We take a look at possible evidence of Martian life, 3D printing a heart, Tetris, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Evidence of Martian Life?

• A team of scientists has found evidence of past water movement throughout a Martian meteorite, reviving debate in the scientific community over life on Mars.
• The team reports that newly discovered different structures and compositional features within the larger Yamato meteorite suggest biological processes might have been at work on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.
• Mars On Earth?
• Martian meteoritic material is distinguished from other meteorites and materials from Earth and the moon by the composition of the oxygen atoms within the silicate minerals and trapped Martian atmospheric gases
  • Robotic missions to Mars continue to shed light on the planet\’s history, the only samples from Mars available for study on Earth are Martian meteorites
• On Earth, we can utilize multiple analytical techniques to take a more in-depth look into meteorites
• In 1996, a group of scientists published an article in Science announcing the discovery of biogenic evidence in the Allan Hills 84001(ALH84001) meteorite.
• The History of as Yamato 000593 (Y000593).
• Scientists are now focused on structures deep within a 30-pound (13.7-kilogram) Martian meteorite known as Yamato 000593 (Y000593).
• Analyses found that the rock was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow on Mars
• Around 12 million years ago, an impact occurred on Mars which ejected the meteorite from the surface of Mars.
• The meteorite traveled through space until it fell in Antarctica about 50,000 years ago.
• The rock was found on the Yamato Glacier in Antarctica by the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2000
• Scientists are now focused on two distinctive sets of features associated with Martian-derived clay
• Tunnel and Micro-Tunnel Structures
• Tunnel and micro-tunnel structures that thread their way throughout Yamato 000593
• The observed micro-tunnels display curved, undulating shapes consistent with bio-alteration textures observed in terrestrial basaltic glasses
• These type of structures have previously been reported by researchers who study interactions of bacteria with basaltic materials on Earth
• Nanometer- to-Micrometer-Sized Spherules
• The second set of features consists of nanometer- to-micrometer-sized spherules
• Similar spherical features have been previously seen in the Martian meteorite Nakhla that fell in 1911 in Egypt.
• Composition measurements of the Y000593 spherules show that they are significantly enriched in carbon compared to the nearby surrounding iddingsite layers.
• What This Might Mean
• These two sets of features in Y000593, recovered from Antarctica after about 50,000 years residence time, are similar to features found in Nakhla, an observed fall collected shortly after landing.
• Scientists cannot exclude the possibility that the carbon-rich regions in both sets of features may be the product of abiotic mechanisms
• Textural and compositional similarities to features in terrestrial samples, which have been interpreted as biogenic, imply the intriguing possibility that the Martian features were formed by biotic activity.
  +The features are evidence of aqueous alterations as seen in the clay minerals, and the presence of carbonaceous matter associated with the clay phases which show that Mars has been a very active body in its past
• It also reveals the presence of an active water reservoir that may also have a significant carbon component.
• The nature and distribution of Martian carbon is one of the major goals of the Mars Exploration Program
• What Now?
• The small sizes of the carbonaceous features within the Yamato 000593 meteorite present major challenges to any analyses attempted by remote techniques on Mars
• While these new features are no \”smoking gun,\” they are nonetheless interesting and show that further studies of these meteorites should continue
• Further Reading / In the News
• Evidence of water in meteorite revives debate over life on Mars | Phys.org

—  NEWS BYTE —

3D Printed Model Heart Helps Save a Life

• While heart surgery on a 14 month old is not unheard of, recently a surgeon was able to map out his surgical approach using a nearly exact model of the patients heart printed on a 3D printer.
• Laying Out A Surgery Plan
• The 14 month old infant was born with four congenital heart defects, doctors had known since before he was born that his heart had problems
• Fixing them all would prove to be a challenge., when it came time to plan the surgery surgeons found each of them had different ideas on the best way to fix the heart
• The ideal approach would involve the least amount of cutting and suturing—but that can be hard to plan using only conventional scanning techniques
• 3D Printed Model
• Researchers worked with radiologists to provide heart to data that could be used with a 3D printer.
• They used CT scanning data, which seemed to a perfect match as CT scanning uses the same basic idea as 3D printing
• CT scanning takes pictures of slices and puts them together on a computer screen to form a whole, and 3D printing is achieved by laying down one layer or \”slice\” of material at a time.
• They decided to print the heart (in three pieces) at twice its normal size
• It was also used a flexible type of plastic known as \”Ninja Flex\” instead of the often used ABS (used in LEGO bricks)
• This allowed the surgeon to bend the finished heart in ways that resembled a real human heart.
• The Surgery
• Printing the heart took approximately 20 hours at a cost of roughly $600, it allowed for a single surgery and greatly reduced cutting and suturing, which ultimately led to a much quicker recovery
• The surgery happened on Feb 10, and by all accounts is now doing just fine
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Doctors prepare for heart surgery with 3D printing | News On Here
• Further Reading / In the News
• Doctor uses printed 3D heart to assist in infant heart surgery | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Controlling Cravings With Tetris

• A recent study suggests that Tetris could actually help dieters reduce cravings
• The Study
• Researchers created two study groups: One that played Tetris for three minutes while the other group was told that the game was loading but they never received the chance to play
• Participants were then asked to rate their cravings for cigarettes, food and alcohol based on the vividness, intrusiveness and strength of those cravings.
• The Tetris group showed a 24 percent reduction in cravings following their activity with the game
• The other group who did not get to play Tetris did not experience any craving reductions.
• The Power of Tetris
• \”Feeling in control is an important part of staying motivated, and playing Tetris can potentially help the individual to stay in control when cravings strike\” | Professors Jackie Andrade | University\’s Cognition Institute
• Tetris is something a person can quickly access, and can replace the feeling of stress caused by the craving, and could be used while at work or home
• Scientists are constantly looking for things to help fight against such cravings through healthy activities, like exercise
• They label Tetris as a neutral activity that has a positive impact so it is a good alternative for now
• Further Reading / In the News
• Could the Video-Game Tetris Curb Cravings for Food, Cigarettes and Alcohol? | ScienceWorldReport.com

—  VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Withdrawing 120 Nonsense Science Papers

• Martin (lowfatty)
• The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense.
• Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers : Nature News & Comment | Nature.com
• Computer-Generated Papers
• Over the past two years computer-generated papers have made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013
• Sixteen appeared in publications by Springer and more than 100 were published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE),
• Among the works a paper published as a proceeding from the 2013 International Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering, held in Chengdu, China.
• Most of the conferences took place in China, and most of the fake papers have authors with Chinese affiliations.
• The authors of the paper, entitled ‘TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce’, in the abstract that they “concentrate our efforts on disproving that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and compact”.
• One of the named authors replied that he does not know why he was a listed co-author on the paper and first learned of the article when conference organizers notified his university in December 2013
• SCIgen
• One way to automatically detect manuscripts composed by a piece of software called SCIgen, which randomly combines strings of words to produce fake computer-science papers
• SCIgen was invented in 2005 by researchers to prove that conferences would accept meaningless papers — and, as they put it, “to maximize amusement”
• A related program generates random physics manuscript titles on the satirical website arXiv vs. snarXiv.
• SCIgen is free to download and use, and it is unclear how many people have done so, or for what purposes
• SCIgen’s output has occasionally popped up at conferences, when researchers have submitted nonsense papers and then revealed the trick.
• The papers are quite easy to spot,” says Labbé, who has built a website where users can test whether papers have been created using SCIgen.
• Automatically identifying these papers involves searching for characteristic vocabulary generated by SCIgen
• **History of Fake Papers
• In April 2010, someone used SCIgen to generate 102 fake papers by a fictional author called Ike Antkare to show how easy it was to add these fake papers to the Google Scholar database
• There is a long history of journalists and researchers getting spoof papers accepted in conferences or by journals to reveal weaknesses in academic quality controls

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

China\’s Yutu Lunar Rover

• Last Time on SciByte …
• sciByte 111 | Yutu Launch | Memories & International Spacecraft | December 3, 2013
• SciByte 113 | Yutu Landing | Aquifers & Brain Plasticity | December 17, 2013
• SciByte 115 | Yutu Wakes Up on Second Lunar Day | Sleep Apnea & Heart Defect Treatments | January 14, 2014
• SciByte 120 | Canadian Fossils & Yutu Rover | February 18, 2014
• Control Circuit Malfunction
• “Yutu suffered a control circuit malfunction in its driving unit,” according to a newly published report on March 1 by the state owned Xinhua news agency.
• A functioning control circuit is required to lower the rovers mast so the malfunction prevented Yutu from entering the second dormancy as planned
• The panel driving unit also helps maneuver the panels into position to efficiently point to the sun to maximize the electrical output
• They must be folded down into a warmed electronics box to shield them from the damaging effects of the Moon’s nightfall when temperatures plunge dramatically to below minus 180 Celsius, or minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Lunar Day 3
• The 140 kilogram rover was unable to move during Lunar Day 3 due to the mechanical glitches so only carried out fixed point observations during its third lunar day
• It was able to complete some limited scientific observations. And fortunately the ground penetrating radar, panoramic and infrared imaging equipment all functioned normally.
• Chinese space engineers engaged in troubleshooting to try and identify and rectify the technical problems in a race against time to find a solution before the start of Lunar Night 3.
• Lunar Night 3 and the Future
• The issue with the control circuit malfunction in its driving unit remains unresolved and a still threatens the outlook for Yutu’s future exploration.
• Yutu and the companion Chang’e-3 lander have again gone into sleep mode during Lunar Night 3 on Feb. 22 and Feb 23 respectively, local Beijing time.
• Yutu is now nearing its planned 3 month long life expectancy
• Further Reading / In the News
• China\’s Yutu Moon Rover Unable to Properly Maneuver Solar Panels | UniverseToday.com

Kepler Data Continues to Show New Exo-Planets

• More Planets
• The Kepler Space Telescope has been inactive since May of 2013, but the probe\’s data has led astronomers to discover 715 new planets
• The 715 new planets are said to be distributed among 305 different star systems bringing the number of known planets beyond our solar system has increased to almost 1,700
• The number of Earth-sized planets has increased by 400% and four of the newly discovered planets are about 2.5 times wider than Earth
• Another four [Kepler 174d, Kepler 296f, Kepler 298d, and Kepler 309c] are also said to be located in a habitable zone where water may exist in liquid form
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Nearly Doubles Discovery of Known Planets Without Active Kepler Space Telescope | ScienceWorldReport.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• NASA\’s Curiosity Mars rover has reached an area where orbital images had piqued researchers\’ interest in patches of ground with striations all oriented in a similar direction
• The six wheeled rover paused during the planned Feb. 19 drive of 328 feet (100 meters) to capture the imagery, on Feb. 20 (Sol 549), she also completed her second 100 meter drive in reverse.
• The foreground rocks are in an outcrop called \”Junda,\” which the rover passed during a drive of 328 feet (100 meters) on Feb. 19.
• Engineers will now occasionally commanding Curiosity to drive backwards in a newly tested bid to minimize serious damage to the six 20 inch diameter wheels
• Curiosity is well on the way to her next near term goal, which is a science waypoint, named Kimberly (formerly called KMS-9), which lies about half a mile ahead.
• \”Kimberley,\” features ground with striations and is where researchers plan to suspend driving for a period of science investigations
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity Rover pauses mid-drive and captures Spectacular Martian Mountain Snapshot | UniverseToday.com
• Mars Science Laboratory: NASA\’s Curiosity Mars Rover Views Striated Ground | mars.jpl.naga.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• March 06, 1950 : 64 years ago : Silly Putty : Silly Putty was introduced as a toy by Peter Hodgson, a marketing consultant, who packaged one-ounce portions of the rubber-like material in plastic eggs. It could be stretched, rolled into a bouncing ball, or used to transfer colored ink from newsprint. The original discovery was made in 1943 by James Wright who combined silicone oil and boric acid at the laboratories of General Electric. He was researching methods of making synthetic rubber, but at the time no significant application existed for the material. However, it was passed around as a curiosity. Hodgson saw a sample and realized its potential simply for entertainment and coined its name for marketing it as a toy. Its popularity made him a millionaire

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs, March 6 | ~hour after sunset | Aldebaran, an orange giant star, is to the upper left of the Moon and the Pleiades star cluster is to the Moon\’s upper right
• Fri, Mar 7 | Tonight Aldebaran is below the Moon
• Sat, Mar 8 | Dusk | The first-quarter Moon stands above Orion high in the south, with Jupiter to the upper left of the Moon
• Planets
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Before and during dawn Venus is in the SE
• Mars | 10pm | Rises in the SE, with Spica 6* to its right. The two are their highest point around 3-4am with Spica now to the lower right
• Jupiter | Is the only planet visible right now in the evenings and is high in the SE, it crosses nearly overhead (for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes) around 8 or 9 p.m. and sets in the West before dawn
• Saturn | 11pm-Midnight | Rises around 11 or and is highest in the south at the beginning of dawn. By then it\’s far to the left of Mars and Spica

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME – Sunday, March 9

• “SPRING” AHEAD

• “Losing” 1 Hour

• 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

The post Martian Life & Tetris | SciByte 122 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We take a look at water vapor on a Dwarf Planet, driverless taxis, evening smartphone use, sensors in football helmets, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Water on a Dwarf Planet in the Asteroid Belt

• Scientists have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.
• Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres when portions of its icy surface warm slightly
• A Viewer Also Pointed Out This Story
• Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Ceres
• Ceres was known as the largest asteroid in our solar system
• When it first was spotted in 1801, astronomers thought it was a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter
• The materials making up Ceres likely date from the first few million years of our solar system\’s existence and accumulated before the planets formed.
• The International Astronomical Union is the governing organization responsible for naming planetary objects reclassified it as a dwarf planet, a solar system body bigger than an asteroid and smaller than a planet.
• They reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet because of its large size. It is roughly 590 miles (950 kilometers) in diameter
• Until now, ice had been theorized to exist on Ceres but had not been detected conclusively
• NASA\’s Dawn Mission
• Is on its way to Ceres now after spending more than a year orbiting the large asteroid Vesta is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in the spring of 2015, where it will take the closest look ever at its surface.
• There it will map the geology and chemistry of the surface in high resolution
• Intermediate Water Vapor
• Scientists used far-infrared vision to see, finally, a clear spectral signature of the water vapor, but they did not see water vapor every time it looked
• They were able to see the water vapor four different times, on one occasion there was no signature
• What scientists now think is happening is when Ceres swings through the part of its orbit that is closer to the sun, a portion of its icy surface becomes warm enough to cause water vapor to escape in plumes
• When Ceres is in the colder part of its orbit, no water escapes
• The strength of the signal also varied over hours, weeks and months, with water vapor plumes rotating in and out of Herschel\’s views as the object spun on its axis
• This enabled the scientists to localize the source of water to two darker spots on the surface of Ceres
• Previously seen by NASA\’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes, the dark spots might be more likely to outgas because dark material warms faster than light material.
• Dwarf Planets, Asteroids and Comets
• \”This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere,\” | Michael Küppers of ESA in Spain
• Scientists now believe Ceres contains rock in its interior with a thick mantle of ice that, if melted, would amount to more freshwater than is present on all of Earth
• \”The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids\” | Seungwon Lee of JPL
• \”We knew before about main belt asteroids that show comet-like activity, but this is the first detection of water vapor in an asteroid-like object.\” | Paul von Allmen, JPL
• Further Reading / In the News
• Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres | Phys.org
• Herschel Discovers Water Vapor Spewing from Ceres | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Driverless Taxis

• Driverless taxis will be carrying passengers during demonstration projects in five European cities as of February 2014
• EU-funded CityMobil2 project, is one of a number of research initiatives that are testing out specially designed self-driving road vehicles as the technology required to navigate them becomes cheaper and more reliable
• Visual Odometry
• Cybercars have traditionally sensed the world through expensive gyroscopes, microwaves and laser beams
• Currently, cheap cameras and fast image-recognition algorithms has led to a new technique known as visual odometry
• Visual odometry uses images to look at the terrain before and after a small drive step
• By tracking specific features they can tell how far they have moved, the position and orientation of the vehicle.
• Sound Familiar? Curiosity Rover is using the same technology for some of it\’s automated driving
• SciByte 103 | Martian Methane & Deep Impact | September 24, 2013
• V-Charge Project
• Car manufacturers are already making automated piloting features of their own – radar-based cruise control, anti-braking systems (ABS) and lane-control assistance
• Cables and hydraulic pressure valves which previously linked the controls of the vehicle to its working parts are gradually being replaced with electronic circuits
• The V-Charge Project is a consortium of companies and universities which is working on fully automated low-speed driving in cities using only cameras and other low-cost sensors mounted on standard cars
• The consortium is working to produce detailed maps and a perception system that allows a vehicle to recognize its location and identify nearby pedestrians and vehicles, all using only stereoscopic or fisheye cameras.
• The team has taken this a step further, pioneering a guidance system that works economically by using a single camera.
• How Soon is Soon?
• While companies such as Google see autonomous cars in a couple of decades the people with the CityMobil2 project think that they could be hitting the road sooner than that
• The team believes that, in addition to teaching cars to respond autonomously to traffic conditions, traffic should be adapted to automated cars
• In their current state of development, cybercars can already drive safely in pedestrian areas and designated lanes
• The first CityMobil project shuttled passengers across the car park of London Heathrow airport in a fleet of driverless pods
• CityMobil2, now brings specially designed automated vehicles to designated roads inside the city centre
• Future Plans
• The project plans to procure two sets of automated vehicles which will tour five cities in a series of demonstration projects each lasting six to eight months
• Investors are at present deterred by their high initial investment and perceived risks.
• CityMobil2 is bringing together experts from ministries in each member state to agree on technical requirements by the time the project concludes in 2016 that could feed into a future European directive on the issue
• Further Reading / In the News
• Driverless Taxis in European Cities from 2014 | ScienceWorldRepoer.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Nighttime Smartphone Use

• In a pair of studies surveying a broad spectrum of U.S. workers found that people who monitored their smart phones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and were less engaged the following day on the job.
• Productivity and Sleep
• More than half of U.S. adults own a smartphone and many consider the devices to be among the most important tools ever invented when it comes to increasing productivity of knowledge-based work
• The National Sleep Foundation says only 40 percent of Americans get enough sleep on most nights a commonly cited reason is smartphone usage for work.
• The Studies
• The first study, the researchers had 82 upper-level managers complete multiple surveys every day for two weeks.
• The second study surveyed 161 employees daily in a variety of occupations — from nursing to manufacturing and from accounting to dentistry
• They showed that nighttime smartphone usage for business purposes cut into sleep and sapped workers\’ energy the next day in the office
• The second study also compared smartphone usage to other electronic devices and found that smartphones had a larger negative effect than watching television and using laptop and tablet computers
• In addition to keeping people mentally engaged at night, smartphones emit \”blue light\”
• Blue light is the most disruptive of all colors of light and is known to hinder melatonin, a chemical in the body that promotes sleep
• Nighttime use of smartphones appears to have both psychological and physiological effects on people\’s ability to sleep and on sleep\’s essential recovery functions
• Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management
• \”There may be times in which putting off work until the next day would have disastrous consequences and using your smartphone is well worth the negative effects on less important tasks the next day,\”
• \”But on many other nights, more sleep may be your best bet.\”
• Further Reading / In the News
• Nighttime smartphone use zaps workers\’ energy | ScienceDaily.com

Football Helmet Safety Tech

• The CDC estimates that between the 1.6 million and 3.8 million Americans suffer sports-related concussions every year, these concussions occur after what seems like a pretty mild blow to the head
• In football, the risk of concussion has been a hot-button issue
• Sensors
• Sensors within helmets can catch what human eyes often miss, alerting people on the sidelines that a player may need to be taken out of play and screened for a concussion
• Jake Merrell, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University created a smart foam that works within football helmets to measure how hard a player just got hit
• Motion sensors transmit data wirelessly to a tablet or computer when the foam in the helmet is compressed by the player\’s head, measuring the force and acceleration of the impact.
• What\’s Out Now
• The helmet manufacturer Riddell debuted a similar concussion-alert product this year, called the InSite Impact Response System which is being used by some high school teams in the 2013 season.
• Sensors inside the player\’s helmet lining measure the severity of a head impact and send an alert to the sidelines if a player has sustained a potentially concussion-inducing hit
• Although this system only works in Riddell\’s Revolution Speed helmet so far.
• What\’s Next
• \”A coach will know within seconds exactly how hard their player just got hit\” | Jake Merrell, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Brigham Young University
• He plans to submit his project to the Head Health Challenge sponsored by GE and the NFL
• Further Reading / In the News
• Smart Foam In Football Helmets Measures Impact Of Each Hit | Popular Science

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Chinese Lander, Chang’e 3, Panorama

• Color of the Lunar Soil
• The lander beamed back a series of new photos taken with its panoramic camera. stitched together, they give us a more detailed and colorful look of the rover’s surroundings in northern Mare Imbrium
• Color images of the moon’s surface by the Apollo astronauts along with their verbal descriptions indicate a uniform gray color punctuated in rare spots by patches of more colorful soils
• Apollo visited six different moonscapes – all essentially gray
• One thing that stands out is the brown color of the lunar surface soil or regolith, it\’s possible that it is simply that the color balance in the Chinese images might be off. Or did Chang’e 3 just happen to land on browner soils
• Multimedia
• The six wheeled Yutu rover, which means ‘Jade Rabbit’, has “experienced a mechanical control abnormality” in a new report by China’s official government newspaper, The People’s Daily
• ‘Jade Rabbit’ was traversing southwards from the landing site as the incident occurred just days ago – about six weeks into its planned 3 month moon roving expedition
• Very few details have emerged or been released by the Chinese government about Yutu’s condition or fate
• The abnormality occurred due to the “complicated lunar surface environment,” said the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence
• Based on unofficial accounts, it appears that one of the solar panels did not fold back properly over Yutu’s mast after it was lowered to the required horizontal position into a warmed box to shield and protect it from the extremely frigid lunar night time temperatures
• This could potentially spell doom for the mast mounted instruments and electronic systems, including the color and navigation cameras and the high gain antenna, if true
• The event took place just prior to the beginning of the 2nd lunar night and ‘dormancy’ for both ‘Jade Rabbit’ and the Chang’e-3 each Lunar night also lasts approximately 14 Earth days
• There is no communication possible during sleep mode, no one will know until the resumption of daylight some two weeks from now – around Feb. 8 to 9.
• Further Reading / In the News
• Yutu rover Suffers Significant Setback at Start of 2nd Lunar Night | UniverseToday.com+ Chang\’e 3 Lander Beams Back New Lunar Panorama Photos | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring
• On Oct. 19, 2014 comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring will buzz Mars about 10 times closer than any identified comet has ever flown past Earth
• Spacecraft at Mars might get a good look at the nucleus of comet Siding Spring as it heads toward the closest approach, roughly 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers) from the planet
• Dust particles that the comet nucleus sheds this spring could threaten orbiting spacecraft at Mars in October
• The level of risk won\’t be known for months, but NASA is already evaluating possible precautionary measures as it prepares for studying the comet
• Observations of comet Siding Spring are planned using resources on Earth, orbiting Earth, on Mars and orbiting Mars, and some are already underway
• Infrared imaging reveals a comet that is active and dusty, even though still nearly three-fourths as far from the sun as Jupiter is
• Comet Viewing Experience
• Researchers using spacecraft at Mars gained experience at trying to observe comet ISON approached Mars
• That flyby distance was about 80 times farther than Siding Spring\’s will be
• The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA\’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could provide imagery with resolution of dozens of pixels across the diameter of the nucleus, when HiRISE observed comet ISON, the nucleus was less than one pixel across
• Cameras on the Mars rovers Curiosity and Opportunity might watch for meteors in the sky that would be an indication of the abundance of particles in the comet\’s tail, though the geometry of the flyby would put most of the meteors in daytime sky instead of dark sky
• The degree to which Siding Spring brightens this spring will be an indicator of how much hazard it will present to spacecraft at Mars
• The path the nucleus will take is now known fairly well. The important unknowns are how much dust will come off the nucleus, when it will come off, and the geometry of the resulting coma and tail of the comet.
• Spacecraft Safety
• Orbiters are designed with the risk of space-dust collisions in mind
• Over a five-year span for a Mars orbiter, NASA figures on a few percent chance of significant damage to a spacecraft from the background level of impacts from such particles, called meteoroids
• If managers choose to position orbiters behind Mars during the peak risk, the further in advance any orbit-adjustment maneuvers can be made, the less fuel will be consumed
• Multimedia
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mars Science Laboratory: NASA Preparing for 2014 Comet Watch at Mars | Mars.NASA.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• February 1, 1811 : 203 years ago : Bell Rock Lighthouse Lit : The Bell Rock Lighthouse was lit for the first time. Using 24 lanterns, it began flashing its warning light, 11 miles out off the east coast of Scotland atop a white stone tower rising over 30m (100ft) high. It was built by Robert Stevenson on a treacherous sandstone reef, which, except at low tides, lies submerged just beneath the waves. Since then, no repair has been necessary to its stonework. It is the oldest sea-washed lighthouse in existence. It was Stevenson\’s finest achievement, regarded by many as the finest lighthouse ever built, the most outstanding engineering achievement of the 19th century. In the centuries before, the dangerous Bell Rock had claimed thousands of lives, as vessels were wrecked on its razor-sharp serrated rocks. Bell Rock Lighthouse | Wikipedia

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Planets
• Mercury | ~45 after sunset | You can see Mercury in the lower W-SW skies, the Moon moving by Mercury changing each day
• Venus | Dawn | In the E-SE, getting higher each day
• Mars | ~11pm | About 5* to the lower right of Spica, blue giant variable star. Both are highest in the sky around 4am, with Mars above Spica
• Jupiter | Eastern sky in evening, overhead around 10pm, Western sky in morning

• Saturn | ~1-2am | Rises in the S-SW to the far 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

The post Asteroid Belt Water | SciByte 117 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.