A Good Look At Perseverance

 There's a lot of action happening around Mars right now.  In February 2021, three new space probes arrived at Mars. The first was Hope Probe, sent by United Arab Emirates, which will orbit Mars and study the planet's atmosphere for an entire Martian year (that's 867 days for scientists back on Earth!) The UAE space agency has an interactive website at this link which updates Hope Probe in real time.

The second probe to arrive in orbit around Mars during February 2021 was Tianwen-1, sent by China. Their orbiter is looking at a potential landing site for their rover, and they hope to land it on Mars in May.

On February 18 NASA landed their own new rover on the red planet, and the rover is called Perseverance. Here's a link to a video about the exciting landing for this robot that will drive around Jezero Crater on Mars like a little remote-controlled car: http://youtu.be/tlTni_HY1Bk 

NASA now has available some audio recordings made on Mars by Perseverance. Check out this link to hear the sound of wind on Mars, or of Perseverance's little laser pinging off nearby rocks. Then look at the banner at the top of the page, where you'll find links to info about the mission, the spacecraft, and more. Download some images, sounds, and videos! There's enough Mars news here to keep any space fan busy learning about Perseverance and other Mars explorers. 

Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Mars 2020 Strategic Mission Manager Pauline Hwang, gives remarks during a NASA Perseverance rover initial surface checkout briefing, Friday Feb. 19, 2021, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

At first glance Perseverance looks much like other NASA robot probes that have been rolling around Mars for a while now: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity. Check out this article on the science website Phys.org or the academic website The Conversation for good descriptions of all these rover probes.

If it sounds to you like there's a lot of traffic around Mars, you're right! There are six other space probes currently orbiting Mars as well: three are from the United States and its partners in NASA's Mars Odyssey (which has been in Mars orbit for twenty years), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and MAVEN Orbiter.   
The European Space Agency sent their Mars Express orbiter, which has used radar to determine the possibility of liquid water under the surface of Mars. India sent its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was sent by a European and Russian partnership.

If you're like me, there are times when you've looked at a photo of a Mars rover and been frustrated because good ol' Opportunity didn't take a photo of itself from the right angle to show you exactly what it looks like from behind, or above, or off to the left. It's possible to get a really good look at Perseverance rover, though! There's a page on NASA's website that has a 3-D image modelling Perseverance. If you click on this link, a page will open with an image of the rover. You'll be able to download the 3-D image, click on it with your computer and pull the image this way and that. You can turn Perseverance around, or upside down, and get a good look at how the camera arm attaches. As well, you can click on this link to see a similar image of Ingenuity, the little helicopter drone that can fly above Perseverance. On March 11th NASA's Mars Helicopter team did a live chat (that you can watch at this link) answering questions about their plans for Ingenuity.

If you're making a piece of art, or an illustration for a school paper, it will be nice to use this 3-D image to move the model into just the exact position you need. Rovers are popular robots to illustrate science fiction stories, and many rovers appear on the covers of science fiction books or magazines. 

Here's a little rover that appeared on issue 6 of Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine. Artist Stephanie Ann Johanson designed the cover with a digital drawing of a robot on the moon. The image was inspired by the third story in issue six, Survival Strategies by Vaughan Stanger. Stephanie is an artist, assistant editor and art director of Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine. She also has several illustrations and covers designed for many of the magazine's 31 issues.

Comets!

 Comets have always mystified people looking up into the night sky. When Comet Hyakutake was blazing across the night sky in 1996, I was lucky enough to be living on a farm an hour's drive north of Edmonton. For my family, the sky above our farm was PLENTY dark for comet-watching. We didn't need to be told where to look. The comet was big, and plenty bright enough to see.

image by E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab; Johannes-Kepler-Observatory, Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at)

On several evenings that winter we took sleeping bags out into the yard and lay on the snow, looking as the fuzzy ball of light in the sky grew bigger till it looked as big as the full Moon. We took turns with a telescope and a pair of binoculars to get a closer look. Comet Hyakutake had a wispy tail, too, that stretched till it looked as long as the Big Dipper across the sky. That wispy, hairy-looking tail on a fuzzy ball is why we use the word "comet" to describe them. "Comet" is a way to say "hairy star" in Latin. Even the Egyptian pharaohs 4,000 years ago called comets by their word for "long hair."

Our family was not the only one looking for information about comets on the Internet. What was a comet? Where did they come from? What were they made of? We found lots of sites with information from NASA and observatories. One of the best websites was written by a Canadian observatory with a program called The Centre of the Universe. The comet moved on and faded from sight, but I was still interested.

The very next year, 1997, Comet Hale-Bopp blazed across the sky. There's a great story at this link about how it was discovered by two people on the same night, who were looking in the right direction. It was wonderful to lay out in our snowy yard again with our sleeping bags and telescope and binoculars, and once again watch an amazing comet. It felt like we could actually SEE the comet moving and its wispy tail fluttering behind it.

But it was hard to get our kids to stay outside for more than about twenty minutes. Yup, this was a mysterious and fascinating object in the night sky! But they had seen the previous amazing comet just a year ago. After half an hour, they were cold enough to want to go inside. They promised to make hot chocolate -- enough for all of us. They knew I'm a science fan and just had to lay out there for a while longer.

I'm still a science fan. I still look up into the night sky, tracking planets and comets. As well, I go to the websites for space probes that have gone through comet tails like Ulysses, or the newer ones that have visited comets, like Rosetta and its lander Philae. On Twitter, I follow messages tweeted about space probes visiting the asteroids Bennu and Ryugu. There's so much to learn about space probes! And I'm still learning where to look.

Countdown to launch of new Mars mission!

On Thursday July 30, NASA will be launching their newest probe with a mission on Mars! There are a terrific assortment of social media activities during the countdown, and lots of free materials to find online about this probe named Perseverance. The Perseverance mission is bringing along a tiny helicopter named Integrity, which will be the first helicopter to fly on Mars, when they get there in February 2021.

Here's a link to the NASA website with plenty of information. You can sign up to receive a countdown to Thursday's launch, or learn about the probe's mission, or watch the launch in real time and many videos at your leisure. Whether you want to learn a lot or just have a good time, this is a science website with lots of content.

Fans of science have an amazing assortment of learning materials and fun stuff available here. If you're more interested in comets or stars than you are in Mars, keep looking through NASA's website at http://www.nasa.gov where you can find links to pictures, videos, articles, and all sorts of information.

If you're on Twitter, check out the hashtag #CountdownToMars for updates all week.

Virtual Tour of an Asteroid

by Paula Johanson

When I was a child, I watched every Apollo launch. Each of the moon landings was celebrated in my home. If (like me) you've ever wished you could be an astronaut, there are lots of things to do with that dream. One way I connect with my inner astronaut is to go to this NASA website, Ryugu Trek.

Ryugu is an asteroid that has been visited by a space probe called Hayabusa2.  On the website Ryugu Trek, you can use your computer to look all around this rocky asteroid. Thousands of photographs have been worked together to create a virtual tour. You can change the image settings like a video game, to see what you'd see flying your own space probe over and around the surface of Ryugu.

Take a little time to check out this website! Click on this link to try the various tours and downloads available. It makes me feel like I understand more about the scientists studying the images of this stony little member of our solar system.

Why NASA monitors Penguin Poop (and Other NASA Stuff You Didn't Know)

Yes, they really doo-doo. Sorry. Yes, they really do. Back in 1966 NASA launched the Landsat program – a bunch of satellites which orbit the earth recording images at various wavelengths (blue, green, red, infra-red, etc.) The latest satellite – Landsat 8 – scans 11 different wavelengths at a resolution of 30 meters. Since Adélie penguins are mostly a lot smaller than 30 meters across, they can’t be seen individually. But where there's a will, there's a way. Male and female penguins take turns in incubating the eggs in their nests. With no bathroom breaks the penguin poo (called guano) builds up around the nest. From space, the area of the guano is easily measured, and from that the number of penguins can be estimated. It’s a lot easier, warmer and less smelly to do this observation using NASA pictures than by going onsite. 

A satellite image showing penguin poop, with a picture of the culprit in the middle.
Photo courtesy NASA.

Scientists have been concerned about a decreasing Adélie penguin population and have speculated that a change in diet may have been the cause, possibly from being able to eat less krill. Krill are tiny crustaceans which are a major part of the Antarctic food chain. Penguins (and seals and whales) are having to compete with commercial trawlers for krill. The colour of penguin poo varies from white (from eating fish) to pink or red (from eating krill). Landsat imaging was able to determine from space that penguin diets have had no long term pattern of change. 

Long Term Landsat Images

Over 50 years of data is enormously useful in tracking changes. 

The two images below show how part of the Exelcior glacier in Alaska has melted into a lake during the last 32 years.  Since 1994, Excelsior Glacier has retreated about 200 meters per year—nearly twice as fast as the previous 50 years.

This image was acquired in October 1986. You can see a darker blue area neara the bottom where melting ice has started forming a lake.
Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey.

This image was acquired in October 2018. You can see the lake is fully formed. It's more than five times the size of Central Park in New York City, and it even has a name!
Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey.

Short Term Landsat Images

Landsat images can also be useful for real-time action. A few weeks ago a cyclone devastated several cities in eastern India. The storm left millions of people homeless, and damaged or destroyed energy infrastructure, leaving around 3.5 million households without electric power for days after the storm hit.

The images below are data visualizations of where the lights went out in the city of Bhubaneswar. The two images show city lighting on April 30 (before the storm) and on May 5, 2019, two days after the cyclone. The Odisha State Disaster Management Authority requested the data from NASA for use in risk assessment and disaster recovery.

Landsat imagery courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and U.S. Geological Survey.

More Landsat Images

You can find hundreds of other fascinating images at https://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

 

 Mars Mission

Next year NASA is planning to send a rover to Mars. Among other things it will look for any evidence that may show if any life has existed on Mars. Here’s an artist’s impression of the rover. 

Although you can’t go along on this flight, NASA is allowing you to send your name to Mars. You’re invited to submit your name at this site:  https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/

The Microdevices Laboratory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will use an electron beam to stencil the submitted names onto a silicon chip. The lines of text will be smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers). At that size, more than a million names can be written on a single dime-size chip. The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover.

If you accept the offer to send your name to Mars, you’ll get a boarding pass like the one below, complete with a tally of your frequent flyer points.

 

It’s an open question whether any possible Martian life will be able to read your name, but we can hope. 

Finally: Everything Old is New Again

The second Orion exploration mission is currently scheduled for 2022 or 2023. It will be a crewed jaunt around the moon and back. This will the furthest distance from earth that any humans have traveled. It will be a significant step forward in NASA's plans to return humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and future missions to worlds beyond, including Mars.
Some of the tests for this mission are to demonstrate the capability of navigation in deep space. And how do you navigate in deep space if you have serious problems with the technology? It's back to basics in a worst-case scenario. In the 18th century sailors used a sextant to measure the angle between celestial bodies (sun, moon, stars and the horizon), so as to be able to calculate their longitude and latitude. Astronauts on Orion 2 will test the use of a sextant for emergency navigation. 

Astronaut Alexander Gerst calibrates and operates the Sextant Navigation device that is testing emergency navigation methods such as stability and star sighting in microgravity for future Orion exploration missions.
Photo: courtesy NASA.