Russian scientists break ground in new asteroid discovery

A new name has appeared in the registry of minor planets. Researchers at the Ussuriysky Astrophysics Observatory of the Far Eastern chapter of the Russian Academy of Scientists have discovered a new asteroid. The Russian scientists claim that they were lucky to have found such a discovery. The unique discovery was made possible thanks to the Hamilton system telescope, the most powerful in the Far East. That equipment was installed at the observatory last fall. For the Ussuriysky scientists the discovery of the asteroid is a real joy, as it was the first time that specialists of that observatory have discovered a new space object among other objects in the Asteroid Belt. "We studied the space guest for several nights before coming to the sensational conclusion that that asteroid was unknown to the world", said Alexey Matkin, one of the authors of the discovery, in his interview to the Voice of Russia. "An asteroid is a common object which poses no threat to our civilization. At present time the orbital data regarding that asteroid is being studied in order to map a more precise orbit. It is the first asteroid to be discovered in the Far East and specifically at our astrophysics observatory". The size of the new asteroid does not exceed hundreds of meters. The Harvard International Minor Planet Center has already confirmed its discovery. The space stranger has received its own number in the catalogue, which has a registry of four and a half thousand minor space objects. Based on the unique number which contains numbers and letters of the Latin alphabet, one can easily determine when this or that asteroid was discovered, explains Sergey Smirnov, a researcher at the main astronomical observatory in Pulkovo and vice-president of the Astro-geodetic Union of Russia. "First of all a preliminary serial number is obtained. Its first four digits represent the calendar year. In our case it is 2014. Then follow Latin letters that reflect a two-week period during the year. The entire year is divided into 24 such time intervals. That is followed by digits that reflect the serial number inside that time interval. Only after this preliminary serial number an asteroid is assigned its permanent name. By that time a few decades can pass by. The majority of asteroids only have preliminary serial numbers and have no permanent name". Today, scientists discover up to 200 minor planets per year and only a small fraction of those discoveries are made by Russian researchers. The fact that the discovery was made in the Ussuriysky observatory is somewhat unexpected. Until recently the researchers at the observatory dealt with completely different issues, continues Sergey Smirnov. "The Ussuriysky observatory was initially set up to observe the sun and the influence of the solar radiation on life on our planet. It is good that the subjects covered by the observatory were extended and astro-metric research was added. That was why the fact that it was at that observatory that the new asteroid was discovered is such a big joy for our entire scientific community". The new asteroid could possibly allow us to solve more mysteries of our Universe. The Russian scientist believes that it is necessary to determine what family that specific asteroid belongs to. "Sometimes asteroid families are formed as a result of space catastrophes when various objects of the solar system clash with each other. Otherwise, if an asteroid passes closely to a large space object, such as Jupiter or Mars, dramatic changes in the orbit or even destruction can take place. In the distant past, billions of years ago in the early days of the history of our Solar system, such formation of asteroid families was especially powerful. But today we can often see the details of that stone-crushing in the gradual drifting apart of the objects of the same family". By the way, today the world astrophysics community is fighting to resolve another space mystery. The astronomers of the European Southern Observatory have managed to literally dissect the body of the Itokawa asteroid discovered in 1998. Thanks to extra-precise measurements the scientists have discovered that its various segments have different a density and structure. Despite the fact that the research continues, very few discoveries still have a great practical meaning, including the issue of fighting a potential asteroid threat. Milena Faustova, Source: Article

Read More........→March 19, 2014

Herschel Discovers Water Vapor Around Dwarf Planet Ceres

Dwarf planet Ceres is located in the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, as illustrated in this artist's conception. Observations by the Herschel space observatory between 2011 and 2013 find that the dwarf planet has a thin water vapor atmosphere. This is the first unambiguous detection of water vapor around anobject in the asteroid belt. Illustration credit: ESA/ATG medialab, Note: For more information, see PIA17831: Water Detection on Ceres, Herschel Telescope Detects Water on Dwarf Planet and Herschel Discovers Water Vapor Around Dwarf Planet Ceres. Source: Article

Read More........→January 25, 2014

Curiosity Rover Celebrates 1 Year on Mars with Dramatic Discoveries

This scene combines seven images from the telephoto-lens camera on the right side of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 343 of the rover’s work on Mars (July 24, 2013). The center of the scene is toward the southwest. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems Story updated with further details: 

By Ken Kremer: NASA’s mega Mars rover Curiosity is celebrating 1 Year on the Red Planet since the dramatic landing on Aug. 6, 2012 by reveling in a string of groundbreaking science discoveries demonstrating that Mars could once have supported past life – thereby accomplishing her primary science goal – and with a promise that the best is yet to come! “We now know Mars offered favorable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago,” said the mission’s project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Curiosity has landed in an ancient river or lake bed on Mars,” Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told Universe Today. Curiosity is now speeding onwards towards Mount Sharp, the huge 3.4 mile (5. 5 km) mountain dominating the center of her Gale Crater landing site – and which is the primary destination of the mission. During Year 1, Curiosity has transmitted over 190 gigabits of data, captured more than 71,000 images, fired over 75,000 laser shots to investigate the composition of rocks and soil and drilled into two rocks for sample analysis by the pair of state-of-the-art miniaturized chemistry labs housed in her belly – SAM & CheMin. “From the sophisticated instruments on Curiosity the data tells us that this region could have been habitable in Mars’ distant past,” Green told me. “This is a major step forward in understanding the history and evolution of Mars.” And just in the nick of time for her 1 year anniversary, the car sized robot just passed the 1 mile (1.6 kilometer) driving mark on Aug. 1, or Sol 351. Mount Sharp still lies roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers) distant – as the Martian crow flies. “We will be on a general heading of southwest to

The total distance driven by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity passed the one-mile mark a few days before the first anniversary of the rover’s landing on Mars. This map traces where Curiosity drove between landing at “Bradbury Landing” on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT, (Aug. 6, 2012 (Universal Time and EDT) and the position reached during the mission’s 351st Martian day, or sol, (Aug. 1, 2013). The Sol 351 leg added 279 feet (85.1 meters) and brought the odometry since landing to about 1.05 miles (1,686 meters). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Mount Sharp,” Jim Erickson, Curiosity Project Manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told Universe Today in an exclusive interview. See the NASA JPL route maps below. “We have been going through various options of different planned routes.” How long will the journey to Mount Sharp take? “Perhaps about a year,” Erickson told me. “We have put some new software – called autonav, or autonomous navigation – on the vehicle right after the conjunction period back in March 2013. This will increase our ability to drive.” “We are trying to make that significantly faster by bringing the new autonav online. That will help. But how much it helps really depends on the terrain.” So far the terrain has not been problematical. “Things are going very well and we have a couple of drives under our belt,” said Erickson, since starting the long trek to Mount Sharp about a month ago. The lower reaches of Mount Sharp are comprised of exposed geological layers of sedimentary materials that formed eons ago when Mars was warmer and wetter, and much more hospitable to microscopic life. “It has been gratifying to succeed, but that has also whetted our appetites to learn more,” says Grotzinger. “We hope those enticing layers at Mount Sharp will preserve a broad diversity of other environmental conditions that could have affected habitability.” Indeed, Curiosity’s breakthrough discovery that the surface of Mars possesses the key chemical ingredients required to sustain microbial life in a habitable zone, has emboldened NASA to start mapping out the future of Mars exploration. NASA announced plans to start work on a follow on robotic explorer launching in 2020and develop strategies for returning Martian samples to Earth and dispatching eventual human missions to Mars in the 2030’s using the new Orion capsule and SLS Heavy lift rocket. “NASA’s Mars program is back on track with the 2016 InSight lander and the 2020 rover,” Jim Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told Universe Today in an interview. “Successes of our Curiosity — that dramatic touchdown a year ago and the science findings since then — advance us toward further exploration, including sending humans to an asteroid and Mars,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement. “Wheel tracks now, will lead to boot prints later.” Following the hair-raising touchdown using with the never before used sky-crane descent thrusters, the science team directed the 1 ton robot to drive to a nearby area of interesting outcrops on the Gale crater floor – at a place called Glenelg and Yellowknife Bay. Along the way, barely 5 weeks after landing, Curiosity found a spot laden with rounded pebbles at the Hottah outcrop of concretions that formed in an ancient stream bed where hip deep liquid water once flowed rather vigorously. In February 2013, Curiosity conducted the historic first ever interplanetary drilling into Red Planet rocks at the ‘John Klein’ outcrop inside Yellowknife Bay that was shot through with hydrated mineral veins of gypsum. The Yellowknife Bay basin looks like a dried up 

Curiosity accomplished Historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182), shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Jan. 26 (Sol 169). The robotic arm is pressing down on the surface at John Klein outcrop of veined hydrated minerals – dramatically back dropped with her ultimate destination; Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

river bed. Analysis of pulverized portions of the gray colored rocky powder cored from the interior of ‘John Klein’ revealed evidence for phyllosilicates clay minerals that typically form in pH neutral water. These starting findings on the crater floor were unexpected and revealed habitable environmental conditions on Mars – thus fulfilling the primary science goal of the mission. See herein our context panoramic mosaic from Sol 169 showing the robotic arm touching and investigating the Martian soil and rocks at ‘John Klein’. And if you take a visit to Washington, DC, you can see our panorama (assembled by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo) on permanent display at a newly installed Solar System exhibit at the US National Mall in front of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum- details here.

A mosaic by the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, assembled by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo is now part of the permanent Solar System Exhibit outside the National Air and Space Museum on the US National Mall in Washington, D.C. Image courtesy NCESSE.

“We have found a habitable environment [at John Klein] which is so benign and supportive of life that probably if this water was around, and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” says Grotzinger, summing up the mission. This past week she captured rare sky watching images of the diminutive Martian moons – Phobos and Deimos – together! Meanwhile, Curiosity’s 10 year old sister rover Opportunity Is trundling merrily along and will arrive shortly at her own mountain climbing goal on the opposite of Mars. And NASA’s next Mars orbiter called MAVEN (for Mars Atmosphere and 

Curiosity captured unique and rare view of tiny Martian moons Phobos & Deimos together on Sol 351 (Aug 1, 2013). Look close and see craters on pockmarked Phobos. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS, contrast enhanced by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken KremerOn the long road to Mount Sharp, Curiosity will make occasional stops for science.

Volatile Evolution), has just arrived intact at the Kennedy Space Center after a cross country trip aboard a USAF C-17. Technicians at Kennedy will complete final preparations for MAVEN’s blastoff to the Red Planet on Nov. 18 from the Florida Space Coast atop an Atlas V rocket. On Tuesday, Aug 6, NASA will broadcast a half day of new programming on NASA TV commemorating the landing and discussing the science accomplished so far and what’s coming next. And stay tuned for more astonishing discoveries during ‘Year 2′ on the Red Planet from our intrepid rover Curiosity – Starting Right Now ! Ken Kremer

Curiosity Route Map From ‘Glenelg’ to Mount Sharp: This map shows where NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity landed in August 2012 at “Bradbury Landing”; the area where the rover worked from November 2012 through May 2013 at and near the “John Klein” target rock in the “Glenelg” area; and the mission’s next major destination, the entry point to the base of Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona. Source: Universetoday

Read More........→August 06, 2013

Comets deposited building blocks of life on Earth?

Washington,Planetary scientists have claimed that comets or "dirty snowballs" may have deposited the building blocks of life on Earth billions of years ago. A team at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute NASA/Ames Research Centre in California says its research has shown that comets bombarding Earth some billions of years ago deposited key ingredients for life to spring up on the planet. Jennifer G Blank, who led the team, described experiments that recreated with powerful laboratory "guns" and computer models the conditions that existed inside comets when these celestial objects hit Earth's atmosphere at almost 25,000 miles per hour and crashed down upon the surface. The research is part of a broader scientific effort to understand how amino acids and other ingredients for the first living things appeared on a planet that billions of years ago was barren and desolate, say the planetary scientists. Amino acids make up proteins, which are the workhorses of all forms of life, ranging from microbes to people. "Our research shows that the building blocks of life could, indeed, have remained intact despite the tremendous shock wave and other violent conditions in a comet impact," Blank said in a release by the American Chemical Society. "Comets really would have been the ideal packages for delivering ingredients for the chemical evolution thought to have resulted in life. We like the comet delivery scenario because it includes all of the ingredients for life – amino acids, water and energy," she added. Comets are chunks of frozen gases, water, ice, dust and rock. These orbit the sun in a belt located far beyond the most distant planets in the solar system. Periodically, comets break loose and hurtle inward, where they may become visible. In their research, Blank and colleagues set out to check whether amino acids could remain intact after a comet's descent through Earth's atmosphere. In one set of experiments, they used gas guns to simulate the enormous temperatures and powerful shock waves that amino acids in comets would experience on upon entering the Earth's atmosphere. The gas guns, devices that weigh thousands of pounds, hit objects with high-pressure blasts of gas moving at supersonic speeds. They shot the gas at capsules filled with amino acids, water and other materials. The amino acids did not break down due to the heat and shock of the simulated crash. Indeed, they began forming the so-called "peptide bonds" that link amino acids together into proteins. The pressure from the impact of the crash apparently offset the intense heat and also supplied the energy needed to create the peptides, she explained. In other experiments, Blank's team used sophisticated computer models to simulate conditions as comets collided with Earth. The scientists suggested that there may well have been multiple deliveries of seedlings of life through the years from comets, asteroids and meteorites. Source: Indian Express

Read More........→June 20, 2013

Meteorites: the secret signs

Meteorites fall on the Earth (Artist's view)

The international expedition to study meteorite catastrophes of the past - a joint Russian-American mission, headed by world-renowned scientist - Dallas Abbott. It belongs to her discovery of a number of such craters on the planet and the hypothesis about the impact of meteorites on Earth evolution. At this time, the scientists are going to dot the "i" in the origin of the two Russian lakes. "Smerdyache" - the most enigmatic and mysterious lake in the Moscow region, near the Shatura. Even the name is scary. It is said that once there was a church. She went into the water together with the priest. Truth or fiction, is not known. However, the landscape around adds mystique ... and unusual shape of the lake - a perfect

Smerdyache lake

circle. "This lake is the most suspicious of 30-40 lakes in Shatura, - said Vyacheslav Gusiakov, head of the Laboratory of the Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics SB RAS. - The origin of the remaining lakes are more or less clear. And here is flat terrain and suddenly there is a ring structure, surrounded by a rampart and further reduction ... " But it is almost perfectly round shape of the lake and attracted fans of extraterrestrial stories. Their version: Lake meteorite origin. Formed ten thousand years from the fall of 20 meter outer body. Evidence of this hypothesis, a lot. However, he has not yet found a meteorite. A joint Russian-American expedition just to dot the "i" in the origin of this water body. Vyacheslav Gusiakov believes that the main thing - to find the right place and to take samples under the ground, to see if there are rocks ejected from the depths, to study the geological section of the

Depression Svetloyar Lake - Crater meteorite origin

site at a depth of 50-60 meters. But the first round of the lake, and the most cursory examination of his right brings some interesting finds. "There is a set of stones that just amazed how all of this - says a leading researcher at the Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Maccabees. - In some places there are pebbles on which surprisingly smooth parallel cracks. But these cracks occur when the subject put a lot of pressure and suddenly take it off. " The task of scientists to take as many samples and conduct laboratory research to say for sure whether the Moscow region in the past undergone a meteoric bombardment. "As part of any meteorite is metal, nickel - sure researcher Dallas Abbott, leader of the expedition. - On the ground, the soil is very little nickel. And if we find it in large numbers, it could be argued that it was the fall of the cosmic body. This is one way to prove that the lake

Image above: As part of an international expedition took part: Professor Dallas Abbott, a member of the Observatory-Doherty Earth Lomond, a researcher micrographs Dee Breger.

appeared as a direct result of a meteorite. "Renowned scholar American Dallas Abbott for the first time in the Russian outback. It belongs to her discovery of several craters on Earth. The most famous - underwater crater Mahuika near New Zealand. It was formed in 1447. Then, according to Abbott, fell into the ocean a huge meteorite, which caused a mega-tsunami, the wave height of over 100 meters. In 2009, she made a sensational new report: Little Ice Age in the 6th century, which lasted four years on Earth, too, caused by the fall of a large meteorite. It was followed by volcanic eruptions, dust emission in the atmosphere, crop failure, famine. The result - a global epidemic of plague. Dallas does not exclude that the Flood could also arise due to the fall of the celestial body. In the history of mankind are many myths and legends about the raging elements. But not knowing how to explain the disaster, people attributed their otherworldly forces. A striking example - Lake Svetloyar in the Nizhny Novgorod region. From this

Alexey Kiselev long held the view of meteoritic origin of the lake Svetloyar

place connects the mysterious disappearance of Kitezh City, according to the legend of the past into the water together with the people, not willing to surrender to the army of Batu. There are earlier - Mari myth. Lecturer of the Department of Astronomy of the University Mininskogo Alexey Kiselev retells it: "According to legend, there lived a tribe pans. Goddess Turk angry with the tribe and sent fiery horse, and this horse has destroyed the rebellious lords ... " But, there to have spoken, and the fall of meteorites - the phenomenon is not rare in our lives. But unlike a dead moon, where craters all at a glance, everything on Earth "space wounds" quickly tightened the winds and the rain. Search craters - this is one way to revive the memories of the past. Even after a century, the modern world reflect the cosmic threat not yet in force. ROSCOSMOS Press Release: http://www.federalspace.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=20141, Images, Text, Credits: Roscosmos TV studio (ROSCOSMOS PAO) / Dmitry Karabelnikov (images) / Translation: Orbiter.ch Aerospace. Greetings, Source: Orbiter.ch Space News

Read More........→June 12, 2013