Comet ISON - 'Comet of the Century' or a 'Flash in the Pan?'

Here's some helpful information regarding Comet ISON, potentially a brilliant performer later this year and early in the next...

Article credit: Weather Underground.com


'Comet of the Century' Set to Fly By Mars Next Week
By: Megan Gannon

Published: September 25, 2013

The potentially dazzling Comet ISON was discovered exactly a year this month, and now a fleet of spacecraft is gearing up to track the icy wanderer during its close encounter with Mars next week.

Comet ISON was discovered by Russian amateur astronomers on Sept. 21, 2012 and has since been billed by scientists as a potential "comet of the century" if it survives an extremely close brush with the sun later this year.

Next Tuesday (Oct. 1), the Comet ISON will fly by Mars at a range of 6.5 million miles (10.4 million kilometers). The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft should have a good view of the flyby. The orbiter began its observation campaign on Sept. 21. [Photos of Comet ISON: A Potentially Great Comet]

Over the next two weeks, Mars Express will snap photos and analyze the composition of the Comet ISON's brightening coma, the atmosphere that surrounds the comet's rock-and-ice nucleus, ESA officials said in a statement. The coma of a comet becomes more prominent as its surface ices are heated and vaporized, with the dusty debris being swept back into a tail.

Meanwhile, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, another spacecraft exploring Mars, is set to trackComet ISON’s Mars flyby on Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 and 2. ISON may even be bright enough for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity to see it from the surface of the Red Planet as it whizzes by.

Comet ISON, officially known as C/2012 S1, was discovered on Sept. 21, 2012 by Russian amateur astronomers Artyom Novichonok and Vitali Nevski, who used a remotely operated telescope to detect the comet in the dim constellation of Cancer. On Nov. 28 of this year — Thanksgiving Day in the United States — ISON will skim just 730,000 miles (1.2 million km) or so above the sun's surface.

If the sun-grazing comet doesn't get ripped apart by extreme solar forces, some astronomers have said it could be the "comet of the century," possibly shining brightly enough to be seen during the daytime as it heads back into the outer reaches of the solar system. NASA scientists have warned that predictions of how bright Comet ISON will be are still uncertain, and that the comet could fizzle if it breaks apart.

When the comet whips around the sun, solar telescopes like the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission by NASA and ESA, will watch out for the celestial spectacle. The European-built Venus Express now orbiting Venus and Proba-2 in Earth orbit will also target the comet during November and December.

Since those spacecraft are designed to observe planets and not distant comets, ESA said it is not clear how their observations will turn out. But the comet has already yielded some amazing images captured by both amateur astronomers on the ground and sophisticated spacecraft like the Hubble Space Telescope, also operated by NASA and ESA.
Comet ISON's Mars 'Buzz' - Orbiter and Rovers on Lookout | Video
Comet Ison: Potential 'Comet Of The Century' News, Photos And Video
Comet ISON Now In Amateur Astronomers' Range | Video
Amazing Comet Photos of 2013 by Stargazers

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MORE: Incredible Astronomy Photos






'Guiding Light to the Stars,' Overall Winner, Earth and Space, Winner. The central regions of the Milky Way Galaxy, 26,000 light years away, appear as a tangle of dust and stars in the central part of the image. Two even more distant objects, the Magellanic Clouds, are visible as smudges of light in the upper left of the picture. (Mark Gee, Australia)

Martian Soil Water

NASA astronomers have learned that Martian soil contains a lot more water than originally thought.

Mars Soil Contains Surprising Amount of Water, NASA Finds

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By: Mike Wall

Published: September 27, 2013

A mosaic of photos taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lends Imager on Sol 85, the rover's 85th Martian day, as Curiosity was sampling rocks at a stop dubbed Rocknest in Gale Crater. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

Future Mars explorers may be able to get all the water they need out of the red dirt beneath their boots, a new study suggests.

NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has found that surface soil on the Red Planet contains about 2 percent water by weight. That means astronaut pioneers could extract roughly 2 pints (1 liter) of water out of every cubic foot (0.03 cubic meters) of Martian dirt they dig up, said study lead author Laurie Leshin, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

“For me, that was a big ‘wow’ moment,” Leshin told SPACE.com. “I was really happy when we saw that there’s easily accessible water here in the dirt beneath your feet. And it’s probably true anywhere you go on Mars.” [The Search for Water on Mars (Photos)]

The new study is one of five papers published in the journal Science today (Sept. 26) that report what researchers have learned about Martian surface materials from the work Curiosity did during its first 100 days on the Red Planet.

Soaking up atmospheric water

Curiosity touched down inside Mars’ huge Gale Crater in August 2012, kicking off a planned two-year surface mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life. It achieved that goal in March, when it found that a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay was indeed habitablebillions of years ago.

But Curiosity did quite a bit of science work before getting to Yellowknife Bay. Leshin and her colleagues looked at the results of Curiosity’s first extensive Mars soil analyses, which the 1-ton rover performed on dirt that it scooped up at a sandy site called Rocknest in November 2012.

Using its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, Curiosity heated this dirt to a temperature of 1,535 degrees Fahrenheit (835 degrees Celsius), and then identified the gases that boiled off. SAM saw significant amounts of carbon dioxide, oxygen and sulfur compounds — and lots of water on Mars.

SAM also determined that the soil water is rich in deuterium, a “heavy” isotope of hydrogen that contains one neutron and one proton (as opposed to “normal” hydrogen atoms, which have no neutrons). The water in Mars’ thin air sports a similar deuterium ratio, Leshin said.

“That tells us that the dirt is acting like a bit of a sponge and absorbing water from the atmosphere,” she said.

Some bad news for manned exploration

SAM detected some organic compounds in the Rocknest sample as well — carbon-containing chemicals that are the building blocks of life here on Earth. But as mission scientists reported late last year, these are simple, chlorinated organics that likely have nothing to do with Martian life. [The Hunt for Martian Life: A Photo Timeline]

Instead, Leshin said, they were probably produced when organics that hitched a ride from Earth reacted with chlorine atoms released by a toxic chemical in the sample called perchlorate.

Perchlorate is known to exist in Martian dirt; NASA’s Phoenix lander spotted it near the planet’s north pole in 2008. Curiosity has now found evidence of it near the equator, suggesting that the chemical is common across the planet. (Indeed, observations by a variety of robotic Mars explorers indicate that Red Planet dirt is likely similar from place to place, distributed in a global layer across the surface, Leshin said.)

The presence of perchlorate is a challenge that architects of future manned Mars missions will have to overcome, Leshin said.

“Perchlorate is not good for people. We have to figure out, if humans are going to come into contact with the soil, how to deal with that,” she said.

“That’s the reason we send robotic explorers before we send humans — to try to really understand both the opportunities and the good stuff, and the challenges we need to work through,” Leshin added.

A wealth of discoveries

The four other papers published in Science today report exciting results as well.

For example, Curiosity’s laser-firing ChemCam instrument found a strong hydrogen signal in fine-grained Martian soils along the rover’s route, reinforcing the SAM data and further suggesting that water is common in dirt across the planet (since such fine soils are globally distributed).

Another study reveals more intriguing details about a rock Curiosity studied in October 2012. This stone — which scientists dubbed “Jake Matijevic” in honor of a mission team member who died two weeks after the rover touched down — is a type of volcanic rock never before seen on Mars.

However, rocks similar to Jake Matijevic are commonly observed here on Earth, especially on oceanic islands and in rifts where the planet’s crust is thinning out.

“Of all the Martian rocks, this one is the most Earth-like. It’s kind of amazing,” said Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, a geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “What it indicates is that the planet is more evolved than we thought it was, more differentiated.”

The five new studies showcase the diversity and scientific value of Gale Crater, Grotzinger said. They also highlight how well Curiosity’s 10 science instruments have worked together, returning huge amounts of data that will keep the mission team busy for years to come.

“The amount of information that comes out of this rover just blows me away, all the time,” Grotzinger told SPACE.com. “We’re getting better at using Curiosity, and she just keeps telling us more and more. One year into the mission, we still feel like we’re drinking from a fire hose.”

The road to Mount Sharp

The pace of discovery could pick up even more. This past July, Curiosity left the Yellowknife Bay area and headed for Mount Sharp, which rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Martian sky from Gale Crater’s center.

Mount Sharp has been Curiosity’s main destination since before the rover’s November 2011 launch. Mission scientists want the rover to climb up through the mountain’s foothills, reading the terrain’s many layers along the way.

“As we go through the rock layers, we’re basically looking at the history of ancient environments and how they may be changing,” Grotzinger said. “So what we’ll really be able to do for the first time is get a relative chronology of some substantial part of Martian history, which should be pretty cool.”

Curiosity has covered about 20 percent of the planned 5.3-mile (8.5 km) trek to Mount Sharp. The rover, which is doing science work as it goes, may reach the base of the mountain around the middle of next year, Grotzinger said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook orGoogle+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

Amazing Mars Rover Curiosity’s Martian Views (Latest Photos)

A ‘Curiosity’ Quiz: How Well Do You Know NASA’s Newest Mars Rover?

Ancient Mars Could Have Supported Life (Photos)

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MORE: Could We Breathe on Mars?

Read more athttp://www.wunderground.com/news/mars-soil-contains-surprising-amount-water-nasa-finds-20130927#jHP0JRzMSQklSW77.99

Failed Wheels

Mission Logo - Courtesy NASA & Caltech

NASA's awesome planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope, has been hobbled for a while by failed wheels (failed gyroscopes, essentially).  Even though it's planet hunting days are over, it will probably still serve as an able space-based platform to aid astronomers.

Read on for more at Scientific American...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=kepler-new-mission-asteroseismology

You can download NASA's awesome 'app' Eyes on the Solar System, here...
http://eyes.nasa.gov/download.html

It's an awesome little program; and they're constantly adding stuff to it.

Gravity...How Strong Is It?

Covering some of the fascinating early astronomers and their achievements casts some light on their genius.  Consider the fact that these early greats, these early 'giants,' had no computers to crunch numbers.  Wow!

Her's a fascinating slide show article from Scientific American about the attempts at measuring 'G,' the gravitational constant in Newton's Law of Gravitation.

Scientific American - Gravitational Constant

Where Are All the Hurricanes?

Image Credit - NOAA Visualization Lab (Enhanced satellite of Sandy post-landfall)

In terms of hurricanes, it's been unusually quiet in the Atlantic Basin this year.  The linked article from NOAA is telling us all to still be on guard.

As the article points out, one month (an August without a hurricane) does not a season  make.

NOAA Article - Atlantic Hurricane Season 2013

Exactly what did cause the extinction of the woolly mammoths? This National Geographic article sheds some light on one of the newest explanations.

National Geographic article - Mammoths

Post Fukushima Japan

One area of Japan is still reeling from the triple disaster of 2011 - Great Tohoku Earthquake, its resulting tsunami, and the ongoing nuclear disaster at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant run by TEPCO.  Radiation still leaks from the plant due to the abundant groundwater in the area.  Both the Japanese government and TEPCO appear increasingly unable to deal with such a complex situation at the wrecked power plant.

Neighboring countries grow increasingly concerned over contaminated water making its way into the Pacific Ocean.


Image Credit: ASR

Click to the superb linked article and related slide show at the NY Times.

NY Times - Fukushima Daiichi Cleanup Article