NASA has commissioned five aerospace companies to develop Mars orbiter designs as part of the next step toward putting a man on the Red Planet in the 2030s. The five companies are Northrop Grumman Corporation, The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin in Colorado, Orbital ATK in Virginia and Space Systems/Loral from California. The proposals must address how the mission could most effectively provide imaging, communications and operational capabilities.

About 95 percent of the data currently coming from Mars originates in the orbiters presently on the Martian surface.Two active rovers and three active orbiters are now exploring the Red Planet. However, according to Richard Zurek, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., those orbiters are aging and need to be replaced. More capabilities are needed though, if a manned mission is going to be possible.

One of NASA’s requirements for the new orbiter is fuel-efficient technology known as solar-electric propulsion. This system will harness the energy from the sun to propel the craft. The technology is already being used by some of the satellites orbiting Earth. The system would allow the Martian satellites to fly near the planet’s surface, and they would carry sophisticated communication systems.

Each of the aerospace companies designing Mars orbiter concepts will have four months to develop their design. NASA may then partner with one of those companies to carry out the project.

However, no matter which company is chosen by NASA, their orbiter will probably be beaten to Mars by at least two other spacecraft. InSight, the geophysical lander whose mission is to study the planet’s deep interior, is scheduled to land on Mars in 2018. Two years later, the Mars 2020 rover will land, with a mission of searching for signs of life and laying the groundwork for the future manned mission.

It was definitely a UFO, since no one seems to be able to say what it really was, but was it of alien origin? And did NASA deliberately cut the live video feed from the International Space Station (ISS), or was it a random outage of the space camera? Whatever the case, on July 9 a video, which was posted on YouTube and received over 2 million hits in the first week, showed something passing into view, and the debate is on as to what it is and why the video feed cut out at just that moment.

Conspiracy theorists and alien hunters believe the truth is out there, even though the only thing visible in the video is a fuzzy white/gray blob heading toward Earth. Even those who want to believe in alien life have acknowledged that the object may just be a meteor, but the fact that, according to some, NASA “cut the feed” right after the object appeared lends a certain mystery to the sighting.

Officials from NASA say no UFOs were seen from the ISS. They say that most of the time these objects turn out to be internal reflections within the space station itself, or from lights positioned outside. “Reflections from station windows, the spacecraft structure itself or lights from Earth commonly appear as artifacts in photos and videos from the orbiting laboratory, just as reflections often appear in pictures taken on Earth,” said a spokesman from NASA.

In addition, bright objects, such as meteors and space debris, fall to Earth regularly, glowing as the enter the atmosphere in a way that closely resembles the “UFO” in the video. These may appear as shooting stars from the ground.

So why was there an interruption in the feed just as the object was spotted? According to the NASA spokesman, the ISS loses its direct connection to Earth on a regular basis. As it orbits Earth it occasionally gets out of reach of the satellites that are used to send and receive video. “We used a space-based data relay network. It gives us a very good coverage area, but you do lose signal occasionally, anywhere from a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes. It varies from day to day.”

Many viewers of the video don’t believe that explanation for a second. “With thousands of satellites NASA has deployed over decades, there would still be ‘blind spots’ in communications with the ISS, with human lives aboard?” said Internet user Furd Helmer. “How can [NASA] claim to be on the cutting edge of space technology [if] it can [not] solve the problem of ‘blind spots’?”

According to NASA, the feed that was supposedly “cut off” is the High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment, which is fully automated and cannot be shut down at a request.

 

Juno is sending in the first images of Jupiter from its JunoCam and the views are exciting. The NASA probe entered Jupiter’s orbit on July 4 and the visible-light camera was turned on six days later. It will be a few weeks more before the first high-resolution images of the planet arrive on earth.

Scott Bolton, principal investigator from NASA’s Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said, “This scene from JunoCam indicates it survived its first pass through Jupiter’s extreme radiation environment without any degradation and is ready to take on Jupiter. We can’t wait to see the first view of Jupiter’s poles.”

The new image of Jupiter was taken on July 10 when Juno was about 2.7 million miles away from the planet on the outbound leg of its 53.5-day capture orbit. The color image displays some of the atmospheric features on Jupiter, including three of the four largest moons – Europa, Io and Ganymede) and the famous Great Red Spot.

The JunoCam will continue to take pictures as it makes its first orbit. The first high-resolution images will not be taken until August 27, when Juno makes its next close pass.

The JunoCam is a visible-light, color camera that was specially designed to take pictures of Jupiter’s poles and cloud tops. It is hoped that it will help provide context for the spacecraft’s other instruments. However, it’s main purpose is public engagement. Although the images will be helpful to the science team it is not considered one of the mission’s major instruments. NASA is currently working to get all the images taken by JunoCam on the agency website where they can be accessed by the public.

Juno will circle Jupiter 37 times during its mission, soaring as low over the cloud tops as 2,600 miles. As it makes these flybys the spacecraft will peek beneath the obscuring cloud cover to study the planet’s auroras and try to learn more about its origin, structure and atmosphere.

Video produced by NASA: Time-lapse movie of the Galilian satellites in motion around Jupiter between Jun 12 and June 29

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Randy Machett, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife (FWS) biologist, describes it as a “glorified gum ball machine.” It’s actually a drone with a special purpose – shooting vaccine-laced M&M candy bombs at prairie dogs in an attempt to protect them, and the black-footed ferrets that eat them, from sylvatic plague.

The vaccine drop, which will be targeting prairie dogs, will be taking place at the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge located in north-eastern Montana. The refuge has been an important site in the recovery of the ferrets since 1994. The black-footed ferret is one of the most endangered mammals found in North America.

The sylvatic plague is a flea-borne disease that entered America in the 1800s through rats coming in on ships landing in California. It is carried by fleas on prairie dogs, and the black-footed ferrets are totally dependent upon those rodents for their food and shelter. The ferrets eat the prairie dogs and take over their burrows, which means the demise of prairie dogs would be disastrous for the species.

It is difficult to vaccinate individual ferrets against the disease, and it is also virtually impossible to protect prairie dogs over a wide area. Machett says FWS has tried dropping the vaccine while walking around, but the territory to be covered is just too large. Spraying burrows with insecticides to kill the fleas is also very labor-intensive, and is also not a long-term solution.

The vaccine-candy-bomb plan would drop a large quantity of vaccine uniformly over a large area. The tiny bombs are M&M candies smeared with vaccine-laden peanut butter that lab tests show is irresistible to prairie dogs. A dye is added to the mix that colors animals’ whiskers once they eat it, so scientists can see that they have gotten the treatment.

A drone carries the device that dispenses the vaccine. The device uses GPS to reliably drop vaccines at 30-foot intervals. It can also fire the candies to the left and right, enabling it to drop three vaccines at once. The device was created from a modified fish-bait machine.

Machett says that that machine “is the fastest, cheapest way to distribute the vaccine.” FWS hope that the oral vaccine can be used to mitigate plague sites of tens of thousands of acres every year.

The U.S. population of black-footed ferrets has been reduced to only 300 animals found in isolated sites across the U.S. In 1981 they were thought to be extinct except for a few animals brought into captivity for breeding. The current population came from a mere seven ferrets that were selectively bred.

Prairie-dogs, though considered a pest by many, are known as a “keystone” species. They are important to a range of animals including coyotes, eagles and owls.

Photo credit: J. Michael Lockhart / USFWS

Astronomers could barely see it. The brown dwarf known as WISE 0855 is 7.2 light years away from Earth, and the largest telescopes that are ground-based can barely make out the failed star. Last week, using the Gemini North telescope on top Mauna Kea, a team of astronomers from UC Santa Cruz were able to gather an infrared spectrum of WISE 0855, which showed strong evidence of water clouds. It is the first instance of water clouds found outside the solar system, and it pushed the boundaries of what can be done with a telescope on earth.

Andrew Skemer, lead author of the paper detailing the findings, says that the discovery is not totally unexpected. WISE 0855 is the coldest known object outside our solar system, with a temperature of about minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. “We would expect an object that cold to have water clouds, and this is the best evidence that it does,” said Skemer.

WISE 0855 is five times fainter than any other objected detected from Earth, according to Skemer. It is too dim for typical spectroscopy at near-infrared or optical wavelengths. The team had to rely on thermal emission in an extremely narrow range from the deep atmosphere. They observed WISE 0855 for about an hour per night for 13 nights.

The result was that the spectrum showed the failed star dominated by clouds and water vapor, with an overall appearance “that is strikingly similar to Jupiter.” Skemer said that if it was possible to see infrared light with the naked eye, the data would appear as a “rainbow of colors.” He said, “The relative brightness of each color gives us a glimpse into the environment of the object’s atmosphere.”

The team developed atmospheric models to help them understand what WISE 0855 might look like. The spectrum seemed to most closely approximate a cloudy model. They also noted water absorption features that were very similar to Jupiter. However, WISE 0855 does not show the abundant phosphine found in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which means that WISE 0855’s atmosphere is likely calmer.

WISE 0855 is too small to be considered a star and too large to be a planet. It is about five times the mass of Jupiter. During the process of forming it was unable to gain enough mass to start the process of nuclear fusions that make a star.