31
Oct 12

Curiosity's First Soil Studies Help Fingerprint Martian Minerals

Source: NASA Press Release: 12-383


Graphic of the first analysis of Martian soil that reveals the presence of
crystalline feldspar, pyroxenes and olivine mixed with some amorphous
(non-crystalline) material. The soil sample, taken from within Gale Crater,
where the rover landed, is similar to volcanic soils in Hawaii.
Image credits:NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ames

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has completed initial experiments showing the mineralogy of Martian soil is similar to weathered basaltic soils of volcanic origin in Hawaii.

The minerals were identified in the first sample of Martian soil ingested recently by the rover. Curiosity used its Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) to obtain the results, which are filling gaps and adding confidence to earlier estimates of the mineralogical makeup of the dust and fine soil widespread on the Red Planet.

"We had many previous inferences and discussions about the mineralogy of Martian soil," said David Blake of NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., who is the principal investigator for CheMin. "Our quantitative results provide refined and in some cases new identifications of the minerals in this first X-ray diffraction analysis on Mars."

The identification of minerals in rocks and soil is crucial for the mission's goal to assess past environmental conditions. Each mineral records the conditions under which it formed. The chemical composition of a rock provides only ambiguous mineralogical information, as in the textbook example of the minerals diamond and graphite, which have the same chemical composition, but strikingly different structures and properties.

CheMin uses X-ray diffraction, the standard practice for geologists on Earth using much larger laboratory instruments. This method provides more accurate identifications of minerals than any method previously used on Mars. X-ray diffraction reads minerals' internal structure by recording how their crystals distinctively interact with X-rays. Innovations from Ames led to an X-ray diffraction instrument compact enough to fit inside the rover.

These NASA technological advances have resulted in other applications on Earth, including compact and portable X-ray diffraction equipment for oil and gas exploration, analysis of archaeological objects and screening of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, among other uses.

"Our team is elated with these first results from our instrument," said Blake. "They heighten our anticipation for future CheMin analyses in the months and miles ahead for Curiosity."

The specific sample for CheMin's first analysis was soil Curiosity scooped up at a patch of dust and sand that the team named Rocknest. The sample was processed through a sieve to exclude particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 micrometers), roughly the width of a human hair. The sample has at least two components: dust distributed globally in dust storms and fine sand originating more locally. Unlike conglomerate rocks Curiosity investigated a few weeks ago, which are several billion years old and indicative of flowing water, the soil material CheMin has analyzed is more representative of modern processes on Mars.

"Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy," said David Bish, CheMin
co-investigator with Indiana University in Bloomington. "We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass."

Bish said, "So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater
recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment. The ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water."

During the two-year prime mission of the Mars Science Laboratory Project, researchers are using Curiosity's 10 instruments to investigate whether areas in Gale Crater ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, and built Curiosity and CheMin. (see source)

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30
Oct 12

Space-Match: fish seeks Q-Tip

Source: ESA News


Maylandia lombardoi fish  with male in front and female behind.
Image credits: Ged/Wikipedia.

It’s a familiar dilemma: you want to find a partner, but you aren’t sure how to do it. If you’re lucky enough to be a European space technology, or are looking for one, on 20 November you can turn to Space-Match. (read more)

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28
Oct 12

Red Giant Devours Planet

Source: NASA Science

 

An international team of astronomers has caught a star in the act of devouring one of its planets. BD+48 740, a red giant they observed using the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, appears to have the fumes of a scorched planet in its atmosphere.  This is consistent with a rocky world, recently destroyed.

Could the same thing happen to Earth?

Yes indeed, says Alex Wolszczan, a member of the research team from Penn State University: "A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system when the sun becomes a red giant some five billion years from now."

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27
Oct 12

Monster galaxy may have been stirred up by black-hole mischief

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1216


Monster galaxy lacks a bright core.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA),
T. Lauer (National Optical Astronomy Observatory, USA), and the CLASH team.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a remarkable new view of a whopper of an elliptical galaxy, with a core bigger than any seen before. There are two intriguing explanations for the puffed up core, both related to the action of one or more black holes, and the researchers have not yet been able to determine which is correct. (read more)

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26
Oct 12

After-effects of Saturn’s super storm shine on

Source: ESA News


Series of images tracking the development of Saturn’s giant storm.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

The heat-seeking capabilities of the international Cassini spacecraft and two ground-based telescopes have provided the first look at the aftermath of Saturn’s ‘Great Springtime Storm’. Concealed from the naked eye, a giant oval vortex is persisting long after the visible effects of the storm subsided. (read more)

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25
Oct 12

VISTA creates largest ever catalogue of centre of our galaxy

Source: ESO Photo Release eso1242


VISTA gigapixel mosaic of the central parts of the Milky Way.
Image credits:ESO/VVV Consortium
Acknowledgement: Ignacio Toledo, Martin Kornmesser

 Using a whopping nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has created a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way. This gigantic dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy. The image gives viewers an incredible, zoomable view of the central part of our galaxy. It is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 metres long and 7 metres tall. (read more)

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23
Oct 12

The Solar System’s grandest canyon

Source: ESA


Valles Marineris.
Image credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

Earth’s Grand Canyon inspires awe for anyone who casts eyes upon the vast river-cut valley, but it would seem nothing more than a scratch next to the cavernous scar of Valles Marineris that marks the face of Mars.

Stretching over 4000 km long and 200 km wide, and with a dizzying depth of 10 km, it is some ten times longer and five times deeper than Earth’s Grand Canyon, a size that earns it the status of the largest canyon in the Solar System.

Seen here in new light and online for the first time, this bird’s-eye view of Valles Marineris was created from data captured during 20 individual orbits of ESA’s Mars Express. It is presented in near-true colour and with four times vertical exaggeration.(read more)

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19
Oct 12

Radioactive decay of titanium powers supernova remnant

Source: ESA News


Supernova remnant SNR1987A  in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Image credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

The first direct detection of radioactive titanium associated with supernova remnant 1987A has been made by ESA’s Integral space observatory. The radioactive decay has likely been powering the glowing remnant around the exploded star for the last 20 years.(read more)

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18
Oct 12

Planet Found in Nearest Star System to Earth

Source: ESO Science Release eso1241


Artist’s impression of the planet around Alpha Centauri B.
Image credits: ESO/L. Calçada/N. Risinger.

European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012. (read more)

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17
Oct 12

Dark Matter Filament Studied in 3D for the First Time Inbox x

Source: ESA/Hubble heic1215


Hubble image of MACS J0717 with mass overlay.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa) & Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM)

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have studied a giant filament of dark matter in 3D for the first time. Extending 60 million light-years from one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, the filament is part of the cosmic web that constitutes the large-scale structure of the Universe, and is a leftover of the very first moments after the Big Bang. If the high mass measured for the filament is representative of the rest of the Universe, then these structures may contain more than half of all the mass in the Universe. (read more)

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16
Oct 12

X-raying stellar winds in a high-speed collision

Source: ESA


Massive star cluster Cyg OB2.
Image credits: ESA/G. Rauw.

Two massive stars racing in orbit around each other have had their colliding stellar winds X-rayed for the first time, thanks to the combined efforts of ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Swift space telescopes.(read more)

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14
Oct 12

Bouncing on Titan

Source: ESA/Huygens


ESA's Huygens image of Titan's surface on 14 January 2005.
Image credits: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

ESA’s Huygens probe bounced, slid and wobbled its way to rest in the 10 seconds after touching down on Saturn’s moon, Titan, in January 2005, a new analysis reveals. The findings provide novel insight into the nature of the moon’s surface. (read more)

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12
Oct 12

Surprising Spiral Structure Spotted by ALMA

Source:ESO Science Release eso1239


Curious spiral spotted by ALMA around red giant star R Sculptoris.
Image credits: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO).

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a totally unexpected spiral structure in the material around the old star R Sculptoris. This is the first time that such a structure, along with an outer spherical shell, has been found around a red giant star. It is also the first time that astronomers could get full three-dimensional information about such a spiral. The strange shape was probably created by a hidden companion star orbiting the red giant. This work is one of the first ALMA early science results to be published and it appears in the journal Nature this week. (read more)

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10
Oct 12

Large water reservoirs at the dawn of stellar birth

Source: ESA Herschel


Taurus molecular cloud.
Image credits: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE

ESA’s Herschel space observatory has discovered enough water vapour to fill Earth’s oceans more than 2000 times over, in a gas and dust cloud that is on the verge of collapsing into a new Sun-like star.(read more)

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9
Oct 12

Chasing clouds on Venus

Source: ESA Space Science


Venus cloud tops.
Image credits: ESA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

Clouds regularly punctuate Earth’s blue sky, but on Venus the clouds never part, for the planet is wrapped entirely in a 20 km-thick veil of carbon dioxide and sulphuric dioxide haze.

This view shows the cloud tops of Venus as seen in ultraviolet light by the Venus Express spacecraft on 8 December 2011, from a distance of about 30 000 km. (read more)

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7
Oct 12

Swift Satellite Discovers A New Black Hole In Our Galaxy

Source: NASA/SWIFT

Video Source: YouTube

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4
Oct 12

Spitzer Space Telescope measures expansion of Universe

Source: NASA Spitzer


Artist's impression of the cosmic distance ladder.
Image credits:NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have announced the most precise measurement yet of the Hubble constant, or the rate at which our universe is stretching apart.

The Hubble constant is named after the astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who astonished the world in the 1920s by confirming our universe has been expanding since it exploded into being 13.7 billion years ago. In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered the expansion is accelerating, or speeding up over time. Determining the expansion rate is critical for understanding the age and size of the universe.

Unlike NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which views the cosmos in visible light, Spitzer took advantage of  long-wavelength infrared light to make its new measurement. It improves by a factor of 3 on a similar, seminal study from the Hubble telescope and brings the uncertainty down to 3 percent, a giant leap in accuracy for cosmological measurements. The newly refined value for the Hubble constant is 74.3 ± 2.1 kilometers per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years. (read more)

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