planetary science Archives - Page 4 of 38 - The Spacewriter's Ramblings

Beyond Pluto, Orbiting Ceres, and Circling Mars and the Moon

Where Pluto is — roughly at the position of Pluto, and headed for PT1 (2014 MU69). Courtesy New Horizons.

Well, it’s official: New Horizons has the official go-ahead for an extended mission to the object 2014 MU69 that lies along its current path out through the Kuiper Belt. Mind you, the spacecraft was going to head that way anyhow, but now the team can plan for further course correction maneuvers and mission activities as the spacecraft whizzes past this object. That’s great news for the New Horizons team. It’s also a boost for planetary scientists interested in learning more about the objects that populate the Kuiper Belt.

Ceres’s Haulani Crater, with a diameter of 21 miles (34 kilometers), shows evidence of landslides from its crater rim.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

The Dawn mission will continue its mission around Ceres, mapping the surface of this weird little place. In particular, it will monitor any changes as Ceres gets closest to the Sun during its upcoming perihelion passage. It will be interesting to see if the activities that formed those weird deposits on the surface will become more frequent. They do tell us that something is going on under the Cerean surface!

An artist’s conception of the MAVEN mission in orbit around Mars. Courtesy NASA/GSFC.

NASA announced the Dawn mission extension, along with continued funding for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission that’s currently studying the Martian atmosphere, the Opportunity and Curiosity Mars rovers, the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) at the Moon, and NASA’s part of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission. These are all very worthy exploration activities and extend our eyes and ears out to the planets in imaginative and impressive ways.

All in all, the fact that NASA can continue to support a wide range of planetary exploration missions is a good thing. I wish they could spend MORE money on studies of the planets so that we can get a few more missions going, but this is at least a good sign.

Exploring the Solar System

Understanding the planets and other worlds of the solar system is like studying your neighborhood. Sure, you can stay in your house and watch TV or surf the Web, but knowing your neighbors and the houses they live in is important, too. The ongoing study of solar system objects tell is just starting to help us understand the origin and evolution of the planets, dwarf planets, satellites and more. And, the more we learn about “out there”, the better it helps us understand the home planet.

I am sure that future Mars explorers will be grateful for the work we’re doing now to learn about the Red Planet. In my dreams, I see future Pluto explorers doing the same thing, maybe from the deck of a New Horizons station circling that distant planet. Maybe they’ll be sending their own missions to MU69 or other Kuiper Belt Objects in that far distant future. In that dream, they all started on the Moon, learning how to live and work in space and on other worlds. It’s not so far-fetched. Maybe it’ll be our kids and grandkids who do those missions, based on the work we all did and paid for in this time.

Anyway, we can dream. In the meantime, congratulations to the missions with newly extended budgets — I’m sure the teams are ecstatic that they can continue the work they began.

Exploring the Deeps of the Solar System

I gotta say: we live in a time of fascinating scientific discoveries in our solar system. We’ve been in a “golden age” of in situ planetary exploration that began in the 1960s. Now, well into the 21st century, space agencies around the world continue to dish out juicy findings. Every week I see news from the outer solar system in the form of Pluto and Charon system results from the New Horizons mission. We’re also getting frequent updates from the Dawn mission currently circling Ceres, a dwarf planet out beyond the orbit of Mars in the Asteroid Belt. I find it amazing that we can know so much about these distant places, all through the efforts of a two small spacecraft and the science teams that built and continue to manage them.

Visiting Ceres

For example, Dawn has been in “deep orbit” around Ceres. Since 2015, it has been snapping up high-resolution images and data of the surface. The team just released an image of Haulani crater, a 21 mile-wide impact feature that seems to show evidence of landslides from its crater walls. This enhanced-color image shows the younger features in blue and older ones in gray. The rays extending out around the crater (and colored blue) are made of material ejected as something slammed into the Cerean surface. It also looks like whatever smacked Ceres hit this world right in a region that was already stressed and fractured. Hence the odd shape of the crater.

The Dawn mission is continuing to explore Ceres in minute detail, giving us new insight into this frozen, cracked, and cratered world.

Pluto’s Latest and Greatest

This image of Pluto's spider terrain was obtained by New Horizons’ Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). It was obtained at a range of approximately 21,100 miles (33,900 kilometers) from Pluto, about 45 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach on July 14, 2015. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute — This image of Pluto’s spider terrain was obtained by *New Horizons*’ Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). It was obtained at a range of approximately 21,100 miles (33,900 kilometers) from Pluto, about 45 minutes before New Horizons’ closest approach on July 14, 2015. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

While New Horizons is no longer at Pluto, it continues to radio back data across the solar system from its momentous 2015 encounter. Pluto continues to amaze everybody with a wide range of interesting features in its icy crust. The latest up-close image shows a region of cracked terrain nicknamed the “Ice Spider” of Pluto. Nothing quite like it has been seen on other bodies in the outer solar system.

This crack in the crust is a set of fractures. The longest one is about 580 km (360 miles) long and appears to lie roughly north-south. The shorter cracks run east-west. They’re only about 100 km (60 miles) long. There’s also a hint of some kind of reddish material in some of the spider’s legs.

The fractures that make up the spider are probablye due to a global extension and shrinking of Pluto’s water-ice crust. However, they could also be telling us there’s some local activity occurring, too.

Award-Winning Science

Both the New Horizons and Dawn Mission teams have been winning prestigious awards for their work exploring these distant worlds. On March 8, the Dawn project team was chosen for the prestigious National Aeronautic Association Robert J. Collier Trophy “for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.” Established in 1911, the 8-foot tall trophy resides at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington and is engraved with the names of recipients. Dawn competed with a field of nine finalists to win this year’s award. The award will be presented on June 9.

On March 11, the team was also honored with the National Space Club and Foundation’s Nelson P. Jackson Award, presented annually for “a significant contribution to the missile, aircraft or space field.” The Dawn team accepted the award at the organization’s 59th Annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner in Washington.

New Horizons team members are also basking in the glory of their achievements. PI Alan Stern, who was just named one of Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world, accepted the Carl Sagan award earlier this year, and gave a Kavli Prize Lecture at the American Astronomical Society meeting about his team’s exploration of the outer solar system. The team itself has earned the John L. “Jack” Swigert, Jr. Award for Space Exploration from the Space Foundation, the National Space Society Space Pioneer Award, and many others. The Smithsonian Institution also gave the New Horizons team a Current Achievement award.

As these two missions continue on their voyages of discovery, I’m sure we’ll ALL be awarded with more great views and data of distant worlds.

The Spacewriter's Ramblings

Category Archives: planetary science

NASA: The Continuing Solar System Missions