Not one person’s mom, but specifically an entire nation’s. India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is lovingly known as MOM and has been sending back science data that has put India on the Space Exploration Map, if there ever was one. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched the ambitious but cost-effective MOM Orbiter on November 5th, 2013. With a bill of only 73 Million dollars, its the most cost-effective Mars mission ever, yet its sending back lovely images and science data that is worth every penny, at least to a biased spaceflight enthusiast such as myself. Whatever you feel about the...
A supernova is the only event in existence that happens on both astronomical and human scales (If you think of others – tell me). It involves a massive stellar explosion and release of energy that can match the output of an entire galaxy, yet this release happens in the blink of a cosmic eye, about two weeks. For all that could live in the incredibly vast amounts of empty space between galaxies, a supernova is a great indicator that stars do in fact inhabit this space. Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that two such supernovae have been discovered. In...
The Rosetta orbiter, currently studying comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it orbits the Sun, has been watching how the comet has changed as it moves toward its perihelion (point of closest approach to the Sun) in August of 2015. As the comet heats up from the increasing intensity of the Sun’s rays, it releases surface gases and dust into what eventually becomes the atmosphere-like coma surrounding the comet. As the comet moves the material produces the visible tail that we usually associate with a comet. With 67P specifically, Rosetta has recently made a surprising discovery: That the water and carbon dioxide streaming...
As we are approaching the New Horizons bypass of Pluto just over a month from now, there is a lot of focus on the Plutonian system, from its strange Moons to its enigmatic surface. As we wait for the first ever high resolution images of the surface of Pluto, we can look to Hubble data to give us our fix. The best image of Pluto taken up to today, by Hubble, is blurry and at best can lead us to speculation about what we are seeing. But Hubble, as always, produces valuable science, and has given new insights into the...
A couple of days ago, the still-active Cassini spacecraft orbiting around Saturn performed a flyby of the small Moon Hyperion, taking high resolution photos of the surface, and showing the sponge-like surface of the moon in a different light. Hyperion is a moderate 250 kilometers wide, yet it doesn’t tug very hard on Cassini. Performing measurements of its surface gravity, Cassini has shown that the moon is mostly empty space, similar to a pumice stone on Earth. The odd shapes of the craters are thought to be a result of this. When an impactor hits Hyperion, it blows the material...
The Moon has clearly seen some stuff. It’s visibly heavily cratered across it’s surface, which has remained unchanged since it’s surface solidified 4.2 Billion years ago. Think about that – the Moon has been the same, with the exception of cratering, for 4 Billion years. This is a stark contrast to the Earth, whose erosion and tectonic activity cause the crust to change on scales of a few hundred million years. Astronomers have worked hard to learn about the early solar system by looking at the Moon and its cratering patterns. Most of the visible craters on the Moon are...
