Vesta is a massive asteroid now considered a “proto-planet”. The jumbled space rock didn’t receive enough mass from early collisions in the asteroid belt to become a full planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Animators took photographic images from NASA's Dawn mission now visiting Vesta to produce a virtual movie. The raw images were digitally harmonized to create a clear impression of the asteroid’s  mooth plains, valleys, and a huge mountain over 3 miles high. The resulting animation is impressive:





";" alt=""> Proto-planet Vesta (credit: JPL)

WHB







...

The Viking Program sent the first Mars robots that survived landing on the planet. The goal of the dual orbiters and their landers was to photograph the planet, sample the local geology, and test for extant life using several simple lab experiments. The results of the three petri dish tests were intriguing but inconclusive and a fierce debate ensued. Now, a new analytical approach has been used with the original data and may have solved the mystery. The results are being published in the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences (IJASS).

By applying a mathematical methodology called complexity analysis and using the original Viking computer printouts, researchers have determined that the soil tests may have indeed detected microbial life on Mars. Carl Sagan, a strong supporter of the Viking mission and its biological experiments is shown with a model of the...

This month, NASA researchers launched a rocket into an aurora in northern Alaska in an attempt to understand these amazing atmospheric displays better. According to the lead scientist from Cornell: "We're investigating ‘space weather’ that is caused by charged particles from the sun interacting with the Earth’s magnetic field.”

Whatever it is called, a fish-eye image taken during the launch is certainly impressive.

PermaLink Read More »

Mobee, or Monolithic Bees, is a tiny drone crafted by engineers at Harvard's Microrobotics Laboratory. Like an origami folded puzzle, the micro-device uses intricate layering and uses a folding process that allows fabrication of multiple pop-up robots. It can fly.

The first prototypes consist of layers consisting of carbon fibers, brass, plastic, sturdy titanium, light weight ceramics, and adhesives laminated in a complex, laser-cut, design. The structure incorporates flexible hinges allowing the bug to assemble itself in a single movement. The Harvard engineers worked for years to build the bio-mimicry inspired, insect sized, robots that can fly and behave autonomously. Suitable materials, software, and fabrication methods were lacking prior to Mobee’s development so they were all invented by the Harvard researchers in its proff-of-concept design. The fabrication...

If you were told that something was worth $1000 per gram--$28000 per ounce or $450000 per pound--you would be right to assume that is was an illicit substance likely bad to consume. If you heard that was the value placed on a rock consisting of basic metals and trace elements, you would again be right in thinking someone was crazy to spend the money. However, that is the market price if you wanted to purchase a gram of space rock that was blasted off the surface of Mars several million years ago and landed in Morocco in North Africa.

The meteorite was recently purchased with help of a donor by the Natural History Museum in London.





...

Saturn’s gigantic moon, Titan, has excited people for decades. It is a place right out of a fantastic SciFi novel.

Larger than the planet Mercury, Titan has a thick atmosphere mostly consisting of nitrogen, great lakes of liquid ethane and methane, extensive river delta systems, and vast arid dune fields all resembling their geographic counter parts on Earth. However, the moon is hard to study due to high elevation clouds produced by a thick haze of hydrocarbon smog. That could change if the forward-thinking ideas of University of Idaho physicist Jason Barnes come to fruition.

Barnes envisions an ultra-lite, nuclear battery powered aircraft drone that would fly over Titan’s landscapes, carry photographic sensors, and beam back data to an orbiting mother ship. The drone would fly below Titan's haze and take photos of surface features that lies largely hidden from the Cassini cameras orbiting Saturn or telescopes on Earth. Unlike a balloon, the drone...

Saturn’s gigantic moon, Titan, has excited people for decades. It is a place right out of a fantastic SciFi novel.

Larger than the planet Mercury, Titan has a thick atmosphere mostly consisting of nitrogen, great lakes of liquid ethane and methane, extensive river delta systems, and vast arid dune fields all resembling their geographic counter parts on Earth. However, the moon is hard to study due to high elevation clouds produced by a thick haze of hydrocarbon smog. That could change if the forward-thinking ideas of University of Idaho physicist Jason Barnes come to fruition.

Barnes envisions an ultra-lite, nuclear battery powered aircraft drone that would fly over Titan’s landscapes, carry photographic sensors, and beam back data to an orbiting mother ship. The drone would fly below Titan's haze and take photos of surface features that lies largely hidden from the Cassini cameras orbiting Saturn or telescopes on Earth. Unlike a balloon, the drone...

Enceladus, the icy moon of Saturn, possesses one of the Cassini orbiter’s biggest discoveries. This ice-ball sprouts massive geysers from its southern polar regions along cracks called tiger stripes. The indicate liquid water exists somewhere below the ice. Now Cassini has beamed back radar scans to a portion of the moon’s surface that provide more surface detail.



Enceladus scanned by radar (credit: NASA/JPL/CalTech)



Perhaps on the next Enceladus radar fly-by a water spout will be captured jetting upwards from a fissure.

WHB

...

 

Comparison of ice images from Iceland, Antarctica, and the icy moon of Jupiter, Europa, show strong similarities. They may indicate liquid water is closer to the surface than originally thought.

Europa has excited everyone since the Galileo spacecraft went into orbit around Jupiter and discovered the potential for a vast salty ocean under the moon’s ice cover. Now researchers from at the University of Texas at Austin, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and elsewhere have announced a model to explain ice features on Europa called chaos terrain. Until now the puzzling icescapes were produced by some unknown geological or mechanical process. Nature has just published the results of researchers who may have discovered a body of liquid water-- the volume of the Great Lakes --locked inside the icy shell...

Everyone seems to have had pumpkin mania this year, even NASA. A space pumpkin was carved to celebrate explorers of the cosmos.





Space pumpkin (credit: Liz Warren)

 

As the NASA carver notes, “space exploration is an extremely challenging and stressful endeavor. Hopefully, my pumpkins bring a moment of levity and a smile to the astronaut crews and the teams that support them.

It will be fun to see the what pumpkin mania looks like next...