Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at a theory breaking exoplanet, a theory confirming star, Saturn moon Titan, lunar formation theories, story and 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:

Breaking Planetary Formation Theories Again

• Astronomers have announced that they have discovered a new type of planet – a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth
• Past theories believed such a world couldn’t form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant
• This planet; however. is solid and much bigger than previously discovered “super-Earths,” making it a “mega-Earth.”
• Kepler-10c
• It is located about 560 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco
• It’s orbit lasts 45 days
• The system also hosts a 3-Earth-mass “lava world,” Kepler-10b, in a remarkably fast, 20-hour orbit
• Discovery
• Kepler-10c was originally spotted by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft.
• By measuring the amount of dimming, astronomers can calculate the planet’s physical size or diameter
• However, Kepler can’t tell whether a planet is rocky or gassy
• Kepler-10c was known to have a diameter 2.3 times as large as Earth
• This suggested it fell into a category of planets known as mini-Neptunes, which have thick, gaseous envelopes
• It’s a Rocky Planet
• The team used the HARPS-North instrument on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) in the Canary Islands to measure the mass of Kepler-10c
• They found that it weighed 17 times as much as Earth – far more than expected, this showed that Kepler-10c must have a dense composition of rocks and other solids.
• It is so massive that it would have been able to hold onto an atmosphere if it ever had one
• Planetary Formation Theories
• Planet formation theories have a difficult time explaining how such a large, rocky world that need elements like silicon and iron, could develop
• The Kepler-10 system is about 11 billion years old, which means it formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang
• The early universe contained only hydrogen and helium
• Heavier elements are created and scattered through the universe when a star goes supernova, when help create later generations of stars and planets
• This process should have taken billions of years; however, Kepler-10c shows that the universe was able to form such huge rocks even during the time when heavy elements were scarce.
• What This Means
• This tells us that rocky planets could form much earlier than we thought
• This research implies that astronomers shouldn’t rule out old stars when they search for Earth-like planets
• If old stars can host rocky Earths too, then we have a better chance of locating potentially habitable worlds in our cosmic neighborhood
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers find a new type of planet: The ‘mega-Earth’ | Phys.org

— NEWS BYTE —

A New Sneaky Star Type

• A Thorne-Zytkow Object, or TZO are actually two stars in one: a binary pair where a superdense neutron star has been absorbed into its less dense supergiant
• Thorne-Zytkow Object
• First theorized in 1975 they are difficult to find in real life because of their similarity to red supergiants, it is only through detailed spectroscopy that the particular chemical signatures can be identified.
• While normal red supergiants derive their energy from nuclear fusion in their cores, TOs are powered by the unusual activity of the absorbed neutron stars in their cores
• Discovery
• The astronomers were examining the spectrum of light emitted from apparent red supergiants, which tells them what elements are present
• When the spectrum of one star, HV 2112, was analyzed the scientists were quite surprised by some of the unusual features
• They took a close look at the subtle lines in the spectrum they found that it contained excess rubidium, lithium and molybdenum
• Past research has shown that normal stellar processes can create each of these elements; however, high abundances of all three of these at the temperatures typical of red supergiants is a unique signature of TŻOs
• Only by absorbing a much hotter star – such as a neutron star left over from the explosive death of a more massive partner – is the production of such elements presumed to be possible
• Formation Theory
• TOs are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars-a red supergiant and a neutron star formed during a supernova explosion-in a close binary system
• The much more massive red supergiant essentially swallows the neutron star, which spirals into the core of the red supergiant
• Scientists are careful to point out that HV 2112 displays some chemical characteristics that don’t quite match theoretical models
• There are some minor inconsistencies between some of the details of what we found and what theory predicts, but the theoretical predictions are quite old, and there have been a lot of improvements in the theory since then
• What This Might Mean
• Studying these objects represents a completely new model of how stellar interiors can work
• In these interiors we also have a new way of producing heavy elements in our universe
• Further Reading / In the News
• Astronomers discover first Thorne-Zytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star | ScienceDaily
• Astronomers Find Evidence of a Strange Type of Star | UniverseToday.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Waves on Saturns Moon?

• Cameras on NASA’s spacecraft Cassini recently saw what appear to be waves on one of Titan’s largest methane lakes, if confirmed, the discovery would mark the first time waves have been seen outside Earth.
• What Did They See?
• The team found patterns in the sunlight reflecting off a northern lake called Punga Mare that they interpret as two-centimeter-high waves
• It may simply be a mudflat instead of a deep lake, and a shallow film of liquid on top may be the cause of the unique light signature
• What it Might Mean
• Waves on Titan would confirm that the lakes actually are deep reservoirs of methane and ethane,
• If life on Titan exists, the best place to look is in large bodies of liquid, the kind that form waves
• True liquid bodies would also make a robotic spacecraft mission to explore Titan’s habitability more feasible
• More Certainty
• By 2017 scientists should know for certain whether what they are seeing is indeed caused by waves
• Cassini has been observing the moon during its northern winter, when weak winds are at work
• As spring starts over the next few years, it brings stronger winds to kick up seas, so the probe should capture more definitive evidence of waves if they exist
• Further Reading / In the News
• Lake on Saturn’s Largest Moon May Have Waves | Scientific American

Lunar Formation Theory Evidence?

• Current Lunar Formation Theory
• According to one lunar formation theory billions of years ago a Mars-sized body (sometimes called “Theia”) smashed into Earth
• Earth survived and the fragments from the crash gradually coalesced into the Moon that we see today
• The problem with this was that no evidence had been found of “Theia”
• Scientists now believe they have found traces of Theia in lunar rocks pulled from the Apollo missions
• Oxygen Isotopes
• Before, the “resolution” of microscopes couldn’t find any significant differences isotopes or types of oxygen of any of the Lunar samples of the Moon brought back by the Apollo missions
• New research appears to show a difference between the Earth and the Moon which implies that a body of different composition caused the changes
• The new data reveals the moon rocks have 12 parts per million more oxygen-17 than the Earth rocks
• “The differences are small and difficult to detect, but they are there,” | lead researcher Daniel Herwartz
• What This Means
• First, scientists can now be reasonably sure that the giant collision took place
• Second, it gives us an idea of the geochemistry of Theia
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Where Did The Moon Come From? – Do We Really Need the Moon? – Preview – BBC Two | BBC
• Further Reading / In the News
• The work was published in Science and will also be presented at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in California on June 11.
• Hulk Smash! Collision That Formed Our Moon Shows Up In Lunar Rocks, Study Says | UniverseToday.com
• New isotopic evidence supporting moon formation via Earth collision with planet-sized body | phys.org

—UPDATE—

Asteroid UQ4 Catalina Turns Comet – Still Looking Promising

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 130 | Solar Sibling & Comets | May 13, 2014
• Asteroid Turns Comet
• On October 23, 2013, astronomers with the Catalina Sky Survey picked up a very faint asteroid with an unusual orbit more like a that of a comet than an asteroid
• 2013 UQ4 belongs to a class of objects known as damocloids, these are thought to be inactive varieties of comet nuclei
• By May 7, the asteroid had grown a little fuzz, making the move to comethood, soon afterwards it displayed a substantial coma or atmosphere
• It is brightening on schedule and should be a binocular object greater than +10th magnitude by the end of June
• It will reach perihelion on July 6th only four days before its closest approach to the Earth
• At that point, the comet will have an apparent motion of about 7 degrees a day — that’s the span of a Full Moon once every 1 hour and 42 minutes
• Further Reading / In the News
• Asteroid-Turned-Comet 2013 UQ4 Catalina Brightens: How to See it This Summer | UniverseToday.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

ISEE-3 Reboot Project

• The team is now receiving information from the spacecraft’s magnetometer
• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 132 | ISEE-3 Back To Life | May 27, 2014
• SciByte 133 | Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | June 3, 2014
• What ISEE-3 Really Looks Like
• Spacecraft Mass: 479 kg [1,056 lb]
• Spacecraft Dimensions: 16-sided body 1.7m [5.6ft] diameter, 1.6m [5.2ft] high
• Spacecraft Power: solar cells
• Maximum Power: 173.0 W (nominal power)
• It has 4 large antennas that span 91 meters and it spins ~ once every 3 seconds
• The spacecraft is spinning at 19.16 rpm, the mission specification is 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm so the spin rate of spacecraft is slightly below what it should be
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Image | ISEE-3 Propulsion System Overview | Space College
• Using GNU Radio to Talk to ISEE-3
• The amazing accomplishment of successfully designing a deep-space uplink modulator in a couple of days was accomplished through a lot of team work, strong leadership, and generous support from the community at large
• The uplink commands to the spacecraft uses products like the Ettus Research USRP, the open source SDR framework GNU Radio have made this exceedingly easy
• Transmitting Rate Change
• On Just 9, the team was able to switch ISEE-3’s B transmitter to a data rate of 64 bps, they hope to eventually leave it this way so as to allow dishes smaller than Arecibo to complete the link and have solid two-way communication with ISEE-3.
• After this they were able to detect signals from the craft with an 8 foot dish
• Telemetry Data
• On June 12, telemetry from ISEE-3 indicating that its entire suite of science instruments is powered up and has been powered up since NASA last commanded the spacecraft many years ago
• The engineers are getting data back from the magnetometer that indicates that science data is coming back; however, just because an instrument is powered up doesn’t mean that it is functioning normally
• Some of the ISEE-3 instruments had begun to fail or become partially functional as early as 1982
• Spinning Up
• The team plans to briefly fire two of the spacecraft’s thrusters on 21 June so as to spin it up from 19.16 rpm to the mission specification of 19.75 +/- 0.2 rpm [the spin-up target is 19.733 rpm]
• This optimal spin rate is required in order to properly fire the axial thrusters during the much longer trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) we need to perform to adjust the spacecraft’s course
• Multimedia
• Image | ISEE-3 Status Report 5 June 2014 (Morning) | Space College
• Twitter | @ISEE3Reboot
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Channel
• Further Reading / In the News
• Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives
• Contact With 36-Year Old Spacecraft Results in Dancing, Hugs. Now Comes Even Bigger Challenge | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• The Road Trip Continues
• Curiosity is currently driving toward Mount Sharp, the layered mountain at the middle of Mars’ Gale Crater.
• The rover is carrying with it some of the drilled powdered sample material from the Windjana location that can be delivered for additional internal laboratory analysis during pauses in the drive.
• Mercury Transit
• The observations were made on June 3, 2014
• Mercury fills only about one-sixth of one pixel as seen from such great distance, so the darkening does not have a distinct shape, but its position follows Mercury’s expected path based on orbital calculations.
• This is the first transit of the sun by a planet observed from any planet other than Earth, and also the first imaging of Mercury from Mars
• The same Mastcam frames show two sunspots approximately the size of Earth. The sunspots move only at the pace of the sun’s rotation, much slower than the movement of Mercury.
• Mercury and Venus transits are visible more often from Mars than from Earth, the next Mercury transit visible from Earth will be May 9, 2016.
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• Testing Future Landing Technologies
• Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) | nasa.gov
• The Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces
• As NASA plans increasingly ambitious robotic missions to Mars, laying the groundwork for even more complex human science expeditions to come, accommodating extended stays for explorers on the Martian surface will require larger and heavier spacecraft
• This test will use a helium balloon (that, when fully inflated, would fit snugly into Pasadena’s Rose Bowl) to lift the vehicle to 120,000 feet
• A fraction of a second after dropping from the balloon, and a few feet below it, four small rocket will stabilize the saucer
• A half second later, a solid-fueled rocket engine will send the test vehicle to the edge of the stratosphere
• “Our goal is to get to an altitude and velocity which simulates the kind of environment one of our vehicles would encounter when it would fly in the Martian atmosphere,” | Ian Clark, principal investigator of the LDSD project at JPL
• Two supersonic decelerator technologies that will be thoroughly tested during two LDSD flight tests next year.
• The SIAD-R, is essentially an inflatable doughnut that increases the vehicle’s size and, as a result, its drag to quickly slow the vehicle
• A second system being tested is the largest supersonic parachute ever flown, to be used when the craft first hits the supersonic flow
• NASA’s flying saucer-shaped test vehicle was not able to be flight tested during the reserved testing launch period unfavorable weather conditions, NASA is continuing to look at options for a future launch window.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Mercury Passes in Front of the Sun, as Seen From Mars – Mars Science Laboratory | Mars.jpl.nasa.gov
• NASA’s LDSD ‘Flying Saucer’ Test–Update – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 25, 1997 : 17 years ago : Space Station Mir Accident : The space-station Mir suffered a near-fatal mishap when a Progress ferry being docked via remote control by Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev accidentally rammed into the Spektr science module, putting a hole in the pressure vessel and damaging its solar arrays beyond use. To salvage the station, which consisted of a core, a connecting node, and five science modules, crew members severed electrical and data connections between Spektr and the rest of the station and then sealed off the module. They saved the station but lost about half of their electrical power
• The One Martian Year Birthday to Curiosity June 24, 2014. The length of time for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun is its sidereal year, and is about 686.98 Earth solar days.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Planets
• Mercury | Hidden by the sunrise
• Venus | Dawn | Low in the East
• Mars | Twilight | High in the SW, with the Blue-White giant star Spica to its left. Mars sets in the W ~ 1AM DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Low in the W-NW in twilight, setting by nightfall

• Saturn | Evening | S sky in the evening

• 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 Super-Earth & Lunar Formation | SciByte 134 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at NASA testing the world’s largest heat shield, ancient evidence of lyme disease, sign language on glasses, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Testing NASA\’s Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield

• Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have attached the world’s largest heat shield to a pathfinding version of NASA’s Orion crew capsule
• **Delta IV Heavy Rockets***
• The Delta IV Heavy is the only rocket with sufficient thrust to launch the Orion EFT-1 capsule and its attached upper stage to its intended orbit of 3600 miles altitude above Earth
• That is 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 year
• Orion Spacecraft
• Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle now under development to replace the now retired space shuttle
• “The Orion heat shield is the largest of its kind ever built. Its wider than the Apollo and Mars Science Lab heat shields,” | Todd Sullivan, heat shield senior manager
• Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1)
• The initial test flight later this Fall on a crucial mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1)
• One of the primary goals of NASA’s eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle – and future human astronauts
• At the conclusion of the two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight, the detached Orion capsule plunges back and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 20,000 MPH (32,000 kilometers per hour).
• “That’s about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions,” Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion Manager of Production Operations
• The big reason to get to those high speeds during EFT-1 is to be able to test out the thermal protection system
• A trio of parachutes will then unfurl to slow it down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean
• The Heat Shield
• The heat shield is constructed from a single seamless piece of Avcoat ablator and measures 16.5 ft (5 m) in diameter
• The ablative material will wear away as it heats up during the capsules atmospheric re-entry thereby preventing the 4000* F (2204*C) heat from being transferred to the rest of the capsule
• Numerous sensors and instrumentation have been specially installed on the EFT-1 heat shield and the back shell tiles to collect measurements of things like temperatures, pressures and stresses during the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry
• The Future
• Data gathered during the flight will aid in confirming. or refuting, design decisions and computer models as the program moves forward to the first flight in late 2017 on the EM-1 mission and more human crewed missions thereafter
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Early in the Process | Textron Team Readies Orion Heat Shield for Shipment to Kennedy Space Center | ReelNASA
• Further Reading / In the News
• World Largest Heat Shield Attached to NASA\’s Orion Crew Capsule for Crucial Fall 2014 Test Flight | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Ancient Lyme Disease

• New discoveries of ticks fossilized in amber show that the bacteria which cause Lyme disease may have been lurking around for 15 million years
• Lyme Disease
• In the United States, Europe and Asia, ticks are a more important insect vector of disease than mosquitos
• It is a stealthy, often misdiagnosed disease that was only recognized about 40 years ago and can cause problems with joints, the heart and central nervous system
• **Amber***
• Plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber are very efficient at maintaining populations of microbes in their tissues, and can infect mammals, birds, reptiles and other animals
• Bacteria
• The findings were made when scientists studied 15-20 million-year-old amber
• They offer the oldest fossil evidence ever found of Borrelia, a type of spirochete-like bacteria that to this day causes Lyme disease
• This is the oldest fossil evidence of ticks associated with such bacteria
• In a separate report, scientists announced the first fossil record Rickettsia bacteria, the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and related illnesses
• **What This Might Mean*
• In 30 years of studying diseases revealed in the fossil record, the scientist has documented the ancient presence of such diseases as malaria, leishmania, and others.
• It\’s now worth considering that these tick-borne diseases may be far more common than has been historically appreciated
• Evidence suggests that dinosaurs could have been infected with Rickettsial pathogens
• Rickettsia species are carried by many chiggers, ticks, fleas, and lice, and cause diseases in humans such as typhus, spotted fever group, and others
• Further Reading / In the News
• Amber discovery indicates Lyme disease is older than human race | Phys.org
• Lyme Disease Bacteria Found in 15-Million-Year-Old Amber | Paleontology | Sci-News.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

\”Signglasses\”

• Students at Brigham Young University recently launched the \”Signglasses\” project in an attempt to develop a better system of sign language for narration through several types of glasses, including Google Glass.
• By coincidence, the only two deaf students to ever take Professor Jones’ computer science class signed up just as the National Science Foundation funded Jones’ signglasses research
• “Having a group of students who are fluent in sign language here at the university has been huge\” | Professor Mike Jones
• The team tested their system during a field trip visit to the Jean Messieu School for the deaf, where it was revealed that the signer should be displayed in the center of the lens
• Deaf participants could then look straight through the signer as they focused on a planetarium show.
• This was particularly surprising for researchers as they believed that deaf students would prefer to have a video displayed at the top, as Google Glass normally presents itself
• The Future
• Jones will publish the full results of their research in June at Interaction Design and Children
• Researchers hope that with further studies, this tool can also be used for literary guidance
• One idea is when you\’re reading a book and come across a word that you don\’t understand, you point at it, push a button to take a picture
• Multimedia
• YouTube | BYU Signglasses Project | Austin Balaich
• Further Reading / In the News
• Google Glass adaptation opens the universe to deaf students | news.byu.edu/
• \’Signglasses\’ System Helps Deaf Literacy | ScienceWorldReport.com

— Updates —

ISEE-3 Reboot

• Last Time on SciByte …
• SciByte 132 | ISEE-3 Back To Life | May 27, 2014
• The Low Down
• Approval from NASA to attempt contact, and that go-ahead came on May 29th
• The ISEE-3 Reboot Project has announced that it has achieved two-way communication with the ISEE-3 at a transmission rate of 512 bits per second.
• “We have been able to verify modulated data through ground stations in Germany, Morehead State in Kentucky, and the SETI Allen Array in California.” | project member Keith Cowing
• Eventual goal is to actually change its current trajectory into one that will enable more frequent communication with the probe
• Transponders
• The spacecraft has two transponders, transponder A and Transponder B
• Transponder B is normally the engineering telemetry transponder and transponder A is the ranging transponder
• The final state of the spacecraft before was to have both of the transponders transmitters active and that is what people around the world have been tracking.
• Communication
• The team tried several times to command the spacecraft\’s B transponder into the mode where it normally sends engineering telemetry but that did not work
• They then tried the same process on transponder A, the initial command was just to turn engineering telemetry, which was successful so they were able to commanded the spacecraft into engineering telemetry mode.
• Through the A transponder receiver we commanded through the B transponder command decoder to output engineering telemetry through transponder B\’s transmitter
• The team tried to command the spacecraft into 64 bits/second mode, which was a mode that is much more complicated to set up and they did not get working successfully during the limited time that the spacecraft is visible from Arecibo
• They need to do this so that the smaller dishes at Morehead State and Bochum will have a positive signal margin so that we can record several hours of data
• When they later processed the first day\’s data dump from the spacecraft they received 49 full frames of data at a bitrate of 512 bits/second, and there were no errors on the downlink
• Verified so Far the Following Systems on the Spacecraft

1. Transponder A receiver
2. Transponder A\’s Command Decoder and Data Handling Unit
3. Transponder B\’s Command Decoder and Data Handling Unit

+ Milestones Related to Commanding and Receiving Data
1. Successful commanding multiple times of ISEE-3/ICE
2. Received engineering telemetry from both data multiplexing units on the spacecraft
3. Successful demodulation on the ground of the received data, through the output of bits
4. Verification of good data at 512 bits/sec, including frame synchronization, correct number of bits/frame, and with no errors, showing a very strong 30+ db link margin through Arecibo
+ The Future
+ If they can maneuver the spacecraft by June 17th they can get the very small delta V number, however if this starts to climb rapidly as the spacecraft gets closer to the moon they cannot at this time rule out a lunar impact.
+ Multimedia
+ Image | \”ISEE-3 Mission Control\” | Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives | spacecollege.org
+ YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot | Mike Loucks Mike
+ Twitter | ISEE3 Reboot Project (ISEE3Reboot)
+ YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot | Mike Loucks
+ YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Project – Recovering a 30 year old space probe Scott Manley
+ Further Reading / In the News
+ Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives | spacecollege.org
+ Citizen Scientists Take Command Of Decades-Old NASA Probe | Forbes.com
+ 35-year-old ISEE 3 Craft Phones Home | Sky & Telescope

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX Dragon V2

• The previous version of the Dragon capsule was flightworthy enough to deliver supplies, its life support system wasn’t reliable for human passengers
• Dragon V2, on the other hand, will be able to carry seven astronauts for seven days.
• General Capabilities
• The vehicle holds seats for 7 passengers, and includes an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) that provides a comfortable environment for crewmembers
• When the capsule reaches the ISS, it will dock with the station autonomously. Unlike its predecessor, it won’t need the ISS’s robotic arm to reach out and grab it
• To land back on Earth, a backup technique for the new capsule is to slow its speed with parachutes before splashing into the ocean
• The main technique for landing uses its engines to land propulsively which will will make it quickly reusable
• “You’ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,” | SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
• The Future
• Dragon V2’s robust thermal protection system is capable of lunar missions, in addition to flights to and from Earth orbit
• According to Ars Technica, NASA pays Russia about $71 million per astronaut for trips to the ISS. Musk thinks he can drop that number to $20 million or less.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | SpaceX Dragon V2 | Flight Animation | spacexchannel·
• Further Reading / In the News
• Dragon V2: SpaceX\’s Next Generation Manned Spacecraft | SpaceX
• Inside The New Dragon Spacecraft | Popular Science

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• Driving on and Science
• Curiosity is resuming driving toward Mount Sharp, the layered mountain at the middle of Mars\’ Gale Crater.
• The rover is carrying with it some of the powdered sample material from Windjana that can be delivered for additional internal laboratory analysis during pauses in the drive.
• Multimedia
• YouTube Curiosity Rover Report JPLnews
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• What\’s New – Mars Science Laboratory | mars.jpl.nasa.gov

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• June 7, 1958 : 56 years ago : Ultrasound Article : A seminal article that launched the widespread use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis was published in The Lancet by Ian Donald, an English physician. After a few years developing the experimental use of ultrasound, Donald had applied it to treat patients in his hospital. In the Lancet article, Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound, he described how he was able to make the life-saving diagnosis of a huge, easily removable, ovarian cyst in a woman who had been diagnosed by others as having inoperable stomach cancer. Donald knew about sonar from his service in WW II, and industrial use of reflected ultrasound waves for flaw detection in materials, and with help from others, he launched its use in medicine

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Thurs, June 5 | First-quarter Moon
• Thurs, June 5 | After Dark | The easy to spot constellation \”Cassiopeia\” that looks like a W is near the north horizon
• Planets
• Mercury | Twilight | Low in the west-northwest both fading and sinking lower to the horizon
• Venus | \”Morning Star\” | Low in the E during dawn
• Mars | Late Twilight | Appears high in the S, setting in the W ~2-3 am DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Shines in the W in twilight setting soon after dark

• Saturn | Evening | Is in the SE in the evening, moving to its highest point in the S skies ~11-12

• 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 Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | SciByte 133 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at resurrecting a space probe, classroom decorations, brain control, viewer feedback, a three year look back at SciByte, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | HD Video | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Show Notes:

Bringing an Abandoned Satellite Back to Life and Use

• An independent team of engineers recovering old imagery on magnetic tape reels from the first lunar orbiter missions decided to accomplish a landmark achievement: to turn on, command and maneuver a NASA spacecraft long ago abandoned
• Original mission : Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)
• Originally the mission was cooperative effort between NASA and ESRO/ESA to study the interaction between the Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind.
• Examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth\’s magnetosphere
• Investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets, and continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU
• Second mission: International Cometary Explorer
• On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE)
• The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere
• ICE carried no cameras. It instead carried instruments for measurements of energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields
• It was sent on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner and on 11 September 1985, the craft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner
• It transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft were in the vicinity of Comet Halley, ICE flew through the tail
• Heliospheric mission
• This phase of the mission was approved by NASA in 1991, which consisted of investigations of coronal mass ejections in coordination with ground-based observations
• End of mission
• On May 5, 1997, NASA ended the ICE mission, and ordered the probe shut down, with only a carrier signal left operating
• Further contact
• In 1999, NASA made brief contact with ICE to verify its carrier signal and discovered that it had not been powered off after the last contact
• On September 18, 2008 a status check revealed that all but one of its 13 experiments were still functioning, and it still has enough propellant
• Bringing It Back to Life?
• Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center had said that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible
• An independent team of engineers recovering old imagery on magnetic tape reels from the first lunar orbiter missions decided to accomplish a landmark achievement: to turn on, command and maneuver a NASA spacecraft long ago abandoned
• They began to study the feasibility and challenges involved in reviving the \’dead\’ satellite
• A team webpage said, \”We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission…If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowdsourcing.\”
• Crowdsourcing
• To cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas
• On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal, and they further met a \’stretch\’ goal of $150,000
• Window of Opportunity
• The team needed to contact the spacecraft before the end of May because the next close approach to the Earth won’t be until 30-40 years
• The ISEE-3/ICE spacecraft was never really designed to be an interplanetary cruiser and thus the thrusters on board are very small
• The project members are working on deadline: if they get the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, it can use the Moon\’s gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.
• The team estimates that if they wait until mid-June to do the course correction that it will take 17 hours of thrusting to get the course change of about 40 meters/second that they will need at that time
• Hardware and Software
• It has been 30 years since the original project was started and and documents and magnetic tapes have disappeared.
• The software and hardware to program, command and transmit to ISEE-3 are long gone
• Amateur radio operators now have technology sufficient to acquire the signal and through the internet are also a part of the recovery effort
• Even without the original hardware transmitter, today’s high-speed electronics are able to emulate in software the hardware from 36 years ago
• Project members obtained the needed hardware (power amplifier, modulator/demodulator and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014
• Technical Progress
• This is an ongoing process and the team has dug some of the pertinent information out of 35 year old IEEE or AIAA papers that are publicly available
• Most of the best information the team found was from the people who worked on the project in the 1980\’s when the spacecraft was fully operational
• They also obtained several documents from NASA as part of the development of thier Space Act Agreement
• Since there is no computer on board the ISEE-3 spacecraft the task is actually much easier since we are going to be directly commanding various subsystems
• Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement
• Although NASA is not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact
• On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project
• \”This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again,\” officials said
• Multimedia
• Twitter | ISEE3 Reboot Project (ISEE3Reboot)
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot | Mike Loucks
• YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Project – Recovering a 30 year old space probe Scott Manley
• Further Reading / In the News
• NASA Signs Agreement with Citizen Scientists Attempting to Communicate with Old Spacecraft | NASA.gov
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project Status and Schedule for First Contact | Space College
• Guest Post: No turning back, NASA ISEE-3 Spacecraft Returning to Earth after a 36 Year Journey | UniverseToday.com
• International Cometary Explorer – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project | Astronomy News | NinePlanets.org
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project: Stretch Goal – NASA Watch
• ISEE-3 Reboot Project by Space College, Skycorp, and SpaceRef | RocketHub

— NEWS BYTE —

Distracted by Classroom Decorations?

• New research from Carnegie Mellon University shows that too much materials covering a classroom wall may end up disrupting attention and learning in young children
• The Low Down
• Researchers looked at whether classroom displays affected children\’s ability to maintain focus during instruction and to learn the lesson content
• They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning gains than when the decorations were removed
• The Study
• 24 kindergarten students were placed in laboratory classrooms for six introductory science lessons on topics they were unfamiliar with
• Three lessons were taught in a heavily decorated classroom, and three lessons were given in a sparse classroom.
• Results
• The results showed that while children learned in both classroom types, they learned more when the room was not heavily decorated
• Children\’s accuracy on the test questions was higher in the sparse classroom (55 percent correct) than in the decorated classroom (42 percent correct).
• When the researchers tallied all of the time children spent off-task in both types of classrooms, the rate of off-task behavior was higher in the decorated classroom (38.6 percent time spent off-task) than in the sparse classroom (28.4 percent time spent off-task)
• The Future
• The researchers are interested in finding out if the visual displays were removed, whether the children\’s attention would shift to another distraction
• Additional research is needed to know what effect the classroom visual environment has on children\’s attention and learning in real classrooms
• They say that they do not suggest by any means that this is the answer to all educational problems but that teachers should consider whether some of their visual displays may be distracting
• Further Reading / In the News
• Heavily decorated classrooms disrupt attention and learning in young children | ScienceDaily.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Flying With Only A Thought

• Scientists have now demonstrated the feasibility of flying via brain control, with astonishing accuracy
• First Breakthrough
• Seven subjects took part in the flight simulator tests
• They had varying levels of flight experience, including one person without any practical cockpit experience whatsoever
• The accuracy with which the test subjects stayed on course by merely thinking commands would have sufficed, in part, to fulfill the requirements of a flying license test
• Several of the subjects also managed the landing approach under poor visibility
• In The Future
• Scientists are now focusing in particular on the question of how the requirements for the control system and flight dynamics need to be altered to accommodate the new control method
• Normally, pilots feel resistance in steering and must exert significant force when the loads induced on the aircraft become too large
• This feedback is missing when using brain control
• The researchers are thus looking for alternative methods of feedback to signal when the envelope is pushed too hard, for example
• Further Reading / In the News
• Using thoughts to control airplanes | ScienceDaily.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Jupiter\’s Great Red Spot Shrinking?

• Twitter | Michael Thalleen ‏@ThalleenM
• Jupiter\’s Great Red Spot Shrinks to Smallest Size Ever Seen
• The Great Red Spot
• “Recent Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm that the spot is now just under 10,250 miles (16,500 km) across, the smallest diameter we’ve ever measured,” said Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Using historic sketches and photos from the late 1800s, astronomers determined the spot’s diameter then at 25,475 miles (41,000 km) across
• Changes
• Starting in 2012 amateur observations revealed a noticeable increase in the spot’s shrinkage rate
• They showed that the spot’s “waistline” is getting smaller by just under 620 miles (1,000 km) per year while its north-south extent has changed little
• This has caused the spot to become more circular in shape
• Cause
• There are no firm answers yet as to what is causing the drastic downsizing,
• New observations however show that very small eddies are feeding into the storm which may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics of the Great Red Spot
• The storm appears to be conserving angular momentum by spinning faster the same way an ice skater spins up when they pulls in their arms
• The faster winds might also help shrink the spot further or bring about its rejuvenation.
• Multimedia
• YouTube | Jupiter\’s Great Red \’Shrinking\’ Spot Spied By Hubble | VideoFromSpace
• Further Reading / In the News
• [Hubble Sees Jupiter\’s Red Spot Shrink to Smallest Size Ever | UniverseToday.com(https://www.universetoday.com/111907/hubble-sees-jupiters-red-spot-shrink-to-smallest-size-ever/)

— Updates —

SciByte

• Hosts
• Jeremy | Co-Hosted for ep 1-13
• Nikki | Summer SciByte | August 06, 2013; August 13, 2013; August 27, 2013; July 23, 2013; SciByte September 03, 2013
• Chris | Episodes 14+ [minus a few \”Summer SciByte\” or \”Summer SciByte Style\” with Nikki]
• Formats Over the Years
• Totally edited video in a virtual studio with Jeremy
• Totally video in a virtual studio with Chris
• Video once a month and \”Enhance Audio\” with Chris
• \”Enhanced Audio\” with Chris
• Google Hangout\’s with Nikki
• Science as an Adjective, a Noun, and a Verb
• Adjective = \’describing\’ a word; Noun = person, place, thing, animal, idea; Verb = conveys an action
• \”Science is Sad\” | Large Hadron Collider | SciByte 8
• Watching Science Progres
• Private Space Travel Advances | From an idea, to engineering, to testing, to implementation [i.e. SpaceX and Virgin Galactic]
• Mars Landers | Opportunity (continuing science and solar panel ‘cleaning’ events) and Curiosity (Confirmation of running/standing water in Mars history, ancient habitable locations, drilling into rocks, switching to searching for the building blocks of life)
• Watching science progress | Alzheimer\’s research, Voyager 1, Exoplanets, medical research helping senses
• Breaking Science | \’Faster Than Light Neutrinos\’, Higgs-Boson Particle
• Further Reading / In the News
• SciByte | JupiterBroadcasting.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

• The Image from Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
• Shows the rock target \”Windjana\” and its immediate surroundings after inspection of the site by the rover
• The researchers drilled a test hole and a sample collection hole produced the mounds of drill cuttings that are markedly less red than the other visible surfaces
• This preparatory \”mini drill\” hole, to lower right from the open hole, was drilled on Sol 615 (April 29, 2014) and subsequently filled in with cuttings from the sample collection drilling.
• The open hole from sample collection is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter. It was drilled on Sol 621 (May 5, 2014).
• The vigorous activity of penetrating the rock with the rover\’s hammering drill also resulted in slides of loose material near the rock
• Gathering Samples
• Since then, the 1 ton robot carefully scrutinized the resulting 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep borehole, the scientists then hit the fresh bore hole with a pinpoint series of parting laser blasts
• The mound of dark grey colored drill tailings, much darker and greyer that the exterior of the rock, that are piled around for an up close examination of the texture and composition with the MAHLI camera and spectrometers
• The team has successfully delivered pulverized and sieved samples to the pair of onboard miniaturized chemistry labs [Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM)] for chemical and compositional analysis.
• Researchers decided that one drill campaign into Kimberley was enough, so the rover will not be drilling into any other rock targets at this location
• There will be further analysis of the ‘Windjana’ sample along the way since there’s plenty of leftover sample material stored in the CHIMRA sample processing mechanism to allow future delivery of samples when the rover periodically pauses during driving.
• The Future
• It may be a very long time before the next drilling when the rover arrives at the foothills of Mount Sharp
• The current location, Windjama, lies some 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay
• It still has about another 4 kilometers to go to reach the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year
• Multimedia
• Images – Mars Science Laboratory | mars..jpl.nasa.gov
• Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
• Social Media
• Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
• Further Reading / In the News
• Curiosity says \’Goodbye Kimberley\’ after Parting Laser Blasts and Seeking New Adventures Ahead | UniverseToday.com

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

• May 29, 1919 : 95 years ago : Einstein\’s Relativity Theory Proved : A solar eclipse permitted observation of the bending of starlight passing through the sun\’s gravitational field, as predicted by Albert Einstein\’s theory of relativity. Separate expeditions of the Royal Astronomical Society travelled to Brazil and off the west coast of Africa. Both made measurements of the position of stars visible close to the sun during a solar eclipse. These observations showed that, indeed, the light of stars was bent as it passed through the gravitational field of the sun. This was a key prediction of Albert Einstein\’s theory that gravity affected energy as in addition to the familiar effect on matter. The verification of predictions of Einstein\’s theory, proved during the solar eclipse was a dramatic landmark scientific event.

Looking up this week

• Keep an eye out for …
• Wed, May 28 | New Moon (exact at 2:40 p.m. EDT)
• Fri, May 30 | 20-30 min after sunset | | Very low in the W-NW you can see the hairline crescent Moon with Mercury to its right, they both set fairly quickly. You can see Jupiter to the far upper left.
• Sat, May 31 | ~1hr after sunset | Jupiter stands to the upper right of the Moon in the early evening
• Sun, Jun 03 | ~1hr after sunset | Jupiter is now to the left and slightly higher than the moon
• Planets
• Mercury | Twilight | It is at it\’s highest point for 2014 for mid-N lat, and is fading this week. As twilight deepens, look for it in the W-NW to the lower right of bright Jupiter as it fades this week
• Venus | Dawn | The \”Morning Star\” is low in the E during dawn, moving to it\’s highest point in the south in late twilight
• Mars | Is at it\’s highest point in the S in late twilight, it sets in the W around 3 or 4 a.m. DST
• Jupiter | Twilight | Is in the west at twilight, sinking during the evening and sets around 11 or midnight. Jupiter is on the far side of the Sun from us and is nearly its minimum apparent size that we see

• Saturn | Evening | Appears SE in the evening moving to it\’s highest point in the S ~11-12

• Further Reading and Resources

• Sky&Telescope | Sky at a Glance
• 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 ISEE-3 Back To Life | SciByte 132 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.