took one-and-a-half days. While analysis of this first data collection is ongoing, some unique discoveries have already made themselves visible.
"First glimpse of Jupiter's north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest
Research Institute in San Antonio. "It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to -- this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We're seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features."
One of the most notable findings of these first-ever pictures of Jupiter's north and south poles is something that the JunoCam imager did not see.
"Saturn has a hexagon at the north pole," said Bolton. "There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere near resembles that. The largest planet in our solar system is truly unique. We have 36 more flybys to study just how unique it really is."
Along with JunoCam snapping pictures during the flyby, all eight of Juno's science instruments were energized and collecting data. The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JI-RAM), supplied by the Italian Space Agency, acquired some remarkable images of Jupiter at its north and south polar regions in infrared wavelengths.
"JIRAM is getting under Jupiter's skin, giving us our first infrared close-ups of the planet," said Alberto Adriani, JIRAM co-investigator from Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali, Rome. "These first infrared views of Jupiter's north and south poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before. And while we knew that the first ever infrared views of Jupiter's south pole could reveal the planet's southern aurora, we were amazed to see it for the first time. No other instruments, both from Earth or space, have been able to see the southern aurora. Now, with JIRAM, we see that it appears to be very bright and well structured. The high level of detail in the images will tell us more about the aurora's morphology and dynamics."
Among the more unique data sets collected by Juno during its first scientific sweep by Jupiter was that acquired by the mission's Radio/Plasma Wave Experiment (Waves), which recorded ghostly- sounding
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transmissions emanating from above the planet. These radio emissions from Jupiter have been known about since the 1950s but had never been analyzed from such a close vantage point.
"Jupiter is talking to us in a way only gas-giant worlds can," said Bill Kurth, co-investigator for the Waves instrument from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "Waves detected the signature emissions of the energetic particles that generate the massive auroras which encircle Jupiter's north pole. These emissions are the strongest in the solar system. Now we are going to try to figure out where the electrons come from that are generating them."
More information on the Juno mission is available at these sites: http://www.nasa.gov/juno, http://missionjuno/org
Source: JPL Return to Contents
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3. SpaceX may shift Falcon 9 launches to KSC’s Pad 39A
As SpaceX continues the investigation into a Sept. 1 accident that destroyed a Falcon 9 and damaged its Cape Canaveral launch pad, the company said it may use a nearby pad when it is ready to resume launches.
In a statement issued late Sept. 2, SpaceX said it was still in the early phases of the investigation into the explosion of the Falcon 9, which took place about eight minutes before a planned static-fire test of the vehicle’s nine first stage engines. The explosion destroyed the rocket and its payload, the
Amos-6 communications satellite for Israeli operator Spacecom.
The explosion also caused damage to the pad at Space Launch Complex 40, which has hosted 26 of 28 Falcon 9 launches prior to the Sept. 1 accident. “The pad clearly incurred damage, but the scope has yet to be fully determined,” the company said.
Besides the Cape Canaveral site, SpaceX operates a launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, from which the other two Falcon 9 launches took place. In addition, it is in the final steps of modifications to Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a former Apollo- and shuttle-era launch pad that SpaceX is leasing from NASA under terms of an agreement signed in April 2014. SpaceX said LC-39A should be operational in November.
Although LC-39A is intended primarily for launches of SpaceX’s upcoming Falcon Heavy rocket and Falcon 9 launches of commercial crew missions, it could host other Falcon 9 launches as well. “Both pads are capable of supporting Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches,” SpaceX said of LC-39A and its Vandenberg site. “We are confident the two launch pads can support our return to flight and fulfill our upcoming manifest needs.”
Experience suggests that the ground-level explosion of the Falcon 9 likely caused significant damage to the launch pad. The failure of an Orbital ATK Antares rocket on an October 2014 launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia, when an engine failure caused the vehicle to crash to the ground next to the pad seconds after liftoff, resulted in $15 million in damage that took nearly one year to repair.
The SpaceX update offered few details about the pad accident itself. “At this time, the data indicates the anomaly originated around the upper stage liquid oxygen tank,” the company said, the same detail it provided shortly after the accident.
SpaceX said it has assembled an accident investigation team overseen by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial launches like this. NASA and the U.S. Air Force are also participating on the team that is currently reviewing about 3,000 channels of telemetry from the time of the accident.
The accident raised new questions about SpaceX’s ability to successfully launch satellite payloads as well as start launching crewed spacecraft as soon as late 2017. SpaceX, in its statement, said it would “carefully and thoroughly investigate and address” the pad explosion. “Again, our number one priority is to safely and reliably return to flight for our customers, as well as to take all the necessary steps to ensure the highest possible levels of safety for future crewed missions with the Falcon 9.”
Source: Space News Return to Contents
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The Night Sky Tuesday, September 6
• As summer approaches its end, Vega becomes the zenith star around the end of twilight (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes). And Arcturus, its zero-magnitude equal for brightness, shines moderately low in the west.
Wednesday, September 7
• The asteroids 1 Ceres and 18 Melpomene, magnitudes 8 and 9, will both fit in a telescope's low-power eyepiece very late tonight and tomorrow night; they're 0.8° apart. See the September Sky & Telescope, page 51.
Moon, Saturn and Mars Sept 8-9, 2016
The first-quarter Moon stands over Saturn and Mars in twilight next Thursday and Friday, respectively.
Thursday, September 8
• The Moon this evening forms a roughly vertical lineup with Saturn and Antares below it, while brighter Mars glows yellow-orange to their left, as shown here.
Friday, September 9
• Now the Moon shines over Mars at dusk. The Saturn-Mars-Antares triangle, the emblem of this summer's evening sky, continues to morph. In the coming days and weeks Saturn and Antares will continue to move farther toward the lower right, while Mars hangs back and fades. By mid-autumn Saturn and Antares will be gone.
Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents
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ISS Sighting Opportunities
For Denver: Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears
Tue Sep 6, 4:58 AM 2 min 42° 37° above SSE 25° above E
Wed Sep 7, 4:08 AM 1 min 16° 16° above E 11° above E
Wed Sep 7, 5:41 AM 4 min 39° 17° above W 16° above NNE
Thu Sep 8, 4:50 AM 2 min 71° 71° above N 23° above NE
Fri Sep 9, 4:00 AM < 1 min 16° 16° above ENE 16° above ENE
Fri Sep 9, 5:33 AM 4 min 21° 16° above WNW 10° above NNE
Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information
NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)
• 1 p.m., 4:30 p.m, Tuesday, September 6 - OSIRIS-Rex Pre Launch News Conference (all channels)
• 2 p.m., 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 - OSIRIS-Rex Science News Conference (NTV-3 (Media))
• 2 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 - ISS Expedition 48 Farewells and Hatch Closure Coverage (hatch closure scheduled at approximately 2:30 p.m. ET) (starts at 2:15 p.m.) (NTV-1 (Public))
• 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 - ISS Expedition 48/Soyuz TMA-20M Undocking Coverage (J. Williams, Ovchinin, Skripochka); undocking scheduled at 5:52 p.m. ET) (all channels)
• 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 - Replay of ISS Expedition 48 Farewells and Hatch Closure Coverage (all channels)
• 8 p.m., Tuesday, September 6 - ISS Expedition 48/Soyuz TMA-20M Deorbit Burn and Landing Coverage (J. Williams, Ovchinin, Skripochka); deorbit burn scheduled at 8:21 p.m. ET; landing near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan scheduled at 9:13 p.m. ET) (all channels)
• Midnight, Wednesday, September 7 - NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 48/Soyuz TMA-20M Landing and Post-Landing Activities (J. Williams, Ovchinin, Skripochka) (all channels)
• 9 a.m., Wednesday, September 7 - Replay of the OSIRIS-Rex Pre Launch News Conference (all channels)
• 10 a.m., Wednesday, September 7 - Replay of the OSIRIS-Rex Science News Conference (all channels)
• 11 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 6 p.m., Wednesday, September 7 - NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 48/Soyuz TMA-20M Post-Landing Activities in Kazakhstan and Interviews (scheduled to include a post-landing interview with ISS Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA and the return of cosmon (all channels)
• 12 p.m., Wednesday, September 7 - OSIRIS-Rex NASA Social (all channels)
• 1 p.m., 4 p.m., 8 p.m., Wednesday, September 7 - NASA Uncovering the Secrets of Asteroids (NUTS) Briefing (all channels)
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• 11 a.m., Thursday, September 8 - Video File of the ISS Expedition 49-50 Crew’s Departure from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia for the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (Kimbrough, Ryzhikov, Borisenko) (all channels)
• 3:30 p.m., Thursday, September 8 - NASA EDGE Prelaunch Coverage of OSIRIS-Rex (NTV-1 (Public))
• 5:30 p.m., Thursday, September 8 - Live Coverage and Commentary of the Launch of the OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft (Launch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m.) (all channels)
Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents
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Space Calendar • Sep 06 - Comet 90P/Gehrels At Opposition (2.565 AU) • Sep 06 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 PR39 Near-Earth Flyby (0.047 AU) • Sep 06 - Asteroid 67 Asia Closest Approach To Earth (1.044 AU) • Sep 06 - Asteroid 787 Moskva Closest Approach To Earth (1.258 AU) • Sep 06 - Asteroid 25275 Jocelynbell Closest Approach To Earth (1.285 AU) • Sep 06 - Kuiper Belt Object 2010 RF43 At Opposition (52.354 AU) • Sep 06 - 20th Anniversary (1996), Galileo, Ganymede 2 Encounter • Sep 06 - Yrjo Vaisala's 125th Birthday (1891) • Sep 06 - James Gilliss' 205th Birthday (1811)
• Sep 07 - [Aug 31] TMA-20M Soyuz Return to Earth (International Space Station) • Sep 07 - Comet C/2013 P3 (Palomar) Closest Approach To Earth (8.609 AU) • Sep 07 - Amor Asteroid 2016 PD1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.060 AU) • Sep 07 - Apollo Asteroid 250458 (2004 BO41) Near-Earth Flyby (0.100 AU) • Sep 07 - Asteroid 214476 Stephencolbert Closest Approach To Earth (2.017 AU) • Sep 07 - Asteroid 310 Margarita Closest Approach To Earth (2.028 AU) • Sep 07 - 60th Anniversary (1956), 1st Man to Reach 100,000 Feet Altitude (Kinch Kincheloe)
• Sep 08 - [Sep 05] OSIRIS-REx Atlas 5 Launch (Asteroid Sample Return Mission)
• Sep 08 - [Sep 01] 50th Anniversary (1966), 1st Star Trek Episode on TV • Sep 08 - Comet 62P/Tsuchinshan At Opposition (2.833 AU) • Sep 08 - Asteroid 224 Oceana Occults HIP 86404 (6.9 Magnitude Star) • Sep 08 - Asteroid 469 Argentina Closest Approach To Earth (2.660 AU) • Sep 09 - Asteroid 2 Pallas Occults TYC 0539-01038-1 (10.7 Magnitude Star) • Sep 09 - [Sep 03] Apollo Asteroid 2016 QN44 Near-Earth Flyby (0.073 AU) • Sep 09 - Asteroid 3473 Sapporo Closest Approach To Earth (1.705 AU) • Sep 09 - Asteroid 118945 Rikhill Closest Approach To Earth (2.339 AU) • Sep 09 - 10th Anniversary (2006), STS-115 Launch (Space Shuttle Atlantis, International Space Station) • Sep 09 - 55th Anniversary (1961), Bells Meteorite Fall (Hit Building in Texas) •
Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents
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Food for Thought
First gravitational waves form after 10 million years
If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team involving the University of Zurich has now calculated that this occurs around 10 million years after the two galaxies merge – much faster than previously assumed.
In his General Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves over a century ago; this year, they were detected directly for the first time: The American Gravitational Wave Observatory LIGO recorded such curvatures in space from Earth, which were caused by the merging of two massive black holes. And the research on gravitational waves – and thus the origin of the universe – continues: From 2034 three satellites are to be launched into space in a project headed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to measure gravitational waves at even lower frequency ranges from space using the Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (eLISA).
Until now, however, it was not possible to conclusively predict the point at which gravitational waves are triggered and spread throughout space when galaxies merge. An international team of astrophysicists from the University of Zurich, the Institute of Space
Technology Islamabad, the University of Heidelberg and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has now calculated this for the first time using an extensive simulation.
Much faster than previously assumed
Every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its core, which can exhibit millions or even billions of solar masses. In a realistic simulation of the universe, the merging of two roughly 3-billion-year-old galaxies lying relatively close to one another was simulated. With the aid of supercomputers, the researchers calculated the time the two central black holes with around 100 million solar masses needed to emit strong gravitational waves after the galaxies collided.
"The result is surprising," explains Lucio Mayer from the Institute for Computational Science of the University of Zurich: "The merging of the two black holes already triggered the first gravitational waves after 10 million years – around 100 times faster than previously assumed."
Year-long supercomputer calculation
The computer simulation, which took more than a year, was conducted in China, Zurich and Heidelberg. The project required an innovative computational approach with various numerical codes on different
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supercomputers. In the process, each supercomputer was responsible for calculating a certain phase of the orbital convergence of the two massive black holes and their parent galaxies.
Compared to previous models, the relation between the orbits of the central black holes and the realistic structure of the parent galaxies was factored into the present simulation. "Our calculations therefore allow a robust forecast for the merging rate of supermassive black holes in the early stage of the universe," explains Mayer. "They may help assess the gravitational waves eLISA is bound to find in the near future more effectively."
Source: NASA Return to Contents
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Space Image of the Week
Jupiter Down Under
This image from NASA's Juno spacecraft provides a never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter's south pole.
The JunoCam instrument acquired the view on August 27, 2016, when the spacecraft was about 58,700 miles (94,500 kilometers) above the polar region. At this point, the spacecraft was about an hour past its closest approach, and fine detail in the south polar region is clearly resolved.
Unlike the equatorial region's familiar structure of belts and zones, the poles are mottled by clockwise and counterclockwise rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes. The south pole has never been seen from this viewpoint, although the Cassini spacecraft was able to observe most of the polar region at highly oblique angles as it flew past Jupiter on its way to Saturn in 2000 (see PIA07784).
Source: NASA Return to Contents
