Magnified view of microscopic particle, about 0.01 mm in size, from inside the sample return canister with quartz manipulator used by research team who hope it is first ever material returned from an asteroid. Note shadow of manipulating needle above. .Credit: JAXA

A little while ago we heard about the Hayabusa spacecraft making its way back to Earth after visiting the asteroid Iwotaka.

Part of the mission was to land on the asteroid and collect a sample from the asteroid and return it.  Sadly the sampling mechanism failed to work properly, not firing a projectile into the surface so the dust kicked up could be collected inside a canister.  Could the force of the landing craft kick up enough dust to be sampled?  The scientists and engineers at JAXA were hopeful.

Turns out the canister did indeed contain a few very small particles.  Now the question becomes: are they particles from the asteroid or contamination?  Time will tell.  If these are from Iwotaka they will be the first particles ever returned from an asteroid.  The samples are very small but apparently not so small they are useless and they will be extensively tested.

Hayabusa was the first spacecraft to land and take off from an asteroid.  Hayabusa suffered from some failures of its ion engines and really is a tribute to JAXA and their resolve to get the craft back, even if it did take three years longer.  JAXA is one of those space agencies that will emerge in the forefront of space sciences with what looks like more and more like the imminent demise of NASA.  Oh and don’t count China out, although they might not be as apt to share information believe you me they are up and coming.

It will be interesting to see how the private space industry in the US will stack up with other space launch entities, after all, commercial launches have been doing commercial space launches for quite a few years and are really the leaders in such endeavors at this point.  I kind of expect great things from the US industry, but that still remains to be seen.

Check out the JAXA site for more about what they are doing.

As far as stars go, it’s one of the largest, the most luminous, brightest, most massive, and one of the best supernova candidates on the list.  Betelgeuse is huge.  If it were in our sun’s place, it would extend out beyond the orbit of Mars, possibly beyond that of Jupiter.  It is the ninth brightest star in the night sky, and the second brightest (behind Rigel) in the constellation Orion.

The constellation Orion - image courtesy of Zwergelstern, released to PD

The origin of the name “Betelgeuse” is an interesting read in itself, if you happen to be interested in etymology (which I am).  There are also many and varied pronunciations floating around, and “beetle juice” is perfectly acceptable.  I was taught to pronounce it “BET el juz”.  You can avoid the whole issue and just call it “alpha ori/orionis”, if that grabs you.

Betelgeuse is a semi-regular variable star, and is believed to be about 8.5 million years old.  While that makes it an infant compared to our sun (actually, it makes it a fetus), Betelgeuse is old for its type.  Scientists believe it will supernova any time in the next 1,000 years; in fact, it could go tonight.  Betelgeuse has been doing some strange things lately, that many astronomers believe to be a preamble to supernova.

NASA/JPL/ESA - Hubble - This 1999 image was the first direct image of the surface of a star other than the Sun

When Betelgeuse does supernova, it will become the brightest object in the night sky – easily outshining the Moon.  It would even be perfectly visible during the day.  We would see it increase in brightness over a two-week period, hold intensity for about two or three months, then rapidly dim.  What would be left?  It could be a neutron star remnant, a white dwarf, or even a pulsar.  We don’t have to worry about a gamma ray burst from Betelgeuse; its rotational axis is positioned so that the burst won’t be headed our way.  Not that worrying about it would do any good, you know.  If we were looking down the barrel, Betelgeuse is close enough to fry us to a cinder.

Long an object of speculation and study, Betelgeuse has been receiving even more attention with the advent of the new “super telescopes” like Gemini.  It’s fair to say that at any moment, someone… somewhere… is looking at Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse, image by ESO's Very Large Telescope

Many people think it would be really cool to watch Betelgeuse supernova.  Maybe.  If I sound grouchy here it’s because although I would like to see a supernova that close (and we should be perfectly safe at this distance), I don’t want to lose Betelgeuse.  Sure, we wouldn’t really lose Betelgeuse… SOMETHING will still be there… but it won’t be that big, beautiful red star I’m used to seeing.

Keep looking up, Alejandro.

Position of New Horizons on the date and time indicated. Credit: New Horizons website.

The New Horizons spacecraft is well on its way to “it’s not a planet”, Pluto.  The spacecraft is about half way there, so far the flight time has been 1629 days (depending on when you read this) with about 1739 left to go before operations begin.

It turns out a course correction was needed if the planned arrival 7,767 miles above Pluto at 07:49 am July 14, 2015 was going to happen as planned.

The course correction involved sending commands to traverse the more than 1.49 billion miles to the spacecraft – yeah 1.49 billion miles, it takes about 2.25 hours for the radio signals to make the trip one way traveling at the speed of light.  The commands were instructions for a 35.6 second thruster firing that increased the speed of New Horizons by just 1-mph.  The reason for the increase in speed is completely amazing:  it seems a tiny amount of force is created by thermal photons from the radioisotope thermoelectric generator power source, get this, reflecting off the backside of the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna and this force needs to be counter acted.  Pretty cool eh?

The commands were sent and the burn accomplished. . . onward to Pluto we go.

Visit the New Horizons website to learn more about the mission including the current position.

In 2000 and 2001, two 27ft telescopes, located in Hawaii and Chili, began scientific operations as the Gemini Observatories.  Named for the constellation Gemini, the twins, the optical/infrared telescopes are among the largest and most advanced available to astronomers.  Named Gemini North (Hawaii) and Gemini South (Chili) when discussing the individual observatories, Gemini is usually referred to in the singular, with no distinction.

Gemini South - Image shamelessly lifted from the Gemini Website

Built and operated jointly by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chili, any astronomer from these countries can apply for observatory time on Gemini.  What’s really cool is a scientist doesn’t have to be physically present at the observatory to operate the telescope; Gemini is designed to be remotely operated.  This saves astronomers valuable time (and expense, of course), and makes Gemini extremely responsive to unexpected celestial events; like this image of Jupiter getting hit by an asteroid:

Being a land-based observatory, Gemini must deal with distortions from the Earth’s atmosphere (something for which space telescopes like the Hubble don’t have to compensate).  In order to compensate for the distortion, the telescopes operate with a system of “adaptive optics”.  In effect, Gemini is wearing glasses.

Since beginning its scientific work, Gemini has been responsible for some ground-breaking discoveries.  Imaging the Milky Way’s galactic core, Gemini’s combined optical/infrared images returned images clearer and more detailed than has ever before been possible.  Most recently, Gemini confirmed the imaging of a planet around a distant star (read Tom’s post here).  That’s just the most recent in a long line of Gemini-based discoveries.  If you have a minute, take a look at these links from the Gemini website.  It would take a whole ‘nother post to talk about these discoveries, but it’s well-worth your time to take a look.

Gemini weighs in as the “next generation” in telescope optics, and it’s a heavy hitter.  I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From NASA:

Moonbase Alpha is a game with single and multiplayer options where players step into the role of an exploration team member in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement. Their mission is to restore critical systems and oxygen flow after a nearby meteor strike cripples a solar array and life support equipment.

NASA will release the game on Valve’s Steam network on Tuesday, July 6. The Army Game Studio produced the game with development by Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Game Features:

* Realistic NASA exploration scenarios
* Immersive 3D graphics
* Solo or team play
* VOIP chat
* Alternate voicable text chat

…COMING JULY 6th!

I have a Beta copy of this and find it rather challenging. The graphics are good and the play on the laptop is nice and smooth. At first I thought driving the rover was a little counter intuitive until I started piloting the robots, all of a sudden the rovers weren’t so bad

I’m getting there even though I seem to be running out of oxygen on every EVA.

Enjoy a safe 4^th of July everybody!!

UPDATE:  SOLVED by Rob at 12:29 CDT

Ah, I see you out there.  You’re quietly looking over the riddle to see if you know the answer, then leaving without a word.  You really should give it a guess, you know.  I promise nobody will laugh hysterically, point fingers, or ridicule your comment.

Tom and I are winding down this cycle, getting ready for another bonus riddle round.  Get your name on the list so you too can experience the aggravation and frustration of trying to solve a really tough riddle in three guesses, with no feedback, not seeing the other guesses, not knowing if you’re right or wrong — warm or cold — until the next day.  YAY!

Okay, right on to today’s brain-buster.  Well, maybe not “brain-buster”.  How about “brain-exerciser”?  Ready?  Today you will be looking for an object:

We think of this object as one thing, but it’s really two.

This object does something important.

While not the largest of its kind, this certainly makes the top 15.

It’s recently been involved in some very interesting discoveries.

It gets around a common problem of its “kind” by, in essence, wearing glasses.

Its two parts are not close together, but have this whole North/South thing going on.

If you follow the blog, you have a running start at guessing this one.

Nobody has to be near this to make it work.

We see it, but it never looks at us.

How about that?  Clear as mud.  Get those guesses in… you know I’m in the comments waiting for someone to talk to me.

Progress resupply ship (NOT the errant one). Credit: NASA

The automated resupply ship, Progress 38, has lost telemetry and has flown past the International Space Station. Reports are sketchy, some reports have the Progress spinning out of control. I don’t know about that and I’ll stick to what NASA is saying as of 15:14 ET:

Friday’s docking for the ISS Progress 38 has been aborted due to a loss of telemetry. Flight controllers have reported the resupply craft flew past the International Space Station. The flight control team is in the early stages of diagnosing what may have caused the aborted docking with the space station, but have decided not to re-attempt docking Friday. As the Progress 38 continues its separation from the space station, the Russian and American teams are discussing their options for a future docking attempt and reconfiguring the station for standard operations. The six Expedition 24 crew members are continuing with normal station activities.

I’m watching NASA TV and they are apparently replaying coverage from before the problem started. I did hear the Progress lost telemetry a bit less than a half before the schedule 11:58 am ET docking and flew past the station at a safe distance. The main thing is nobody is (or was) in any danger.

If by chance NASA TV has anything new in the next hour or two, I will let you know.

A Gemini image of a star and its 8-Jupiter mass planet taken in 2008. Click for a larger version. Credit: Gemini Observatory.

I wrote about this back in 2008 and finally we have confirmation this is indeed the first directly imaged planet around another star!

Here’s the first part of the press release from the Gemini Observatory:

A planet only about eight times the mass of Jupiter has been confirmed orbiting a Sun-like star at over 300 times farther from the star than the Earth is from our Sun. The newly confirmed planet is the least massive planet known to orbit at such a great distance from its host star. The discovery utilized high-resolution adaptive optics technology at the Gemini Observatory to take direct images and spectra of the planet.

First reported in September 2008 by a team led by David Lafrenière (then at the University of Toronto, now at the University of Montreal and Center for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec), the suspected planetary system required further observations over time to confirm that the planet and star were indeed moving through space together. “Back in 2008 what we knew for sure was that there was this young planetary mass object sitting right next to a young Sun-like star on the sky,” says Lafrenière. The extremely close proximity of the two objects strongly suggested that they were associated with each other but it was still possible (but unlikely) that they were unrelated and only aligned by chance in the sky. According to Lafrenière, “Our new observations rule out this chance alignment possibility, and thus confirms that the planet and the star are related to each other.”

Read the rest of this and get more visuals at the Gemini site.

A Spitzer Space Telescope image of a Brown Dwarf (?), Click for larger. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/P. Eisenhardt (JPL)

This image shows what astronomers think is one of the coldest brown dwarfs discovered so far (red dot in middle of frame). The object, called SDWFS J143524.44+335334.6, is one of 14 such brown dwarfs found by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope using infrared light. Follow-up observations are required to nail down this “failed” star’s temperature, but rough estimates put this particular object at about 700 Kelvin (800 degrees Fahrenheit).

In this image, infrared light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns is color-coded blue; 4.5-micron light is red. The brown dwarf shows up prominently in red because methane is absorbing the 3.6-micron, or blue-coded, light.

The Spitzer Space telescope has found 14 brown dwarfs using its infrared vision.  The image shows (they think) one of coldest found so far, it’s the red star in the center of the image.  Cool in this case is only about 800 degrees, certainly no where near a true star.  It has a name too: SDWFS J143524.44+335334.6, catchy eh?  To be sure more observations will be necessary.

Brown dwarfs you will recall are essentially failed stars, they are small in terms of stellar mass and not hot enough to trigger the required thermonuclear reactions in their cores or if they manage a reaction they cannot sustain them.  Why?  Again they are too small and the heating creating by gravitational contraction just doesn’t make it.

Brown dwarfs are quite interesting objects.  They are pretty much invisible because they are cool and just don’t give off much light.  There is speculation that a brown dwarf might even be closer than the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri at 4.2 light-years.  If there is one, the WISE spacecraft will hopefully find it.

Visit the Spitzer website.

EPOXI is already in orbit (not shown) around the Sun. This graphic shows its trajectory starting from the 2009 Earth Flyby. The spacecraft will make its last Earth Flyby on 27 June 2010 before heading to its rendezvous with comet Hartley

Remember the Deep Impact spacecraft that released a probe that smashed into Comet Temple I back on July 4, 2005?  I sure do, I attended a Moody Blues concert and got home in time to watch it.  It was an amazing end to a fine day.

The part of the spacecraft that didn’t hit the comet, the part that contains two cameras, two telescopes and an infrared spectrometer, was recycled thanks in large part to Michael A’Hearn (University of Maryland, Deep Impact team leader and all around good guy).  What is recycled you ask?  Well through careful planning, it means another comet encounter and guess what else?  They set the spacecraft on an altered course with one last flyby of Earth this past Sunday.

The spacecraft came as close as 18,900 miles above the South Atlantic and from that got a gravity assist to increase its speed by a whooping 1.5-Km/sec – that’s 3,470 mph.  The result will be to reshape the spacecrafts orbit just the right amount to have a close encounter with Comet Hartley 2.  We won’t be waiting long either, science data will start to be received this September and the close encounter will occur on November 4, 2010.  Don’t expect an impact this time around though.

What’s in a name?  EPOXI is an extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft. Its name is derived from its two tasked science investigations — the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh) and the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI).