Blue Moon on New Year's Eve

Party planners take note. For the first time in almost twenty years, there's going to be a Blue Moon on New Year's Eve.

"I remember the last time this happened," says professor Philip Hiscock of the Dept. of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. "December 1990 ended with a Blue Moon, and many New Year's Eve parties were themed by the event. It was a lot of fun."

Don't expect the Moon to actually turn blue, though. "The 'Blue Moon' is a creature of folklore," he explains. "It's the second full Moon in a calendar month."

The full moon of Dec. 2, 2009, over Turan, Italy. Photographer Stefano De Rosa notes that the blue colors are cast by Christmas lights surrounding the pictured church.

Most months have only one full Moon. The 29.5-day cadence of the lunar cycle matches up almost perfectly with the 28- to 31-day length of calendar months. Indeed, the word "month" comes from "Moon." Occasionally, however, the one-to-one correspondence breaks down when two full Moons squeeze into a single month. Dec. 2009 is such a month. The first full Moon appeared on Dec. 2nd; the second, a "Blue Moon," will come on Dec. 31st.

This definition of Blue Moon is relatively new.

If you told a person in Shakespeare's day that something happens "once in a Blue Moon" they would attach no astronomical meaning to the statement. Blue moon simply meant rare or absurd, like making a date for the Twelfth of Never. "But meaning is a slippery substance," says Hiscock. "The phrase 'Blue Moon' has been around for more than 400 years, and during that time its meaning has shifted."

The modern definition sprang up in the 1940s. In those days, the Farmer's Almanac of Maine offered a definition of Blue Moon so convoluted that even professional astronomers struggled to understand it. It involved factors such as the ecclesiastical dates of Easter and Lent, and the timing of seasons according to the dynamical mean sun. Aiming to explain blue moons to the layman, Sky & Telescope published an article in 1946 entitled "Once in a Blue Moon." The author James Hugh Pruett cited the 1937 Maine almanac and opined that the "second [full moon] in a month, so I interpret it, is called Blue Moon."

That was not correct, but at least it could be understood. And thus the modern Blue Moon was born.
Blue moon has other connotations, too. In music, it's often a symbol of melancholy. According to one Elvis tune, it means "without a love of my own." On the bright side, he croons in another song, a simple kiss can turn a Blue Moon pure gold.

The modern astronomical Blue Moon occurs in some month every 2.5 years, on average. A Blue Moon falling precisely on Dec. 31st, however, is much more unusual. The last time it happened was in 1990, and the next time won't be until 2028.

So cue up that old Elvis record and "enjoy the extra moonlight on New Year's Eve," says Hiscock. "It only happens once in a Blue Moon."

Partial Lunar Eclipse of 31 December 2009

Headline:
The last eclipse of 2009 occurs on New Year’s Eve. This minor Partial Lunar Eclipse takes place in Gemini, and is visible primarily from the Eastern Hemisphere. Greatest eclipse takes place at 19:23 UT when the eclipse magnitude will reach 0.0763. (The information below was observed by Dragon X’s Eclipse Observation & Investigation System)

Eclipse Viewer:
On 31 December 2009, Thursday night, there will be a Partial Lunar Eclipse occurs in our Earth’s shadow. The eclipse will be occurring at the Ecliptic Conjunction of 19:13:51.1 TD (19:12:45.1 UT), and the Greatest Eclipse of 19:23:45.9 TD (19:22:39.9 UT). At the moment, the Penumbral Magnitude will be at 1.0555, P. Radius of 1.2997° and the Gamma of 0.9766. The Umbral Magnitude will be at 0.0763, U. Radius of 0.7575° and the Axis of 0.9921°.

Easy Capture (1):
Ecliptic Conjunction = 19:13:51.1 TD (19:12:45.1 UT)
Greatest Eclipse = 19:23:45.9 TD (19:22:39.9 UT)

Penumbral Magnitude = 1.0555
P. Radius = 1.2997°
Gamma = 0.9766

Umbral Magnitude = 0.0763
U. Radius = 0.7575°
Axis = 0.9921°

Sun at Greatest Eclipse (Geocentric Coordinates):
When the eclipse occur, the Sun will be in the Right Ascension for 18hours 44minutes 37.2seconds. The Declination of the Sun will be in -23°02’33.1”, Apparent Semi-Diameter of 00°16’15.9”, and the Horizontal Parallax of 00°00’08.9”.

Easy Capture (2):
R.A. = 18h44m37.2s
Dec. = -23°02’33.1”
S.D. = 00°16’15.9”
H.P. = 00°00’08.9”

Moon at Greatest Eclipse (Geocentric Coordinates):
When the eclipse occur, the Moon will be in the Right Ascension for 06hours 45minutes 22.4seconds. The Declination of the Sun will be in +24°01’10.5”, Apparent Semi-Diameter of 00°16’36.6”, and the Horizontal Parallax of 01°00’57.6”.

Easy Capture (3):
R.A. = 06h45m22.4s
Dec. = +24°01’10.5”
S.D. = 00°16’36.6”
H.P. = 01°00’57.6”

Umbra Occur:

Eclipse Occur Duration:
When the eclipse occur on the day, it will passed the Penumbral Shadow for the Semi Duration of 02hours 05minutes 34seconds, and the Umbral Shadow for the Semi Duration of 00hours 29minutes 59seconds. So for the total time for the eclipse to take time(s) is 02hours 35minutes 33seconds.

Easy Capture (4):
Penumbral = 02h05m34s
Umbral = 00h29m59s
Total Occur = 02h35m33s

Best Visible:
ΔT = 66.0s
Rule = CdT (Danjon)
Eph. = VSOP87/ELP2000-85

Information Box:
Local Date(s):
31 December 2009 ~ 01 January 2009

Local Time(s):
09:37:15pm ~ 12:12:48am

Duration Occur(s):
02hours 35minutes 33seconds

Types/Percentage Occur(s):
8.0% Umbral

Best Visible From(s):
Europe, Africa, Asia

Eclipse Contacts:
On that night, the Lunar Eclipse will occur step by step by passing through the Earth’s shadow. It will started by the Penumbral Eclipse that will begins at 17:17:07 UT, then followed by the Partial Umbral Eclipse that will begins at 18:52:44 UT, next by the Partial Umbral Eclipse that will ends at 19:52:42 UT, and finally resume by the penumbral Eclipse that will be ends at 21:28:15 UT.

Easy Capture (5):
P1 = 17:17:07 UT
U1 = 18:52:44 UT
U4 = 19:52:42 UT
P4 = 21:28:15 UT

Voyager Makes an Interstellar Discovery

The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.

"Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system," explains lead author Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University. "This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all."

Voyager flies through the outer bounds of the heliosphere en route to interstellar space. A strong magnetic field reported by Opher et al in the Dec. 24, 2009, issue of Nature is delineated in yellow.

The discovery has implications for the future when the solar system will eventually bump into other, similar clouds in our arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers call the cloud we're running into now the Local Interstellar Cloud or "Local Fluff" for short. It's about 30 light years wide and contains a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms at a temperature of 6000 C. The existential mystery of the Fluff has to do with its surroundings. About 10 million years ago, a cluster of supernovas exploded nearby, creating a giant bubble of million-degree gas. The Fluff is completely surrounded by this high-pressure supernova exhaust and should be crushed or dispersed by it.

"The observed temperature and density of the local cloud do not provide enough pressure to resist the 'crushing action' of the hot gas around it," says Opher.

So how does the Fluff survive? The Voyagers have found an answer.
"Voyager data show that the Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected—between 4 and 5 microgauss*," says Opher. "This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction."

An artist's concept of the Local Interstellar Cloud, also known as the "Local Fluff."

NASA's two Voyager probes have been racing out of the solar system for more than 30 years. They are now beyond the orbit of Pluto and on the verge of entering interstellar space—but they are not there yet.

"The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff," says Opher. "But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it."

The Fluff is held at bay just beyond the edge of the solar system by the sun's magnetic field, which is inflated by solar wind into a magnetic bubble more than 10 billion km wide. Called the "heliosphere," this bubble acts as a shield that helps protect the inner solar system from galactic cosmic rays and interstellar clouds. The two Voyagers are located in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, or "heliosheath," where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas.

Voyager 1 entered the heliosheath in Dec. 2004; Voyager 2 followed almost 3 years later in Aug. 2007. These crossings were key to Opher et al's discovery.

The anatomy of the heliosphere. Since this illustration was made, Voyager 2 has joined Voyager 1 inside the heliosheath, a thick outer layer where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas.

The size of the heliosphere is determined by a balance of forces: Solar wind inflates the bubble from the inside while the Local Fluff compresses it from the outside. Voyager's crossings into the heliosheath revealed the approximate size of the heliosphere and, thus, how much pressure the Local Fluff exerts. A portion of that pressure is magnetic and corresponds to the ~5 microgauss Opher's team has reported in Nature.

The fact that the Fluff is strongly magnetized means that other clouds in the galactic neighborhood could be, too. Eventually, the solar system will run into some of them, and their strong magnetic fields could compress the heliosphere even more than it is compressed now. Additional compression could allow more cosmic rays to reach the inner solar system, possibly affecting terrestrial climate and the ability of astronauts to travel safely through space. On the other hand, astronauts wouldn't have to travel so far because interstellar space would be closer than ever. These events would play out on time scales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, which is how long it takes for the solar system to move from one cloud to the next.

"There could be interesting times ahead!" says Opher.

To read the original research, look in the Dec. 24, 2009, issue of Nature for Opher et al's article, "A strong, highly-tilted interstellar magnetic field near the Solar System."

Colliding Auroras Produce Explosions of Light

A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco.

"Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time," says space scientist Larry Lyons of UCLA, a leading member of the team that made the discovery. "These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras."

Colliding auroras photographed by THEMIS all-sky imagers (ASIs) on Feb. 29, 2008. [short movie with labels] [full-length movie]

The collisions occur on such a vast scale, isolated observers on Earth with limited fields of view had never noticed them before. It took a network of sensitive cameras spread across thousands of miles to get the big picture.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency created such a network for THEMIS, short for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms." THEMIS consists of five spacecraft launched in 2006 to solve a long-standing mystery: Why do auroras occasionally erupt in an explosion of light called a substorm? Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed across the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to photograph auroras from below while the spacecraft sampled charged particles and electromagnetic fields from above. Together, the cameras and spacecraft would see the action from both sides and be able to piece together cause and effect—or so researchers hoped.
It seems to have worked.

The breakthrough came earlier this year when UCLA researcher Toshi Nishimura completed the Herculean task of assembling continent-wide movies from the individual ASI cameras.

Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed by researchers from the University of California Berkeley, the University of Calgary, and the University of Alaska in support of the THEMIS mission. This map shows their locations and field of view. Image

"It can be a little tricky," Nishimura says. "Each camera has its own local weather and lighting conditions, and the auroras are different distances from each camera. I've got to account for these factors for six or more cameras simultaneously to make a coherent, large-scale movie."

The first movie he showed Lyons was a pair of auroras crashing together in Dec. 2007.

"It was like nothing I had seen before," Lyons recalls. "Over the next several days, we surveyed even more events. Our excitement mounted as we became convinced that the collisions were happening over and over."

The explosions of light, they believe, are a sign of something dramatic happening in the space around Earth—specifically, in Earth's "plasma tail." Millions of kilometers long and pointed away from the sun, the plasma tail is made of charged particles captured mainly from the solar wind. Sometimes called the "plasma sheet," the tail is held together by Earth's magnetic field.

The same magnetic field that holds the tail together also connects it to Earth's polar regions. Because of this connection, watching the dance of Northern Lights can reveal much about what's happening in the plasma tail.

A schematic diagram of Earth's magnetosphere. Earth is the circle near the middle and the plasma tail is denoted in yellow.

By examining many collisions, Lyons and Nishimura have identified a common sequence of events. It begins with two elements: (1) a broad curtain of slow-moving auroras and (2) a smaller knot of fast-moving auroras, initially far apart. The slow curtain is quietly glowing over the Arctic when the speedy knot rushes in from the north. The two auroras collide and an eruption of light ensues.

How does this sequence connect to events in the plasma tail?

"It took some creative thinking to come up with an answer, but I believe this team has done it," says THEMIS project scientist Dave Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Lyons believes that the fast-moving knot is associated with a stream of relatively lightweight plasma jetting through the plasma tail. The stream gets started in the outer regions of the plasma tail and moves rapidly inward toward Earth. The fast knot of auroras moves in synch with this stream.

Meanwhile, the broad curtain of auroras is quietly hanging over the Arctic, gently glowing, more or less minding its own business. This curtain is connected to the stationary inner boundary of the plasma tail and is fueled by plasma instabilities there.

Auroras poised to collide. Click on the image to view a labeled sequence of events.

When the lightweight stream reaches the inner boundary of the plasma tail—bang!--there is an eruption of plasma waves and instabilities. This collision of plasma is mirrored by a collision of auroras over the poles.

National Science Foundation radars located in Alaska and Greenland confirm this basic picture. They have detected echoes from streams of material rushing through Earth's upper atmosphere just before the auroras collide and erupt.
The five THEMIS spacecraft also agree. They have been able to fly through the plasma tail and confirm the existence of lightweight material rushing toward Earth.

"By putting together data from ground-based cameras, ground-based radar, and the THEMIS spacecraft themselves, we now have a nearly complete picture of what causes explosive auroral substorms," says Sibeck.And what a picture it is. Click here for movies.

A Flash of Light from Titan

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has photographed a flash of sunlight reflecting from a lake on Saturn's moon Titan, confirming the presence of liquid hydrocarbons on a part of the moon dotted with many lake-shaped basins.

Cassini scientists had been looking for the glint, also known as a specular reflection, since the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn in 2004. But until recently Titan's northern hemisphere, where most of the lakes are located, had been veiled in winter darkness. Now, however, the seasons are changing and sunlight has returned to the north, allowing Cassini to capture this serendipitous image:

This image, obtained using Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), shows the first observed flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan.

The picture, which shows sunlight reflecting from the smooth surface of a liquid on July 8, 2009, was presented today at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

"This one image communicates so much about Titan -- a thick atmosphere, surface lakes and an otherworldliness," says Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It's an unsettling combination of strangeness yet similarity to Earth. This picture is one of Cassini's iconic images."

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has captivated scientists because of its many similarities to Earth. Scientists have theorized for 20 years that Titan's cold surface hosts seas or lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only other planetary body besides Earth believed to have liquid on its surface. While data from Cassini have not indicated any vast seas, they have revealed what appeared to be large lakes near Titan's north and south poles.

In 2008, Cassini scientists using infrared data confirmed the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in Titan's southern hemisphere. But they were still looking for the smoking gun to confirm liquid in the northern hemisphere, where the basins are larger and more numerous.

Katrin Stephan, of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin, an associate member of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team, was processing the initial image and was the first to see the glint on July 10, 2009.

"I was instantly excited because the glint reminded me of an image of our own planet taken from orbit around Earth, showing a reflection of sunlight on an ocean," Stephan said. "But we also had to do more work to make sure the glint we were seeing wasn't lightning or an erupting volcano."

A false-color radar map of putative methane lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere.

Team members at the University of Arizona in Tucson processed the image further. They were able to pinpoint the reflection at the southern shoreline of a lake called Kraken Mare. The sprawling Kraken Mare covers about 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), an area larger than the Caspian Sea, the largest lake on Earth.

By comparing this new image to radar and near-infrared images acquired since 2006, scientists were able to show that the shoreline of Kraken Mare has been stable over the last three years and that Titan has an ongoing hydrological cycle that brings liquids to the surface. Of course, in this case, the liquid in the hydrological cycle is methane rather than water, as it is on Earth."These results remind us how unique Titan is in the solar system," says Ralf Jaumann, who leads the scientists at the DLR who work on Cassini. "They also show us that liquid has a universal power to shape geological surfaces in the same way, no matter what the liquid is."

When to See Mercury in December 2009

Headline:
In December 2009, there will be many space events to see during this school end holidays. Once of the event is the Milky Way Galaxy first planet, Mercury will be seen on 18 December 2009? Mercury is the first planet in our solar system named, the Milky Way Galaxy. On 18 December 2009, we can see Mercury as a bright star in the sunset and sunrise. The Mercury will be seen as a bright star in the evening sky, 1 hour before sunset.

How to See the Mercury in the Evening Sky:
Look at the sun at 6.00pm (Malaysia Time), 6.00am (Orlando Florida Time). You can find the Mercury in the horizon line to the sun, and then look up onto 20 degrees angle from the line; you will found the bright star which is take place as Mercury. The Mercury will be in the Earth area by 6 weeks after the date given. But for the information, in the 6 weeks duration, on 18 December 2009 only that you can see the Mercury as visible as you can.

See The Mercury Needs Any Preparation?
Actually, see the Mercury in the evening sky doesn’t need any preparation or equipments. Some of the people said that seeing the Mercury in the evening sky needs the binocular and telescope to see it clearly. That is not actually wrong, but for seeing the Mercury, you can also don’t need the equipments for seeing it clearly. Even though the position of Mercury is so nearly to the Sun, when you used the binocular or the telescope to see it, it will damage your eyes. So, Dragon X Space Agency warn that when the Mercury is occur, do not used any equipments to see it, you can even see it with your naked eyes. This is safe for your eyes’ system.

Information Box:
Local Date(s):
18 December 2009, Friday

Local Time(s):
1 hour before sunset

Visible Position(s):
Horizon line to the Sun, 20 degrees above

The 2009 Leonid Meteor Shower

This year's Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17th. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors over North America followed by a more intense outburst over Asia. The phase of the Moon will be new, setting the stage for what could be one of the best Leonid showers in years.

"We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers."

Leonids are bits of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years the comet visits the inner solar system and leaves a stream of dusty debris in its wake. Many of these streams have drifted across the November portion of Earth's orbit. Whenever we hit one, meteors come flying out of the constellation Leo.

"We can predict when Earth will cross a debris stream with pretty good accuracy," says Cooke. "The intensity of the display is less certain, though, because we don't know how much debris is in each stream." Caveat observer!
The first stream crossing on Nov. 17th comes around 0900 UT (4 a.m. EST, 1 a.m. PST). The debris is a diffuse mix of particles from several old streams that should produce a gentle display of two to three dozen meteors per hour over North America. Dark skies are recommended for full effect.

"A remarkable feature of this year's shower is that Leonids will appear to be shooting almost directly out of the planet Mars," notes Cooke.

It's just a coincidence. This year, Mars happens to be passing by the Leonid radiant at the time of the shower. The Red Planet is almost twice as bright as a first magnitude star, so it makes an eye-catching companion for the Leonids: sky map.

The next stream crossing straddles the hour 2100-2200 UT, shortly before dawn in Indonesia and China. At that time, Earth will pass through a pair of streams laid down by Comet Tempel-Tuttle in 1466 and 1533 AD. The double crossing could yield as many as 300 Leonids per hour.

This side of Earth will be facing the Leonid debris stream at the time of the Nov. 17th outburst. Observers in India, China and Indonesia are favored with dark, pre-dawn skies.

"Even if rates are only half that number, it would still be one of the best showers of the year," says Cooke.

The Leonids are famous for storming, most recently in 1999-2002 when deep crossings of Tempel-Tuttle's debris streams produced outbursts of more than 1000 meteors per hour. The Leonids of 2009 won't be like that, but it only takes one bright Leonid streaking past Mars to make the night worthwhile.

Enjoy the show.

Dragon X Launch Schedule

2009 Launches

Date: 23 November 2009, Monday
Mission: Diamond Ring flight test
Launch Vehicle: Diamond Ring PTR-01
Launch Site: Dragon X Space Agency
Launch Complex - EFTP 0019
Launch Window: 10.45am – 11.00am (TBD)
Description: Dragon X Space Agency will launch the Diamond Ring rocket on its first flight test for the FOB operating.

2010 Launches

Date: 2010
Mission: Diamond Ring 2nd flight test
Launch Vehicle: Diamond Ring PTR-02
Launch Site: Dragon X Space Agency Launch Complex – EFTP 0019
Launch Window: (TBD)
Description: 2nd flight test for Diamond Ring

Date: 2010
Mission: Launch EX exploration
Launch Vehicle: EX exploration rocket
Launch Site: Dragon X IMSS Launch – Holder-Hand
Launch Window: (TBD)
Description: Launch an explosion missile for Weapon Manufacture Industry-WMI

Date: 2010
Mission: Diamond Ring Final Confirmation Flight
Launch Vehicle: Diamond Ring PTR-03
Launch Site: Dragon X Space Agency Launch Complex – RLP 1A
Launch Window: (TBD)
Description: Launch Diamond Ring for the final flight in the “Diamond Ring Flight Test Programmed”

DIAMOND RING FLIGHT TEST

23 November 2009

Time(s): 10.45 a.m. – 11.00 a.m. (TBD)

Location: Dragon X Space Agency Launch Complex – EFTP 0019 launch pad

Dragon X Space Agency will launch the Diamond Ring rocket on a first flight test for transport payload to ORP and GTP. The “Diamond Ring Flight Test Programmed” that was launched by the Space Exploration Cooperation – Space X, is to collect the data from Diamond Ring PTR -01 during the flight onto the FOB operating.


The Dragon X Space Agency Launch Complex Viewing Dots will be closed during this launch.

A Mars Rover Named "Curiosity"

If you found your grandmother's diary, tattered and dust covered, up in the attic, would you read it? Of course you would. Granny was a pistol! Brush off the dust, open up the little book, and foray into her lively and interesting past.
Dust cloaks some fascinating tales in other places, too. NASA scientists will soon brush the dust off some Martian rocks that are practically bursting their seams to give their lively account of the red planet's past. The Mars Science Lab -- aptly named "Curiosity" -- is heading up there in 2011 to read the diary of Mars.

The small, car-sized rover will ramble about on the rocky surface, gizmos at full tilt, not only brushing dust off rocks but also vaporizing them with a laser beam, gathering samples to analyze on the spot, taking high resolution photographs, and more.

"Curiosity will be prospecting for organic molecules, the chemical building blocks of life," says Joy Crisp of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We want to find out whether Mars' environment was, or still is, capable of harboring life."
"To answer the question 'Is there life on Mars?' the most reasonable and productive approach is to look for organic compounds, which could be from life past or present, or from meteorites," explains Michael Meyer of NASA headquarters. "If you find anything, you know you're in a region that could preserve evidence of life, if there was any. We have maps from our orbiters, but we don't know which of the promising looking regions actually contains anything, much less the mother lode."

"The rock record is of particular interest," says Crisp. "It has a record from billions of years ago and can answer questions like 'Where and for how long might Mars have been habitable?' 'Was it cold or warm there in the past?' 'Was the water there acidic or salty?'"

Curiosity will be the first red planet rover since Spirit and Opportunity. Though it would be hard to match the twins' toughness, Curiosity will have a much greater range, more instruments, and a bigger, stronger robotic arm. It will be nuclear powered instead of solar, so there will be no worries about dust on solar panels causing energy supplies to plummet. It will have much more power, more consistently.

"Curiosity will even land in a new fashion," says Crisp. "Spirit and Opportunity were sitting on top of a lander that hit on the surface and bounced, protected by airbags, before coming to rest and opening up. They then had to drive off the top of the lander. A descent stage called Sky Crane will gently lower Curiosity (no airbags needed) via cables, which will be cut once the rover's wheels set down.

Meyer adds, "The most important difference is that Spirit and Opportunity aren't analytical labs – they are more for observing. This newest rover will be performing a more comprehensive study of the Martian environment."
Remote sensing instruments located on Curiosity's mast will scout around for promising targets and perform some long-distance analysis before the vehicle moves in for a closer look.

"Curiosity will have a laser on its mast that can take aim at a rock and vaporize a small spot on it," says Crisp. "This produces a plasma cloud that tells us about that rock's chemistry. We'll look at the light reflected off the cloud to characterize rocks and soils from up to 9 meters away. We’ll be able to classify minerals, ices, and organic molecules without having to drive as much."

The mast also sports a high-resolution camera called, naturally, Mastcam. It will observe, photograph, and videotape geological structures and features, like craters, gullies, and dunes.

"Siblings." This artist's concept compares Curiosity (left) to Spirit (right).

The rover's robotic arm wields its own unique instruments. APXS, the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer, will measure the abundance of chemical elements in the dust, soils, rocks, and processed samples. MAHLI, the Mars Hand Lens Imager, will return color images like those of typical digital cameras and act like a geologist's magnifying lens. Its images can be used to examine the structure and texture of rocks, dust, and frost at the micrometer to centimeter scale.

One laboratory instrument inside the rover's body will explore the red planet by "sniffing" the air, bird-dog style. SAM, short for Sample Analysis at Mars, has vents that open to the atmosphere to determine where to take samples, for example if it detects methane in the area.

"That's important because methane can be released by microbes," explains Crisp, "or by liquid water reacting with rock at depths under the surface. Water 'down under' could be a niche for subterranean life. SAM can also be used to sniff the gases released after baking a rock or soil sample in its oven."

In addition, Curiosity will carry instruments for observing Martian weather and measuring cosmic radiation bombarding the planet's surface.

"This rover is intrinsically spectacular in terms of what the mission will do," says Meyer. "It's a keystone for the future. It sets the stage for understanding whether organics are preserved on Mars and will tell us what we need to use to find out.

"Now – where's that diary?

NASA Mission to Study the Moon's Fragile Atmosphere

Right now, the Moon is a ghost town. Nothing stirs. Here and there, an abandoned Apollo rover — or the dusty base of a lunar lander — linger as silent testimony to past human activity. But these days, only occasional asteroid impacts disrupt the decades-long spell of profound stillness.

And this stillness presents scientists with an important opportunity.

Currently, the Moon's tenuous atmosphere is relatively undisturbed. But that won't be true for long. NASA is planning to return people to the Moon, and human activity will kick up dust, expel rocket exhaust, and release other gaseous emissions into the lunar atmosphere. Because the atmosphere is so thin, these disturbances could quickly swamp its natural composition.

If scientists are ever to know the lunar atmosphere in a relatively natural state, now is the time to look. So researchers are building a probe called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) that will orbit the Moon and measure its wispy atmosphere better than ever before.

"It's important that we understand it in its pristine state before there's much perturbation," says Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "It's such a fragile system. It's possible that it will be hard to study once humans are once more living and working on the Moon."

Thinner than thin

Right about now, you might be thinking to yourself: "Hold on a second. I thought the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere!" And you would be almost correct. The Moon's "atmosphere" is so tenuous that it's technically considered an exosphere, not an atmosphere.

"It's not anything like an atmosphere we would think of," Colaprete says. For example, a cubic centimeter of Earth's atmosphere at sea level contains about 100 billion billion molecules. That same volume of the Moon's exosphere contains only about 100 molecules.

In fact, that's so thin that molecules in the lunar exosphere almost never collide with each other. Rather than constantly ricocheting off each other to create a cohesive, swarming mass of molecules as happens in Earth's atmosphere, molecules in the lunar exosphere fly unimpeded, like microscopic cannon balls following curved, ballistic trajectories.

And the weirdness of the exosphere doesn't stop there. During the lunar night, the Moon's exosphere mostly falls to the ground. (Just imagine if our atmosphere fell to the ground at night!) When sunlight returns, the solar wind kicks up new particles to replenish the exosphere.

In 1968, on many occasions, NASA's Surveyor 7 moon lander photographed a strange "horizon glow" after dark. Researchers now believe the glow is sunlight scattered from electrically-charged moondust floating just above the lunar surface.

Also, intense ultraviolet sunlight kicks electrons off particles in the lunar soil, giving those particles an electric charge that can cause them to levitate. Ambient electric fields lift these charged dust particles as high as kilometers above the surface, forming an important part of the exosphere.

Lunar astronauts will have to live and work in this bizarre environment, so scientists want a better picture of the exosphere and its odd behaviors. Levitating dust can get into equipment, spacesuits, and computers, causing damage and shortening the hardware's useful life. In fact, moondust wrecked havoc with the Apollo spacesuits, which were nearly threadbare by the time they returned to Earth. Knowing how much dust is floating around in the exosphere and how it behaves will help engineers design next-generation lunar hardware.

After it launches in 2012, LADEE's spectrometers and dust detectors will measure the concentrations of 18 different chemicals in the exosphere, including methane and water vapor. These sensors will document how those chemicals vary, both from place to place and over time.

Beyond the inherent scientific value of understanding the chemical makeup of the Moon's exosphere, knowing how chemicals move within the exosphere could help answer a question of keen interest to future human habitants: How could the Moon have frozen reserves of water?

This animation shows how individual molecules may move near the surface of the Moon to form an exosphere.

Evidence suggests that the Moon might harbor stores of ice in deep, dark polar craters. On the lunar surface, fierce sunlight would quickly sublimate any ice and the vapors would drift off into space. But a deep dark crater, combining unimaginable cold with an absence of sunlight, could provide a safe-haven for frozen water.

A popular idea is that icy comets brought water to the Moon in a series of ancient impacts. But there's a problem: Even if a comet landed in one of those dark polar craters by sheer luck, the heat of impact would evaporate most of the ice. So how could significant amounts of ice accumulate?

The Moon's exosphere could help.

Suppose a comet hits the Moon and leaves some H2O molecules on the exposed surface. That water could survive by, essentially, leaping to safety. Water molecules could "jump" across the lunar surface by escaping into the exosphere and later be recaptured by the surface as the exosphere breathes in and out. Individual water molecules could move around in this way until they land in one of the dark polar craters, where they would accumulate as solid ice.
Data from LADEE should show whether this "jumping" process works in a way that could explain how cometary ice could have found its way into those craters. "We can estimate the likelihood that the water on the Moon is cometary in origin," Colaprete says.

So much information from such a trifling amount of atmosphere! Stay tuned for results from LADEE.

The 2009 Orionid Meteor Shower

The Orionid meteor shower peaks this week and it could be a very good show.

"Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, the source of the Orionids," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour."


The best time to look is before sunrise on Wednesday, Oct. 21st. That's when Earth encounters the densest part of Halley's debris stream. Observing is easy: Wake up a few hours before dawn, brew some hot chocolate, go outside and look up. No telescope is required to see Orionids shooting across the sky.

Orionids appear every year around this time when Earth orbits through an area of space littered with debris from the ancient comet. Normally, the shower produces 10 to 20 meteors per hour, a modest display. The past few years, however, have been much better than usual.

"Since 2006, the Orionids have been one of the best showers of the year, with counts of 60 or more meteors per hour," says Cooke.

According to Japanese meteor scientists Mikiya Sato and Jun-ichi Watanabe, 2006 marked Earth's first encounter with some very old debris. "We have found that the [elevated activity of 2006] was caused by dust trails ejected from 1P/Halley in 1266 BC, 1198 BC, and 911 BC," they wrote in the August 2007 edition of Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan. In their paper "Origin of the 2006 Orionid Outburst," Sato and Watanabe used a computer to model the structure and evolution of Halley's many debris streams stretching back in time as far as 3400 years. The debris that hit Earth in 2006 was among the oldest they studied and was rich in large fireball-producing meteoroids.

Repeat encounters produced good displays in 2007 and 2008—and "the meteoroids are expected to approach Earth [again] in 2009," say Sato and Watanabe. They note that these old broad streams tend to produce equally broad showers, lasting several nights around the peak. So, if clouds interfere on the 21st, try again on the 22nd or 23rd.

The phase of the Moon favors a good show. The Moon is almost new and completely absent from the pre-dawn sky at the time of the shower's peak. Bright moonlight will not be a problem.

Last but not least, the display will be framed by some of the prettiest stars and planets in the night sky. In addition to Orionids, you'll see brilliant Venus, red Mars, the dog star Sirius, and bright winter constellations such as Orion, Gemini and Taurus. Even if the shower is a dud, the rest of the sky is dynamite.

Set your alarm and enjoy the show.

Diamond Ring Flight Test

Space X’s Diamond Ring Flight Test:

Space X, or stand for Space Exploration Cooperation, had planned for a new programmed to launch a PTR rocket system (Payload Transportation Rocket). For this new flight programmed, Space X had asked for a permission from Dragon X Space Agency to create for a new space vehicle/rocket to be used for their cooperation. So far, Dragon X Space Agency had agreed and allowed them to create for their own rocket.

Launch Site:
All space vehicles launches and touchdowns are always plan at Dragon X Space Agency. So the new Space X’s PTR rocket is plan for launches at Dragon X Space Agency Launch Complex. The Space X’s PTR rocket is also controlled by Dragon X Space Agency Launch Operation Center (LOC) when in the process to be launch and touchdown, similar to the other.

"Click here" for more information.

Lunar Eclipse In 2009.pdf

Umbral Lunar Eclipse of 31 December 2009

Eclipse occurs date(s) = 31 December 2009 ~ 01 January 2010
Eclipse occurs time(s) = At about 23:00 hours ~ 02:00hours

Percentage of eclipse occurs
= 8.0% Umbral

Umbral Magnitude = -0.0881 U.Radius = 0.7463° Axis = 1.0680°

Best visible from:
Europe, Africa, Asia

Information added by:
Dragon X Space Agency

Space X Lunar Manager

Anti-frozen Of Gasses

If you carelessly keep the carbonate drinks in the frozen for two days, what will you think you will ask for when you take out the drinks?

"The drinks were in in the liquids particle! Why was it didn't change into ice?"

Actually, the carbonate drinks which is high in carbonate and carbohydrate is a type of anti-frozen for gasses. The "defenders" which is defense the liquids from reaching the freezing point are called the A-warmers. After planting the experiments on it, thenDragon X Space Agency had confirmed that the carbon dioxide (CO2), carbonate and carbohydrate is a type of the anti-frozen for gasses.

Alcohol – An Anti-frozen Of Liquids

Why that the alcohol that was kept in the frozen did not change in ice?

Dragon X Space Agency had discovered the science that “Why is the alcohol that kept in the frozen for a long times did not change into ice?” What did you think is the answer for this discovered?

Actually, the alcohol is a type of the anti-frozen for liquids. The alcohol is made up of small “defenders”. These “defenders” are called the A-warmers. These A-warmers are such as the tiny soldiers that defense the frozen (the freezing point) from attacking the liquids.

If you put a bottle of alcohol (above 30%) in the frozen for 1 month without touching it, you will find out that the alcohol in the bottle does not have any changes. It is only cold in liquid but not freeze in solid. This is because the A-warmers always keep the liquids cold by not reaching the freezing point, so the alcohol in the frozen will not change into ice.

New Solar Cycle Prediction

An international panel of experts led by NOAA and sponsored by NASA has released a new prediction for the next solar cycle. Solar Cycle 24 will peak, they say, in May 2013 with a below-average number of sunspots.

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.

It is tempting to describe such a cycle as "weak" or "mild," but that could give the wrong impression.

"Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather," points out Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we’re predicting for 2013."

The 1859 storm--known as the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare--electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused "only" $80 to 125 billion in damage.

The latest forecast revises an earlier prediction issued in 2007. At that time, a sharply divided panel believed solar minimum would come in March 2008 followed by either a strong solar maximum in 2011 or a weak solar maximum in 2012. Competing models gave different answers, and researchers were eager for the sun to reveal which was correct.

"It turns out that none of our models were totally correct," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."
Researchers have known about the solar cycle since the mid-1800s. Graphs of sunspot numbers resemble a roller coaster, going up and down with an approximately 11-year period. At first glance, it looks like a regular pattern, but predicting the peaks and valleys has proven troublesome. Cycles vary in length from about 9 to 14 years. Some peaks are high, others low. The valleys are usually brief, lasting only a couple of years, but sometimes they stretch out much longer. In the 17th century the sun plunged into a 70-year period of spotlessness known as the Maunder Minimum that still baffles scientists.

Right now, the solar cycle is in a valley--the deepest of the past century. In 2008 and 2009, the sun set Space Age records for low sunspot counts, weak solar wind, and low solar irradiance. The sun has gone more than two years without a significant solar flare.

"In our professional careers, we've never seen anything quite like it," says Pesnell. "Solar minimum has lasted far beyond the date we predicted in 2007."

In recent months, however, the sun has begun to show timorous signs of life. Small sunspots and "proto-sunspots" are popping up with increasing frequency. Enormous currents of plasma on the sun’s surface ("zonal flows") are gaining strength and slowly drifting toward the sun’s equator. Radio astronomers have detected a tiny but significant uptick in solar radio emissions. All these things are precursors of an awakening Solar Cycle 24 and form the basis for the panel's new, almost unanimous forecast.

According to the forecast, the sun should remain generally calm for at least another year. From a research point of view, that's good news because solar minimum has proven to be more interesting than anyone imagined. Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earth’s atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract. Space junk accumulates in Earth orbit because there is less aerodynamic drag. The becalmed solar wind whips up fewer magnetic storms around Earth's poles. Cosmic rays that are normally pushed back by solar wind instead intrude on the near-Earth environment. There are other side-effects, too, that can be studied only so long as the sun remains quiet.

Meanwhile, the sun pays little heed to human committees. There could be more surprises, panelists acknowledge, and more revisions to the forecast."Go ahead and mark your calendar for May 2013," says Pesnell. "But use a pencil."

Honey, I Blew up the Tokamak

Magnetic reconnection could be the Universe's favorite way to make things explode. It operates anywhere magnetic fields pervade space--which is to say almost everywhere. On the sun magnetic reconnection causes solar flares as powerful as a billion atomic bombs. In Earth's atmosphere, it fuels magnetic storms and auroras. In laboratories, it can cause big problems in fusion reactors. It's ubiquitous.

The problem is, researchers can't explain it.

The basics are clear enough. Magnetic lines of force cross, cancel, reconnect and—Bang! Magnetic energy is unleashed in the form of heat and charged-particle kinetic energy.

But how? How does the simple act of crisscrossing magnetic field lines trigger such a ferocious explosion?
"Something very interesting and fundamental is going on that we don't really understand -- not from laboratory experiments or from simulations," says Melvyn Goldstein, chief of the Geospace Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA is going to launch a mission to get to the bottom of the mystery. It's called MMS, short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, and it consists of four spacecraft which will fly through Earth's magnetosphere to study reconnection in action. The mission passed its preliminary design review in May 2009 and was approved for implementation in June 2009. Engineers can now start building the spacecraft.

"Earth's magnetosphere is a wonderful natural laboratory for studying reconnection," says mission scientist Jim Burch of the Southwest Research Institute. "It is big, roomy, and reconnection is taking place there almost non-stop."
In the outer layers of the magnetosphere, where Earth's magnetic field meets the solar wind, reconnection events create temporary magnetic "portals" connecting Earth to the sun. Inside the magnetosphere, in a long drawn-out structure called "the magnetotail," reconnection propels high-energy plasma clouds toward Earth, triggering Northern Lights when they hit. There are many other examples, and MMS will explore them all.

The four spacecraft will be built at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Each observatory is shaped like a giant hockey puck, about 12 feet in diameter and 4 feet in height," says Karen Halterman, MMS Project Manager at Goddard.

The mission's sensors for monitoring electromagnetic fields and charged particles are being built at a number of universities and laboratories around the country, led by the Southwest Research Institute. When the instruments are done, they will be integrated into the spacecraft frames at Goddard. Launch is scheduled for 2014 onboard an Atlas V rocket.

Any new physics MMS learns could ultimately help alleviate the energy crisis on Earth.

"For many years, researchers have looked to fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for our planet," says Burch. "One approach, magnetic confinement fusion, has yielded very promising results with devices such as tokamaks. But there have been problems keeping the plasma (hot ionized gas) contained in the chamber."
"One of the main problems is magnetic reconnection," he continues. "A spectacular and even dangerous result of reconnection is known as the sawtooth crash. As the heat in the tokamak builds up, the electron temperature reaches a peak and then 'crashes' to a lower value, and some of the hot plasma escapes. This is caused by reconnection of the containment field."

In light of this, you might suppose that tokamaks would be a good place to study reconnection. But no, says Burch. Reconnection in a tokamak happens in such a tiny volume, only a few millimeters wide, that it is very difficult to study. It is practically impossible to build sensors small enough to probe the reconnection zone.

Earth's magnetosphere is much better. In the expansive magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet, the process plays out over volumes as large as tens of kilometers across. "We can fly spacecraft in and around it and get a good look at what's going on," he says.

That is what MMS will do: fly directly into the reconnection zone. The spacecraft are sturdy enough to withstand the energetics of reconnection events known to occur in Earth's magnetosphere, so there is nothing standing in the way of a full two year mission of discovery.

Deep Solar Minimum

The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.

Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87%).

It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

"This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," agrees sunspot expert David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Quiet suns come along every 11 years or so. It's a natural part of the sunspot cycle, discovered by German astronomer Heinrich Schwabe in the mid-1800s. Sunspots are planet-sized islands of magnetism on the surface of the sun; they are sources of solar flares, coronal mass ejections and intense UV radiation. Plotting sunspot counts, Schwabe saw that peaks of solar activity were always followed by valleys of relative calm—a clockwork pattern that has held true for more than 200 year.

The current solar minimum is part of that pattern. In fact, it's right on time. "We're due for a bit of quiet—and here it is," says Pesnell.

But is it supposed to be this quiet? In 2008, the sun set the following records:

A 50-year low in solar wind pressure: Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft reveal a 20% drop in solar wind pressure since the mid-1990s—the lowest point since such measurements began in the 1960s. The solar wind helps keep galactic cosmic rays out of the inner solar system. With the solar wind flagging, more cosmic rays are permitted to enter, resulting in increased health hazards for astronauts. Weaker solar wind also means fewer geomagnetic storms and auroras on Earth.

A 12-year low in solar "irradiance": Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft show that the sun's brightness has dropped by 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at extreme UV wavelengths since the solar minimum of 1996. The changes so far are not enough to reverse the course of global warming, but there are some other significant side-effects: Earth's upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun and it is therefore less "puffed up." Satellites in low Earth orbit experience less atmospheric drag, extending their operational lifetimes. Unfortunately, space junk also remains longer in Earth orbit, increasing hazards to spacecraft and satellites.

A 55-year low in solar radio emissions: After World War II, astronomers began keeping records of the sun's brightness at radio wavelengths. Records of 10.7 cm flux extend back all the way to the early 1950s. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest "radio sun" since 1955. Some researchers believe that the lessening of radio emissions is an indication of weakness in the sun's global magnetic field. No one is certain, however, because the source of these long-monitored radio emissions is not fully understood.

All these lows have sparked a debate about whether the ongoing minimum is "weird", "extreme" or just an overdue "market correction" following a string of unusually intense solar maxima.

"Since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high," notes Hathaway. "Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years. We're just not used to this kind of deep calm."
Deep calm was fairly common a hundred years ago. The solar minima of 1901 and 1913, for instance, were even longer than the one we're experiencing now. To match those minima in terms of depth and longevity, the current minimum will have to last at least another year.

In a way, the calm is exciting, says Pesnell. "For the first time in history, we're getting to see what a deep solar minimum is really like." A fleet of spacecraft including the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the twin STEREO probes, the five THEMIS probes, Hinode, ACE, Wind, TRACE, AIM, TIMED, Geotail and others are studying the sun and its effects on Earth 24/7 using technology that didn't exist 100 years ago. Their measurements of solar wind, cosmic rays, irradiance and magnetic fields show that solar minimum is much more interesting and profound than anyone expected.

Modern technology cannot, however, predict what comes next. Competing models by dozens of top solar physicists disagree, sometimes sharply, on when this solar minimum will end and how big the next solar maximum will be. Pesnell has surveyed the scientific literature and prepared a "piano plot" showing the range of predictions. The great uncertainty stems from one simple fact: No one fully understands the underlying physics of the sunspot cycle.
Pesnell believes sunspot counts will pick up again soon, "possibly by the end of the year," to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013.But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates.

Ares Super-chute

NASA and U.S. Air Force test pilots have just dropped a 50,000-pound "dummy" rocket booster on the Arizona desert--and stopped it before it crashed.

It's all part of NASA's plan to return to the Moon.

"NASA's new Ares moon rocket is going to have a reusable booster stage that we plan to recover after each mission," explains James Burnum of Marshall Space Flight Center. "To 'catch' the booster before it crashes back to Earth, we need a super-reliable parachute system."

Chief pilot Frank Batteas of Dryden Flight Research Center helped a NASA-led team test one of the super-chutes on Feb. 28th, and he offers this account:

"We flew at 175 knots at 25,000 feet, and dropped one of the heaviest payloads a C-17 has ever carried – a 50,000 pound stand-in for the spent Ares booster," says Batteas. "A lot of things have to happen correctly for such a test to be successful. A great deal of teamwork, among NASA, the Air Force, the Army, Boeing, and others, goes into planning and executing events both inside and outside the plane."

Burnum adds, "not only is planning critical, but also the aircraft pilot's skill and experience are paramount. The Air Force saw to it that we were placed in very good hands. Batteas was one of the very first test pilots for the C-17 and has flown this aircraft for about 1000 of its 3000 total hours, so he knows the plane like the back of his hand. This kind of excellent support from the Air Force lets us concentrate on our hardware. We don't worry at all about the plane or piloting."

The Ares booster recovery parachute system consists of (1) a small pilot chute, which pulls out the drogue chute; (2) a drogue chute, and (3) three main parachutes. All three components are being subjected to testing.
In the recent test, the 68-foot diameter drogue parachute got a chance to prove itself. Its ultimate job will be to slow the Ares I rocket's jettisoned booster and orient it vertically before the cluster of three main parachutes deploys to carry the booster to splashdown.

The drogue chute passed its test with flying colors. It slowed the descent of its ungainly passenger – a 50,000-pound steel, missile shaped test payload – sufficiently for the main parachute to deliver it to good old terra firma in Yuma, Arizona for recovery. Like the booster, the test payload will be reused.

"The steel 'missile' used for testing has cavities for adjusting the weight of the payload," says Franz Ravelo, C-17 Mission Systems Engineer at the Air Force Flight Test Center in Edwards Air Force Base, California. "We'll reuse it for future Ares parachute testing with 70,000, 77,000, 85,000, and finally 90,000 pound payloads."

The Feb. 28th drop went off entirely without a hitch – well, almost.

"The day testing was scheduled for, 80 mph winds were blustering at 25,000 ft, causing a slip in the schedule," says Batteas. "We ended up testing on my birthday, so I missed the celebration they held for me back at Dryden," says Batteas. "They did call me and sing 'Happy Birthday' to me over the phone. And my wife saved me some cake."
He didn't really mind working that day, though.

"When you see that mammoth payload plunge Earthward and then slow as the chutes deploy, it is very satisfying. It's exciting to see it really work. And with each test there are many lessons learned which make it safer for the next test--and take us that much closer to the Moon."

A Brief History of Solar Sails

Solar sail, n. - A gossamer material that, when unfurled in the vacuum of space, feels the pressure of sunlight and propelled by said pressure may carry a ship among the stars.

Long ago, someone stood alone on a sandy shore and gazed longingly out at the seemingly endless expanse of ocean, over a horizon suffused softly with ocean mist, musing "I wonder, what's out there?" Then, they fashioned a boat, rigged it with a large cloth to catch the wind, and set sail.

Not quite so long ago, someone stood alone on a sandy shore and gazed longingly up at the seemingly endless expanse of space, suffused softly with sparkling stars, musing "I wonder, what's out there?" Then, they fashioned a spacecraft, rigged it with a large cloth to catch the sun, and set sail.

Two very special missions are planned for the near future; both aim to deploy a solar sail to harness the power of sunlight. NASA's NanoSail-D is a small solar sail slated for launch as early as August 2008. The Planetary Society's Cosmos 2 does not yet have a specific launch target date. Its goal is to make "a controlled flight under sunlight pressure."

To fully appreciate these two missions, let's travel back in time for a brief history of solar sailing:

Almost 400 years ago, German astronomer Johannes Kepler observed comet tails being blown by what he thought to be a solar "breeze." This observation inspired him to suggest that "ships and sails proper for heavenly air should be fashioned" to glide through space.

Little did Kepler know, the best way to propel a solar sail is not by means of solar wind, but rather by the force of sunlight itself. In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell first demonstrated that sunlight exerts a small amount of pressure as photons bounce off a reflective surface. This kind of pressure is the basis of all modern solar sail designs.
In 1960, Echo-1 felt these solar pressure effects loudly and clearly. "Photon pressure played orbital soccer with the Echo-1 thin-film balloon in orbit.... The shards were flung far and wide by sunlight."

NASA had a more positive experience with solar sailing in 1974 when the Mariner 10 spacecraft ran low on attitude control gas. Because Mariner 10 was on a mission to Mercury, there was plenty of sunlight around and this gave mission controllers an idea: They angled Mariner's solar arrays into the sun and used solar radiation pressure for attitude control. It worked. Though Mariner 10 was not a solar sail mission, and though the radiation pressure it used was incredibly small, this ingenious use of Mariner's solar arrays did demonstrate the principle of solar sailing.
Right: Mariner 10, circa 1974, was not designed for solar sailing, but the spacecraft's solar arrays worked surprisingly well as impromptu sails for attitude control.

Also in the 1970s, Dr. Louis Friedman, then at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, led a project to try the first solar sail flight. Halley's Comet was to make its closest approach to Earth in 1986, and NASA conceived the exciting idea of propelling a probe via solar sail to rendezvous with the comet. Eventually, the project was scrapped. Still "the year-long work on preliminary design demonstrated that, indeed, solar sailing was a feasible spacecraft-propulsion technique."

In 1993, the Russian Space Agency launched a 20-meter diameter, spinning mirror called Znamya 2, hoping to beam solar power back to the ground.

"Some call Znamya 2 a sail because it was made of a large, lightweight reflector and unfurled like a solar sail might be unfurled," says Les Johnson of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, co-author of the soon-to-be-published book Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel. "In fact, if I were asked to demonstrate solar sail technology and was constrained to deploy it from a large spacecraft, I might design a 'sail' like Znamya."

The foil reflector unfurled and when illuminated produced a spot of light which crossed Europe from France to Russia. Unable to control its own flight, however, the mirror burned up in the atmosphere over Canada. Russia's proto-sail program was abandoned in 1999 after a larger, follow-up mission (Znamya 2.5) failed to deploy properly.
Solar sails were an accessory on India's INSAT 2A and 3A communications satellites, circa 1992 and 2003. The satellites were powered by a 4-panel solar array on one side. A solar sail was mounted on the north side of each satellite to offset the torque resulting from solar pressure on the array.

In 2004, the Japanese deployed solar sail materials sub-orbitally from a sounding rocket. Although it was not a demonstration of a free-flying solar sail that could be used for deep-space exploration, the deployment was nevertheless "a valuable milestone" remarks Friedman, who appreciates the challenges of deploying gossamer sheets from fast-moving spacecraft.

To date, no solar sail has been successfully deployed in space as a primary means of propulsion.
The Planetary Society hoped to demonstrate the technology with its Cosmos 1 mission in 2005. "Cosmos 1 was a fully developed solar sail spacecraft intended to fly only under the influence of solar pressure for control of the spacecraft's orbit," says Friedman, now the director of the Planetary Society.

"If all had gone as planned, the US-based Planetary Society, working with Russia, would have been the first to fly a fully functional, though performance-limited, solar sail in space," says Johnson. "It would have been the first spin-stabilized, free-flying solar sail to fly in space."

Cosmos 1, however, was lost when the launch vehicle failed.

Meanwhile, NASA has also continued to dabble in solar sailing. Between 2001 and 2005, the Agency developed two different 20-meter solar sails (fabricated by ATK Space Systems and L'Garde, Inc., respectively) and tested them on the ground in vacuum conditions. "These sail designs are robust enough for deployment in a one atmosphere, one gravity environment and are scalable to much larger solar sails -- perhaps as much as 150 meters on one side." "A NASA flight test is possible by the year 2010."

Meanwhile, NanoSail-D is shooting for this summer, and space.

Edward E. Montgomery's team from the Marshall Space Flight Center is working in cooperation with Elwood Agasid's Ames team toward deploying the NanoSail-D solar sail--in fact, "any day now," says Montgomery. It will travel to orbit onboard a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket, to be launched from Omelek Island in the Pacific Ocean.

"Our primary objective is to demonstrate successful deployment of a lightweight solar sail structure in low Earth orbit," says Montgomery. NanoSail-D will feel two kinds of pressure: (1) aerodynamic drag from the wispy top of Earth’s atmosphere and (2) the pressure of sunlight. Montgomery's team hopes to measure both types of pressure as the sail circles Earth.

Johnson cautions, "If--and it's a big if—they can measure the solar pressure, they will have demonstrated solar pressure as a primary means of orbital maneuvering. They'll have to show conclusively the effects of solar pressure, with a convincingly high signal-to-noise ratio (above the forces resulting from the residual atmospheric pressure)."
Montgomery acknowledges the challenge: "The orbit available to us in this launch opportunity is so low, it may not allow us to stay in orbit long enough for solar pressure effects to accumulate to a measurable degree. We are going to have to look closely at the flight data to see if we can make that determination."

And what of Cosmos 2? The mission is a privately funded project, a partnership of The Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios. Work has begun at the Russian Space Research Institute on some Cosmos 2 spacecraft hardware. They are also studying possible launch configurations on a reliable launch vehicle.

If successful, NanoSail-D and Cosmos 2 could profoundly affect the future of science and exploration missions.
"Success would be huge for the future of space exploration," says Montgomery.

"Solar sailing is the only means known to achieve practical interstellar flight," says Friedman. "It is our hope that the first solar sail flight will spur the development of solar sail technology so that this dream can be made real."

Each effort is a stepping stone, in the great visionary Carl Sagan's words, along "the shore of the cosmic ocean," leading us closer to sailing among the stars. Future attempts will surely take us the rest of the way. "'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemedAs if it could not be,And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamedOf sailing that beautiful sea."

Letupan Besar

Menurut teori Letupan Besar, alam semesta muncul dari keadaan yang sangat tumpat dan panas. Sejak itu, ruang angkasa mengembang dengan masa membawa galaksi bersama.

Dalam fizik kosmologi, Letupan Besar merupakan teori saintifik yang mengatakan alam semesta muncul dari keadaan yang sangat tumpat dan panas lebih kurang 13.7 bilion tahun dahulu. Teori Letupan Besar adalah berdasarkan cerapan anjakan merah hukum Hubble tentang jarak galaksi yang apabila disertakan sekali prinsip kosmologi mendapati ruang angkasa mengembang menurut model Friedmann-Lemaître bagi kerelatifan am. Ditentuluarkan ke masa silam, pemerhatian ini menunjukkan yang alam semesta mengembang dari keadaan ketika tenaga dan jirim dalam alam semesta ini sangat panas dan tumpat. Ahli fizik tidak bersetuju sepenuhnya tentang apa yang berlaku sebelum itu, walaupun kerelatifan am meramalkan ketunggalan graviti.

Istilah Letupan Besar digunakan bagi merujuk titik apabila pengembangan yang dicerap (Hukum Hubble) bermula — kira-kira 13.7 bilion (1.37 × 1010) tahun dahulu (±2%) — dan bagi yang lebih umum iaitu digunakan untuk merujuk paradigma kosmologi terkini menerangkan asal dan pengembangan alam semesta, begitu juga komposisi jirim awal melalui nukleosintesis seperti yang diramalkan oleh teori Alpher-Bethe-Gamow.

Satu kesan daripada letupan besar adalah keadaan alam semesta kini berbeza dari keadaan pada masa dahulu atau akan datang (evolusi semula jadi alam semesta sentiasa mengambil tempat). Daripada model, George Gamow pada 1948 dapat meramalkan, sekurang-kurangnya secara kualitatif, akan kewujudan sinar latar belakang mikrogelombang kosmos (CMB). CMB ditemui pada 1960-an dan kemudian mengesahkan teori Letupan Besar mengatasi lawannya, teori keadaan tetap.


Sejarah
Rencana utama: Sejarah teori Letupan Besar

Teori Letupan Besar dikembangkan dari cerapan dan pertimbangan teori. Secara cerapan, didapati kebanyakan nebula berpusar bergerak dari Bumi,m tetapi sesiapa yang membuat pemerhatian tersebut tidak menyedari akan implikasi kosmologi mahupun yang nebula tersebut adalah galaksi luar Bima Sakti. Pada 1927, Georges Lemaitre menerbitkan persamaan Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker dari persamaan Albert Einstein tentang kerelatifan am dan mencadangkan, tentang asas bagi runtuhan nebula berpusar, bahawa alam semesta bermula dari "letupan" "atom awal"—yang kemudian dikenali sebagai Letupan Besar.

Pada 1929, Edwin Hubble menyediakan asas pemerhatian tentang teori Lemaître. Dia menjumpai, secara relatif kepada Bumi, yang galaksi bergerak di setiap arah pada kelajuan yang berkadar terus dengan jaraknya dari Bumi. Fakta ini dikenali sebagai Hukum Hubble. Di beri prinsip kosmologi yang mana alam semesta, apabila dilihat dalam skala jarak yang agak besar, tidak mempunyai arah tertentu atau tempat tertentu, Hukum Hubble mencadangkan yang alam semesta sedang berkembang lalu menentang scenario alam semesta yang tetap dan selanjar yang dikembangkan oleh Einstein.

Idea ini membenarkan dua percanggahan kemungkinan. Satu adalah teori Letupan Besar Lemaitre, disokong dan dimajukan oleh George Gamow. Kemungkinan lain adalah model keadaan tetap Fred Hoyle yang mana jirim baru akan tercipta apabila galaksi menjauhi antara satu sama lain. Dalam model ini, alam semesta agak sama di mana-mana titik pada satu masa. Sebenarnya, Hoyle mencipta nama bagi teori Lemaitre, merujuk secara ironiknya sebagai "idea Letupan Besar ini" ketika siaran rancangan pada 28 Mac 1949 oleh BBC Third Programme. Hoyle mengulang istilah itu dalam siaran yang lain pada awal 1950-an, sebagai sebahagian siri dari lima syarahan yang bertajuk Sifat Benda. Teks syarahannya telah diterbitkan dalam majalah British The Listener seminggu selepas setiap kali penyiaran, kali pertama istilah"Letupan Besar" muncul dalam cetakan.

Buat beberapa tahun, sokongan bagi teori ini telah bebelah bagi. Walau bagaimanapun, bukti cerapan mula menyokong idea yang menyatakan bahawa alam semesta berubah dari keadaan tumpat dan panas. Sejak penemuan sinaran latar belakang mikrogelombang kosmos pada 1965, ia telah dianggap sebagai teori terbaik tentang asal-usul dan perubahan kosmos. Hampir semua kerja teori dalam kosmologi kini melibatkan pengembangan dan pernukaran asas teori Letupan Besar. Banyak kerja tentang kosmologi kini meliputi pemahaman bagaimana galaksi membentuk dalam konteks Letupan Besar, pemahaman tentang apa yang terjadi ketika Letupan Besar, dan menyepadukan pemerhatian dengan teori asas.

Kelebihan besar dalam kosmologi Letupan Besar pada 1990-an dan abad ke-21 sebagai kesan daripada kemajuan teknologi teleskop apabila disekalikan dengan data satelit yang banyak dari COBE, Teleskop Hubble Space dan WMAP. Data sebegitu telah membenarkan ahli kosmologi mengira banyak perimeter Letupan Besar hingga ke satu tahap kepersisan dan membawa kepada penemuan yang tidak dijangka iaitu pengembangan alam semesta sedangan memecut.

Gambaran keseluruhan
Berdasarkan pengukuran pengembangan semesta dengan menggunakan Supernova Type Ia, pengukuran akan kekasaran latar belakang mikrogelombang kosmos, dan pengukuran fungsi sama bagi galaksi, usia alam semesta dikira selama 13.7 ± 0.2 bilion tahun. Persetujuan 3 pengukuran tidak bersandar ini dikira sebagai bukti kukuh bagi Model ΛCDM yang menerangkan secara terperinci sifat isi kandungan alam semesta.

Alam semesta yang awal diisi secara lama keadaan dan seragam dengan ketumpatan bertenaga tinggi bersama suhu dan tekanan tinggi. Ia mengembang dan menyejuk, melalui perubahan fasa seperti pemeluwapan wap atau penyejukan air apabila ia menyejuk tetapi berkaitan dengan zarah asas.

Lebih kurang 10-35 saat selepas zaman Planck, peralihan fasa menyebabkan alam semesta mengalami pertumbuhan eksponen ketika pengembungan kosmos. Selepas pengembungan terhenti, komponen-komponen jirim alam semesta berada dalam bentuk plasma kuark-gluon (juga termasuk zarah lain—dan mungkin dihasilkan secara eksperimen seperti cecair kuark-gluon) yang mana juzuk zarah semuanya bergerak secara relatif. Apabila alam semesta berterusan membesar, suhu pula menurun. Pada suhu tertentu, melalui peralihan yang masih tidak diketahui yang dipanggil bariogenesis, kuark dan gluon akan bergabung menjadi barion seperti proton dan neutron, malah menghasilkan ketaksimetrian seperti antara jirim dan antijirim.

Suhu rendah masih boleh menyebabkan fasa peralihan pecahan simetri berlaku yang meletakkan daya dan zarah asas kepada keadaan seperti sekarang. Kemudian, sebahagian proton dan neutron membentuk nucleus-nukleus deuterium dan helium dalam proses yang dipanggil Nukleosintesis letupan besar. Apabila alam semesta semakin sejuk, jirim berandur-ansur berhenti bergerak secara relatif dan jisim rehat tenaga ketumpatannya menjadi secara graviti yang menguasai sinaran. Selepas 300,000 tahun, elektron dan nukleus bergabung membentuk atom (kebanyakannya hidrogen); maka sinaran terpancar dari jirim dan bersambungan merentasi angkasa yang tidak berpenghalang. Sinaran peninggalan inilah latar belakang gelombang mikro kosmik.

Lama-kelamaan, kawasan yang lebih tumpat yang jirimnya disebarkan secara seragam tertarik secara graviti berhampiran jirim lalu bertambah tumpat dan membentuk awan gas, bintang, galaksi, dan lain-lain struktur astronomi yang boleh dilihat hari ini. Perincian proses ini bergantung kepada jumlah dan jenis jirim dalam alam semesta. Tiga jenis yang mungkin dikenali sebagai jirim gelap sejuk, jirim gelap panas, dan jirim barionan]]. Pengukuran terbaik (dari WMAP) menunjukkan yang bentuk utaman jirim dalam alam semesta adalah jirim gelap sejuk. Dua yang lain mengambil 20% daripada jirim alam semesta.

Alam semesta kini dipenuhi sejenis bentuk tenaga yang misteri yang dikenali sebagai tenaga gelap. Lebih kurang 70% daripada keseluruhan ketumpatan tenaga alam semesta masa kini dalam bentuk tersebut. Komponen sebatian alam semesta ini didedahkan oleh sifatnya yang menyebabkan pengembangan alam semesta menyimpang dari hubungan jarak-halaju linear dengan menyebabkan ruang-masa mengembang dengan lebih cepat dari yang dijangka pada suatu jarak yang besar. Tenaga gelap yang berada dalam pembentukan yang teringkas mengambil bentuk istilah pemalar kosmologi dalam persamaan medan Einstein tentang kerelatifan am, tetapi kandungannya tidak diketahui dan lebih umumnya, perincian persamaan keadaannya dan hubungannya dengan model piawai bagi zarah fizik masih disiasat secara cerapan dan teori.

Semua cerapan ini akan dirangkumkan ke dalam model ΛCDM kosmologi, iaitu model matematik bagi Letupan Besar dengan enam parameter tidak bersandar. Misteri muncul ketika ia hampir kepada permulaan, apabila tenaga zarah lebih tinggi dari apa yang boleh dikaji melalui eksperimen. Tiada bantuan model fizik bagi 10-33 saat yang pertama alam ini iaitu sebelum peralihan fasa yang dipanggil teori penyatuan agung (Grand Unification Theory, GUT). Pada mulanya, teori Einstein tentang graviti meramalkan kewujudan ketunggalan graviti iaitu ketika ketumpatannya tidak terhingga. Untuk menguraikan paradoks ini, teori kuantum graviti diperlukan. Memahami tempoh tersebut dalam sejarah alam semesta adalah satu masalah besar yang masih belum dapat diselesaikan.