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By NASA
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NASA-Funded Study Examines Tidal Effects on Planet and Moon Interiors
NASA-supported scientists have developed a new method to compute how tides affect the interiors of planets and moons. Importantly, the new study looks at the effects of body tides on objects that don’t have a perfectly spherical interior structure, which is an assumption of most previous models.
The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon’s surface at the highest resolution. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute Body tides refer to the deformations experienced by celestial bodies when they gravitationally interact with other objects. Think of how the powerful gravity of Jupiter tugs on its moon Europa. Because Europa’s orbit isn’t circular, the crushing squeeze of Jupiter’s gravity on the moon varies as it travels along its orbit. When Europa is at its closest to Jupiter, the planet’s gravity is felt the most. The energy of this deformation is what heats up Europa’s interior, allowing an ocean of liquid water to exist beneath the moon’s icy surface.
“The same is true for Saturn’s moon Enceladus.” says co-author Alexander Berne of CalTech in Pasadena and an affiliate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Enceladus has an ice shell that is expected to be much more non-spherically symmetric than that of Europa.”
The body tides experienced by celestial bodies can affect how the worlds evolve over time and, in cases like Europa and Enceladus, their potential habitability for life as we know it. The new study provides a means to more accurately estimate how tidal forces affect planetary interiors.
In this movie Europa is seen in a cutaway view through two cycles of its 3.5 day orbit about the giant planet Jupiter. Like Earth, Europa is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle and a surface ocean of salty water. Unlike on Earth, however, this ocean is deep enough to cover the whole moon, and being far from the sun, the ocean surface is globally frozen over. Europa’s orbit is eccentric, which means as it travels around Jupiter, large tides, raised by Jupiter, rise and fall. Jupiter’s position relative to Europa is also seen to librate, or wobble, with the same period. This tidal kneading causes frictional heating within Europa, much in the same way a paper clip bent back and forth can get hot to the touch, as illustrated by the red glow in the interior of Europa’s rocky mantle and in the lower, warmer part of its ice shell. This tidal heating is what keeps Europa’s ocean liquid and could prove critical to the survival of simple organisms within the ocean, if they exist. The giant planet Jupiter is now shown to be rotating from west to east, though more slowly than its actual rate. NASA/JPL-Caltech The paper also discusses how the results of the study could help scientists interpret observations made by missions to a variety of different worlds, ranging from Mercury to the Moon to the outer planets of our solar system.
The study, “A Spectral Method to Compute the Tides of Laterally Heterogeneous Bodies,” was published in The Planetary Science Journal.
For more information on NASA’s Astrobiology Program, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrobiology
-end-
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Nov 07, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Sols 4352-4354: Halloween Fright Night on Mars
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image of the target surface feature nicknamed “Reds Meadow,” using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located on the turret at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. Curiosity captured the image Oct. 31, 2024, at 19:09:10 UTC, on sol 4350 — Martian day 4,350 of the Mars Science Laboratory Mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Earth planning date: Friday, Nov. 1, 2024
Yesterday evening (Thursday) was Halloween for many of us here on Earth. My neighborhood in eastern Canada was full of small (and not so small!) children, running around in the dark collecting sweets and candy but also getting scared by the ghostly decorations hung at each house. Little did we suspect that our poor rover on Mars was also getting spooked. Curiosity completed about a meter (about 3 feet) of the planned drive before becoming unsettled … scared, if you will! … when its left front wheel got hung up on a rock and stopped moving.
Luckily, we understood this kind of frightened behavior and were able to resume planning today as per usual. That meter was enough to give us a whole new set of targets to choose from. As APXS Strategic Planner this week, I had chosen darker-looking targets in the workspace — “Ladder Lake” and “Reds Meadow” (shown in the accompanying MAHLI image) — earlier in the week. I was happy that bumping backwards by a meter allowed us to reach some of the more typical pale colored bedrock at “Eureka Valley” and a second APXS analysis on “Black Bear Lake,” which is a mixture of both pale bedrock and some darker layers. MAHLI added in a bonus set of images on “Stag Dome,” focusing on small, rougher patches on the pale bedrock.
ChemCam is taking advantage of the short bump, too, adding a passive observation on the brushed Reds Meadow target, analyzed by APXS and MAHLI in Monday’s plan. A ChemCam LIBS target “Hoist Ridge” focuses on a small vertical face of dark material. Two long distance images planned for ChemCam’s Remote Micro Imager (RMI) look at the distribution of rocks along the Gediz Vallis ridge in the distance.
Mastcam is taking several mosaics this weekend (must have gotten extra energy from the Halloween sugar!). Close to the rover, Mastcam will acquire single-frame images of the targets Hoist Ridge and Eureka Valley, and a small mosaic of some surficial troughs just a little further away. Moving further afield, a small 3×1 mosaic (three images in one row) will image the same area as the ChemCam RMI of the Gediz Vallis ridge, and a larger 9×2 mosaic will focus on the faraway yardang unit, where we hopefully will be in a few years.
Then for the really big images: Mastcam will image the whole landscape in a special 360-degree view, so big it needs to be broken into two parts. The first will have 43×4 frames, the second 34×5 frames. These mosaics are huge, so we save them for when we are at a really good vantage point to allow us to capture as much detail as possible for science and engineering planning.
As ever, we continue our environmental monitoring of conditions, with Mastcam and Navcam movies and images looking at dust in the atmosphere above and around us in Gale crater, and watching out for dust devils.
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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Last Updated Nov 04, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
On Nov. 3, 1994, space shuttle Atlantis took to the skies on its 13th trip into space. During the 11-day mission, the STS-66 crew of Commander Donald R. McMonagle, Pilot Curtis L. Brown, Payload Commander Ellen Ochoa, and Mission Specialists Joseph R. Tanner, Scott E. Parazynski, and French astronaut Jean-François Clervoy representing the European Space Agency (ESA) operated the third Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Sciences (ATLAS-3), and deployed and retrieved the U.S.-German Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere-Shuttle Pallet Satellite (CRISTA-SPAS), as part of NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth. The remote sensing instruments studied the Sun’s energy output, the atmosphere’s chemical composition, and how these affect global ozone levels, adding to the knowledge gained during the ATLAS-1 and ATLAS-2 missions.
Left: Official photo of the STS-68 crew of Jean-François Clervoy, left, Scott E. Parazynski, Curtis L. Brown, Joseph R. Tanner, Donald R. McMonagle, and Ellen Ochoa. Middle: The STS-66 crew patch. Right: The ATLAS-3 payload patch.
In August 1993, NASA named Ochoa as the ATLAS-3 payload commander, and in January 1994, named the rest of the STS-66 crew. For McMonagle, selected as an astronaut in 1987, ATLAS-3 marked his third trip into space, having flown on STS-39 and STS-54. Brown, also from the class of 1987, previously flew on STS 47, while Ochoa, selected in 1990, flew as a mission specialist on STS-56, the ATLAS-2 mission. For Tanner, Parazynski, and Clervoy, all from the Class of 1992 – the French space agency CNES previously selected Clervoy as one of its astronauts in 1985 before he joined the ESA astronaut cadre in 1992 – STS-66 marked their first spaceflight.
Left: Schematic illustration of ATLAS-3 and its instruments. Right: Schematic illustration of CRISTA-SPAS retrievable satellite and its instruments.
The ATLAS-3 payload consisted of six instruments on a Spacelab pallet and one mounted on the payload bay sidewall. The pallet mounted instruments included Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS), Millimeter-Wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS), Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM), Measurement of the Solar Constant (SOLCON), Solar Spectrum Measurement from 1,800 to 3,200 nanometers (SOLSCAN), and Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SUSIM).
The Shuttle Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SSBUV) instrument constituted the payload bay sidewall mounted experiment. While the instruments previously flew on the ATLAS-1 and ATLAS-2 missions, both those flights took place during the northern hemisphere spring. Data from the ATLAS-3’s mission in the fall complemented results from the earlier missions. The CRISTA-SPAS satellite included two instruments, the CRISTA and the Middle Atmosphere High Resolution Spectrograph Investigation (MAHRSI).
Left: Space shuttle Atlantis at Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Middle: Liftoff of Atlantis on STS-66. Right: Atlantis rises into the sky.
Following its previous flight, STS-46 in August 1992, Atlantis spent one and a half years at the Rockwell plant in Palmdale, California, undergoing major modifications before arriving back at KSC on May 29, 1994. During the modification period, workers installed cables and wiring for a docking system for Atlantis to use during the first Shuttle-Mir docking mission in 1995 and equipment to allow it to fly Extended Duration Orbiter missions of two weeks or longer. Atlantis also underwent structural inspections and systems upgrades including improved nose wheel steering and a new reusable drag chute. Workers in KSC’s Orbiter Processing Facility installed the ATLAS-3 and CRISTA-SPAS payloads and rolled Atlantis over to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Oct. 4 for mating with its External Tank and Solid Rocket Boosters. Atlantis rolled out to Launch Pad 39B six days later. The six-person STS-66 crew traveled to KSC to participate in the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, essentially a dress rehearsal for the launch countdown, on Oct. 18.
They returned to KSC on Oct. 31, the same day the final countdown began. Following a smooth countdown leading to a planned 11:56 a.m. EST liftoff on Nov. 3, 1994, Atlantis took off three minutes late, the delay resulting from high winds at one of the Transatlantic Abort sites. The liftoff marked the third shuttle launch in 55 days, missing a record set in 1985 by one day. Eight and a half minutes later, Atlantis delivered its crew and payloads to space. Thirty minutes later, a firing of the shuttle’s Orbiter Maneuvering System (OMS) engines placed them in a 190-mile orbit inclined 57 degrees to the equator. The astronauts opened the payload bay doors, deploying the shuttle’s radiators, and removed their bulky launch and entry suits, stowing them for the remainder of the flight.
Left: Atlantis’ payload bay, showing the ATLAS-3 payload and the CRISTA-SPAS deployable satellite behind it. Middle: European Space Agency astronaut Jean-François Clervoy uses the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System (RMS) to grapple the CRISTA-SPAS prior to its release. Right: Clervoy about to release CRISTA-SPAS from the RMS.
The astronauts began to convert their vehicle into a science platform, and that included breaking up into two teams to enable 24-hour-a-day operations. McMonagle, Ochoa, and Tanner made up the Red Team while Brown, Parazynski, and Clervoy made up the Blue Team. Within five hours of liftoff, the Blue Team began their sleep period while the Red Team started their first on orbit shift by activating the ATLAS-3 instruments, the CRISTA-SPAS deployable satellite, and the Remote Manipulator System (RMS) or robotic arm in the payload bay and some of the middeck experiments. The next day, Clervoy, operating the RMS, grappled CRISTA-SPAS, lifted it from its cradle in the payload bay, and while Atlantis flew over Germany, deployed it for its eight-day free flight. McMonagle fired Atlantis’ thrusters to separate from the satellite.
Left: Ellen Ochoa and Donald R. McMonagle on the shuttle’s flight deck. Middle: European Space Agency astronaut Jean-François Clervoy in the commander’s seat during the mission. Right: Scott E. Parazynski operates a protein crystallization experiment in the shuttle middeck.
Left: Joseph R. Tanner operates a protein crystallization experiment. Middle: Curtis L. Brown operates a microgravity acceleration measurement system. Right: Ellen Ochoa uses the shuttle’s Remote Manipulator System to grapple CRISTA-SPAS following its eight-day free flight.
For the next eight days, the two teams of astronauts continued work with the ATLAS instruments and several middeck and payload bay experiments such as protein crystal growth, measuring the shuttle microgravity acceleration environment, evaluating heat pipe performance, and a student experiment to study the Sun that complemented the ATLAS instruments. On November 12, the mission’s 10th day, the astronauts prepared to retrieve the CRISTA-SPAS satellite. For the retrieval, McMonagle and Brown used a novel rendezvous profile unlike previous ones used in the shuttle program. Instead of making the final approach from in front of the satellite, called the V-bar approach, Atlantis approached from below in the so-called R-bar approach. This is the profile Atlantis planned to use on its next mission, the first rendezvous and docking with the Mir space station. It not only saved fuel but also prevented contamination of the station’s delicate sensors and solar arrays. Once within 40 feet of CRISTA-SPAS, Ochoa reached out with the RMS, grappled the satellite, and then berthed it back in the payload bay.
A selection from the 6,000 STS-66 crew Earth observation photographs. Left: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Middle left: Hurricane Florence in the North Atlantic. Middle right: The Ganges River delta. Right: The Sakurajima Volcano in southern Japan.
As a Mission to Planet Earth, the STS-66 astronauts spent considerable time looking out the window, capturing 6,000 images of their home world. Their high inclination orbit enabled views of parts of the planet not seen during typical shuttle missions.
Left: The inflight STS-66 crew photo. Right: Donald R. McMonagle, left, and Curtis R. Brown prepare for Atlantis’ deorbit and reentry.
On flight day 11, with most of the onboard film exposed and consumables running low, the astronauts prepared for their return to Earth the following day. McMonagle and Brown tested Atlantis’ reaction control system thrusters and aerodynamic surfaces in preparation for deorbit and descent through the atmosphere, while the rest of the crew busied themselves with shutting down experiments and stowing away unneeded equipment.
Left: Atlantis makes a perfect touchdown at California’s Edwards Air Force Base. Middle: Atlantis deploys the first reusable space shuttle drag chute. Right: Mounted atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, Atlantis departs Edwards for the cross-country trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On Nov. 14, the astronauts closed Atlantis’ payload bay doors, donned their launch and entry suits, and strapped themselves into their seats for entry and landing. Tropical Storm Gordon near the KSC primary landing site forced a diversion to Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California. The crew fired Atlantis’ OMS engines to drop out of orbit. McMonagle piloted Atlantis to a smooth landing at Edwards, ending the 10-day 22-hour 34-minute flight, Atlantis’ longest flight up to that time. The crew had orbited the Earth 174 times. Workers at Edwards safed the vehicle and placed it atop a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for the ferry flight back to KSC. The duo left Edwards on Nov. 21, and after stops at Kelly Field in San Antonio and Eglin AFB in the Florida panhandle, arrived at KSC the next day. Workers there began preparing Atlantis for its next flight, STS-71 in June 1995, the first Shuttle-Mir docking mission. Meanwhile, a Gulfstream jet flew the astronauts back to Ellington Field in Houston for reunions with their families. As it turned out, STS-66 flew Atlantis’ last solo flight until STS-125 in 2009, the final Hubble Servicing Mission. The 16 intervening flights, and the three that followed, all docked with either Mir or the International Space Station.
“The mission not only met all our expectations, but all our hopes and dreams as well,” said Mission Scientist Timothy L. Miller of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “One of its high points was our ability to receive and process so much data in real time, enhancing our ability to carry out some new and unprecedented cooperative experiments.” McMonagle said of STS-66, “We are very proud of the mission we have just accomplished. If there’s any one thing we all have an interest in, it’s the health of our planet.”
Enjoy the crew narrate a video about the STS-66 mission.
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By NASA
3 Min Read November’s Night Sky Notes: Snowballs from Space
This diagram compares the size of the icy, solid nucleus of comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) to several other comets. The majority of comet nuclei observed are smaller than Halley’s comet. They are typically a mile across or less. Comet C/2014 UN271 is currently the record-holder for big comets. And, it may be just the tip of the iceberg. There could be many more monsters out there for astronomers to identify as sky surveys improve in sensitivity. Though astronomers know this comet must be big to be detected so far out to a distance of over 2 billion miles from Earth, only the Hubble Space Telescope has the sharpness and sensitivity to make a definitive estimate of nucleus size. Credits:
Illustration: NASA, ESA, Zena Levy (STScI) by Kat Troche of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
If you spotted comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in person, or seen photos online this October, you might have been inspired to learn more about these visitors from the outer Solar System. Get ready for the next comet and find out how comets are connected to some of our favorite annual astronomy events.
Comet Composition
A comet is defined as an icy body that is small in size and can develop a ‘tail’ of gas as it approaches the Sun from the outer Solar System. The key traits of a comet are its nucleus, coma, and tail.
The nucleus of the comet is comprised of ice, gas, dust, and rock. This central structure can be up to 80 miles wide in some instances, as recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2022 – large for a comet but too small to see with a telescope. As the comet reaches the inner Solar System, the ice from the nucleus starts to vaporize, converting into gas. The gas cloud that forms around the comet as it approaches the Sun is called the coma. This helps give the comet its glow. But beware: much like Icarus, sometimes these bodies don’t survive their journey around the Sun and can fall apart the closer it gets.
The most prominent feature is the tail of the comet. Under moderately dark skies, the brightest comets show a dust tail, pointed away from the Sun. When photographing comets, you can sometimes resolve the second tail, made of ionized gases that have been electronically charged by solar radiation. These ion tails can appear bluish, in comparison to the white color of the dust tail. The ion tail is also always pointed away from the Sun. In 2007, NASA’s STEREO mission captured images of C/2006 P1 McNaught and its dust tail, stretching over 100 million miles. Studies of those images revealed that solar wind influenced both the ion and dust tail, creating striations – bands – giving both tails a feather appearance in the night sky.
Comet McNaught over the Pacific Ocean. Image taken from Paranal Observatory in January 2007. Credits: ESO/Sebastian Deiries Coming and Going
Comets appear from beyond Uranus, in the Kuiper Belt, and may even come from as far as the Oort Cloud. These visitors can be short-period comets like Halley’s Comet, returning every 76 years. This may seem long to us, but long-period comets like Comet Hale-Bopp, observed from 1996-1997 won’t return to the inner Solar System until the year 4385. Other types include non-periodic comets like NEOWISE, which only pass through our Solar System once.
But our experiences of these comets are not limited to the occasional fluffy snowball. As comets orbit the Sun, they can leave a trail of rocky debris in its orbital path. When Earth finds itself passing through one of these debris fields, we experience meteor showers! The most well-known of these is the Perseid meteor shower, caused by Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. While this meteor shower happens every August in the northern hemisphere, we won’t see Comet Swift-Tuttle again until the year 2126.
The Perseids Meteor Shower. NASA/Preston Dyches See how many comets (and asteroids!) have been discovered on NASA’s Comets page, learn how you can cook up a comet, and check out our mid-month article where we’ll provide tips on how to take astrophotos with your smartphone!
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By European Space Agency
ESA’s solar eclipse-making Proba-3 mission is about to leave Europe, to head to its launch site in India. The mission’s two spacecraft – which will manoeuvre precisely in Earth orbit so that one casts a shadow onto the other – have departed the facilities of Redwire Space in Kruibeke, Belgium. The pair will be flown to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, near Chennai, for the launch campaign to begin.
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