Robotic Eels, Citizen Satellites, Sky Cranes and The Frozen Lakes Of Mars

Develop and fly your own cube satellite with help from ESA !
Okay, it's not open to individuals , but university groups with a good design , deadline is March 5th, 2017.
Hurrah for ESA !
Citizen Satellites can't be far away...maybe let's practice with drones first.
For the very ambitious, there is the competition to reach the moon and be first to return selfies.
Twenty million dollars for the winner !
The final contestants will begin launching this year !

Whilst I'm impressed that they have developed a chip that can survive the hellish temperatures of the surface of Venus, I can't help wondering why they are so focused on replicating a Curiosity-type rover - surely at such high temperatures a different style is called for
Why not have a hovering rover with extendable probe for surface samples.?
Or a completely separate autonomous drilling  unit ?
Would a drone be feasible , controlled by a remote signal from a satellite in the upper atmosphere ?

This is the problem with astro-physics - for all the compliments paid to the film Interstellar for its realistic depiction of a wormhole, has anyone actually been through one ?
Can a black hole be replicated under lab conditions ?
No, so everything is conjecture.
By the same token we are in danger of imposing limits on our own potential
There is the saying, that 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'; which is fine to an extent, but no-one ever pushed the envelope by staying in their comfort zone.
On re-reading this paragraph, I think it is unclear - what I'm trying to say is, let's get wild with spacecraft designs.
I don't want to lapse into business speak with ' blue- sky- thinking -outside- of -the-box', but here's an example of a box to think outside of...

Europa lander...   artist impression      NASA / JPL-Caltech

I'm not saying that landers should be aesthetically pleasing
And I understand that huge doses of radiation from Jupiter is a very real threat, so a shielded box is a smart thing,but...
But there's something - dull about it.
It's retro, but not in a good way.
Even the pareidolia of the robot 'head' looks naff.

STOP PRESS
Further reading tells me that the pictured lander is just an early prototype
It would drill beneath the surface , but only a few inches, as opposed to the miles of drilling needed to reach the ocean,
I stand corrected.
Further details
I'm still not convinced by the drilling theory - I hope further exploration might reveal a hidden shortcut, perhaps a deep gully / ravine, or better still, a system of caves.
My conjecture.

I remember reading of submarine probes based on the fact that any life on Europa is likely to be beneath the waters - even the recently developed robot - eels look appropriately ...alien.
I understand the practical necessity to assess land-based minerals for their extraction value, but are we not limiting our potential in exploration terms ?
Send in a couple of the very cool robotic eels.

There is an issue, of course - given the current attention paid to avoid contaminating potential water sources on Mars , why would we send technology into an alien ocean ?
Is it not running the risk of breaching the Outer Space Treaty ?

Mars continues to confuse.
Curiosity has ample evidence of lake beds which once were filled with fresh water , yet the lack of traceable co2 in the atmosphere suggests the water was always frozen, and never achieved a liquid state . Bizarre...


If you saw the film Gravity, then this picture probably resonates .
It's a photo from the first 'untethered'. spacewalk , showing Bruce McCandless
Not so futuristic after all - this picture is from 1984
Don't panic , he got back safely - phew !

Don't look down

The Dunes of Mars, Bennu, Blazars and Cats in Boxes

It's official - being in space can alter your DNA !
Expect returning astronauts to resemble giant rubber - suited monstrosities of yore
Actually, nothing so dramatic, but there is evidence of unexpected alterations .
This could have major implications for long, manned journeys - to Mars, for instance.
Speaking of which, a recent image shows the dunes in the northern hemisphere of Mars - fun facts; whilst perusing the photos, I became aware that there are different kinds of dune - I am guilty of thinking how one pile of sand was pretty much like another.

Mars - Pahrump Hills - Curiosity                  pic NASA /JPL-Caltech

The image below had me confused for some time, and shows the problem of pictures without objects of reference for scale ; to be fair, Mars is rather short of monuments and landmarks to judge scale by - I thought that this was just a close up of a dry riverbed with cracked mud...but apparently some of the thin ridged areas are 16 storeys high.

Mars image by HI RISE        NASA/ Caltech / University of Arizona

A new test for biosignatures has been developed, which is 10,000 times more sensitive than those onboard Curiosity.
The article which mentions this discovery also name-checks Europa as a suitable target for testing, In preparation of which, this piece describes a proposed lander for Europa .
Personally, I'm disappointed that it looks so - underwhelming.

The tiny blue smudge in the centre is our solar system...

The illustration above shows our solar system compared to the largest black hole yet found.

Don't fret, it's not actually swallowing us - it is 12.1 billion light years away , thankfully.
Of course, given its immense size and the voracious appetite of black holes, it may well munch its way here, like a giant Pacman*...
This supermassive black hole is part of an immense quasar - if it were 280 light years away from us, it would give us heat equivalent to the sun.
I am now feeling small and insignificant , still banjaxed by all the big numbers involved , so in order to preserve my sanity, I will extricate myself from the event horizon of this monstrosity (diameter of 236.7 billion kilometres)

In a previous post , I mentioned the exciting project which would use lightsails powered by sunlight to achieve incredible speeds reaching 20% the speed of light, and enabling exploration of Alpha Centauri within a mere 20 years.
The caveat to that was the lack of a braking system - obviously a craft travelling at 60,000 km/s without brakes could have a problem with landing...
It turns out they have worked out a way to slow the craft down - although this will also affect the overall speed, bringing it down to a 95 years journey rather than a mere 20 years, so it becomes a generational thing.
Which means if you're travelling with Virgin Galactic , don't get a return.
Unless they solve longevity, too.
Which maybe connected to this earlier piece.
Longer telemeres, longer life ?

More immediate space exploration is the Bennu mission which aims to return sample material from an asteroid to Earth, with contact planned for 2018.
The Bennu-Rex explorer is also tasked with discovering whether Earth has any 'trojan' asteroids following its orbit.
This could unlock details of our distant past , as potential asteroids would likely be composed of material dating from Earths creation.
This little ' side-mission' is happening now ( Feb 2017)

If, like me, you've been struggling to understand quantum mechanics, there is now  a Ladybird guide to the strange , but inevitable realm.
Before you ask, the answer is no - I still don't understand it .
Cats in boxes ?
Yes - and no.
At the same time.
That's quantum .

Until next time, keep it ...erm...in a state of flux.



* Showing my age here, is Pacman still a thing ?

Giant Otters, Rogue Worlds, And Extrasensory Moments

A new theory tells us that planet Earth may have been hit by a rogue world long ago - infact, during the Late Heavy Bombardment  (yes, there really was such a thing!)
Apparently , the planets of our solar system were originally in a different order, but scattered like balls on a snooker table after a strong break: except , very slowly.
So where is the culprit planet , the cosmic cue - ball that set everything in motion ?
Apparently it is now debris, adrift in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter - well , that's the theory.

Meanwhile, in a laboratory...

The image below is from an article about scientists managing to maintain a substance as liquid below its freezing point.
Shrödingers substance ?
It is solid and it's not at the same time.
Quantum , anyone ?
I may have mentioned my theory that the world has been distinctly weird since the upgrade and restarting of the Large Hadron Collider in 2015, and I still believe that is true .
Well, as true as anything can be in this weird new reality where terms like post - truth and alternative truth are commonly used...


A recent study finds evidence of widespread synaesthesia, with many more people than expected attesting to have experienced the sensory crossed wires of synaesthesia.
I think it is a result of our constant use of multimedia - and as we progress to a world of communication by symbols and gestures, isn't it inevitable ?
Still - a new sense can only be good...

Giant otters once roamed the Earth .
Fossil specimens found in China have proved perplexing - mostly because why would an otter be so big ?
Seeking some form of context, I followed a timeline
This puts the giant otters in the Miocene era, a time when mammals became well established, giant sloths were nibbling leaves on the tree tops. sabre - toothed cats roamed the land, and giraffes and hyenas appeared for the first time
I imagine the only real threat came from the sabre-toothed cats - being the size of a wolf would be an advantage.
Which brought me to thinking of evolutionary adaptions - we are now capable of creating unique lifeforms
Adding two letters to the genetic code of e. coli microbes might not lead to a Jurassic Park scenario , but it's a start.
I had to interrupt my palaentological detective work, as it was yet another online rabbit hole; a depository of amazing information, but also a bottomless mine of trivia - sigh.
Time to get back to the world of hard facts, I thought - not idle speculation.
Difficult though, as I learned that the universe is probably the playground of super - intelligent robots.
Will we ultimately create AI that is self replicating , and determined to conquer the cosmos ? - if so, does that reality already exist ?

Eagle crater pic NASA / JPL - Caltech

It's now thirteen years since the Opportunity rover landed on Mars and crawled out of a crater to begin exploration of the Red planet.
Still going strong, it has surpassed all expectations.
Its companion , Spirit , sadly ceased contact in 2010 , but both rovers exceeded expectations, lasting way beyond their original remits.
Opportunity was to last 90 sols , but it still operates, albeit with a software upgrade to its flash memory storage in 2015, just before it entered Marathon Valley.
It is currently the longest operating offworld explorer ever - so let's get those medals ready...


Until next time !

Flying Cars, Superfast Trains, Venusian Waves and the Squirrel Problem...

A familiar element in sci-fi , the flying car is fast becoming a reality.
Tom Enders, the CEO of Airbus, plans to have a working prototype by the end of this year, and Uber are also investing in VTOL technology.
Stealing a march on driverless cars from Google, the Airbus cars will be fully automated-
but they will not time - travel.

Airbus' flying car will not time-travel

Miracle material graphene has exhibited superconductivity in its natural state.
As well as being a unique one - atom thick material which is two dimensional , super-flexible, tougher than diamond and harder than steel it also has unrivalled superconductivity.
Previously, superconductivity only happened at very low temperatures, an expensive process.
Offering superconductivity at normal temperature could make serious improvements to the cost and efficiency of  devices such as maglev trains and MRI scanners.
The current fastest maglev train recorded was 500 kmh in  Japan - but the potential increase in speed could reach over a 1000 kmh...suddenly commuting from London to Tokyo might be feasible.
Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has rightly gained a reputation as a miracle material -
as well as its potential for use in lightweight airplanes and foldable cellphones, graphene has even been used in the fashion world

Currently in orbit, we have 18 Galileo satellites, which are tasked with the creation of a global search and rescue GPS .
Each of the satellites has four clocks to help with balance and positioning.
It seems that four of the eighteen clocks have malfunctioned, and are currently being assessed / repaired...
There are estimated some 2271 satellites in orbit around the planet  (officially), which makes for a lot of space junk 
Fortunately the loss of four clocks is nothing more than an inconvenience , but it has been alleged that the biggest threat to our planets infrastructure comes not from asteroids, space debris , hackers or terrorists, but squirrels; they top a list which includes rats, raccoons and snakes.
In a previous post, I detailed the havoc caused at the LHC by a Marten (link here)
Speaking of archives, the legendary Brian Eno, he of the ambient and oblique strategies,  kindly posted an archive of the old Omni mag , and I include a link here for those who wish to explore and marvel at that cutting edge science trends mag...

images of venus with bow - shaped anomaly       JAXA  / Taguchi

Meanwhile, on the blistering hell that is Venus, an immense wave has been seen stretching North to South.
This atmospheric anomaly is 10,000 km long , and appears to be caused by the ferocious winds which have slammed into a tall mountain range.
Despite being buffeted by the 250mph winds, the mysterious wave remains almost motionless (as can be seen in the above gif)
Theories abound, but there is no guaranteed explanation for this anomaly.

Seeing Venus through the clouds of sulphuric acid is tricky, so radar has been used to help map the surface detail.

Finally, on Mars , Curiosity has found a new meteorite for examination , and further possible evidence of water on Mars.

Postscript - it has been pointed out to me that the current weirdness of the world is connected to the upgrade and switching on of the Large Hadron Collider - perhaps they did create an alternate dimension...hmmm

Until next time !

Ancient Computers , Frozen Poles, Duck Bay and Quantum Games

It's that time of year again , with winter making everyone feel cold and frosty.
Just to reassure us that it could be worse, scientists have succeeded in lowering the temperature of an object to a smidgeon above absolute zero  (smidgeon is not a scientific term and is probably not even in the Oxford dictionary)
 Anyways, the point of my ramble is that I was about to elaborate on this feat of freezing which somehow involves quantum motion , when I realised that the piece failed to give an actual temperature attained.
Or any detail of the actual frozen object.

Scientists attempt the discovery of absolute zero...

Was it a metal pole against which scientists had to stand with their tongues attached ?
The closest temperature I could find was from a previous article, this time making the discovery in an italian laboratory - which included a recorded temperature and a picture of the deep-frozen equipment used.
On my journey through the rabbit-hole of the interweb , I discovered that the average temperature of space holds at a steady -270.45 ° kelvin....thanks to the all - pervasive background microwave radiation (which conjures the image of a scientist opening a microwave door to reveal his instant noodles and the sudden cries of joy from next door as his colleagues finally receive a radio signal from deep space.)

Over two thousand years ago, an intricate device was created on the Greek island of Rhodes .
Discovered in a shipwreck in 1900, its mechanism and purpose has intrigued and mystified many for decades.
The Antikythera mechanism has finally been replicated, albeit virtually.

Moving on from what is technically the oldest computer in the world, you too can help with the advancement of quantum computing by playing an online game that involves complex geometries.
I gave it a go, but hey, I am a simple human - for those who are keen to advance our knowledge in this field, here is a link to Mequanics via gizmodo

Image of Victoria crater by Opportunity rover , 2006

Space has been thin on the ground in this post ; to address this, here are some images from Mars. Above is the view from ' Duck Bay' imaged by the Opportunity rover, as it entered the Victoria crater.
Below is my current favourite image, which again shows the Victoria impact crater on Mars, with superimposed Opportunity rover for some kind of scale .
The images below were taken by the Mars Reconaisance Orbiter - I almost forgot that we have a camera orbiting another world...then I remembered that we have cameras dotted throughout the solar system...

NASA / JPL / MRO

Until next time, thanks for stopping by !

Metallic Psyche , Inflatable Space Hotels, and The Road Ahead

Missions Map by Olaf  Frohn
Note the lower right hand side, with voyager 1 and 2 indicated ' off route'
more to come !

Hello, I hope 2017 finds you refreshed and raring to go - no? Oh well, straight in with a recent announcement by NASA that they are launching two missions.
The missions are titled Psyche and Lucy - one is to fly to a distant metallic asteroid , which is effectively a drifting core from a puported ' protoplanet '.
The mission, 'Lucy', is a little closer to home, exploring asteroids around the gas giant Jupiter , although the principle is similar - to examine materials dating from the early formation of our solar system..
Further examination of space comes with the IXPE mission selected by NASA , in which telescopes in space will gauge distant x-ray fields emanating from black holes .
This mission is set to launch in 2020.

In other news a series of distant frbs are drawing us to look closer - though at 3 billion light years away, close is a loose term...it seems the main attraction is the sheer power required to output a signal over such a distance - could it be ...

image by Shane Graf 

Alongside the ever increasing list of companies with designs on space travel, is Bigelow Aerospace . 

They hope to create interstellar hotels capable of flight - an admirable , progressive concept. Particularly if said hotels utilise solar sails to reach near light speed.
Of course, 80 % of light speed would mean your hotel is travelling at a fair clip , but the distance to the nearest starfield (Alpha Centauri) is so great, that you'd have plenty of time to work out how to drink a cocktail in zero gravity without looking foolish.
On a serious note, back to Bigelow Aerospace - their first working test is the BEAM unit recently added to the ISS.
Personally, I would have issues with a flimsy pod in space, with nothing between myself and the great unknown...
Aside from the unexplored depths of the Mariana trench (but that's for another discussion), 

there is no greater unknown than space, so it's just as well that Hubble is being used to map a path for the ongoing journeys of Voyagers 1 and 2, now that they are in unexplored territory - a SatNav for the galaxy...hopefully not too many wrong turns up ahead... this is amazing stuff - we're using an orbiting telescope to create a road map for a pair of explorer craft which are billions of miles away!

The future is now - okay, the map is presently about the chemical makeup of the road ahead, but Hubble is marking a wide swathe of space between the two explorers.

pic NASA/ ESA / G Bacon (st/scl)

From The Great Attractor To The Fountains of Enceladus

This is the closest thing to a cosmic xmas wreath, so...merry festive !

Apparently dark shadows in craters on Ceres conceal frozen water ice, something which the Dawn explorer is looking into (no pun intended) - the famous  highly reflective white patches are salt , and the craters conceal what could be ice water from which the salt has come; more evidence of a briny, subsurface ocean .
Given the sheer amount of subsumed salt on the surface, I'd wager it wasn't far beneath the surface.
It's almost a given that our solar system is full of worlds with hidden oceans.

A recent trend seems to be the coupling of serious information with crude humour , and the headline of this article continues the tradition.
Anyway, Uranus exhibits unusual rotation in the southern latitudes , rotating some 15% faster than the rest of the gas giant.
This seems to be the result of an unusual object deep inside the planet.
Very little is known about the gas giants , so this, along with the current Juno explorer , could help greatly increase our knowledge.

Scientists have measured the smallest sliver of time ever , so brief (850 zaptoseconds*) , that they can see an electron emerge from an atom which got me thinking ; how can they create a ' sliver ' of time?
Can they therefore stop time ?

A new Antarctic exploration has begun with an attempt to drill  down deep and uncover the oldest ice on Earth, yielding evidence from millions of years ago.
From the microscopic to the macrocosmic - the discovery of galactic infrastructure
(we are part of a supercluster called Laniakea) means that we  are potentially the tiny building blocks of an even greater universe .
This has implcations for many things, including our understanding of time; speaking of which, go see  Arrival...

Enceladus water plumes     image NASA / Cassini

The next journeys to Saturns moons Enceladus and Titan, will be to find evidence of life.
Nasa have an explorer lined up called Enceladus Life Finder, or ELF, to be funny.
Not to be outdone, ESA will be exploring with a craft named E2T , which isn't quite so snappy, but it will be amazing to see two flybys intent on uncovering evidence of life.
The focus will be on the jets of water seen emitting from the southern polar area of Enceladus. Coupled with a low altitude camera survey of the surface, it is hoped that enough information will be gleaned to establish for once and for all the possibility that even microbial life does or did exist in those subsurface oceans.

Meanwhile, on Mars...

Slightly closer to home - well, Mars anyway, is on target for the 2020 Exomars thing, with the addition of a drill capable of taking samples from a depth of two metres below the surface in the ongoing search for biosignatures...

High above the Earth...

...even closer to home is the ISS, and NASA are mooting a new form of parachute braking system to enable two way journeys of science payloads.
Plans are already afoot for a new space station, with the mooted NASA / Roskosmos collaboration scheduled for 2024 . By this time, such operations should be quite commercialised , and a joint exploration of Mars is also planned - to which end, the new Orion is being put through its paces.

Out there, somewhere...

Apparently,the Great Attractor is our destiny .
Whats going to happen is a secret though-
It's 200 million light years away, so we won't be getting spoilers for a long time.
No one knows what the great attractor is, except that it has the mass of 200 billion suns, and is drawing us inexorably towards it
So it's pretty irresistible
Pun was not intended

I am posting this as we approach the end of  2016, for better or worse.
Personally, I think it's for the better, as this year has been relentless and miserable .
I do intend to write a couple more blogposts by the end of this year, but they may be more 'Earthbound' than recent posts.
I'm scratching my head though - perhaps I should just get a new blog.
Decisions, eh ?

Until soon, take care !





* Apparently its very short. I trust New Scientist not to prank me.