Mang is hosting his first Carnival of Space this week. I’d like to highlight the 10 Reasons Why China is Good for Space post from 21st Century Waves and an unusual take on some old bricks from Robert Pearlman of collectSPACE.

Carnival of Space 61

GLAST has now launched after a few delays in the last couple of weeks. But no worries! Soon the £350 million mission between NASA and the US Department of Energy will begin showing us the gamma-ray sky. GLAST will orbit about 350 miles above the Earth has a five year mission to undertake. For more info, there is a good BBC News article and also the official GLAST website.

This HiRISE image shows a 10km crater on the northern polar plains of Mars, called Heimdal. This isn’t the point though. The bright spot highlighted is the Phoenix lander descending to the surface. This incredible picture was captured on May 25th by the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbiter was 760 kilometers away from Phoenix when picture was taken.

This has to be one of the most incredible images taken in 2008. It says so much about what is going on in space exploration at the moment. If Phoenix finds what it is looking for, namely evidence of water ice and habitability, then this image will become truly iconic.

This image also came in just minutes after the event took place and spread virally throughout the internet within hours. The world is interested in what is happening on Mars. As a race, we seem to be captivated by our neighbouring planet. It seems to have taken control of our ambitions. Manned missions and more probes will cement this obsession in the coming decade(s).

To be able to image one craft from another proves that we have created reliable, durable methods for exploring other worlds. The longevity of NASA’s martian rovers and the new, larger version of this mission heading to Mars next year (Mars Science Laboratory) have created a tangible, real perspective on the planet. It no longer seems so alien. Of course it is when people set foot there that we will feel as if we are truly capable of great things again.

It may well be that what we are discovering on Mars is something we are in short supply of at the moment here on Earth: optimism for the future.

Plantetary landers are far from my speciality, so I’ll not dwell on Phoenix too long. Last night’s landing was well-covered by the blogosphere and in particular (took the BBC ages to catch up in fact), I was following the MarsPhoenix Twitter feed and The Planetary Society. The University of Arizona has an excellent webpage covering the mission and of course NASA also has much to say. Both are great sites and easy to read.

If, as my brother-in-law would say, you want to skip to the end: here are the pictures! First up is the first image sent back of the surface. It is black and white because that way they could send the image quickly and more easily in order to test out the lander. Phoenix has 14 colour filters and will be able to send full colour pictures later on.

Above we have a false colour image (UV and infrared filters) showing the hexagonal features of the ground in this arctic region. Below is a tall panorama showing the vast plains that are indicative of the geographical region on Mars, where Phoenix has landed.

The Mars lander, Phoenix will be touching down near the North Pole of the red planet on May 25th. It is an exciting mission, which is setting out to explore the notion of life on Mars as well as looking into the planet’s water history.

There’s no point in me regurgitating a load of facts here; The Planetary Society has a great lowdown on the Phoenix lander and recent news regarding the mission.

I just wanted to mention that there is a great Twitter feed for the Phoenix mission which will keep you up to date if you’re that way inclined.

Continuing my series of posts regarding Google Sky and Google Earth, here is a KMZ file that will let you find some of the prominent and interesting space telescopes and satellites on Google Earth. This file includes real-time position tracking and 1 hour flight paths for:

• Swift Gamma Ray Mission (NASA)
• RoSat (NASA, UK, Germany)
• CoRoT (CNES, ESA)
• GalEx (NASA)
• COBE (NASA)
• IRAS (NASA, UK, Netherlands)
• Envisat (ESA)
• Hubble Space Telescope (NASA, ESA)
• International Space Station (Many)

This KMZ file splits down into several separate files so you can chose to select or deselect any and all of the above objects. Clicking on the satellite or telescope’s icon brings up information about that object with links to more information. Screenshots below for those who like that sort of thing.

To see more Google Earth satellite files check out the general Satellites on Google Earth post and the Chinese Space Debris post. As always, suggestions are welcomed in the comments section. For example, I had created a time-slider dependent satellite tracker but it just ended up being really annoying. Would that be something people would want? Also, as mentioned in a previous comment, I am in the process of creating a tracker that uses a Sketchup model instead of an icon. All thoughts welcome, have fun playing with these.

I can hardly type this without thinking of the Muppets’ ‘Pigs in Space’. Whilst writing about space debris recently, and preparing to do a talk on the subject of stuff that we’ve put into space, I got to once again thinking about those frogs that NASA put into space in 1970 (for which this very blog is named).

How many other animals have been put into space and why? Looking into the subject, it’s quite entertaining. so here’s my top ten list of animals sent into space:

10. Flies

In 1942 the first animals were put into space. they were ironically flies. Fruit flies and corn seeds took a one way trip on a US V2 rocket, (you know the ones they built using Nazi technology and slaves).

9. Dogs

On November 3rd, 1957 the first animal in orbit was Laika, the Russian space dog. She flew aboard Sputnik 2 and died during the flight. The Soviets flew 10 more dogs on that programme until April 12, 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit.

Belka and Strelka (seriously, who named these dogs?) were the first mammals to be successfully returned to the Earth after orbital flight in 1960. you can them in the picture. The other canine record holders are Veterok and Ugolyok, two dogs that spent 22 days in space before returning unharmed in 1966.

Strelka’s puppy, Pushinka was given as a present to the Kennedys and many of her descendants are known still today.

8. Fish

Several fish have visited space. specifically the species Mummichog, Japanese Killfish and Zebra Danio. The Killfish were in fact the only survivors of the Columbia distaster.

More than anything I was simply pleased to find out there is an animal called a Mummichog.

7. Spiders

Experimenting with low gravity environments is obviously a big reason behind putting animals in space. So can a spider build a web in orbit? The answer is yes. Anita and Arabella were two garden spiders that flew on SkyLab in 1973.

The webs were seen to be finer that on Earth and to have variations in thickness throughout each web, unlike the highly uniform webs spun on Earth. Anit’s remains are still kept in a jar at the Smithsonian for all to see. You can see her web above.

6. Cats

Two cats have graced the skies, both put there by the French. The first was Felix in 1963, who survived his trip despite having electrodes implanted into his brain. The second cat’s name does not seem to be obvious, but he did not survive. I can has spacesuit?

5. Newts

In 1985, the Russians sent 10 newts into space after amputating their forearms. They were trying to study the regeneration of cells in low-gravity.

4. Mice and Rats

Many mice have been into space. The US reportedly put loads of them up there in the 1950s, but only the first one survived. In the 1960s, China, the USA and Russia all put many mice into space and into orbit. Nothing much seems to have come of this so far as popular culture is concerned. Douglas Adams, may have had other things to say about that though.

Russia flew rats and mice, as well as hordes of other animals, during its Bion programs in the 60s and 70s. Bion spacecraft (shown above) were designed to test organisms in space. As you can see they look very comfortable. If only NASA had made them, they would have at least had cupholders.

3. Frogs

My favourite space dwellers are the Orbiting Frogs that were sent up in 1970. Why? Well of course it was to sudy motion sickness in space. Don’t you know that frogs get carsick?

The Orbiting Frog Otolith housed the bullfrogs for a week as they circled the Earth. Scientists measured their vital signs and once the experiment was over the simply left the frogs to work it out for themselves. Needless to say it pleases and disturbs me greatly that there are possibly still two frogs up there somewhere.

Also, Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese journalist, carried a tree frog with him on a visit to Mir in 1990.

2. Tortoises

The tortoise is held in my esteem on this blog entry because it is the unlikely holder of not one, but two space records! In 1968 a Russian Tortoise became the first animal to go into deep space when it orbited the Moon and returned safely to the Earth.

There must be something about Tortoises that Russian space scientists like (or dislike) because a Tortoise also hold the record for longest flight time in orbit. In 1976 two tortoise and a fish spent 90.5 days in orbit on Salyut 5. They were never recovered and the craft burned up during re-entry in 1977.

1. Monkeys

Of course I had to end with monkeys. On June 11th, 1948 a monkey named Albert was the first to be put into space by NASA. He was under anesthetic during the launch and never returned. Many other monkeys have famously been put into space.

In 1959, Able and Baker, a rhesus and squirrel monkey respectively, were the first to survive spaceflight. It sounds like the premise of a Warner Brothers’ cartoon. They were placed in the nosecone of a missile and shot nearly 400 hundred miles above the surface of the Earth and over a distance of 1,700 miles. They travelled at 100,000 mph for 16 minutes. Needless to say they experience G-forces above and beyond anything normal (Wikipedia says 16g).

Able died a few days later from complications related to one of his implanted electrodes, but Baker lived until 1984 in the NASA Spaceflight centre in Huntsville, Alabama, possibly running the place.

In 1961, Ham the Chimp was launched into orbit. He was been trained to operate his craft (seriously, Warner Bros again?). He survived and lived a life of luxury afterwards. He appeared many times on television and even starred in a film with Evel Knievel!

17 more monkeys and chimps were flown in the years that followed, by the US, Russia and France, including two that went up on one of the first space shuttle missions.

I would like to end on the tragic is the story of Gordo. A young squirrel monkey from South America, Gordo also flew in the nosecone of a missile. In fact he paved the way for Able and Baker to do so more successfully a year later. He rocketed upward and survived the 10g launch, to the delight of NASA supervisors. However, during the 100,000 mph re-entry, whilst experiencing a whopping 40g, Gordo’s parachute failed to deploy. The squirrel monkey, sealed in the nosecone, sonicly-boomed into the ocean, more than a 1000 miles from Florida. He has never been recovered.

As if Canadarm wasn’t the best name of anything in space (it’s a Canadian arm for the International Space Station), the Canadian Space Agency has now put Dextre into space. What is Dextre? Well he’s the hand to Canadarm’s arm.

The team that built him have kept referring to him as a person despite Dextre being a very important, and serious, addition to the ISS. Endeavour’s recent mission to the orbiting space station was partly to deliver Dextre and install him for use.

After Endeavour leaves the station in a few days, Canadarm (well technically now Canadarm2) will pick Dextre up by his head and put him to use in a series of tests. He is designed to perform tasks that astronauts would normally have to do during risky spacewalks. Now, the astronauts on board can carry out routine maintainence tasks without leaving the safety of the station’s modules. Dextre is even designed to be operated from the same controls as Canadarm2. He can also be operated remotely, from the Earth.

The need for Dextre has arisen as the ISS has become larger and thus needs more frequent repairs and maintenance work. Also, NASA will be retiring the space shuttle fleet in 2010 so the frequency of visits to the station will reduce and robotic and remote work will become more of a requirement.

If you want to hear more about Dextre, I recommend the fabulous Quirks and Quarks science show from CBC. You can download Quirks via a podcast or listen via radio in Canada and via Sirius satellite radio. They did an interview about Dextre in their March 1st show.

Or visit the Canadian Space Agency Dextre website.

Discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11 last year, this 150-600m asteroid will closely approach the Earth in the next few days. It will pass within 1.4 lunar distances (roughly 335,000 miles) on January 29th at about 8a.m. GMT. It will almost reach magnitude 10 between the 29th and 30th and will then get fainter as it moves further from Earth. According to NASA’s press release, you might even be able to see it through a good telescope.

Here is a map, also from the NASA site, showing its path over the sky. You can also get a local ephemeris via this link.

For the press release click here.

This is a nice link from Digg about concepts for space stations. just goes to show how varied and wide the shapes and sizes for space-faring vehicles could get, if only we could get to the future and build them already!

read more | digg story

If you haven’t heard of Photosynth, its an incredible idea from Microsoft’s labs (yes they do cool stuff too!). Basically the concept is that as more and more photos are taken of a particular object or location the better a computer could get at creating a sort of simulated view of it (a ’synth’) in which you can swing it about in 3D.

Since millions of digital photos are taken each week and uploaded all over the internet, the guys and gals at Photosynth are trying to demonstrate their impending software relase with a few choice examples from ‘the cloud’. In this example they have created synths of the buildings around the shuttle Endeavour.

Its Windows only, but more than worth a look. this is the future of digital photography and what a cool example subject. Go, now, to Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth. They also have a Notre Dame example.

Thanks to James for the tip on this one.

I recently saw a Digg article which linked to a space.com page about the 10 Strangest Things in Space. All but 2 of the items were not pictures at all but computer simulations, or artists impressions. So here to correct this injustice to phenomena everywhere I present the REAL 10 Strangest Things in Space - or at least in my opinion. Feel free to suggest any others in the comments.

V838 Monoceroti Expansion (Hubble)

It wasn’t anything interesting until it happened but the star V838 Monoceroti, which had simply sat in obscurity, flared up in 2002 to become 600,000 more luminous than our own Sun. It didn’t take long for the star to fade back into the darkness but the Hubble Space Telescope managed to get quite a few pictures of it during its active phase. (Click for animated version)

In this series of images you can see how the star’s outer layers were first expelled and then cut away by the powerful radiation from the star. The event was made even more interesting by the fact that a ‘light echo‘ was seen. During the expansion the object appeared to expand faster than the speed of light - the effect was however merely an astronomical optical illusion.

The Egg Nebula (Hubble)

Also known as CRL2688, the Egg Nebula shows a pair of mysterious ’searchlights’ bursting out from a dense cocoon of dust surrounding a hidden, Sun-like star. We see the light escaping in the directions where the cocoon is thinner. Objects like CRL2688 are rare because they are in a phase of their evolution that is short-lived. Images like this one are very important to understanding how stars like our Sun will ultimately die.

The Sun in UV (SOHO)

The surface of the Sun is far more active than most people would think. This ultraviolet video taken by NASA’s SOHO spacecraft gives brilliant detail. It allows us to see one full revolution of the Sun on its axis, which normally takes about 25 days. In this video you can make out large flares erupting from the surface and the striking magnetic loops that seem to whirl about them as they go. (Full 512×512 MPEG Here)
Red Square Nebula Nebula (Hale/Keck)

Discovered in 2007, this ruby-like nebula may be the result of two interacting stars. If one star is dying then the material from it may be dragged into a disc around the orbits of both objects. Material can then only escape from the system along the poles of the disc, resulting in two cones leading out of the stars. When viewed from the edge these cones seem like two triangles. Here the system is seen in the infrared. Structures like this are rarely seen in nebula but there is in fact a Red Rectangle Nebula which is less symmetric but still quite interesting to look at.

Abell 39 (NOAO)

Here we see an almost perfect planetary nebula that sits about 7,000 light years away in the constellation Hercules. The dot at the centre is the original star, which - as it died - released the expanding gas shell also seen clearly here. The ghostly appearance of the shell is due to the blue-green filter used to take the image, which picks out the oxygen emitted light at 500.7nm.

Saturn’s Rings (Cassini)

This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. Cassini was sheltered from the Sun’s glare by positioning itself behind Saturn. Ring structures are revealed here in detail as they brighten substantially at viewing angles where the Sun is almost directly behind the objects. These observations allowed Cassini to detected two new faint rings.

The Horsehead Nebula Swallowed Something (SCUBA)

Observers used the JCMT submillimetre telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to take this image of the familiar Horsehead Nebula, who’s outline can be seen here. When observed at 850 microns, we are seeing the cold dust at temperatures close to absolute zero. This dust is deep inside the optical nebula normally seen, which is transparent at this wavelength. It seems from the image that the Horse has swallowed a ‘lozenge’ which is in fact a region of dense dust that may be collapsing under gravity. In fact this could be a star system in the making.

Gomez’s Hamburger (Hubble)

Arturo Gomez found this odd object in 1985 and it became known as Gomez’s Hamburger for obvious reasons. It is actually a proto-planetary nebula, an earlier version of Abell 39 perhaps. The curves of light (the bun) are reflecting light from the star which is being obscured by a thick band of dust (the burger). The whole thing is only only a fraction of a light year across and located 10,000 light years away in Sagittarius.

The Solar Spectrum (NOAO)

If you could catch a rainbow and put it under a microscope you would see that it was not a continuous blend of colours. Along the width of it would be seen, scattered irregularly, dark patches. Atoms and molecules in the Sun’s atmosphere pick out specific frequencies of light and absorb them, diminishing their intensity by comparison. This images shows the spectrum of light from the Sun stretched out to make these absorption lines visible. We use the reverse of the idea (emission lines) when we make coloured lights. For instance, we excite sodium atoms to emit a signature orange light in street lamps. In this image you can see two prominent dark bands in the yellow-orange section which are the absorption due to sodium.

Update to This Entry

The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared (Spitzer)

By looking at things in different wavelengths we can see much more than meets the eye. This image is a perfect example. Just as with the Horsehead image above we are seeing cooler material. This time it is dust in the Sombrero galaxy. The red ring is a thick band of dust encircling the whole galaxy. In the optical, this dust ring is what gives the Sombrero its distinctive black, obscuring line.

Oddities in the Orion Nebula (Hubble)

Deep within high resolution images of the Orion Nebula taken by Hubble we can see dark blobs. When you take a closer look you can see that these are like little flattened blobs. Some show a dim, red glow at their centres, others are just dark. These are proto solar-systems.

The red glowing is a protostars attempting to burst through and the dark disks are thick dust regions where one day planets may form. 6 billion years ago, this is what our Solar System may have looked from very far away.

Attention Cardiff citizens - I know you’re out there - the ISS is coming to our city. Well honestly, the ISS passes over us all the time but there are two nice upcoming passes that are worth keeping an eye our for because they are bright, conveniently timed and easy to spot. There is also the slight chance it will be clear and you will actually see it happen.

Tonight on Monday June 11th the ISS will rise at 11:21pm almost due West and pass directly overhead until it vanishes into the Earth’s shadow in the East at 11:29pm. It will move very quickly overhead at a magnitude of -1.0 which is about as bright as the brightest stars you can see. It will of course fly across the whole sky, compared to those stars, in just 8 minutes and that is what gives it away.

If you miss that pass for any reason, on Wednesday June 13th almost exactly the same thing will happen again. This time it will start and finish at 10:27pm and 10:35pm respectively and will be just fractionally dimmer at magnitude -0.9. That still puts it among the bright objects up there at the time.

All of this is made extra cool by knowing that the shuttle Atlantis and its crew are currently up there working on the space station, installing solar panels and making space walks.

Thanks to Heaven’s Above for the great service they provide. You can finid out when and where to spy the ISS and an array of other objects over at their website.

Wired are reporting on a feasability study from the NASA Institute for Advanced Studies on a giant liquid mirror telescope that could potentially be placed on the Moon. Roger Angel or the University of Arizona is the man in charge of this study and he is suggestying it may be possible to build a 100m diameter telescope on the Moon that would be able to collect 1,736 times mnore light than Hubble.

There is currently a 6m liquid telescope under construction in British Columbia, Canada (they already have a working 2.7m model, shown above) but if moved to the Moon a far larger structure could be built and then mantained more easily. With the Moon’s much weaker gravity buildings could be far larger without stressing under their own weight and they would be easier to move around, targeting the sky.

Liquid Mirror Telescopes (LMTs) cost 10 to 20 times less to manufacute than a polished aluminium mirror equivalent and in fact building a 20m LMT for the Moon would cost less than the $4.7 billion dollars NASA is spending on the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s succesor in the sky.

It seems that the ide ais sound enough and it is really just details left to debate. The greatest technical challenge is finding reflective liquids with low freezing points and vapor pressures (i.e. they would freeze or evaporate when placed on the Moon).

Ermanno Borra, of Laval University in Quebec, was the first made the case for an LMT on the Moon back in 1991. Recently, Borra has been experimenting with metal liquid-like films, that reflect light as effectively as aluminum. According to the Wired article, Borra declined to comment on his results until they’ve been published in Nature later this summer.

NASA’s Chandra observatory, in unison with ground-based optical telescopes, has relased details of a supernova from last September which is the brightest ever recorded. SN 2006gy exploded in galaxy NGC 1260 and was the brightest such event ever seen. NGC 1260 is 240 million light years away and the supernoa appeared to outshine the entries galaxy in both optical and x-ray wavelengths.

This event is believed to be a Type II supernova, which occur at the end of a large stars life. When a star is larger than about nine solar masses it will go through a different set of fusion reactions at the end if its life. As the hydrogen runs out, having all been converted to other elements, the stars begins to grow unstable at its centre as the heavier elements grow more and more dense and the gravitational pressure becomes unsustainable by the star’s newlty formed iron core. When the core reaches a mass known as the Chandrasekhar limit, a catastrophic collapse ensues during which the stars outer layers fall inward at a speed nearly one quarter that of light.

In just a few seconds 10⁴⁰ joules (one hundred billion trillion trillion trillion) of gravitational energy are crushing down on the core which becomes as desne as an atomic nuceus and so the collapse bounces. Bounce is a very gentle word for what happens but since the core has taken all the pressue it possible can, the falling material has no choice but to rebound and it blows outward, destroying the star with it and showering the universe in neutrinos and everything else.

In the above image, taken from NASA’s press release, the top section shows an artists impression of the event close-up. The lower left panel is an infrared image and the lower-right an x-ray image from Chandra. both the lower panels show the nucelus of NGC 1260 on the left and SN 2006gy on the right.

SN 2006gy is thought to be the largest such event witnessed and even more interestingly, it bore a striking resemblance to a star in our own galaxy just before it died. Eta Carinae was the star which appeared in Hubble’s 17th Anniversary image. SN 2006gy is thought to have beren a lot like ETa Carinae; both were enormous stars which had begun spewing out material. If Eta Carinae follows the same path as SN 2006gy then we could be in for more than just a bright light in Chandra’s field of view. Whereas SN 2006gy is 240 million light years away, Eta Carinae is only 7,500. If it did go supernova then it would be visible during the day and at night would cast shadows almost as well as the full moon.

Hopefully more information and more images will follow and with any luck Eta Carinae will give us a repeat, close-up discussion someday in the future. If it did then it would be the most fantastic event in all of modern civilisation.