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Space News Update — May 8, 2020 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1: Perseverance Presses On, Remains Targeted for Summer Launch

Story 2:

A Deep Dive into Jupiter's Clouds

Story 3: Researchers Use 'Hot Jupiter' Data to Mine Exoplanet Chemistry

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. Perseverance Presses On, Remains Targeted for Summer Launch

Testing on NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover at Kennedy Space Center closed out April on an extremely high note.

The latest activities at the Florida spaceport included attaching the aeroshell backshell on April 29 and attaching the rover to its rocket-powered descent stage on April 23 inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The rover and descent stage were the first spacecraft components to come together for launch — and they will be the last to separate when the spacecraft reaches Mars on Feb. 18, 2021.

The backshell carries the parachute and several components that will be used during later stages of entry, descent and landing. The aeroshell will encapsulate and protect Perseverance and its descent stage during their deep space journey to Mars and during descent through the Martian atmosphere, which generates intense heat.

April saw other key rover milestones reached at Kennedy. On April 14, the descent stage — fully loaded with 884 pounds of fuel (a hydrazine monopropellant) — was rotated and spun on two separate measuring fixtures

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to pinpoint its center of gravity. This will help ensure the descent stage remains stable while guiding Perseverance to a safe landing.

On April 6, NASA’s Mars Helicopter, recently named Ingenuity, was attached to the belly of the rover. Weighing less than four pounds, the twin-rotor, solar-powered helicopter will be released to perform the first in a series of flight tests that will take place during 30 Martian days (a day on Mars is about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth). Ingenuity will become the first aircraft to fly on another world.

Thanks to the enduring efforts of NASA and United Launch Alliance (ULA) engineers, Perseverance remains on track for its targeted launch period, which opens in just six weeks. The rover will liftoff aboard a ULA Atlas V 541 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy is managing the launch.

After the rover enters the thin Martian atmosphere, the descent stage will complete the slowing of Perseverance to less than two miles per hour. At about 65 feet over the Martian surface, the descent stage — utilizing a tether of nylon cords — will lower Perseverance to the surface of Jezero Crater. The rover will then sever the cords and the descent stage will fly away.

About the size of a car with dimensions similar to the Curiosity rover, Perseverance will carry seven different scientific instruments. Developed under NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, the rover’s astrobiology mission will search for signs of past microbial life. It will characterize the planet’s climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

Visit the mission website for more information.

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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2. A Deep Dive Into Jupiter's Clouds

Researchers using a technique known as "lucky imaging" with the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea have collected some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground.

These images are part of a multi-year joint observing program with the Hubble Space Telescope in support of NASA's Juno mission. The Gemini images, when combined with the Hubble and Juno observations, reveal that lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid. The new observations also confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations.

Three years of imaging observations using the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab, have probed deep into Jupiter's cloud tops. The ultra-sharp Gemini infrared images complement optical and ultraviolet observations by Hubble and radio observations by the Juno spacecraft to reveal new secrets about the giant planet.

"The Gemini data were critical because they allowed us to probe deeply into Jupiter's clouds on a regular schedule," said Michael Wong of UC Berkeley. "We used a very powerful technique called lucky imaging," adds Wong. With lucky imaging, a large number of very short exposure images are obtained and only the sharpest images, when the Earth's atmosphere is briefly stable, are used. The result in this case is some of the sharpest infrared images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. According to Wong, "These images rival the view from space."

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Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) allows astronomers to peer deep into Jupiter's mighty storms, since the longer wavelength infrared light can pass through the thin haze but is obscured by thicker clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere. This creates a "jack-o-lantern"-like effect in the images where the warm, deep layers of Jupiter's atmosphere glow through gaps in the planet's thick cloud cover.

The detailed, multiwavelength imaging of Jupiter by Geminiand Hubble has, over the past three years, proven crucial to contextualizing the observations by the Juno orbiter, and to understanding Jupiter's wind patterns, atmospheric waves, and cyclones. The two telescopes, together with Juno, can observe Jupiter's atmosphere as a system of winds, gases, heat, and weather phenomena, providing coverage and insight not unlike the network of weather satellites meteorologists use to observe Earth.

Mapping giant lightning storms

On each of its close passes over Jupiter's clouds, Juno detected radio signals created by powerful lightning flashes called sferics (short for atmospherics) and whistlers (so-called because of the whistle-like tone they cause on radio receivers). Whenever possible, Gemini and Hubble focused on Jupiter and obtained high-resolution, wide-area maps of the giant planet.

Juno's instruments could determine the latitude and longitude coordinates of clusters of sferic and whistler signals. With Gemini and Hubble images at multiple wavelengths, researchers now can probe the cloud structure at these locations. By combining these three pieces of information the research team found that the lightning strikes, and some of the largest storm systems that create them, are formed in and around large convective cells over deep clouds of water ice and liquid.

"Scientists track lightning because it is a marker of convection, the turbulent mixing process that transports Jupiter's internal heat up to the visible cloud tops," explained Wong. The largest concentration of lightning seen by Juno came from a swirling storm called a "filamentary cyclone." Imaging from Gemini and Hubble shows details in the cyclone, revealing it to be a twisted collection of tall convective clouds with deep gaps offering glimpses to the water clouds far below.

"Ongoing studies of lightning sources will help us understand how convection on Jupiter is different from or similar to convection in the Earth's atmosphere," Wong commented.

Glowing features in the Great Red Spot

While scanning the gas giant for gaps in cloud cover, Gemini spotted a telltale glow in the Great Red Spot, indicating a clear view down to deep, warmer atmospheric layers.

"Similar features have been seen in the Great Red Spot before," said team member Glenn Orton of JPL, "but visible-light observation couldn't distinguish between darker cloud material, and thinner cloud cover over Jupiter's warm interior, so their nature remained a mystery."

Now with the data from Gemini, this mystery is solved. Where visible light images from Hubble show a dark semicircle in the Great Red Spot, images taken by Gemini using infrared light reveal a bright arc lighting up the region. This infrared glow, from Jupiter's internal heat, would have been blocked by thicker clouds, but can pass through Jupiter's hazy atmosphere unobscured. By seeing these features as bright infrared hotspots, Gemini confirms that they are gaps in the clouds. Even though earlier observations have seen dark features in the Great Red Spot, the rapidly swirling winds within it hid the true nature of these spots until the simultaneous Hubble and Gemini observations were conducted.

"NIRI at Gemini North is the most effective way for the US and the international Gemini partnership investigators to get detailed maps of Jupiter at this wavelength," explained Wong. Gemini achieved a 500-

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kilometer (300-mile) resolution on Jupiter. "At this resolution, the telescope could resolve the two headlights of a car in Miami, seen from New York City," said Andrew Stephens, the Gemini astronomer who led the observations.[1]

"These coordinated observations prove once again that ground-breaking astronomy is made possible by combining the capabilities of the Gemini telescopes with complimentary ground- and space-based facilities," said Martin Still, an astronomy program director at the National Science Foundation, which is Gemini's US funding agency. "The international Gemini Partnership provides open access to a powerful combination of large telescopes' collecting area, flexible scheduling, and a broad selection of interchangeable instruments."

Notes

[1] This corresponds to an angular resolution of the Gemini infrared "lucky imaging" observations down to 0.13 arc-seconds.

Source: Spaceref.com Return to Contents

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3. South Africa's MeerKAT Solves Mystery of 'X-galaxies'

Many galaxies far more active than the Milky Way have enormous twin jets of radio waves extending far into intergalactic space. Normally these go in opposite directions, coming from a massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy. However, a few are more complicated and appear to have four jets forming an 'X' on the sky.

Several possible explanations have been proposed to understand this phenomenon. These include changes in the direction of spin of the black hole at the center of the galaxy, and associated jets, over millions of years; two black holes each associated with a pair of jets; and material falling back into the galaxy being deflected into different directions forming the other two arms of the X.

Exquisite new MeerKAT observations of one such galaxy, PKS 2014-55, strongly favor the latter explanation as they show material "turning the corner" as it flows back towards the host galaxy; the results have just been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This work was carried out by a team from the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), the (US) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the University of Pretoria, and Rhodes University.

Previous studies of these unusual galaxies lacked the high quality imaging provided by the recently completed MeerKAT telescope. This telescope array consists of 64 radio dishes located in the Karoo semi-desert in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Computers combined the data from these antennas into a telescope 8 km in diameter, and provided images in the radio band of unprecedented quality for PKS 2014-55 which enabled solving the mystery of its shape.

Bernie Fanaroff, former director of the SKA South Africa project that built MeerKAT, and a co-author of the study, notes that "MeerKAT was designed to be the best of its kind in the world. It's wonderful to see how its unique capabilities are contributing to resolving longstanding questions related to the evolution of galaxies."

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Lead author William Cotton of the NRAO says, "MeerKAT is one of a new generation of instruments whose power solves old puzzles even as it finds new ones—this galaxy shows features never seen before in this detail which are not fully understood." Further research into these open questions is already underway.

Explore further

Distant Milky Way-like galaxies reveal star formation history of the universe

Source: Phys.org Return to Contents

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The Night Sky Comet SWAN skirts the dawn and dusk horizons. This new comet (C/2020 F8) is already 5th magnitude and heading for 3rd, but it stays low and tricky to find at the very beginning of dawn this week, then at the very end of dusk later in the month. See Bob King's Comet SWAN article and charts. You'll want to bring binoculars or a wide-field scope.

Friday, May 8

■ All week, look high in the west at nightfall for Pollux and Castor, the heads of the Gemini twins. They're lined up almost horizontally (depending on your latitude), some 30° upper left of brilliant Venus: about three fists at arm's length.

Pollux and Castor form the top of the enormous Arch of Spring. To their lower left is Procyon, the left end of the Arch. Farther to their lower right is the other end, formed by Menkalinan (Beta Aurigae) and then brilliant Capella.

Venus shines below the Arch's right side.

■ The waning gibbous Moon rises in the east-southeast tonight around 10 p.m. daylight-saving time, depending on where you live in your time zone. Once it's well up, look to its right or lower right for Antares, twinkling pale orange. Around and to the upper right of Antares are lesser, whiter stars of Scorpius.

Saturday, May 9

■ The Summer Triangle is making its appearance in the east, one star after another. The first in view is bright Vega. It's already visible in the northeast as twilight fades.

Next up is Deneb, lower left of Vega by two or three fists at arm's length. Deneb takes about an hour to appear after Vega does, depending on your latitude.

The third is Altair, which shows up far to their lower right by midnight.

■ Asteroid to occult a star. David Dunham of the International Occultation Timing Association writes us, "Occultation of 9.5-magnitude SAO 82820 by (667) Denise [along a track from] northern Mid-Atlantic (clear skies forecast there) to southern Oregon, night of Saturday May 9/10; see page for this event. The path passes over Washington, DC (4:54 UT May 10 UT); Columbus & Dayton, OH (4:55 UT); Indianapolis and Urbana, IL (4:56 UT); Des Moines and Omaha (4:57 UT); and Pocatello and Twin Falls, Idaho (5:00 UT)."

Sunday, May 10

■ Three zero-magnitude stars shine after dark in May: Arcturus high in the southeast, Vega much lower in the northeast, and Capella in the northwest (upper right of Venus). They appear so bright because each is at least 60 times as luminous as the Sun, and because they're all relatively nearby: 37, 25, and 42 light-years away, respectively.

■ Another asteroid occultation. David Dunham writes, "Occultation of 5.7-magnitude 14 Cancri by (363) Padua for the southwestern US Sunday evening, May 10/11; see the IOTA page for the event, with a lot of observing advice."

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■ Before dawn on Monday the 11th, the waning gibbous Moon shines in the south. Left of it are Jupiter and Saturn, as shown below.

Look closer below the Moon for the handle of the Sagittarius Teapot. The handle's three brightest stars show at far right in the scene below.

Monday, May 11

■ Before and during early dawn on Tuesday the 12th, the waning gibbous Moon shines under Jupiter and Saturn as shown above. For skywatchers in North America's Central and Mountain time zones, they'll form a virtually perfect right triangle while dawn is brightening.

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver: Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears Sat May 9, 3:36 AM 1 min 11° 10° above NNW 10° above N Sat May 9, 5:13 AM 2 min 16° 11° above NNW 16° above NNE Sun May 10, 2:48 AM 2 min 11° 10° above NNW 11° above N Sun May 10, 4:25 AM 2 min 13° 10° above NNW 13° above NNE Mon May 11, 2:02 AM < 1 min 13° 13° above N 13° above N Mon May 11, 3:38 AM 1 min 11° 10° above NNW 11° above N Mon May 11, 5:14 AM 3 min 27° 10° above NW 27° above NNE Tue May 12, 2:50 AM < 1 min 10° 10° above NNW 10° above N Tue May 12, 4:26 AM 2 min 20° 10° above NNW 20° above NNE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

May 8, Friday 11 a.m. - SpaceCast Weekly (All Channels) 2 p.m. - Artemis Generation Panel with NASA Astronauts - “The First Residents of the Moon and Mars are Today’s Students” (All Channels) May 11, Monday 11:45 a.m. – Coverage of the release of the Northrop Grumman Cygnus/NG-13 cargo craft from the International Space Station; release scheduled at 12:10 p.m. EDT (All Channels) May 12, Tuesday 12:35 p.m. – International Space Station Expedition 63 Interviews with CNN and HGTV’s “At Home” podcast with Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA regarding social isolation (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar • May 08 - Comet C/2020 H2 (Pruyne) Closest Approach To Earth (0.656 AU) • May 08 - Comet 210P/Christensen Closest Approach To Earth (1.081 AU) • May 08 - Comet C/2002 R5 (SOHO) At Opposition (1.731 AU) • May 08 - Comet C/2018 X2 (Fitzsimmons) At Opposition (3.018 AU) • May 08 - Comet P/1999 XN120 (Catalina) At Opposition (3.756 AU) • May 08 - Comet P/2015 X1 (PANSTARRS) At Opposition (3.770 AU) • May 08 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 HB6 Near-Earth Flyby (0.025 AU) • May 08 - Asteroid 160105 Gobi Closest Approach To Earth (1.478 AU) • May 08 - Amor Asteroid 7336 Saunders Closest Approach To Earth (1.815 AU) • May 08 - Asteroid 16529 Dangoldin Closest Approach To Earth (1.970 AU) • May 08 - Asteroid 1288 Santa Closest Approach To Earth (1.997 AU) • May 08 - Asteroid 2228 Soyuz-Apollo Closest Approach To Earth (2.663 AU) • May 09 - Comet 87P/Bus Perihelion (2.100 AU) • May 09 - Comet 288P Closest Approach To Earth (2.450 AU) • May 09 - Comet 193P/LINEAR-NEAT At Opposition (2.628 AU) • May 09 - Apollo Asteroid 2020 HC6 Near-Earth Flyby (0.007 AU) • May 09 - Asteroid 230975 Rogerfederer Closest Approach To Earth (1.709 AU) • May 09 - Amor Asteroid 9950 ESA Closest Approach To Earth (2.055 AU) • May 09 - [May 05] Centaur Object 144908 (2004 YH32) At Opposition (11.096 AU) • May 10 - Comet 88P/Howell Closest Approach To Earth (1.080 AU) • May 10 - Apollo Asteroid 388945 (2008 TZ3) Near-Earth Flyby (0.019 AU) • May 10 - Asteroid 3355 Onizuka Closest Approach To Earth (1.303 AU) • May 10 - Asteroid 3769 Arthurmiller Closest Approach To Earth (1.437 AU) • May 10 - Amor Asteroid 1036 Ganymed Closest Approach To Earth (1.954 AU) • May 10 - Kuiper Belt Object 2010 FX86 At Opposition (45.046 AU) • May 10 - George E Smith's 90th Birthday (1930) • May 10 - Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's 120th Birthday (1900) • May 11 - Comet P/2019 A4 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (1.778 AU) • May 11 - Comet 238P/Read Closest Approach To Earth (2.782 AU) • May 11 - Comet 61P/Shajn-Schaldach At Opposition (4.245 AU) • May 11 - Asteroid 363 Padua Occults HIP 40023 (5.5 Magnitude Star) • May 11 - Atira Asteroid 2006 WE4 Closest Approach To Earth (0.489 AU) • May 11 - Asteroid 727 Nipponia Closest Approach To Earth (1.880 AU) • May 11 - [May 05] Board on Earth Sciences and Resources - Spring 2020 Board Virutal Meeting • May 11 - Harriet Quimby's 145th Birthday (1875)

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

The Atmosphere On Venus Rotates Faster than the Planet, and Now Astronomers Think They Know Why

Venus is unique—almost—in our Solar System because it’s what’s known as a “super-rotator.” That means that Venus’ atmosphere rotates faster than the planet itself. Only Saturn’s moon Titan has the same characteristic.

Scientists have been trying to figure out what causes this super-rotation, and now an international team of researchers might have figured it out.

On Venus, the winds can move up to 60 times faster than the planet itself, and though the planet takes 243 days to rotate, the atmosphere only takes four days to circle the planet. For comparison, Earth’s atmosphere moves at between 10% to 20% the speed of the planet. Scientists have known since the 1960s that Venus is a super-rotator, but haven’t been able to figure out why.

In 2016, researchers found a large stationary gravity wave structure in Venus’ atmosphere. The bow-shaped structure stretched for 10,000 km (6200 miles) across Venus’ cloud tops. It remained stationary relative to the surface of the planet, while the atmosphere maintained its super-rotation.

In 2018, scientists published a paper showing what role the massive wave played in the planet’s super-rotation. The gravity wave on Venus is so huge because the atmosphere only moves in one direction, while on Earth, for example, more variable winds don’t create such massive wave structures. The 2018 paper showed that the huge wave tugged on the planet, altering its rotation rate, but didn’t explain Venus’ super-rotation.

“Since the super-rotation was discovered in the 1960s, however, the mechanism behind its forming and maintenance has been a long-standing mystery,” says Takeshi Horinouchi, lead author of the new study.

This new study says that there’s more going on in Venus’ atmosphere, and that the super-rotation is related to not only atmospheric tidal waves, but to other features as well.

The new study is titled “How waves and turbulence maintain the super-rotation of Venus’ atmosphere.” The lead author is Takeshi Horinouchi of Hokkaido University in Japan. The study is published in the journal Science.

In broad terms, the study shows two contributing factors to Venus’ super-rotation.

At the equator, solar heating creates atmospheric tidal waves on the day side. On the night side, cooling creates the same waves. But at the poles, something else is happening. A press release says, “Closer to the poles, however, atmospheric turbulence and other kinds of waves have a more pronounced effect.”

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The new study is based on data from Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft. The spacecraft is in a large elliptical orbit around Venus. Akatsuki complements the ESA’s Venus Express orbiter, which was in a polar orbit from 2006 to 2014. Together, the pair of spacecraft have made an immense contribution to our understanding of Venus.

The Akatsuki spacecraft carries five imaging cameras: three infrared, one ultraviolet, and one visible light camera. Horinouchi and his colleagues used ultraviolet and infrared images from the spacecraft to develop a precise method of tracking clouds. The cloud tracking led to accurate measurement of wind velocities. From there, the team estimated what contribution the atmospheric waves and the turbulence made to Venus’ super-rotation.

The first thing they noticed was temperature variations. There were atmospheric temperature variations between altitudes that couldn’t be explained, unless there was atmospheric circulation across latitudes.

In the press release, Horinouchi said, “Since such circulation should alter the wind distribution and weaken the super-rotation peak, it also implies there is another mechanism which reinforces and maintains the observed wind distribution.”

What was the other mechanism?

After more analysis of the data, and more modelling, the team came up with something else: the thermal tide. The American Meteorological Society describes a thermal tide ss “A variation in atmospheric pressure due to the diurnal differential heating of the atmosphere by the sun.” Horinouchi and his colleagues say that the thermal tide is responsible for the wind at low latitudes.

That’s in contrast to earlier studies, which showed that the thermal tides played no role. This study showed that thermal tides play a role in acceleration at mid and high-latitudes, while having a small deceleration effect at low latitudes.

So, the team has uncovered some important evidence that helps explain Venus’ unusual atmosphere. Not only does their work show how the super-rotation is maintained, it shows how heat is transported around the planet. Circulation along meridians slowly moves heat towards Venus’ poles, while super-rotation moves heat from the day-side to the night-side.

Like so much of planetary science, it not only explains the actual planet being studied, but could help scientists understand the increasing number of discovered exoplanets.

“Our study could help better understand atmospheric systems on tidally-locked exo-planets whose one side always facing the central stars, which is similar to Venus having a very long solar day,” Horinouchi added.

More:

• Press Release: Atmospheric tidal waves maintain Venus’ super-rotation • Research Paper: How waves and turbulence maintain the super-rotation of Venus’ atmosphere • Universe Today: Giant Streak Structure Found in Venus’ Cloudtops

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Long Tailed Comet SWAN Explanation Blowing in the solar wind the spectacular ion tail of Comet SWAN (C/2020 F8) extends far across this 10 degree wide telephoto field of view. Captured on May 2 its greenish coma was about 6 light-minutes from Earth. The pretty background starfield lies near the border of the constellations Cetus and Aquarius. This comet SWAN was discovered at home by Australian amateur Michael Mattiazzo by checking images from the Sun-staring SOHO spacecraft's SWAN (Solar Wind ANisotropies) camera. The comet has now become just visible to the naked-eye as it sweeps from southern to northern skies. Appearing in morning twilight near the eastern horizon, Comet SWAN will make its closest approach to planet Earth on May 12 and reach perihelion on May 27. Image Credit: NASA/Expedition 61; Caption by Laura Phoebus, Jacobs, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC Source: APOD Return to Contents