MOM Is Headed to Mars!

Twelve days after NASA's MAVEN spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and immediately embarked on a 10-month journey to the Red Planet, India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) probe finally left Earth's orbit today (despite launching to space almost two weeks before MAVEN did...on November 5) and is also headed for the cold, crimson-colored world as well. In case you're wondering why it took so long for MOM to enter an interplanetary trajectory, it's because India didn't have the luxury of having their Mars-bound craft lift off on a powerful Atlas V rocket like MAVEN did (just so I won't completely sound like an arrogant American, the Atlas V depends on Russian-built RD-180 engines to soar off the pad)...and instead have to rely on several engine burns throughout this month to boost MOM's orbit to the point where it would finally be freed from Earth's gravity. Despite the fact that MAVEN had a considerable head start on MOM, both will reach Mars next September; MOM entering Martian orbit on September 14 and MAVEN following suit eight days later. Either way, the Russians must be pouting over other nations knowing how to get Martian spacecraft out of Earth's orbit and not them (which is ironic if you want me to mention the RD-180 again). I kid.

EDIT (December 3): Based on a tweet from MAVEN's Twitter feed, MOM will arrive at Mars two days (on September 24) after MAVEN does. My bad.


Indian Space Research Organisation / Astro0

Happy Thanksgiving (Fellow Yanks)!

Just thought I'd mark this holiday by pointing out that you and yours have a great time feasting on stuffed turkey and shrimp cocktails today...and have fun either watching the Detroit Lions lose to the Green Bay Packers or the Oakland Raiders duke it out with the Dallas Cowboys later this afternoon. On another note, it was announced earlier this month that the 1 World Trade Center will officially be called the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere—courtesy of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Yet another reason to give thanks...and to be proud to be an American. Wait what?

EDIT (2:06 PM, PST): The Packers fell to the Lions, 40-10, about an hour ago. Leave it to me to jinx Detroit into winning its first Thanksgiving Day game since 2003. Of course, Detroit now has former USC running back/Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush on its team. Go Trojans.

Kepler To Get A New Lease on Life?

NASA Ames / W Stenzel

A Sunny Outlook for NASA Kepler's Second Light (Press Release - November 25)

You may have thought that NASA's Kepler spacecraft was finished. Well, think again. A repurposed Kepler space telescope may soon start searching the sky again.

A new mission concept, dubbed K2, would continue Kepler's search for other worlds, and introduce new opportunities to observe star clusters, young and old stars, active galaxies and supernovae.

In May, the Kepler spacecraft lost the second of four gyroscope-like reaction wheels, which are used to precisely point the spacecraft, ending new data collection for the original mission. The spacecraft required three functioning wheels to maintain the precision pointing necessary to detect the signal of small Earth-sized exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, orbiting stars like our sun in what's known as the habitable zone -- the range of distances from a star where the surface temperature of a planet might be suitable for liquid water.

With the failure of a second reaction wheel, the spacecraft can no longer precisely point at the mission's original field of view. The culprit is none other than our own sun.

The very body that provides Kepler with its energy needs also pushes the spacecraft around by the pressure exerted when the photons of sunlight strike the spacecraft. Without a third wheel to help counteract the solar pressure, the spacecraft's ultra-precise pointing capability cannot be controlled in all directions.

However, Kepler mission and Ball Aerospace engineers have developed an innovative way of recovering pointing stability by maneuvering the spacecraft so that the solar pressure is evenly distributed across the surfaces of the spacecraft.

To achieve this level of stability, the orientation of the spacecraft must be nearly parallel to its orbital path around the sun, which is slightly offset from the ecliptic, the orbital plane of Earth. The ecliptic plane defines the band of sky in which lie the constellations of the zodiac.

This technique of using the sun as the 'third wheel' to control pointing is currently being tested on the spacecraft and early results are already coming in. During a pointing performance test in late October, a full frame image of the space telescope's full field of view was captured showing part of the constellation Sagittarius.

Photons of light from a distant star field were collected over a 30-minute period and produced an image quality within five percent of the primary mission image quality, which used four reaction wheels to control pointing stability. Additional testing is underway to demonstrate the ability to maintain this level of pointing control for days and weeks.

To capture the telltale signature of a distant planet as it crosses the face of its host star and temporarily blocks the amount of starlight collected by Kepler, the spacecraft must maintain pointing stability over these longer periods.

"This 'second light' image provides a successful first step in a process that may yet result in new observations and continued discoveries from the Kepler space telescope," said Charlie Sobeck, Kepler deputy project manager at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA.

The K2 mission concept has been presented to NASA Headquarters. A decision to proceed to the 2014 Senior Review – a biannual assessment of operating missions – and propose for budget to fly K2 is expected by the end of 2013.

Kepler's original mission, which is still in progress to fully process the wealth of data collected, is to determine what percentage of stars like the sun harbor small planets the approximate size and surface temperature of Earth. For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitored the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes.

More than a year of the data collected by Kepler remains to be fully reviewed and analyzed.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA Ames

Kobe Bryant To Be A Laker for Two More Years...

With his current contract expiring at the end of this season, Kobe Bryant just signed an extension with the Los Angeles Lakers that will last two additional years and be worth a total of $48.5 million. It's nice to know that KB24 is essentially retiring as a Laker; here's hoping that he won't be sidelined by another injury after he's soon set to return to the NBA court upon recovering from that Achilles tear he suffered earlier this year. No need for another Derrick Rose situation... Look up the Chicago Bulls point guard on Google to know what I'm talking about.


Getty Images

Vanish: The Roller Coaster

Photos of the Day: Just thought I'd share these two images showing a roller coaster that goes underneath a large water pool at Yokohama Cosmo World in Japan. Despite the fact the ride has no loops despite its nearly 5-minute length, and the cars are underground for only about 2 seconds (this assessment is based on videos I watched online... Google 'em), these are cool pics of Vanish—and looks like something that Six Flags Magic Mountain and Knotts Berry Farm should emulate here in SoCal...but with loops and cars moving along the track at a much greater speed. I miss Magic Mountain; haven't been there in more than 13 years. Hope you're having a good day, everyone!


Yokohama Cosmo World

The USS Zumwalt: America's New Stealth Destroyer

U.S. Navy / General Dynamics Bath Iron Works

Just thought I'd share these photos of the U.S. Navy's newest warship, the USS Zumwalt (named after the late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt), which is scheduled to enter service sometime in 2015. Although only three vessels will be constructed due to budget and technical issues (the Zumwalt, Michael Monsoor and Lyndon B. Johnson), the Zumwalt and her sister ships introduce a new class of destroyers whose radar signature will be comparable to that of a mere fishing boat, and may introduce such high-tech weaponry as the Advanced Gun System...also known as a railgun (which is what took down Devastator in 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen if you want to bring up random movie references). Although the Navy will continue to rely on its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (featured in the 2012 film Battleship and this year's Captain Phillips) for the foreseeable future, the Zumwalt's capabilities should hopefully be called upon if American forces see more combat years from now. Unless, of course, the Zumwalt becomes the naval version of the F-22 Raptor (which has yet to fire a missile at an enemy aircraft or drop a bomb on a foreign bunker). That would be unfortunate.


Michael C. Nutter - U.S. Navy / General Dynamics Bath Iron Works


Associated Press


U.S. Navy / General Dynamics Bath Iron Works

MAVEN Is Headed to Mars!

NASA

At 10:28 AM, Pacific Standard Time today, an Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Mars-bound MAVEN orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. After a near-flawless flight where the only issue was weather conditions that could've caused the Atlas V to trigger lightning as it flew through a cloud layer right after lift-off (violating a so-called Field Mill Rule that NASA and the U.S. Air Force have in their 'launch commit criteria' list), MAVEN separated from the Atlas almost an hour after departing from its Florida pad...and is now on a 10-month interplanetary journey that will culminate with the orbiter arriving at the Red Planet on September 22, 2014.


NASA

Although MAVEN does not have any cameras with which to photograph Mars during its mission, it has a suite of instruments that will hopefully determine what caused the Red Planet to lose much of its atmosphere over the past millions of years or so. Just as integral to this flight is the fact that MAVEN carries a telecommunication system that will allow it to relay data from the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers (as well as future landers) on the Martian surface. It was actually this crucial capability that MAVEN possessed which allowed it to proceed with launch preparations during the U.S. government shutdown last month.



Just like the now-silent Phoenix Mars lander, aboard MAVEN is a DVD bearing the names of scores of Earthlings (including mine) who wanted to hitch along for yet another ride to the Red Planet. In fact, the DVD contains 100,000 monikers as well as artwork and space-related Japanese haiku that were submitted through the Internet earlier this year. Even though MAVEN's orbit will gradually decay and the probe will burn up in Mars' atmosphere after its mission has long come to an end, I'm glad that NASA provided another public relations opportunity with this project. Since no images will come from MAVEN, the space agency has to find some other way (excluding the promising science) to capture people's imagination with this latest Martian endeavor...before we get to see black and white photos that will be taken by the InSight lander (set to launch to the Red Planet in 2016) and gorgeous high-resolution pictures taken by Curiosity's twin rover—set to take off in 2020. Carry on.


NASA / Lockheed Martin

T-Minus 15 Hours and Counting...

Here's hoping that 24 hours from now, the MAVEN spacecraft will be bathed in raw sunlight [as opposed to the xenon lights that are illuminating the Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station tonight (shown below)] as it heads to Mars following what will hopefully be a flawless launch come tomorrow morning (in terms of Pacific Time). I said it before and I'll say it again: Godspeed, MAVEN!


NASA / Bill Ingalls

MAVEN Is At The Pad!

Earlier today, the Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's Mars-bound MAVEN orbiter was rolled out to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Official forecast for the area predicts a 60% chance of good weather allowing the Atlas to depart from its pad at Space Launch Complex 41 this Monday; here's hoping this prediction remains true or improves by the time of lift-off at 10:28 AM, Pacific Standard Time on November 18. Godspeed, MAVEN!


NASA / Kim Shiflett

New York Shows Solidarity for the Philippines

Just thought I'd share this great photo of the Empire State Building as it was recently lit up in the colors of the Philippine flag to show New York's support for the survivors of Typhoon Haiyan. I would think that the 1 World Trade Center (towering in the background) would be the one that displays a red, blue, yellow and white lighting scheme in solidarity—seeing as how this skyscraper symbolizes Manhattan's own ability to rise up from the tragedy that struck it more than 12 years ago—but it's all good. Let's just keep having the aid flow into the embattled island nation to help it recover from last week's disaster.


Photo courtesy of Instagram