We take a look at my top science stories and events of 2013, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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— Book Pic: —

• Area 51: An Uncensored History of America\’s Top Secret Military Base Audiobook | Annie Jacobsen | Audible.com

Curiosity | Evidence of Ancient Habitable Water Locations

• Habitable Water
• Jan | Curiosity sees calcium rich deposits that on Earth are associated with water percolating through cracks and fractured rocks.
• Mar | Drilling samples taken in Feb show that the minerals that are present in a lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein were very different from just about anything ever analyzed before on Mars and was deposited in a freshwater environment
• Sep | The Curiosity rover team revealed that the first scoop of soil analyzed by the rover showed several percent water by weight.
• Dec | Curiosity rover has discovered evidence that an ancient Martian lake had the right chemical ingredients that could have sustained microbial life
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Jan. 18, 2013): Curiosity Finds Calcium-Rich Deposits | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Mar. 15, 2013): Rover Hits Paydirt | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• Image | Pebbly Sandstone Conglomerate Rock at Curiosity’s Waypoint 1 | mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• YouTube | Curiosity Rover Report (Dec. 9, 2013): Dating Younger Rocks | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
• SciByte Episodes
• SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu | January 22, 2013
• SciByte 86 | Exoplanet & Bee Venom | March 19, 2013
• SciByte 104 | Fear & Lunar Formation | October 1, 2013
• SciByte 112 | Typing & Dying Silk | December 10, 2013

— NEWS BYTE —

Voyager 1 | “Interstellar Space” Announcement

• September
• NASA says that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is in interstellar space and actually made the transition about a year ago.
• Evidence is overwhelming that Voyager 1 has crossed the heliopause, but acknowledge that they have to determine why the magnetic field direction didn’t shift.
• The data does show that Voyager 1 in certainly in a new region at the edge of the solar system where things are changing rapidly
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Voyager Captures Sounds of Interstellar Space | Sep 6, 2013
• YouTube | Voyager Welcomed To Interstellar Space | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | Voyager 1 Goes Interstellar: Solar System Boundary Passed | VideoFromSpace
• SciByte Episodes
• SciByte 102 | Voyager 1 & Insect Gears | September 17, 2013

Exoplanets

• How Common are Habitable Planets
• Astronomers have analyzed all four years of Kepler data in search of Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars
• Based on the analysis, they estimate that 22 percent of stars like the sun have potentially habitable Earth-size planets, though not all may be rocky or have liquid water
• [SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks | November 12, 2013]
• Clouds on Alien Planet Mapped for 1st Time
• Astronomers using data from NASA\’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet known as Kepler-7b
• Kepler\’s visible-light observations of Kepler-7b\’s moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere
• That data was not enough on its own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat
• [SciByte 105 | Exoplanet Clouds & Updates | October 15, 2013]
• Two Potentially Habitable Planets
• Astronomers have announced that they have found three new, potentially rocky, planets in the habitable zone of their stars by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
• Two of the worlds, are the smallest exoplanets yet found in a habitable zone, and they might both be covered in water or ice, depending on what kind of atmosphere they might have
• [SciByte 92 | Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | May 7, 2013]
• Exoplanet Atmosphere
• Found hints of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and acetylene in an exo-planets’ atmosphere in the sharpest spectrum ever obtained of an extrasolar planet
• [SciByte 86 | Exoplanet & Bee Venom | March 19, 2013]
• Small Exoplanet Discovered by Listening to Star
• Scientists discovered a new planet orbiting a Sun-like star, and the exoplanet is the smallest yet found in data from the Kepler mission
• They discovered it by measuring oscillations in the star’s brightness caused by continuous star-quakes, and turning those tiny variations in the star’s light into sounds
• [SciByte 83 | Tiny Exo-planet & Medical Glue | February 26, 2013]
• Multimedia
• YouTube | One in Five Sun-Like Stars Have \’Goldilocks\’ Planets | VideoFromSpace
• YouTube | Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System | American Museum of Natural History
• 3D Visualization Tool | A fully rendered tool, available for download at eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets

International and Private Space Travel

• India’s Mars Orbiter Mission
• India’s first ever Mars probe ‘MOM’ successfully fired its main engine on Dec. 1 to begin its nearly yearlong momentous voyage to Mars
• ISRO’s engineers devised a procedure to get the spacecraft to Mars on the least amount of fuel via six “Midnight Maneuver” engine burns over several weeks – and at an extremely low cost
• This maneuver increases the ship’s velocity and gradually widens the ellipse eventually raising the apogee of the six resulting elliptical orbits around Earth that eventually injects MOM onto the Trans-Mars trajectory
• SciByte 111| Memories & International Spacecraft (December 3, 2013)
• SciByte 109 | ‘Earth-Like’ Planets & Sharks (November 12, 2013)
• SciByte 107 | Dinosaurs & Satellites (October 29, 2013)
• Chinese Lunar Lander
• China had a successful touchdown of the Chang’e-3 probe with the ‘Yutu’ rover on the surface of the Moon on Dec. 14
• They landed on the lava filled plains of the Bay of Rainbows occurred at about 8:11 am EST or 9:11 p.m. Beijing local time
• Barely seven hours after the Chang’e-3 mothership touched down on Sunday, Dec. 15, the six wheeled ‘Yutu’, or Jade Rabbit, rover drove straight off a pair of ramps at 4:35 a.m. Beijing local time
• SciByte 113 | Freshwater Aquifers & Brain Plasticity (December 17, 2013)
• Bigelow Aerospace’s | Genesis, Inflatable Space Station Modules
• On Jan 11 NASA announced they have awarded a $17.8 million contract to Bigelow to provide a new inflatable module for the ISS, making it the first privately built module to be added to the space station
• The outer shell of their module is soft, as opposed to the rigid outer shell of current modules at the ISS, Bigelow’s inflatable modules are more resistant to micrometeoroid or orbital debris strikes it uses multiple layers of Vectran, a material which is twice as strong as Kevlar
• The company wants to launch and link up several of its larger expandable modules to create private space stations, which could be used by a variety of clients.
• SciByte 77 | Breath Analysis & Large Structures (January 15, 2013)
• SpaceX | Geostationary Orbit
• The Dec 3 liftoff at 5:41 p.m. EST (2241 GMT) marked SpaceX\’s first entry into the large commercial satellite market and its first launch into a geostationary transfer orbit needed for such a mission.
• Being able to launch into this new orbit will let SpaceX compete against Europe and Russia to haul large telecommunications satellites into orbit.
• This launch also marks the second of three certification flights needed to certify the Falcon 9 to fly missions for the U.S. Air Force under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program
• When Falcon 9 is certified, SpaceX will be eligible to compete for all National Security Space (NSS) missions

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Science Events of 2013

• Kepler Space Telescope
• Jan | Kepler develops another reaction wheel problem, \’rests\’ for 1 days and then goes back to work | SciByte 78 | Dyscalculia & the Flu | January 22, 2013
• May | [SciByte 94] | The second of four reaction wheel fails and may bring the mission to an end. NASA starts to put options together
• Aug | NASA announces that Kepler may not fully recover, ends primary mission, opens up the possibility and ideas of another mission
• K2 Second Light | Uses pressure from photons from the Sun some functionality will return
• Image Galleries | kepler.nasa.gov
• Twitter | NASA Kepler [@NASAKepler]
• Russian Chelyabinsk Meteorite
• SciByte 82 | Meteorites & Asteroids – 2013 Russian Meteorite Strike | February 19, 2013
• SciByte 83 |
  Tiny Exo-planet & Medical Glue – Russian Meteorite Orbital Calculations | February 26, 2013
• SciByte 84 |
  HIV & SpaceX Troubles – Russian Meteorite Chunk Found | March 5, 2013
• Infographic | Huge Russian Meteor Blast is Biggest Since 1908 | Space.com
• YouTube | Meteorite crash in Russia: Video of meteorite explosion that stirred panic in Urals region | RT
• YouTube Huge hole as Russian meteor smashes into icy lake | RT
• YouTube | Meteor Hits Russia 2013 – Best Footage Collection | Tuvix72

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Software Upgrade
• Curiosity engineers uploaded the third upgrade version of the software, completing the switch to the new software took about a week
• Wheel Wear
• An upcoming activity will be driving to a relatively smooth patch of ground to take a set of images of Curiosity\’s aluminum wheels, using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover\’s arm.
• Curiosity\’s recent driving has crossed an area that has numerous sharp rocks embedded in the ground. Routes to future destinations for the mission may be charted to lessen the amount of travel over such rough terrain, compared to smoother ground nearby.
• Multimedia
• Image | Left-Front Wheel of Curiosity Rover, Approaching Three Miles | mars.nasa.gov/msl
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity Team Upgrades Software, Checks Wheel Wear | December 20, 2013

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• Jan 11, 1954 : 59 years ago : First UK TV Weather Broadcast : The first in-vision weather forecaster broadcast on BBC television. George Cowling of the Meteorological Office presented from the BBC\’s Lime Grove studios with two hand-drawn weather charts pinned to an easel.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Fri, Jan 10 | Nightfall | To the left of the moon you might be able to see the Pleiades star cluster, by 8-9 they will be above the moon
• Sat, Jan 11 | Dusk | The orange giant star Aldebaran, \’eye\’ of the Constellation Taurus, will be below the moon and moving to the left of the Moon by around 11
• Planets
• Venus | Hiding in the glare of the sun
• Mars | ~midnight | HIghest in the S before first light of dawn, with Spica to the lower left
• Jupiter | Rises at sunset, highest in the sky around midnight. In the evenings it is the brightest object in the sky. On Jan 5, it is in opposition, directly opposite the Sun from our perspective.

• Saturn | Dawn it\’s in the SE, far to the lower left of Mars and Spica

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope
• SpaceWeather.com
• StarDate.org
• For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
• Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
• Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
• AstronomyNow
• HeavensAbove