outerspace

Authors: F. Bocchino, A. M. Bykov, Y. Chen, A. M. Krassilchtchikov, K. P. Levenfish, M. Miceli, G. G. Pavlov, Yu. A. Uvarov and X. Zhou.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 541 , page A152<br />Published online: 22/05/2012<br /> Keywords: ISM: supernova remnants ; X-rays: ISM ; ISM: individual objects: Kes 69.

Authors: L. Pagani, C. Lefèvre, A. Bacmann and J. Steinacker.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 541 , page A154<br />Published online: 22/05/2012<br /> Keywords: ISM: supernova remnants ; dust, extinction ; ISM: structure ; ISM: clouds ; ISM: individual objects: Gum ; ISM: individual objects: Vela.

Authors: B. Parise, P. Bergman and F. Du.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 541 , page L11<br />Published online: 22/05/2012<br /> Keywords: astrochemistry ; line: identification ; ISM: abundances ; ISM: molecules ; ISM: individual objects:ρOphiuchi A.

This is a guest post from Rick White who is an astronomer at STScI. He is the Principal Investigator for MAST.  This is the first of a planned series of articles about using MAST.

The newly re-christened Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) is NASA’s archive center for ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared data.  MAST includes data from 15 NASA telescopes.  Active missions include Hubble, Kepler, GALEX and XMM-OM.  We have data from many legacy missions and also host the Digitized Sky Survey and the Guide Star Catalogs.  More than 1000 papers were published last year using MAST mission data, and a large majority of those papers were archival publications unrelated to the original proposal that collected the data.

MAST provides a variety of tools and interfaces for searching and retrieving data, many of which are probably already familiar to AstroBetter readers.  These articles will describe some less widely known features of MAST.  In future articles we’ll write about the Hubble Legacy Archive, GALEX and Kepler tools, community-contributed High Level Science Products, and the new MAST portal (scheduled for rollout at the May 2012 AAS meeting).  We welcome suggestions for topics you’d like to see included.

MAST has custom search pages for all our different missions, and many of our users go directly to the Hubble data page.  You might not have noticed that there is a multi-mission search form right on the MAST home page.  Put in a target name or position to search the data for all the MAST missions.  You can download or preview data from the results page.  Note that this multi-mission search limits the number of results returned for any particular instrument to 10 datasets, so pay attention to the note at the top that says “10 rows displayed, but 36 are available”.  If you click the title line for the results section (e.g., HST:ACS-IMAGE), it takes you to a search form that is already filled out for the target you requested.  You can add additional constraints to the search if desired, then do Search to get the complete list of results.

The MAST form interfaces are convenient if you have only a few targets to search, but if you have a list of targets you’ll definitely want to use scripts.  The MAST search functions are accessible through web services.  MAST of course offers standard VO services including cone searches, simple image access and simple spectral access.  The MAST services web page gives examples of the use of all these services.

But you might not realize that the MAST web services are much more flexible than the VO protocols.  Hate XML and want the results as comma-separated values or in JSON?  Add outputformat=CSV or outputformat=JSON to your query.  Want to search using a target name instead of a position, or to use some old B1950 coordinates?  There are optional parameters for that.  Want to do an all-sky HST data search restricted using the exposure time, filter, or start time, any of the other parameters available on the HST search form?  Check out the list of mission-specific HST parameters.

Finally, you don’t have to start your search from a list of targets or observation characteristics.  The MAST Bibliography Search allows searches for papers that use MAST data; the HST Bibliography Search provides even more Hubble-specific options.  Get a list of all the papers that have used ACS data (there are 2805 at this writing), or find the IUE papers with “radio” in the title.  When you use this tool, the results include a Data link that lists the MAST datasets that were used and a link to the article in ADS.  You can also search starting from ADS by requiring HST or IUE data links (which are provided to ADS by MAST), but the MAST interface provides more flexibility.

In the future we plan to use the paper titles and abstracts, along with proposal abstracts, to build a science keyword index for the MAST data. When coupled with data and publications from other missions and an onotolgy of astronomical terminology, this will enable a flexible and powerful interface to search for data based on scientific concepts (e.g., “gravitational lensing”) rather than specific targets.

Researchers have detected a possible planet that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The exoplanet is thought to be not much larger than Mercury.

A new mission proposed as part of NASA s Explorers program could help gather data that would greatly aid in the search for habitable, extrasolar worlds. FINESSE would be the first mission dedicated to

Researchers have described a new extinct giant turtle species from the same location in which the giant snake Titanoboa was discovered. The extinct turtle could shed new light on the links between t

New observations are helping scientists assess the number of potentially hazardous asteroids in our solar system. These asteroids include those big enough to make it through the Earth s atmosphere and

Satellite data is helping scientists understand how the forests around Mt. St. Helens have recovered in the 32 years since the volcano erupted.

Today was to have been devoted to antimatter, continuing the discussion not only of how to produce the stuff on Earth or harvest it in nearby space, but how to create the kind of propulsion system that could tap its enormous energies. But the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence released its first public announcement about the 100 Year Starship yesterday, and I want to go right to that story given the interest that grew out of last year’s starship symposium in Orlando. I’ll get back to antimatter, then, and particularly the provocative work of Ronan Keane and Wei-Ming Zhang on magnetic nozzles for propulsion systems, on Monday.

For today, though, let’s talk about pushing out into the galaxy. The Tau Zero Foundation has a particular interest in the 100 Year Starship organization because our friends at Icarus Interstellar, who are re-thinking the 1970s Project Daedalus design, were partners in the winning proposal, which was called “An Inclusive, Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth and Beyond.” I have no experience with the Dorothy Jemison Foundation or, for that matter, the third partner in the winning proposal, the Foundation for Enterprise Development, but our long relationship with Icarus Interstellar has demonstrated the expertise and commitment this band of scientists, engineers and enthusiasts brings to the task.

You’ll recall that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put up the seed funding for what was to become a non-government entity with a focus on the long term, one that is designed to promote advanced capabilities for interstellar flight over the next hundred years. The 100 Year Starship name refers, then, not to a mission that lasts a hundred years but to an entity robust enough to grow the interstellar idea through the coming century, the hope being that somewhere around the early part of the 22nd Century, our technologies may have reached the point where we can launch a mission to another star.

Mae Jemison, a former astronaut who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour, puts it this way:

“Yes, it can be done. Our current technology arc is sufficient. 100 Year Starship is about building the tools we need to travel to another star system in the next hundred years. We’re embarking on a journey across time and space. If my language is dramatic, it is because this project is monumental. This is a global aspiration. And each step of the way, its progress will benefit life on earth. Our team is both invigorated and sobered by the confidence DARPA has in us to start an independent, private initiative to help make interstellar travel a reality.”

Whether you were able to get to the 100 Year Starship symposium last year in Orlando or not, be aware that a second symposium is in the works for Houston on September 13-16 of this year. The organization’s press release says that the symposium will from here on out be an annual event that will examine not only the scientific and engineering challenges of starflight but the multidisciplinary questions starflight raises in economics, philosophy and culture. You can sign up to be notified about further symposium news here.

I’m pleased in particular to see that the 100 Year Starship is to include a scientific research institute called The Way which will place an emphasis on long-term science and technology issues. Readers of Centauri Dreams know that long-term thinking is an obsession of mine, as the necessity of looking beyond immediate material and financial returns to the kind of future we can build through sacrifice and dedication has never been more clear. On that score, I appreciate the quote from columnist and critic John Mason Brown that’s found on the organization’s website: “The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.”

Indeed, and what a purpose it is. A starship is the ultimate in long-term thinking, a challenge to our science, our engineering, our conception of ourselves. What interstellar flight asks of us is whether we are prepared to make a commitment that reaches well beyond our own generation, to take the first steps forward on a journey whose end most, if not all of us, will never see. It is gratifying to see the idea moving forward, and the Tau Zero Foundation sends congratulations to all involved in the new organization.

Scientists have tested a new space web technology that could pave the way for building large structures in orbit that gather enough solar energy to power cities on Earth.

A new discovery may help answer the question, is the planet Earth really a giant living organism. The research focuses on interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere and land.

In Stephen Baxter’s wonderful novel Ark (Roc, 2010), a team of scientists works desperately to come up with an interstellar spacecraft while epic floods threaten the Earth. The backdrop gives Baxter the chance to work through many of our current ideas about propulsion, from starships riding a wave of nuclear explosions (Orion) to antimatter possibilities and on into Alcubierre warp drive territory. I won’t give away the solution, but will say that it partly involves antimatter used in an unorthodox way, and because Baxter’s is a near-term Earth, there simply isn’t enough antimatter to go around. That means getting to Jupiter first to harvest it.

Antimatter in space is an idea that James Bickford (Draper Laboratory) analyzed in a Phase II study for NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts, for he had realized that high-energy galactic cosmic rays interacting with the interstellar medium (and also with the upper atmospheres of planets in the Solar System) produce antimatter. In fact, Bickford’s calculations showed that about a kilogram of antiprotons enter the Solar System every second, though little of this reaches the Earth. To harvest some of this incoming antimatter, you need a planet with a strong magnetic field, so Jupiter is a natural bet for Baxter’s scientists, who go there to forage.

The odd thing, though, is that Saturn is actually a better source of antimatter than Jupiter, with 250 micrograms produced by reactions in the rings and injected into the magnetosphere every year. Bickford’s work showed that the process by which galactic cosmic rays produce antimatter isn’t as effective around Jupiter because its magnetic field shields the Jovian atmosphere and lowers the flux. A much larger flux reaches the atmosphere of Saturn. But Bickford also believed that our own Earth would be a good antimatter source, leading to the idea of using a plasma magnet — the scientist discusses using high temperature superconductors to form two pairs of 100-meter RF coils to manage this. The result is a kind of magnetic scoop that could trap antiparticles found in our planet’s radiation belts.

Image: Among sources of naturally occurring antimatter in our Solar System, Saturn may be the most useful. Credit: James Bickford.

Why go to the trouble of collecting antimatter from space? Because antimatter production on the order of one-trillionth of a gram per year, which is about what we can get out of today’s accelerator labs through high-energy particle collisions, isn’t enough to power up a lightbulb for more than a few seconds. Moreover, at today’s prices the stuff costs about $100 trillion per gram. This is why Robert Forward, who used to circulate an antimatter newsletter among colleagues and wrote extensively about its possibilities, proposed that one day we would build antimatter factories in space. Build a large enough solar-powered array and you could, he thought, come up with something on the order of a gram of antimatter per day.

Remember that as little as ten micrograms of antimatter might power a 100-ton payload on a one-year mission to Jupiter and you can see that one gram of antimatter a day is a bountiful supply. But Forward’s antimatter collector array was huge, 100 kilometers to the side, and well beyond today’s engineering. Thus the interest generated by the PAMELA satellite (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) last year when it picked up more antiprotons in the region known as the South Atlantic Anomaly than had been expected.

This South Atlantic Anomaly is where the inner Van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the Earth’s surface, which in turn creates a higher flux of energetic particles there. The PAMELA work showed that Bickford’s original NIAC analysis was correct — antimatter is indeed being produced near the Earth. Bickford went on to suggest that we could collect some 25 nanograms per day using his magnetic scoop, a process that if successful would prove orders of magnitude more cost effective than creating antimatter here on Earth.

So would Baxter’s doughty crew be able to harvest their antimatter much closer to home than Jupiter or Saturn? Maybe not. A new paper by Ronan Keane (Western Reserve Academy) and Wei-Ming Zhang (Kent State University) comes into play here. The authors have developed new thinking on antimatter propulsion, specifically on the magnetic nozzles that would be required to make it work. It’s important work and tomorrow I want to get into the propulsion aspects of it, but for today I note their comment on the PAMELA findings and antimatter. Here’s a quote:

The recent PAMELA discovery, in which the observed antiproton flux is three orders of magnitude above the antiproton background from cosmic rays, paves the way for possible harvesting of antimatter in space. Theoretical studies suggest that the magnetosphere of much larger planets like Jupiter would be even better for this purpose. If feasible, harvesting antimatter in space would completely bypass the obstacle of low energy efficiency when an accelerator is used to produce antimatter, and thus could offer a solution to the main difficulties stressed by the skeptics.

The problem with this — and this has been noted by The Physics arXiv Blog and Jennifer Ouellette in recent days — is that PAMELA could come up with only 28 antiprotons over the course of 850 days of data acquisition. There is no question that Bickford is right in seeing how antimatter can be produced locally. In fact, the paper on the PAMELA work says this: “The flux exceeds the galactic CR antiproton flux by three orders of magnitude at the current solar minimum, thereby constituting the most abundant antiproton source near the Earth.” But does the process produce enough antimatter to make local harvesting a serious possibility?

We need to learn more, obviously, and it’s worth noting, as Keane and Zhang do in their paper, that the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was installed on the International Space Station in mid-2011, giving us a much enhanced ability to detect and measure antiparticles in Earth orbit. Antimatter harvesting within the Solar System appears to be a workable concept, but if we’re going to need to go to the gas giants to make it happen, we’re obviously pushing back the time frame on collecting significant quantities that could be used in future propulsion systems.

More on this tomorrow, when we’ll look further at Keane and Zhang’s ideas on antimatter engines and what could make them possible. Their paper is “Beamed Core Antimatter Propulsion: Engine Design and Optimization,” submitted to the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (preprint). The PAMELA work is Adriani et al., “The discovery of geomagnetically trapped cosmic ray antiprotons,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 37, No. 2, L29 (abstract / preprint). For a cluster of Bickford references, see Antimatter Source Near the Earth, published here last August.

Research shows that ancient mollusks made their homes around methane seeps in the seaway that once covered America s Great Plains.

Microbes living at the edges of Arctic ice sheets could help researchers find evidence for life on Mars, Jupiter s moon Europa, or Saturn s moon Enceladus.

Authors: T. Velusamy, W. D. Langer, J. L. Pineda and P. F. Goldsmith.<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 541 , page L10<br />Published online: 17/05/2012<br /> Keywords: ISM: structure ; ISM: general ; submillimeter: ISM ; infrared: ISM.

Authors: G. Pace, M. Castro, J. Meléndez, S. Théado and J.-D. do Nascimento Jr..<br />Astronomy & Astrophysics Vol. 541 , page A150<br />Published online: 17/05/2012<br /> Keywords: stars: abundances ; stars: atmospheres.

As we continue to think about the implications of Planetary Resources and its plans for asteroid mining, I was interested to see exoplanet hunter Sara Seager (MIT) make a rousing case for the company’s ideas and for commercial space ventures in general. Seager, who works with Planetary Resources as a science advisor, tells The Atlantic’s Ross Andersen in a May 14 interview that one reason for optimism is the progress we’re making with robotics. Mining operations currently being managed beneath the seas are being handled by robotics. Couple that with our ability to get to and orbit an asteroid as well as to scoop up surface materials and you have all the ingredients for a workable mining operation in a low-gravity environment.

Seager explains that asteroids are attractive mining targets because unlike fully formed planets like the Earth, their heavier elements have not largely sunk inside through planetary differentiation in the early days of the planet’s existence. Asteroids are either fragments of bigger objects or building blocks that were never fully formed, meaning that high-value platinum metals should be readily accessible on the right kind of object. Their low gravity and, in the case of NEA’s, proximity mean that they are attractive targets from which to return materials.

Image: All the technologies may be falling into place for asteroid mining. But is a move to commercial operations a story with even bigger implications? Credit: NASA.

Planetary Resources is intriguing not only because of potential mining returns but because it involves a different model of detail and risk than would be acceptable in a government-created program. Here Seager invokes the Mars Science Laboratory, a $2 billion mission that will land a rover on Mars this summer. MSL became a huge operation because it is a general science mission that demands the 10 different science instruments aboard the craft, making it a heavier rover and demanding a landing system far more complicated than the air-bag methods we’ve used successfully in our last several Mars landings. A private firm, on the other hand, can focus tightly on a specialized goal rather than aiming for a multi-purpose mission from the start.

But there’s a bigger difference, adds Seager:

In the private spaceflight world there are focused goals with profit and new capability as priorities. At NASA the motivation for space missions is different. In addition to big and general science goals, the main goal appears to be not to fail. In this sort of culture the bigger space companies and academia are taught that it, the mission, has to work.

Even the large space companies like Lockheed and Northrop Grumman can become trapped inside this paradigm, for they are not creating long-term, sustainable businesses with the work they perform for the government. Instead, they are operating within a culture riddled with bureaucracy and plagued with high costs. Seager likes the look of young and lean space companies:

…at small space companies, things can fail. Risk is part of developing new technology. Also, for the big space companies the whole competition is just getting the government contract. The competition is not about making something awesomely cool, first to market, and making a ton of money out of it. So in my opinion, the motivation factor and the risk aversion factor make it basically impossible for these larger companies to shift gears. The question that is on the minds of a lot of people is “Can America continue to be competitive in space with the current paradigm?” And the answer is no. That is the reason we have seen the rise of the commercial space flight world—they’re trying to start a new paradigm for spaceflight with a sustainable business that doesn’t just rely on government contracts.

The Seager interview is well worth your time as she discusses not only the Planetary Resources business model but the implications involved in getting a new generation of small and inexpensive technology into space. It’s no surprise that the Arkyd series of spacecraft should catch her eye, since Seager is also involved in a project called ExoplanetSat, a prototype ‘nanosatellite’ that can monitor a single, Sun-like star for two years. This gets seriously interesting when you start talking about producing a large number of such satellites, because while we have the Kepler mission monitoring planetary transits in a fixed field, we have no mission in the works to hunt for planets around the nearest and brightest stars.

So instead of a single space telescope fixated on tens of thousands of stars, most of them distant from the Sun, we invert the model to produce a fleet of tiny telescopes with a single target each, with the detailed properties of each star under observation programmed into each instrument. You can see why Planetary Resources’ plan to launch a large number of small space telescopes would appeal to Seager. The Arkyd series (based on the company’s original name) would allow small institutions to buy a space telescope for a price ranging from $1-10 million, opening space-based observations to universities or even wealthy individuals.

Image: ExoPlanetSat is just 10 centimeters tall, 10 cm wide and 30 cm long, and will complement existing planet-hunters like NASA’s Kepler space telescope and ground-based assets. It gives NASA the ability to dedicate relatively inexpensive assets to stare at a star for long periods of time to look for transits. Credit: MIT/Draper Laboratory.

Here again Seager sees Planetary Resources tweaking the basic model of how science gets done. A telescope specifically designed for a unique science goal can produce superb results, as we’ve learned from Hubble, CoRoT, Kepler and other missions. But bring a commercial interest into the mix and a new flexibility emerges. Planetary Resources can sell small space telescopes into a new market, while also using the product for its asteroid characterization work. The mix of motivations provided by commercial space drives the enterprise. Adds Seager, “If you’re part and parcel of the commercial space flight world, it appears you can get a lot of interesting things done. I think that in academia we could learn a lot from the business world.”

A fragment recovered from the "Sutter s Mill Meteorite," which fell to Earth on April 22, has been generously donated to NASA. Now, research on the meteorite fragment could bring answers to unsolved m

Amber from Cretaceous deposits has revealed the first ever record of insect pollination.