Connect with us

The New Horizons mission currently flying through the Kuiper Belt could be facing an unexpected change of plans. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate is soliciting input on turning the spacecraft into a heliospheric science probe. The agency wants to do it much sooner than mission planners intended. If that happens, it will stop further planned planetary exploration of objects in that distant regime of the Solar System.

The changes NASA proposes come as a surprise since the spacecraft continues to perform Kuiper Belt object observations. And, it has received a very good recent senior science review. That report stated, “This is likely the only spacecraft humans will send through the outer Solar System for at least 20 – 30 years. The investigations proposed are strengthened by the unique position of this asset.”

More Kuiper Belt Studies

To date, the mission continues to accomplish its planned science goals in planetary exploration. “We’re doing a variety of Kuiper Belt science—including tracing the dust distribution from colliding KBOs out much farther than ever before,” said Principal Investigator Alan Stern. “We’re studying new, more distant KBOs from angles and closer ranges that you can’t get from Earth to determine their surface properties, their satellite counts, and shapes, things that cannot be done well except by a spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt. And of course, we’re on the prowl for a new flyby target if one can be found.”

Stern points out that the mission has, through 2022, observed and characterized 36 Kuiper Belt objects. In addition, it has studied several dwarf planets from its unique vantage point in the Belt. Data from those observations help calculate the shapes, orbits, and surface textures of these very distant bodies.

What the science teams have found so far will help place some important constraints on KBO formation mechanisms. Future observations should also help the teams understand the processes driving the surface evolution and compositional differences between various KBOs.

Building on New Horizons Observations of Pluto and Arrokoth

Science also continues to flow from the mission’s earlier discoveries, as reported at the March Lunar and Planetary Science conference. For example, the team may have figured out how the primitive Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth formed by gentle accretion. They’ve also been tracking the phenomenon of polar wander on Pluto. It turns out that the surface feature Sputnik Planitia may play a role.

A false-color image made from data supplied by New Horizons shows a ridge-trough system on Pluto that could have been Pluto's original equator before the poles began to wander. Credit: James Tuttle Keane (JPL / Caltech) / NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI
A false-color image made from data supplied by New Horizons shows a ridge-trough system on Pluto that could have been Pluto’s original equator before the poles began to wander. Credit: James Tuttle Keane (JPL / Caltech) / NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

The spacecraft is well placed to “look back” and capture views of Uranus and Neptune. Those observations will be done in tandem with the Hubble Space Telescope. In addition, New Horizons will continue its planned studies of the heliosphere. Finally, it will continue to map the cosmic background in optical and ultraviolet light. In other words, there’s plenty for the spacecraft to do in astrophysics, cosmology, and solar system sciences. 

Searching for the Next Target

Since the Arrokoth encounter, the team’s been hunting for another flyby target. According to Stern, it’s been an intense search. “We’re twice as far out from Earth as when we found Arrokoth, which makes the targets we search for sixteen times farther. So, the search is much harder,” he said. “This is the only chance we’ve got to do Kuiper Belt science for decades and we need time to find the next target.”

hscDid you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/juice-launched-to-jupiter-ai-helping-astronomy-terran-1-is-no-more/

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Related Topics:

Frontier Adventure

Should We Send Humans to Venus?

venussurface 750 jpg

NASA is preparing to send humans back to the Moon with the Artemis missions in the next few years as part of the agency’s Moon to Mars Architecture with the long-term goal of landing humans on the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s or 2040s. But what about sending humans to other worlds of the Solar System? And, why not Venus? It’s closer to Earth than Mars by several tens of millions of kilometers, and despite its extremely harsh surface conditions, previous studies have suggested that life could exist in its clouds. In contrast, we have yet to find any signs of life anywhere on the Red Planet or in its thin atmosphere. So, should we send humans to Venus?

“Yes, we should send humans to Venus,” Dr. Paul Byrne, who is an Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, tells Universe Today. “But first, let’s talk about what ‘sending humans to Venus’ actually means. The surface of Venus is hellish, so nobody would last long there nor volunteer to go. Above the clouds, the temperature and pressure are almost like a nice spring day here on Earth, so aside from tiny sulphuric acid cloud droplets you’d be okay (with a breathing apparatus).”

These “hellish” conditions that Dr. Byrne alludes to are the extreme conditions across the surface of Venus, including surface pressures 92 times that of Earth’s surface and average surface temperatures of approximately 464 degrees Celsius (867 degrees Fahrenheit). In contrast, Earth’s average surface temperatures are a calm 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). These extreme pressures and temperatures have made landing on the surface of Venus even more difficult, as the former Soviet Union continues to be the only nation to have successfully landed on Venus’ surface, having accomplished this feat with several of their Venera and Vega missions. However, the longest mission duration for the lander was only 127 minutes (Venera 13), which also conducted the first sound recording on another planet.

venussurface 750 1 jpg
Color images taken by the Soviet Union’s Venera 13 lander on the surface of Venus on March 1, 1982, with the lander surviving only 127 minutes due to Venus’s extreme surface conditions. (Credit: NASA)

“If we were to send humans to Venus, they’d be going in a spacecraft that would fly by the planet en route somewhere else,” Dr. Byrne tells Universe Today. “If we were to one day send humans actually to Venus itself for science and engineering purposes, then a cloud-based habitat is the way to go. Getting humans onto the Venus surface is going to require so much technology and expense that, for the foreseeable future, I don’t think anyone will think it worth doing.”

A 2015 study presented at the AIAA Space and Astronautics Forum and Exposition outlined a NASA study for the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission that would involve a 30-day crewed mission using an airship equipped with solar panels within the upper atmosphere of Venus. This is because Venus’ upper atmosphere at approximately 50 kilometers (30 miles) above the surface exhibits much more hospitable conditions, including temperatures between 30 to 70 degrees Celsius (86 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit) and pressures very close to that of Earth. However, Dr. Byrne refers to HAVOC as an “unbelievably expensive concept”.

NASA Cloud City on Venus 750 1 jpg
Artist rendition of proposed habitable airships traversing Venus’ atmosphere, which has been proposed as the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) mission. (Credit: NASA)

As for using Venus while en route to another location in the Solar System, Venus has been used on several occasions to slingshot spacecraft to the outer Solar System as well as for exploration of the inner Solar System, such as Mercury and the Sun. For example, NASA’s Galileo and Cassini spacecraft used gravity assists

Continue Reading

Frontier Adventure

We Should Hit Peak Solar Activity Next Year

NASAs SDO Observes Largest Sunspot of the Solar Cycle 15430820129 jpeg

You may be familiar with the solar cycle that follows a 22 year process shifting from solar minimum to maximum and back again. It’s a cycle that has been observed for centuries yet predicting its peak has been somewhat challenging. The Sun’s current cycle is approaching maximum activity which brings with it higher numbers of sunspots on its surface, more flares and more coronal mass ejections. A team from India now believe they have discovered a new element of the Sun’s magnetic field allowing them to predict the peak will occur early in 2024.

The Sun is a gigantic sphere of plasma or electrically charged gas. One of the features of plasma is that if a magnetic field passes through it, the plasma moves with it. Conversely if the plasma moves, the magnetic field moves too. This magnetic field is just like Earth and is known as a dipole magnetic field. You can visualise it if you can remember your school science days with a bar magnet and iron filings.

A dipole magnetic field has two opposite but equal charges and at the start of the Sun’s cycle the field lines effectively run from the north pole to the south. As the Sun rotates, with the equator rotating faster than the polar regions, then the plasma drags the magnetic field lines with it, winding them tighter and tighter.

The field lines become stretched causing the magnetic field to loop up and through the visible surface of the Sun. This localised event prevents the convection of super heated gas from underneath and appears as a cooler area of the surface which appears dark. As the solar cycle starts, these sunspots appear around the polar regions and slowly migrate toward the equator as it progresses with peak activity occurring when the sunspots fade away as we head toward the start of another cycle. 

NASAs SDO Observes Largest Sunspot of the Solar Cycle 15430820129 1 jpeg
Image of sunspots (Credit : NASA Goddard Space Flight Center // SDO)

On occasions the magnetic field of sunspots are disrupted and we can experience flares or coronal mass ejections hurling vast amounts of charged particles out into space. If they reach us here on Earth they give rise to the beautiful aurora displays but they do also have a rather negative impact to satellites, power grids and telecommunications systems.

Deep inside the Sun, a dynamo mechanism is driving all this. It is created by the energy from the movement of plasma and it is this that is responsible for the flipping of the Sun’s magnetic poles where the north pole becomes south and the south pole becomes north which happens every 11 years or so. It’s another aspect of the solar cycle.

It’s been known since the 1930’s that the rate of rise the sunspot cycle relates to its strength with stronger cycles taking less time to reach peak. In the paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters; Priyansh Jaswal, Chitradeep Saha and Dibyendu Nandy from the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research announced their findings. They discovered that the rate of decrease in the Sun’s dipole magnetic field also seems to relate to the rise of the present cycle.

The team have looked back through archives and have shown how the observation of the dipole decrease rate along with observations of sunspots can predict the peak of activity with better accuracy than before. They conclude the current cycle is expected to peak somewhere between early 2024 and September next year. Being able to better predict the peak of activity will help understand the likely intensity of space weather events here on Earth providing us more warning to be able to prepare.

Source : Solar activity likely to peak next year, new study suggests

The post We Should Hit Peak Solar Activity Next Year appeared first on Universe Today.

Continue Reading

Frontier Adventure

The Solar Radius Might Be Slightly Smaller Than We Thought

mdi010 prev jpg

Two astronomers use a pioneering method to suggest that the size of our Sun and the solar radius may be due revision.

Our host star is full of surprises. Studying our Sun is the most essential facet of modern astronomy: not only does Sol provide us with the only example of a star we can study up close, but the energy it provides fuels life on Earth, and the space weather it produces impacts our modern technological civilization.

Now, a new study, titled The Acoustic Size of the Sun suggests that a key parameter in modern astronomy and heliophysics—the diameter of the Sun—may need a slight tweak.

The study out of the University of Tokyo and the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge was done looking at data from the joint NASA/ESA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO’s) Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) imager. The method probes the solar interior via acoustics and a cutting edge field of solar physics known as helioseismology.

Interior of the Sun
A cutaway diagram of the Sun. NASA/ESA/SOHO

‘Hearing’ the Solar Interior

How can you ‘hear’ acoustic waves on the Sun? In 1962, astronomers discovered that patches on the surface of the Sun oscillate, or bubble up and down, like water boiling on a stove top. These create waves that ripple in periodic 5-minute oscillations across the roiling surface of the Sun.

SOHO SDO
A view of the Sun, courtesy of SOHO’s MDI instrument. Credit: NASA

What’s more, astronomers can use what we see happening on the surface of the Sun to model the solar interior, much like terrestrial astronomers use seismic waves traveling through the Earth to model its core. Thanks to helioseismology, we can even ‘see’ what’s going on on the solar farside, and alert observers of massive sunspots before they rotate into view.

Solar Ffarside
Solar farside modeling using helioseismology. Credit: NSF/GONG

The study looked at p-mode waves as they traversed the solar interior. Previous studies relied on less accurate f-mode waves, which are surface waves considerably shorter than the solar radius.

The study defines the solar radius (half the diameter) as 695,780 kilometers… only slightly smaller than the generally accepted radius of 696,000 kilometers obtained by direct optical measurement. This is only smaller by a few hundredths of a percent, or 100-200 kilometers.

SOHO
An artist’s conception of SOHO in space. Credit: ESA/SOHO

The solar radius is a deceptively simple but crucial factor in astronomy. The Sun is a glowing ball of hydrogen and helium plasma without a distinct surface boundary. The photosphere—the glowing visible layer we see shining down on us on a sunny day—is what we generally refer to as the surface of the Sun.

The Solar Radius: A Brief
Did you miss our previous article…
https://mansbrand.com/if-warp-drives-are-impossible-maybe-faster-than-light-communication-is-still-on-the-table/

Continue Reading

Trending