The New Horizons Spacecraft: One Giant Leap For Robotic Space Exploration?

Despite their limitations in comparison to human space explorers, is the New Horizon spacecraft demonstrates the best of our current robotic spacecraft ability?

By: Ringo Bones 

Despite of the post Cold War austere fiscal environment at NASA, the recent successes demonstrated by the New Horizons spacecraft currently taking our clearest snapshots of Pluto so far can be quite inspiring to anyone interested in astronomy and space exploration as a whole. Given the spacecraft’s recent accomplishment despite being built on a “relatively” shoestring budget of 700 million US dollars is no mean feat indeed. 

When NASA’s task-masters at Capitol Hill green lit the New Horizons program back in 2001 and the four year timetable on the construction of the craft for its scheduled launched at the beginning of 2006 are just one of the miracles successfully pulled off by the New Horizons spacecraft. If the funding and launch timetable was delayed to several weeks after the International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto is no longer a planet, the “princes” at Capitol Hill would probably had scrapped the funding of the New Horizons program. In honor of Pluto’s discoverer, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, Tombaugh’s ashes was taken onboard as payload on the New Horizons spacecraft so that he can achieve the closest physically possible of actually visiting Pluto first hand. 

Due to its distance and small size, the world’s astronomical community have virtually little interest on the planet Pluto that between the cataloguing of the planet via “old school” astronomical photographic plates by Clyde Tombaugh in the 1930s and astronomer Carl Lampland in the 1950s, the actual location of Pluto’s orbit could be in error by as much as 62,000 miles. It was only after 1990 that the global astronomical community’s orbital data accuracy on Pluto became on par of that of the planets Uranus and Neptune. It is only understandably so due to Pluto’s remoteness at over 3 billion miles away from planet Earth and since Clyde Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto in 1930, astronomers here on Earth had only “witnessed” about 1/3 of its almost 250-year orbit around our Sun.  

The recent New Horizons spacecraft’s successful 8,000 mile “close flyby” would not have happened without the due diligence of one of the New Horizons program’s co investigator Dr. Marc Buie due to a lack of usefully accurate data on Pluto’s orbit and actual distance from the Sun. By 2012, the New Horizon’s team was concerned on the lack of accurate orbital data on the planet Pluto that Dr. Buie actually did his own legwork at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona in order to reexamine around 1,000 of astronomical photographic plates of Pluto taken by Clyde Tombaugh and Carl Lampland during 1930 to 1950. The new computational data acquired by Dr. Buie became very indispensible in programming the New Horizon’s spacecraft’s trajectory so that when it encounters Pluto by July 2015, it will be within 8,000 miles – as opposed to 62,000 miles away. 

Due to its destination’s remoteness from the Sun where the ambient strength of sunlight is only 1/1000^th found here on Earth, the use of solar panels is out of the question in the New Horizons spacecraft. Instead, it uses a plutonium-239 powered thermoelectric reactor similar to that used in the Voyager spacecraft to power its systems. Due to Pluto’s remoteness, it took nine and a half years for New Horizons to reach its Pluto flyby despite travelling 1 million miles a day at 51,000 miles per hour. 

Hubble Space Telescope’s 25th Anniversary

Even though it is slated to be retired in five years time, is there still life left in the Hubble Space telescope?

By: Ringo Bones

Since its launch into low earth orbit by the Space Shuttle Discovery back in April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has proven itself to be the proverbial “little telescope that could”. Freed from the inherent turbulence of the earth’s atmosphere by placing it in orbital space, the Hubble Space Telescope has the potential to be far better than any earthbound telescope that has come before. But for its entire 25-year lifespan is not totally free from controversy.

When it was found out that its primary mirror was misshapen – as in light rays hitting the mirror’s edge is reflected differently in comparison to the light rays hitting the center of the mirror by as much as one-thirteenth the thickness of the human hair which significantly affected its performance when looking at distant galaxies tens of millions of light-years away. The mainstream press dubbed it the 2-billion dollar blunder upon hearing the news and some folks – most of them your right-wing conservative types – are the ones voicing the loudest criticisms of the fledgling space telescope.

For all intents and purposes, Reagan era “conservative” America may have something to do on why the misshapen main mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope was overlooked and was only found out after it was sent into space. Perkin Elmer – the Hubble Space Telescope’s main mirror contractor – wasn’t allowed to verify if they’ve ground the mirror accurate enough using the test jig at the then Lockheed Aircraft Corporation (before they merged with the famed cruise missile manufacturer Martin Marietta). Given that it was still the height of the Cold War, Hubble’s main mirror never got the opportunity for troubleshooting in an optical test jig at Lockheed where they test the main mirrors of NSA’s 1980s era Keyhole Reconnaissance Satellites for fears that the then Soviet Union might know the optical capabilities of the 1980s era U.S. spy satellites – thus the “blunder” that got overlooked. But given that the main mirror was misshapen in such a precise manner, folks at NASA managed to device a “contact lens” to correct the Hubble Space Telescope’s misshapen main mirror – at a fraction of the total cost of the space telescope.

With a Space Shuttle flight to fix the Hubble back in December 2, 1993, a team of NASA astronauts led by Story Musgrave managed to install the “contact lens package” – as in the COSTAR corrective optics module - to fix the Hubble. The mission was totally worth it when in July 16, 1994 the Hubble Space Telescope managed to give humanity a “ringside seat” to the crash of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 to the planet Jupiter. Then came the “Hubble Deep Field” series of images and a host of other images that forever changed the science of astronomy.

But the Hubble Space Telescope is truly the “space based telescope that could”. As in the Hubble consumes as much power as a household electric clothes drier and its “jitter spec” is of 0.007 arc-second accuracy – in layman’s terms it is like pointing a hand-held laser pointer on the top of the Washington Monument and keep it steady enough to aim at a dime on top of the Empire State Building while keeping it steady enough to keep the laser point or spot aimed squarely at Roosevelt’s profile on the said dime. Another "weird fact" is that the mechanical parts of the Hubble Space Telescope is lubricated by sperm whale oil given that during the mid 1980s - during the time period of the famed telescope's construction phase at Lockheed - it was the only lubricant available at the time that wouldn't seize up in the weightlessness and extreme temperature swings of outer space conditions.

Since the late 1990s, the Hubble Space Telescope has been slated for replacement. The James Webb Space Telescope which will be placed over a million miles away from earth. If its specs can be trusted, the James Webb Space Telescope has the potential to detect any earth-like planet within 10,000 light-years. And despite its age and scores of upgrades later, it seems that the Hubble Space Telescope’s “imminent” retirement 5 years from now is not yet certain given that it was originally designed to last for only 15 years.

Will The Dawn Spacecraft Uncover Something New From Ceres?

Given it is still a virtually unexplored part of out Solar System, will the Dawn spacecraft uncover something new from Ceres? 

By: Ringo Bones 

 Since its launch in 2007, there has been scant press coverage on the Dawn spacecraft and its intended destination – a region in our Solar System that lie between the planets Mars and Jupiter called the asteroid belt. Besides some Earth like asteroids fictionalized in the first season of The Twilight Zone, it seems that the asteroid belt is an out of sight out of mind part of our Solar System. Fortunately, the recent pictures sent by the Dawn spacecraft has slightly peaked everyone’s interest of these so-called “dwarf planets” – as they are now called by the International Astronomical Union – that reside in the asteroid belt. 

As of Friday, March 6, 2015, the Dawn spacecraft entered the orbit of Ceres. According to the mission’s chief engineer Marc Rayman at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the 473-million US dollar mission says: “It went exactly the way we expected. Dawn gently, elegantly slid into Ceres’ gravitational embrace.” 

Ceres is the second and final stop for Dawn, a robotic spacecraft that was launched in 2007 on a voyage to the main asteroid belt, a zone between Mars and Jupiter that’s littered with rocky leftovers that dates back from the formation of the Sun and the planets some 4.5 billion years ago. Dawn will spend 16 months photographing the icy surface of Ceres. Dawn previously spent a year at Vesta – the only “dwarf planet” of the asteroid belt that can occasionally seen with the naked eye from the Earth’s surface, exploring the asteroid’s surface and sending back stunning close-ups of its lumpy surface before cruising onto the Texas-sized Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. 

The 4.8 billion kilometer trip was made possible by Dawn’s ion propulsion engines which provide a gentle yet constant acceleration and are more efficient than chemical-based rocket thrusters. As Dawn approaches Ceres, it beamed back the best pictures ever taken of the “dwarf planet”. Some puzzling images revealed a pair of shiny patches inside a crater – signs of possible ice or salt – which is something that can’t be seen by earthbound telescopes. Marc Rayman says that the Dawn spacecraft is currently in Ceres’ shadows and won’t take new pictures until it emerges in April, he said. 

Since its discovery in the evening of January 1, 1801 by the Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi, Ceres has intrigued generations of astronomers. Ceres measures 965-kilometers (600 miles) in diameter and is named after the Roman goddess of agriculture and harvest. It was initially called a planet before it was demoted into an asteroid and more recently classified as a “dwarf planet”. Like true blue planets, dwarf planets are spherical in shape because their size or mass generates enough gravitation for it to attain hydrostatic equilibrium and thus attaining a spherical shape unlike the smaller oddly-shaped asteroids. 

The Rosetta Probe: The Little Spacecraft That Could?

Launched from earth over a decade ago to rendezvous with a comet more than half a billion miles away from earth, is the Rosetta Probe the little robotic spacecraft that could? 

By: Ringo Bones 

When it was launched off the Arianne spaceport in French Guiana back in March 2, 2004, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Probe with a mission to rendezvous with a comet more 10 years later could for all intents and purposes pass muster as a mission to the unknown. The craft was placed in a decade long hibernation once it escaped the bonds of earth’s gravity and was reactivated earlier this year. It gained headline news status and attention of the major news networks when it successfully caught up to and orbited around Comet 67P - also known as Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko - during the middle of November 2014. Although once it – more or less – successfully landed the Philae Lander on the surface of Comet 67P back in November 15, 2014 did the Rosetta Space Probe became the little spacecraft that could. 

The major unavoidable hazard of launching space-probes on long-duration space missions is that when they arrive at their destinations, they will inevitably be using what was the state-of-the-art technology at the time of their launch date. The Rosetta Probe’s 4-megapixel Osiris camera – although very state-of-the-art back when it was designed and built back in 2003 – is somewhat quaint by comparison to the built in cameras used on entry level mobile smart-phone cameras circa 2014, except the Rosetta Probe’s mere 4-megapixel camera – though lacking in resolution in comparison to contemporary consumer counterparts – can see portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that the latest i-Phone can’t with quantum efficiencies better than Ronald Reagan era Keyhole reconnaissance satellites. 

Although it was the Philae Lander that eventually became the star of the show when it successfully landed on the surface of Comet 67P despite a “shaky” bouncy landing due to the failure of deployment of the beryllium-copper harpoons supposedly used to anchor the Lander on the surface of the comet because the gravitational pull on the surface of Comet 67P is 100,000 times less than that on the earth’s surface. The washing machine sized Philae Lander – which weighs 100-kilograms on the earth’s surface – only weighs 1 gram on the surface of Comet 67P thus the necessity of the beryllium-copper harpoons needed to anchor the Lander firmly on the comet’s surface. 

Even though Professor Derrick Pitts – chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute – was concerned when the Philae Lander bounced off into a dark part / shadowy cliff of the surface of the Comet 67P which it can’t use its solar photovoltaic panels to power its instruments in analyzing the composition of the comet, the Lander had enough juice in its on-board reserve batteries to do a series of scientific analysis of the comet and sent the valuable data back to earth before losing power and reverting to sleep mode. Preliminary analysis of the data sent by the Philae Lander has shown that it has detected a wealth of organic compounds on the comet’s surface near the landing zone. And it is also worth mentioning that at the distance between Comet 67P / Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and earth, radio signals sent from the Philae Lander - even moving at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second - takes almost an hour to arrive to the satellite telemetry sites tuned in to the Lander here on earth.

Cosmic Diamond: The Universe’s Largest Uncut Diamond?

It might be the ultimate jeweler’s dream here on planet Earth to work on such sized stone, but is the cosmic diamond the Universe’s largest uncut piece of diamond? 

Given that diamonds are just an allotropic form of low impurity carbon whose atoms are arranged differently than ordinary carbon that makes them one of the hardest naturally formed materials, are there conditions elsewhere in the cosmos that would allow the creation of the Universe’s largest chunk of uncut diamond? Fortunately, there is such a place. 

These are called cosmic diamonds and astrophysicists had long theorized their existence since humanity had figured out the working principles behind how stars work and how they are created, live out their lives and eventually die. Cosmic diamonds are an ultra compressed crystal of carbon believed to lie in the core of a white dwarf star as an end product that resulted after a main-sequence star’s helium burning phase. It is a whole, uncut diamond – likely spherical in shape – and could be thousands of miles in diameter, easily making it one of the largest uncut pieces of diamonds in the Universe. Given the physical conditions we currently know that prevail in the core of white dwarf stars, cosmic diamonds could have a wholly different atomic and molecular structure in comparison to the diamonds we are familiar with that are formed by planet Earth’s geological processes. 

Despite the financial and scientific interests fueling our curiosity of cosmic diamonds, at present, we can only study them from afar via our sensitive astronomical spectroscopic instruments because on average, the nearest white dwarf stars are tens to hundreds of light-years away from us. And given out current space travel technology, we won’t be able to reach one and make a sample return mission using robotic spacecraft within a practical human timescale. A round-trip mission to Alpha Centauri using our current space travel technology could take at least a little over 1-million years for a sample return mission. 

Y-Class Brown Dwarf Stars: Coolest Stars Ever?

Though they are real stars – not just some fictional astronomical phenomena conjured up in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek – are Y-Class brown dwarf stars truly qualify as the coolest stars ever in terms of temperature?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that a star’s spectral class / color temperature can now easily determined after seeing it and taking spectroscopic , bolometric and other tests via that “Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me Smack” mnemonic device. But it seems we still have to add another letter to than mnemonic device to accommodate recently discovered new classes of stars that – if you were to excuse the pun – are actually very cool. The latest stellar spectral type classification mnemonic had to be changed and now goes as: “Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me Less Tongue, Yo”.  

Discovered back in 2011 by the onboard astronomical instruments on the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer or WISE spacecraft that “see” in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, Y Class Brown Dwarf stars were said to be the coolest stars discovered to date. Despite the existence of clouds of iron vapor being picked up by the WISE spacecraft’s instrument and “snow” made up of iron filings on a Y-Class Brown Dwarf star it is studying, the mean surface temperature of the said star is only 80 degrees Fahrenheit  - a temperature cool enough to be touched with one’s own hands.  

Basing on the data gathered so far astronomers believe that Y-Class Brown Dwarf stars are believed to be an intermediate stage between planets and stars. They are on average bigger than the planet Jupiter. While some astronomers label them as “failed stars” – as in stars not big enough to have the requisite gravity to initiate full blown fusion to burn hot enough to be a bona-fide star.  

Zodiacal Light: Oft Ignored Astronomical Phenomena?

Even though it seems to longer register in the consciousness of most amateur astronomers, are they missing out on observing one of the most interesting astronomical phenomena?

By: Ringo Bones 

Although no prominent astronomers – amateur or otherwise – had been recently talking about it, are first time amateur astronomers missing out one of the most interesting astronomical phenomena that can even be seen by the naked eye. But why does it ever seldom if ever even mentioned at all?

The zodiacal light or the zodiacal band is a faint glow of light seen along the ecliptic just after sunset or before sunrise is another manifestation of the interplanetary meteoric material. This “zodiacal light” is caused by the reflection of sunlight from the meteoric grains moving in interplanetary space. A still fainter diffuse luminous spot called the gegenschein or “counter glow”, found directly opposite the sun in the sky and the false “F corona” of the sun seen during total eclipse are the two other phenomena caused by this interplanetary material. Although such material is slowly spiraling into the sun, it is continually replenished by the destruction of comets.  

The zodiacal light appears as a large, faint pyramidal glow whose base is the horizon after the twilight glow has faded. This form is best seen on spring evenings and mornings in October. A fainter incarnation of zodiacal light stretches clear across the sky along the ecliptic – as in the orange line in our sky maps. Because urban light pollution overpower the glow, the vast majority of amateur astronomers will only get a chance to see the zodiacal band at a star party located at a rural location devoid of most urban light pollution – where the skies are usually quite dark - as in Class 1 to Class 4 - in the Bortle Dark Sky scale. Though urban regions that register as Class 5 in the Bortle Dark Sky scale will provide adequate Zodiacal Light observations for non demanding amateur astronomers. 

Observing the zodiacal band is one of those funny things. You don’t generally notice it until someone points it out, then – under a dark sky – it is fairly straightforward to see. Keep in mind that the zodiacal light is a magnitude or two fainter than the Milky Way.

One way to detect the zodiacal band is to watch for the sky background brightness to change as you slowly scan up from the horizon. Initially you’ll see a brighter horizon haze followed by darkness, then the sky will brighten a bit – this is the zodiacal band – only o fade as you look higher. You might have to block the light from Jupiter with your hand – it’s that dim.

Once you recognize this faint belt, you’ll notice that Saturn clearly lies beneath it as shown on the Path of the Planets map if you are on the northern hemisphere.