Slashdot Mirror

It's quite significant, since many of the complex organic compounds on Titan are very similar to those that would have been raining down on the primordial Earth before that began evolving. Spectroscopy has already found chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), cyanoacetylene (HC3N) and cyanogen (C2N2) in the Titanian atmosphere - these are thought to be essential in the manufacture of amino acides.

Secondly, Titan is in a cold place, but it may not be cold - it is a sizeable body which may well have differentiated - under all of that ice there may be rock heated by radioactive decay - which would provide plenty of energy to drive chemical reactions.

I'm sure a physicist will be along shortly to say if Titan also receives energy from tidal pumping in its orbit around Saturn - that keeps Io, Europa and Ganymede hot around Jupiter, and Triton hot around Neptune.

I'm just surprised how much this composite image of Titan looks like the early images of Mars.

Best wishes,
Mike.

More info at this site.

Dean G.

Messenger is not dead...

I don't know what the maximum speed attainable is, but in Cassini's case, what they got was a maximum speed relative to Saturn of 69,350 MPH (~111,512 KPH). This is 32 times faster than an assault rifle bullet, and 4 times faster than the shuttle, according to the spaceflight.com article on the maneuver.

Trollish , if partially true. Saturn sans rings is probably, though debatably, marginally less interesting than Jupiter. Stuff like the uncertainty over the length of its day shows that it has some surprises in store, though.

But Titan sure has to be the most interesting object in the Solar System at the moment, if only because it's the biggest bit of unexplored surface left. The good probability of extraterrestrial oceans is also pretty damn cool. Go, Huygens!

nice image showing gravitonal waves in the rings (link)

Not sure what you mean by gravitational waves let alone gravitonal waves, but there does seem to be some interesting structure in the outer ring in that picture. It reminds me of the famous braided ring spotted by the Pioneer 11 fly-by. I don't remember if Voyager saw this kind of thing.

thanks the other poster for the correction. the article is here i just mistaken the words :)

of course i wanted to write density waves :) my mistake. "Look at that structure, it's so regular!" marveled imaging team leader Carolyn Porco as a picture came in showing well-defined bands of brightness and darkness. "I'm wondering if we're looking at a density wave. This looks like it might be a density wave, but I'm not quite sure." Density waves, caused by gravitational interactions with nearby moons, are thought to be "kissing cousins" of the waves that produce the spiral structure seen in galaxies like Earth's Milky Way. "These are regions where the rings are communicating gravitationally with the moons exterior to them," Porco explained. A few moments later: "Oh my God, look at that! ... These density waves are like books, just waiting to be read." story

the new generation of American boosters still being developed, and demand for reliable launching rockets building up around the world, the prospect of having a huge already-constructed supply of giant boosters built by the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth has been embraced around the world.'

The new generation of American boosters have already been developed and are 100% successful. Both the Delta IV and Atlas V have flown several missions with complete success. A heavy lift version of the Delta IV is scheduled to launch in September. It will be the most powerful unmanned launcher in the world.

The Russian Sea Launch launch vehicle (Zenit 3), specifically its Block DM upper stage has failed yet again, leaving another satellite in a low transfer orbit. So much for the most experienced and reliable rocket engineers on earth.

it's called a f'en link - try this next time:

Pretty pictures

oops... ...brought up by a commercial aircraft.

From their official website:

He said the pubic and media reaction the flight gave him goosebumps.

Man, I also got excited about the event, but this is too much.

According to the mission status page on SpaceFlightNow, Melvill heard three large bangs in flight (see 11:11am update)... if there was a premature shutdown, perhaps this was the reason?

Now let's hope that SpaceShip One and others competing for the X-Prize can get actively involved in iplementing the Moon-To-Mars Commission's recommendations, which call for a great deal of privatization and commercialization of space, particularly near Earth.

My favorite update so far is this one:

1250 GMT (8:50 a.m. EDT)

The International Space Station will be flying high above Mojave at approximately the time SpaceShipOne is scheduled to launch. The Expedition 9 resident crew will attempt to photograph the launch and contrail.

The ISS crew, likely to be remembered as caretakers of NASA's failed scheme, will be witness to the future of space exploration. Poetic, isn't it?

It also occurs to me that if something bad happens to the Russian space program, the ISS crew may have to wait for Rutan's future orbital project, if they hope to get home at all...

get the blow by blow here.

Just refresh your page to get the newest news.

Watch, no, but there's live coverage at SpaceFlightNow.

As the newer vechicles came online (Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour), new maufacturing techniques (particularly ones that replaced lots of the "tiles" on low temp areas with "thermal blankets") and the fact that the new craft were not instrumented up the wazoo saved on weight. Ironically, it was Columbia's legacy instrumentation that provided much of the data that was used in the accident investigation, with pressure sensors even noting the subtle impact of the foam on its left wing during ascent. Had it been another Orbiter, the conclusions may have been more speculative.

Astronaut Bob Crippin who commanded her maiden flight in 1981 made a remark at a memorial ceremony to the effect that like a lot of old folks, Columbia was a little heavy in the rear end, but got the job done.

Further reading:

http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/nats102 /impact.html

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0209/05wildfir es/

Next time, don't program it to land in a crater. NASA was lucky that their similarly boneheaded failure to include filesystem cleanup code in their Mars landers was repairable.

P.S. In response to MurphyZero, yea, not a whole lotta Atlas II's left ... nor Atlas III's ... the future is the Atlas V family with the Russian RD-180 engines.

A small nitpick: AMC-11 is the payload, not the rocket.

A realtime status log is available at Spaceflight Now.

Travis

No, it's about uploading the correct set of data to the rocket, so it uses the right flight profile when launching. Thus not a problem with the satellite. Source: SpaceFlight Now.

Better sources for space related stuff:
spaceref.com
space.com
spaceflightnow.com
spacedaily.com
the rovers' homepage
and just for fascinating pics and educative descriptions: Astronomy Picture of the Day

They often carry the same stories, but usually one of them will have the scoop. There are more sites, but these ones are definately worthy of a daily visit, and some have plenty links to other interesting sites. Have fun :D

Interference from things on Earth:
Miles thick atmosphere
More RF than you would believe
City Lights - (only place unaffected is middle of the pacific)
Higher Gravity
Capability of linking Lunar and Earth radio telescopes to "build" one about 384kilometers in diameter Example
There's your examples of why the moon is better for astronomy.

I also heard a talk last summer which was looking at just this problem -- modelling the probability of failure of launch vehicles. The conclusion was (basically) that the learning curve is very steep -- a company that has had 3 launches (successful or not, as it happens -- the unsuccessful ones go out of buisiness quicker than that) has almost the same reliability as a company that's been launching for many years. There's a pdf linked from the conference page. The main data points are that after the first two launches, new companies have a success rate of 0.88, and established companies, a success rate of 0.89.

The list only includes NASA, ESA and JAXA. Completely missing are the upcoming probes from China and India . Oddly, Russia doesn't seem to have anything planned.

As more and more data is showing, it appears Mars once had a much denser atmosphere that probably supported liquid water. There is also evidence that Mars once had an Earth-like dipole magnetic field and magnetosphere which protected the ancient Martian atmosphere from the radiation of the solar winds. Many researches now believe that without a magnetic field the Martian atmosphere was simply eroded away by the solar wind.

I am merely a layman on this subject, but it seems to me that without somehow restarting the Martian dynamo to generate a global magnetic field, the idea of terraforming Mars will always remain science fiction.

With this information, it seems to me that the idea of terraforming Mars is a joke. Am I missing something?

References:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan_1 .htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3016_magn etic.html
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0012/17marsmagnet/

NASA's best disagrees:

If NASA managers had realized early on that Columbia had suffered a catastrophic breach in its left wing during launch - either by obtaining satellite imagery or, more likely, by having the astronauts stage an inspection spacewalk - they might have had time to mount a repair spacewalk or even an emergency rescue mission with the shuttle Atlantis, the chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said today. link.

Holy cow, nobody has yet even mentioned 2004-DW as a candidate for Sedna nor posted any links. Here ya go:

story 1
story 2
story 3
website of researcher at CalTech

The diameter (up to 1880 km) of 2004-DW matches pretty nicely with the upper estimate of 2000km of Sedna. These reports find 2004-DW to comparible in size to Quaoar. (Note these stories came out when the data was fresh, better numbers should be handed out Monday.)

Nothing to do on a Friday night, eh? I'm surprised.

The irony of these type of posts always makes me chuckle. Not just the quoted part either.

Ah well, now that I got a couple more beers, time to head back out to the beach to watch the launch.

There are also 2 or 3 dead gyros on Hubble currently

Two currently. Part of the repair mission would be to fix/replace them. There are 6 gyros on Hubble and 3 are required for proper operation. Useful article here.

And, yes, the gyros are a big problem. The gyro failures are the entire reason that Hubble will fail if not serviced -- the optics and other electronics are working just fine, but they're worthless if you can't hold steady on a target. IIRC, there's only a 15% chance that Hubble will remain functional at all by 2008 without gyro replacement.

The gyros are failing a bit faster than expected, but even at the outset they only had a 4-6 year lifespan. Ongoing maintainence was part of the plan for Hubble.

And if you really can't wait 10 years... NASA's Stardust will bring back some pieces of comet in only 685 days :)

Incidentally, that launch pad is about 3 miles from where I'm sitting. I can see it if I climb up on the antenna tower on the roof, but management got mad last time I did that to watch a launch.

"In other news, the rovers are beginning to experience power supply problems due to the accumulation of dust on their solar panels"

This makes things sound worse than they actually are. They are not beginning to experience power supply problems -- they are simply getting less power than they were when it first landed, and they are taking some steps to operate more efficiently.

From SpaceFlightNow, in the report for THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2004 2215 GMT (5:15 p.m. EST):

"The amount of power Opportunity is able to generate continues to dwindle due to the decreasing amount of sunlight (energy) reaching the solar panels during the Martian seasonal transition to winter."

From the Reuters report:

"NASA's two robotic rovers on Mars have begun scaling back their working hours as the approach of autumn on the Red Planet and dust on their solar panels slowly chokes off their power supplies, a NASA official said on Friday."

What the NASA official (Richard Cook) actually said was: "The vehicle is continuing to perform fine but we are starting to modify our daily process to respond to the decreasing power."

Both the dust accumulation and the decrease of sunlight were anticipated. The lifetime (designed to be 90 days) of each Rover is determined when the batteries can no longer be charged enough to survive the cold nights. Spirit is already 54 days into its 90-day "death sentence".

And again, at least until next week. This time because of insulating foam coming loose.

Right.

The brine speculation is coming from people not involved on the project, which space.com is reporting uncritically. The news conference where the project scientists are presenting their information mention nothing about brine.

See the entry for Thursday, February 19, 2004 at http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status.htm l.

Nice summaries, many which doesn't reach "Press Release" as well can be found here

Osiris has both carbon and oxygen in its atmosphere. However, it's unlikely that there is life there, as the surface temperature is roughly 1000 degrees C.

The current working hypothesis, as it were, is that Osiris was at one time a gas giant. Osiris' sun has reached the point in its lifespan where it has expanded to the point that the solar wind is literally blowing away the atmosphere of Osiris.

See the article at http://goatse.cx

It's more like 150 million miles, but the analogy still applies! I believe the specifics for the lander can be had at spaceflightnow.com.

I've found this site very informative, with frequent rover status updates, links to images, NASA press releases and details of rover activities.

Well, at least as he has on this planet. Some of the others out there, however, may have more of God's bandwidth allocation. That's why, really, that we have been trying to venture out into space, to see if we can find "heaven". This is only a start in our quest for the source of all bandwidth, Almighty God!

deitel99: The machines aren't as slow as the top post says... they don't run at 20MHz, they are "capable of carrying out about 20 million instructions per second". Depending on the complexity of the instructions, the processor actually runs several times faster than 20MHz.

danheskett: That's an excellent point. A lot of people are thinking instruction = 1 cycle. The real world is that it's not unusual for an instruction to take 2, 4, 10, or even 100 cycles. The reality of the matter is that instructions can be anything from a single two bit sum to a floating point division. I see this mistake a lot...

You both assume that the one who wrote the article didn't make the same mistake in the opposite direction.

In this article about the Stardust probe, the RAD6000 is said to be "a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC chip used on some models of Macintosh computers" which "can be switched between clock speeds of 5, 10 or 20 MHz".

It is now believed that the rover's flash memory had become so full of files that the craft couldn't manage all of the information stored aboard. Spirit bogged down because it didn't have enough random access memory, or RAM, to handle the current amount of files in the flash -- including data recorded during its cruise from Earth to Mars and the 18 days of operations on the red planet's surface.

It is now believed that the rover's flash memory had become so full of files that the craft couldn't manage all of the information stored aboard. Spirit bogged down because it didn't have enough random access memory, or RAM, to handle the current amount of files in the flash -- including data recorded during its cruise from Earth to Mars and the 18 days of operations on the red planet's surface.

anybody notice the differences between spirit rover 1 landing site and opportunity rover 2 landing site? (high res) anyone care to comment on what the raw images may show? described clockwise from 12 o'clock.

compare the above images with this pathfinder image taken in '97.

spirit image 1:

context

flat, slightly undulating landscape. scattered large rocks. undulations appear to be lighter coloured/different texture.

12 o'clock

flat, slighly undulating granular surface punctuated with small to medium sized rocks scattered evenly. Between the larger rocks smaller fragments appear just beneath the surface causing convex bulging of the surface material. No craters. larger surface features (mountains?) in the distance.

12 o'clock

flat, slighly undulating granular surface punctuated with small to medium sized rocks scattered evenly. Between the larger rocks smaller fragments appear just beneath the surface causing convex bulging of the surface material.

2 o'clock

rocks appear shattered with sharp edges. larger rocks exposed appear untouched by weathering. material on ground has gentle undulations. In some instances the material covers the rocks.

3 o'clock

slight rises in ground material appear from 2 to 7 - facing in the same direction.

5 o'clock

jpl image on rover visible. rocks to immediate left and above appear to be pock marked. In these pock marks appear to be grains of martian surface.

8 o'clock

collections of rocks above and partially hidden in surface. rocks partially hidden show outlines below the surface. compared to 5 there are much less of the larger rocks. looking right to the 6 position just above the largest pock marked rock notice the collection of very small rocks just beneath the surface.

11 o'clock

trio of larger rocks at 12,6 and 9. inside these rocks are smaller rocks. shadows appear from the 5 position. Inside the trio of rocks appear a great many collection of smaller rocks bounded by the other 3. close inspection of the rocks reveal small mounds surrounding them at a short distance.

opportunity image 2:

context:
appears to have landed in a low depression. You can see the a hill on the horizon. The image is taken with the sun at high angle. It is just possible to see what appears to be drag marks against the flat surface. Another image shows the wind swept regular surface devoid of visible small rocks.

12 o'clock

we have what looks like undisturbed/slightly ground with smooth texture. resembles wind blow sand. No inidcation of rock deposits on surface. From this image it is difficult to tell what is original surface. However if we look at this image we see that the surface surrounding image is a fine textured regular surface where the only irregular surface is possibly where spirit has come into context.

2 o'clock

depression of surface that could be drag marks. area shows both smooth surface as described at 12 and scratch marks that expose small darker objects which could be deeper marks in the disturbed surface or small regular sized objects.
Note scratch mark in top left region crossing the previously created marks suggesting it has been made after the other marks.

anybody notice the differences between spirit rover 1 landing site and opportunity rover 2 landing site? (high res) anyone care to comment on what the raw images may show? described clockwise from 12 o'clock.

compare the above images with this pathfinder image taken in '97.

spirit image 1:

context

flat, slightly undulating landscape. scattered large rocks. undulations appear to be lighter coloured/different texture.

12 o'clock

flat, slighly undulating granular surface punctuated with small to medium sized rocks scattered evenly. Between the larger rocks smaller fragments appear just beneath the surface causing convex bulging of the surface material. No craters. larger surface features (mountains?) in the distance.

12 o'clock

flat, slighly undulating granular surface punctuated with small to medium sized rocks scattered evenly. Between the larger rocks smaller fragments appear just beneath the surface causing convex bulging of the surface material.

2 o'clock

rocks appear shattered with sharp edges. larger rocks exposed appear untouched by weathering. material on ground has gentle undulations. In some instances the material covers the rocks.

3 o'clock

slight rises in ground material appear from 2 to 7 - facing in the same direction.

5 o'clock

jpl image on rover visible. rocks to immediate left and above appear to be pock marked. In these pock marks appear to be grains of martian surface.

8 o'clock

collections of rocks above and partially hidden in surface. rocks partially hidden show outlines below the surface. compared to 5 there are much less of the larger rocks. looking right to the 6 position just above the largest pock marked rock notice the collection of very small rocks just beneath the surface.

11 o'clock

trio of larger rocks at 12,6 and 9. inside these rocks are smaller rocks. shadows appear from the 5 position. Inside the trio of rocks appear a great many collection of smaller rocks bounded by the other 3. close inspection of the rocks reveal small mounds surrounding them at a short distance.

opportunity image 2:

context:
appears to have landed in a low depression. You can see the a hill on the horizon. The image is taken with the sun at high angle. It is just possible to see what appears to be drag marks against the flat surface. Another image shows the wind swept regular surface devoid of visible small rocks.

12 o'clock

we have what looks like undisturbed/slightly ground with smooth texture. resembles wind blow sand. No inidcation of rock deposits on surface. From this image it is difficult to tell what is original surface. However if we look at this image we see that the surface surrounding image is a fine textured regular surface where the only irregular surface is possibly where spirit has come into context.

2 o'clock

depression of surface that could be drag marks. area shows both smooth surface as described at 12 and scratch marks that expose small darker objects which could be deeper marks in the disturbed surface or small regular sized objects.
Note scratch mark in top left region crossing the previously created marks suggesting it has been made after the other marks.

anybody notice the differences between spirit rover 1 landing site and opportunity rover 2 landing site? (high res) anyone care to comment on what the raw images may show? described clockwise from 12 o'clock.

compare the above images with this pathfinder image taken in '97.

spirit image 1:

context

flat, slightly undulating landscape. scattered large rocks. undulations appear to be lighter coloured/different texture.

12 o'clock

flat, slighly undulating granular surface punctuated with small to medium sized rocks scattered evenly. Between the larger rocks smaller fragments appear just beneath the surface causing convex bulging of the surface material. No craters. larger surface features (mountains?) in the distance.

12 o'clock

flat, slighly undulating granular surface punctuated with small to medium sized rocks scattered evenly. Between the larger rocks smaller fragments appear just beneath the surface causing convex bulging of the surface material.

2 o'clock

rocks appear shattered with sharp edges. larger rocks exposed appear untouched by weathering. material on ground has gentle undulations. In some instances the material covers the rocks.

3 o'clock

slight rises in ground material appear from 2 to 7 - facing in the same direction.

5 o'clock

jpl image on rover visible. rocks to immediate left and above appear to be pock marked. In these pock marks appear to be grains of martian surface.

8 o'clock

collections of rocks above and partially hidden in surface. rocks partially hidden show outlines below the surface. compared to 5 there are much less of the larger rocks. looking right to the 6 position just above the largest pock marked rock notice the collection of very small rocks just beneath the surface.

11 o'clock

trio of larger rocks at 12,6 and 9. inside these rocks are smaller rocks. shadows appear from the 5 position. Inside the trio of rocks appear a great many collection of smaller rocks bounded by the other 3. close inspection of the rocks reveal small mounds surrounding them at a short distance.

opportunity image 2:

context:
appears to have landed in a low depression. You can see the a hill on the horizon. The image is taken with the sun at high angle. It is just possible to see what appears to be drag marks against the flat surface. Another image shows the wind swept regular surface devoid of visible small rocks.

12 o'clock

we have what looks like undisturbed/slightly ground with smooth texture. resembles wind blow sand. No inidcation of rock deposits on surface. From this image it is difficult to tell what is original surface. However if we look at this image we see that the surface surrounding image is a fine textured regular surface where the only irregular surface is possibly where spirit has come into context.

2 o'clock

depression of surface that could be drag marks. area shows both smooth surface as described at 12 and scratch marks that expose small darker objects which could be deeper marks in the disturbed surface or small regular sized objects.
Note scratch mark in top left region crossing the previously created marks suggesting it has been made after the other marks.

You are indeed wrong. The two rovers are identical (PDF file). And indeed, they are trying to make sure that what happened to Spirit won't happen to Opportunity as well.

Space flight now has a color photo of the area which has a red tint to it and a decent article about how the surface looks like talcum powder.

Very interesting stuff. I think we should launch another 6 or 10 of these things all over mars after fixing the problem spirit has.