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Thursday, October 31, 2019
NASA studying future mission orbiting Pluto
Four years after a spacecraft flew by Pluto, sending
stunning images and data back to Earth, NASA has commissioned a study to
explore spending even more time examining and exploring the dwarf
planet.
The
San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute announced Wednesday it
had received funding from NASA to study the feasibility and cost of a
possible future Pluto orbiter mission.
The
study will build on the success of the agency’s New Horizons mission, a
space probe that launched in 2006. It was the first of its kind to get a
close look at Pluto and its five moons, about 3 billion miles from
Earth.
The Southwest Research Institute was part of the team
that built that spacecraft, which is still exploring the farthest
reaches of our solar system, having flown by Ultima Thule — a rock
located a billion miles beyond Pluto that is found in the solar system’s
Kuiper Belt — in January.
“We’re
going to be using lots of the same people, lots of the same technology
and really building on that, putting more instruments on it, and instead
of flying past Pluto, stop and hanging out for two Earth years,” said
Carly Howett, who is leading the study for the Southwest Research
Institute.
NASA
is providing $150,000 to the institute for the study, one of 10
different mission studies the agency is sponsoring to prepare for the
next Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which outlines recommendations
for space and ground-based exploration 10 years into the future. The
results of these studies will be delivered to the National Academy
Planetary Decadal Study that will begin in the summer of 2020.
When
New Horizons launched in 2006, it became the first-ever mission to
Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, also known as the solar system’s “third
zone,” according to NASA. The belt is a grouping of icy bodies just
outside Neptune’s orbit where Pluto is found.
Its
flyby of Pluto in 2015 provided both breathtaking images and data that
has helped scientists gain new insights about the dwarf planet and its
moons.
That
data piqued Howett’s interest and sparked the idea of an orbiter
mission to answer questions about Pluto’s unique and mysterious
characteristics, hopefully with even higher-resolution images.
The New Horizons spacecraft carried only a limited
payload and many aspects of examining Pluto require different kinds of
instrumentation that only an orbiter can provide. This could include
radar to measure the thickness of the ice on the planet’s surface, as
well as lidar to measure its topography.
“We’ve
got different instruments, so we’d be able to look at the heat flow,
the activity and trying to really get a grip on whether Pluto does have a
sub-surface ocean — is it possible Pluto could be supporting life?
Those big science questions, this mission’s going to be able to
address,” Howett said.
A
new Pluto orbiter would also be able to determine the extent of organic
molecules on the planet, which New Horizons hinted at in its findings.
Howett
and her team will spend three weeks in a NASA-designed laboratory to
figure out the trajectory and payload capacity of a new spacecraft, and
how long it would be able to spend in Pluto’s orbit.
“We’re
looking forward to getting into the nitty gritty of this mission and
seeing how feasible it is and what a mission like this could really look
like,” she said.
A
new Pluto mission could also provide further clarity on its status,
after it was relegated to the status of dwarf planet by the
International Astronomical Union in 2006. During a presentation at a
conference in Washington last week, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine
made clear he still considered Pluto to be a planet.
Howett declined to wade into the argument, calling Pluto “a world” even though she was always taught it was, indeed, a planet.
“The
pressure’s so high on both sides of this (argument),” she said. “I
think it’s just a really interesting world that I’m very excited to go
explore.”
Nick Powell
These Mesmerizing Images Show 'Invisible Gravity Waves' Rippling Over Australia
Visible undulations in the atmosphere are a rare sight
Rippling gravity waves in the sky are usually invisible, but a satellite recently caught a rare glimpse of the phenomenon off the coast of northwestern Australia.
In the images, captured Oct. 21, air moves away from land and over the ocean, and rows of curved white lines emerge, like ripples do in disturbed water. Those thin white bands are clouds forming on the crests of atmospheric gravity waves, according to the Australian meteorology site Weatherzone, which tweeted an animation of the satellite view on Oct. 22.
Gravity waves appear following atmospheric disturbances; in this case, storms in the area produced cold air — which is denser than the warm air over land, Weatherzone says. Interaction between cool and warm air agitated the atmosphere, and the ripples that formed are gravity's way of restoring that lost equilibrium.
Unlike gravitational waves — theoretical ripples in space-time, proposed by Einstein's theory of general relativity — gravity waves are a physical phenomenon. It's easy to picture the physical appearance of gravity waves in liquid: Think of ocean waves, or the ripples that form in a pond after you drop a pebble in the water. While we usually can't see gravity waves in the atmosphere, they behave in the same way that liquids do when they're disturbed, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Atmospheric gravity waves take shape from the push and pull between gravity and buoyancy; when air is perturbed, gravity pulls the air down and the air's buoyancy pushes it back up. In some cases, when there is enough moisture in the air, water condensation creates white vapor outlines along the crests of the oscillating air waves; the white lines dissipate as the air sinks into troughs.
When that happens, the waves' rippling lines are visible to satellites — such as Japan's geostationary weather satellite Himawari-8, which captured the images featured on Weatherzone.
A large, brownish dust plume carried over the ocean from the Australian coast was also visible in the satellite images, making the ripples even easier to spot, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) reported.
Mindy Weisberger
Source News
Rippling gravity waves in the sky are usually invisible, but a satellite recently caught a rare glimpse of the phenomenon off the coast of northwestern Australia.
In the images, captured Oct. 21, air moves away from land and over the ocean, and rows of curved white lines emerge, like ripples do in disturbed water. Those thin white bands are clouds forming on the crests of atmospheric gravity waves, according to the Australian meteorology site Weatherzone, which tweeted an animation of the satellite view on Oct. 22.
Gravity waves appear following atmospheric disturbances; in this case, storms in the area produced cold air — which is denser than the warm air over land, Weatherzone says. Interaction between cool and warm air agitated the atmosphere, and the ripples that formed are gravity's way of restoring that lost equilibrium.
Unlike gravitational waves — theoretical ripples in space-time, proposed by Einstein's theory of general relativity — gravity waves are a physical phenomenon. It's easy to picture the physical appearance of gravity waves in liquid: Think of ocean waves, or the ripples that form in a pond after you drop a pebble in the water. While we usually can't see gravity waves in the atmosphere, they behave in the same way that liquids do when they're disturbed, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Atmospheric gravity waves take shape from the push and pull between gravity and buoyancy; when air is perturbed, gravity pulls the air down and the air's buoyancy pushes it back up. In some cases, when there is enough moisture in the air, water condensation creates white vapor outlines along the crests of the oscillating air waves; the white lines dissipate as the air sinks into troughs.
When that happens, the waves' rippling lines are visible to satellites — such as Japan's geostationary weather satellite Himawari-8, which captured the images featured on Weatherzone.
A large, brownish dust plume carried over the ocean from the Australian coast was also visible in the satellite images, making the ripples even easier to spot, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) reported.
Mindy Weisberger
Source News
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