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Space News Update — February 6, 2018 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1: SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch put on Spectacular Show in Maiden Flight

Story 2: Good News for the Searth for Live, the Trappist System Might Be Rich in

Water

Story 3: HINODE captures record breaking solar magnetic field

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch put on Spectacular Show in Maiden Flight

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, the world's most powerful rocket, thundered to life and shot away from Florida Tuesday on the power of 27 engines and nearly 5 million pounds of thrust, kicking off a spectacular maiden flight to send founder Elon Musk's cherry red Tesla Roadster on a "just for fun" journey beyond the orbit of Mars.

It was easily the loudest and possibly most dramatic launch from Florida's "Space Coast" since NASA's space shuttle was retired in 2011 with the Falcon Heavy, made up of three strapped-together core stages powered by nine engines each, putting on a dazzling show for tourists and area residents jamming nearby roads and beaches.

Spectacular as it was, the launching was just the appetizer for a long-awaited test flight. Eight minutes after the rocket took off, two of the three Falcon 9 core stages that helped power the vehicle out of the lower atmosphere made rocket-powered descents to side-by-side touchdowns at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, generating thunderous sonic booms as they slowed for landing.

Recovering rocket stages was impressive in its own right, but it was a secondary test objective. The primary goal was to prove the rocket's ability to boost heavy payloads into space.

While the Tesla on board for the rocket's first test flight tipped the scales at a relatively modest one ton or thereabouts, the Heavy has the ability to boost nearly 140,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit and more than 37,000 pounds to Earth-escape trajectories to Mars.

NASA is currently building the Space Launch System, or SLS, that will generate 8.8 million pounds of thrust in its initial configuration and up to 11.9 million pounds in a follow-on cargo variant. The initial version will be able to boost more than 50,000 pounds to Earth-escape velocity.

But the SLS is not expected to fly until late 2019 or later. Until then, the Falcon Heavy will be the world's most powerful rocket, offering a relatively low-cost option for getting heavy payloads into space for NASA, the Department of Defense and commercial satellite operators.

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Made up of three strapped-together Falcon 9 first stages and a single upper stage, carrying the Tesla, the Falcon Heavy's engines flashed to life at 3:45 p.m. EST (GMT-5), two hours and 15 minutes late because of higher-than-allowable upper-level winds.

After a lightning-fast round of computer checks, the 229-foot-tall rocket was released to climb away from from the pad, shattering the afternoon calm with an ear-splitting roar and an impossible-to-miss rush of fire from all 27 engines, nine at the base of each core stage.

Going into the flight, Musk predicted a 50 percent to 70 percent chance of success based in large part on the difficulty predicting how the vehicle would respond to extreme aerodynamic stresses and vibrations from the clustered engines.

As it accelerated skyward, aerodynamic forces quickly ramped up, forming an invisible "bow shock" over the nose of the central core stage, creating complex interactions and, possibly, localized heating as the spacecraft picked up speed plowing through the thick lower atmosphere.

But the Heavy endured those stresses, rocketing through the speed of sound and the region of maximum aerodynamic stress about a minute after liftoff.

The 18 engines in the two outboard core stages shut down two-and-a-half minutes after launch. Both stages then separated from the core booster, flipped around, restarted three engines each and began flying back to Florida.

The nine center stage engines continued firing for another 30 seconds or so before they, too, shut down and the second stage pulled away on its own, lighting up a single Merlin engine to continue the boost toward a preliminary orbit.

The central core stage then fired three of its engines to set up a landing on an off-shore drone ship stationed several hundred miles east of Cape Canaveral. The two outboard stages, meanwhile, restarted three engines to slow down for atmospheric entry.

The burns -- brilliant side-by-side jets of flame -- were clearly visible across Florida's east coast as the boosters plunged tail-first toward pads at Landing Zone 1 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Falling like bombs, the rockets each restarted a single engine to slow for touchdown, each one deploying four landing legs.

Heralded by dual sonic booms that thundered across Cape Canaveral, both boosters touched down about eight minutes after liftoff. The central core landed on SpaceX's off-shore drone ship about 20 seconds later.

A few moments after that, the second stage engine shut down putting the rocket and Musk's still-attached Tesla Roadster into a preliminary orbit. A second engine firing 20 minutes later was planned to adjust the orbit as required to set up a trajectory to Mars.

A third rocket firing was planned about six hours later to boost the spacecraft's velocity to nearly 25,000 mph, fast enough to escape the pull of Earth's gravity. Again, Musk downplayed expectations.

"Once we reach orbit, we've got a very long coast, we've got a six-hour coast before restart, which is twice as long as we've ever coasted a stage," he said. "So we could see the fuel potentially freeze, because it's out there in deep space and when it's not facing the sun it's at three degrees above absolute zero.

"So it could easily freeze, or the liquid oxygen could boil off, so there's a lot that could go wrong."

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Assuming it makes it through the high-radiation environment of Earth's Van Allen belts, and assuming the Falcon Heavy's second stage propellant doesn't freeze or boil away, the flight plan called for the Tesla to be released on a trajectory carrying it slightly farther than the orbit of Mars.

A mannequin known as Starman, wearing a spacesuit, was strapped into the driver's seat, its left arm casually draped across the door as if cruising through the country side. Or a long flight to Mars.

"We expect it'll get about 400 million kilometers away from Earth, maybe 250 to 270 million miles, and be doing 11 kilometers per second," Musk said. "It's going to be in a precessing elliptical orbit with one part of the ellipse being at Earth orbit and the other part being at Mars orbit. So it'll essentially be an Earth-Mars cycler.

Musk believes the Falcon Heavy, which at $90 million a copy costs much less than ULA's less-powerful rockets or the European Ariane 5 booster, is a potential game-changer for SpaceX. But first, the company must demonstrate the Heavy's reliability.

And it's not yet clear how the Falcon Heavy figures into SpaceX's long-term plans, whether enough customers, including NASA, will buy the Heavy for commercial satellite-launching missions, to send interplanetary probes into deep space or possibly to send space tourists into orbit aboard a piloted version of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

Source: CBS News Return to Contents

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2. Good News for the Searth for Live, the Trappist System Might Be Rich in Water

When we finally find life somewhere out there beyond Earth, it’ll be at the end of a long search. Life probably won’t announce its presence to us, we’ll have to follow a long chain of clues to find it. Like scientists keep telling us, at the start of that chain of clues is water.

The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system last year generated a lot of excitement. 7 planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, only 40 light years from Earth. At the time, astronomers thought at least some of them were Earth-like. But now a new study shows that some of the planets could hold more water than Earth. About 250 times more.

This new study focuses on the density of the 7 TRAPPIST-1 planets. Trying to determine that density is a challenging task, and it involved some of the powerhouses in the world of telescopes. The Spitzer Space Telescope, the Kepler Space Telescope, and the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) facility at ESO’s Paranal Observatory were all used in the study.

In this study, the observations from the three telescopes were subjected to complex computer modelling to determine the densities of the 7 TRAPPIST planets. As a result, we now know that they are all mostly made of rock, and that some of

them could be 5% water by mass. (Earth is only about 0.02% water by mass.)

Finding the densities of these planets was not easy. To do so, scientists had to determine both the mass and the size. The TRAPPIST-1 planets were found using the transit method, where the light of the host star dips as the planets pass between their star and us. The transit method gives us a pretty good idea of the size of the planets, but that’s it.

It’s a lot harder to find the mass, because planets with different masses can have the same orbits and we can’t tell them apart. But in multi-planet systems like TRAPPIST-1, there is a way.

As the planets orbit the TRAPPIST-1 star, more massive planets disturb the orbits of the other planets more than lighter ones. This changes the timing of the transits. These effects are “complicated and very subtle” according to the team, and it took a lot of observation and measurement of the transit timing—and very complex computer modelling—to determine their densities.

Lead author Simon Grimm explains how it was done: “The TRAPPIST-1 planets are so close together that they interfere with each other gravitationally, so the times when they pass in front of the star shift slightly. These shifts depend on the planets’ masses, their distances and other orbital parameters. With a computer model, we simulate the planets’ orbits until the calculated transits agree with the observed values, and hence derive the planetary masses.”

So, what about the water?

First of all, this study didn’t detect water. It detected volatile material which is probably water.

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Whether or not they’ve confirmed the presence of water, these are still very important results. We’re getting good at finding exoplanets, and the next step is to determine the properties of any atmospheres that exoplanets have.

Team member Eric Agol comments on the significance: “A goal of exoplanet studies for some time has been to probe the composition of planets that are Earth-like in size and temperature. The discovery of TRAPPIST-1 and the capabilities of ESO’s facilities in Chile and the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope in orbit have made this possible — giving us our first glimpse of what Earth-sized exoplanets are made of!”

This study doesn’t tell us if any of the TRAPPIST planets have life on them, or even if they’re habitable. It’s just one more step on the path to hopefully, maybe, one day, finding life somewhere. Study co-author Brice-Olivier Demory, at the University of Bern, said as much: “Densities, while important clues to the planets’ compositions, do not say anything about habitability. However, our study is an important step forward as we continue to explore whether these planets could support life.”

This is what the study determined about the different planets in the TRAPPIST system:

• TRAPPIST 1-b and 1c are the two innermost planets and are likely to have rocky cores and be surrounded by atmospheres much thicker than Earth’s.

• TRAPPIST-1d is the lightest of the planets at about 30 percent the mass of Earth. We’re uncertain whether it has a large atmosphere, an ocean or an ice layer.

• TRAPPIST-1e is a bit of a surprise. It’s the only planet in the system slightly denser than Earth. It may have a denser iron core, and it does not necessarily have a thick atmosphere, ocean or ice layer. TRAPPIST-1e is a mystery because it appears to be so much rockier than the rest of the planets. It’s the most similar to Earth, in size, density and the amount of radiation it receives from its star.

• TRAPPIST-1f, g and h might have frozen surfaces. If they have thin atmospheres, they would be unlikely to contain the heavy molecules that we find on Earth, such as carbon dioxide.

The TRAPPIST-1 system is going to be studied for a very long time. It promises to be one of the first targets for the James Webb Space Telescope (we hope.) It’s a very intriguing system, and whether or not any of the planets are deemed habitable, studying them will teach us a lot about our search for water, habitability, and life.

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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3. HINODE captures record breaking solar magnetic field

Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) using the HINODE spacecraft observed the strongest magnetic field ever directly measured on the surface of the Sun. Analyzing data for 5 days around the appearance of this record breaking magnetic field, the astronomers determined that it was generated as a result of gas outflow from one sunspot pushing against another sunspot. Magnetism plays a critical role in various solar phenomena such as flares, mass ejections, flux ropes, and coronal heating. Sunspots are areas of concentrated magnetic fields. A sunspot usually consists of a circular dark core (the umbra) with a vertical magnetic field and radially-elongated fine threads (the penumbra) with a horizontal field. The penumbra harbors an outward flow of gas along the horizontal threads. The darkness of the umbrae is generally correlated with the magnetic field strength. Hence, the strongest magnetic field in each sunspot is located in the umbra in most cases.

Joten Okamoto (NAOJ Fellow) and Takashi Sakurai (Professor Emeritus of NAOJ) were analyzing data taken by the Solar Optical Telescope onboard HINODE, when they noticed the signature of strongly magnetized iron atoms in a sunspot. Surprisingly the data indicated a magnetic field strength of 6,250 gauss. This is more than double the 3,000 gauss field found around most sunspots. Previously, magnetic fields this strong on the Sun had only been inferred indirectly. More surprisingly, the strongest field was not in the dark part of the umbra, as would be expected, but was actually located at a bright region between two umbrae.

HINODE continuously tracked the same sunspot with high spatial resolution for several days. This is impossible for ground-based telescopes because the Earth's rotation causes the Sun to set and night to fall on the observatories. These continuous data showed that the strong field was always located at the boundary

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between the bright region and the umbra, and that the horizontal gas flows along the direction of the magnetic fields over the bright region turned down into the Sun when they reached the strong-field area. This indicates that the bright region with the strong field is a penumbra belonging to the southern umbra (S-pole). The horizontal gas flows from the southern umbra compressed the fields near the other umbra (N-pole) and enhanced the field strength to more than 6,000 gauss.

Okamoto explains, "HINODE's continuous high-resolution data allowed us to analyze the sunspots in detail to investigate the distribution and time evolution of the strong magnetic field and also the surrounding environment. Finally, the longtime mystery of the formation mechanism of a stronger field outside an umbra than in the umbra, has been solved."

Source: Phys.org Return to Contents

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The Night Sky Tuesday, February 6

• The last-quarter Moon rises around midnight tonight. Jupiter rises below the Moon about 50 minutes later. By dawn on Wednesday the 7th they're high in the south — now with Jupiter lower left of the Moon, Mars farther to the lower left of Jupiter, and Antares below Mars, as shown here.

Wednesday, February 7

• The waning Moon rises around 1 a.m. tonight with Jupiter shining to its right or upper right. By dawn on Thursday the 8th they're high in the south — now with Jupiter to the right of the Moon, Mars to the Moon's lower left, and Antares below Mars, as shown here.

Thursday, February 8

• Before and during dawn on Friday morning the 9th, the Moon shines near Mars and Antares as shown here. Far to their upper right is brighter Jupiter.

Friday, February 9

• By 9 p.m. the Big Dipper stands straight up on its handle in the northeast. In the northwest, the W of Cassiopeia also stands on end at about the same height.

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver:

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears Tue Feb 6, 6:44 PM 2 min 15° 11° above NNW 15° above NNE Wed Feb 7, 5:52 PM 2 min 12° 10° above N 10° above NNE Wed Feb 7, 7:27 PM 1 min 17° 10° above NW 17° above NNW Thu Feb 8, 6:35 PM 3 min 23° 11° above NNW 22° above NE Fri Feb 9, 7:19 PM 2 min 47° 10° above NW 47° above NW Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

Wednesday, February 7 11:30 a.m. - ISS Expedition 54 In-Flight Event for the European Space Agency for the 10th Anniversary of the Launch of the Columbus Module with NASA Flight Engineers Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei (starts at 11:40 a.m) (all channels) 12:30 p.m. - ISS Expedition 54 Educational In-Flight Event with the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C. and NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba (starts at 12:55 p.m.) (all channels) 8 p.m. - The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Presents Nobel Prize winner John Mather: “Engineering Miracles for Scientific Discoveries with the James Webb Space Telescope” (all channels) Thursday, February 8 12 p.m. - ISS Expedition 54 Educational In-Flight Event with NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei, Joe Acaba and Scott Tingle (all channels) Friday, February 9 11 a.m. - SpaceCast Weekly (all channels) 11:30 a.m. - ISS Expedition 54 In-Flight Interviews with Newsweek Magazine and KSAZ-TV, Phoenix with NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba (starts at 11:35 a.m.) (all channels)

Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

• Feb 06 - [Feb 05] Tesla Roadster Falcon 9 Heavy (Maiden Launch) • Feb 06 - Comet 311P/PANSTARRS Closest Approach To Earth (1.122 AU) • Feb 06 - Asteroid 4 Vesta Occults 2UCAC 25787320 (11.0 Magnitude Star) • Feb 06 - Asteroid 4 Vesta Occults 6216-00783-1 (10.2 Magnitude Star) • Feb 06 - [Feb 05] Apollo Asteroid 2018 CC Near-Earth Flyby (0.001 AU) • Feb 06 - Aten Asteroid 2017 YS8 Near-Earth Flyby (0.077 AU) • Feb 06 - Aten Asteroid 2018 BB5 Near-Earth Flyby (0.090 AU) • Feb 06 - Asteroid 7359 Messier Closest Approach To Earth (2.148 AU) • Feb 06 - 130th Anniversary (1888), Williamina Fleming's Discovery of the Horsehead Nebula • Feb 06 - Thomas David Anderson's 165th Birthday (1853) • Feb 07 - Comet 128P-B/Shoemaker-Holt At Opposition (2.702 AU) • Feb 07 - Comet 128P/Shoemaker-Holt At Opposition (2.703 AU) • Feb 07 - Apollo Asteroid 505657 (2014 SR339) Near-Earth Flyby (0.054 AU) • Feb 07 - Asteroid 71000 Hughdowns Closest Approach To Earth (1.600 AU) • Feb 07 - 10th Anniversary (2008), STS-122 Launch (Space Shuttle Atlantis, International Space

Station) • Feb 07 - Nicolas Sarrabat's 320th Birthday (1698) • Feb 08 - Comet 56P/Slaughter-Burnham At Opposition (3.533 AU) • Feb 08 - Comet P/2005 GF8 (LONEOS) At Opposition (3.807 AU) • Feb 08 - Apollo Asteroid 2018 BJ3 Near-Earth Flyby (0.056 AU) • Feb 08 - Asteroid 378214 Sauron Closest Approach To Earth (0.705 AU) • Feb 08 - [Feb 06] Online Lecture: Titan - A World With Two Styles of Ocean • Feb 08 - 15th Anniversary (2003), Brett Gladman, et al's Discovery of Jupiter Moon Herse • Feb 08 - Hiroki Kosai's 85th Birthday (1933) • Feb 08 - Jules Verne's 190th Birthday (1828) • Feb 09 - Moon Occults Asteroid 4 Vesta • Feb 09 - Comet P/2017 Y3 (Leonard) Closest Approach To Earth (1.438 AU) • Feb 09 - Comet 245P/WISE Perihelion (2.190 AU) • Feb 09 - [Feb 05] Apollo Asteroid 2018 CB Near-Earth Flyby (0.0004 AU) • Feb 09 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 BN509 Near-Earth Flyby (0.033 AU) • Feb 09 - Apollo Asteroid 2018 BL1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.043 AU) • Feb 09 - [Feb 05] Apollo Asteroid 2018 CA Near-Earth Flyby (0.051 AU) • Feb 09 - Asteroid 13801 Kohlhase Closest Approach To Earth (1.614 AU) • Feb 09 - 105th Anniversary (1913), Great Meteor Procession of 1913

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Dinosaur Age Meets the Space Age at NASA Goddard

A slab of sandstone discovered at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center contains at least 70 mammal and dinosaur tracks from more than 100 million years ago, according to a new paper published Jan. 31 in the journal Scientific Reports. The find provides a rare glimpse of mammals and dinosaurs interacting.

The tracks were discovered by Ray Stanford — a local dinosaur track expert whose wife, Sheila, works at Goddard. After dropping off Sheila at work one day in 2012, Stanford spotted an intriguing rock outcropping behind Shelia’s building on a hillside. Stanford parked his car, investigated, and found a 12-inch-wide dinosaur track on the exposed rock. Excavation revealed that the slab was the size of a dining room table and examination in the ensuing years found that it was covered in preserved tracks.

The remarkable Goddard specimen, about 8 feet by 3 feet in size, is imprinted with nearly 70 tracks from eight species, including squirrel-sized mammals and tank-sized dinosaurs. Analysis suggests that all of the tracks were likely made within a few days of each other at a location that might have been the edge of a wetland, and could even capture the footprints of predator and prey.

“The concentration of mammal tracks on this site is orders of magnitude higher than any other site in the world,” said Martin Lockley, paleontologist with the University of Colorado, Denver, a co-author on the new paper. Lockley began studying footprints in the 1980s, and was one of the first to do so. “I don't think I've ever seen a slab this size, which is a couple of square meters, where you have over 70 footprints of so many different types. This is the mother lode of Cretaceous mammal tracks.”

After Stanford's initial find, Stephen J. Godfrey, curator of paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum, coordinated the excavation of the slab and produced the mold and cast that formed the basis of the scientific work.

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The first track Stanford found was of a nodosaur — "think of them as a four-footed tank," Stanford said. Subsequent examination revealed a baby nodosaur print beside and within the adult print, likely indicating that they were traveling together. The other dinosaur tracks include: a sauropod, or long-necked plant-eater; small theropods, crow-sized carnivorous dinosaurs closely related to the Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex; and pterosaurs, a group of flying reptiles that included pterodactyls.

“It’s a time machine,” Stanford said. “We can look across a few days of activity of these animals and we can picture it. We see the interaction of how they pass in relation to each other. This enables us to look deeply into ancient times on Earth. It’s just tremendously exciting.”

The dinosaur tracks are impressive, but it is the collection of mammal tracks that make the slab significant. At least 26 mammal tracks have been identified on the slab since the 2012 discovery — making it one of two known sites in the world with such a concentration of prints. Furthermore, the slab also contains the largest mammal track ever discovered from the Cretaceous. It is about four inches square, or the size of a raccoon's prints.

Lockley and Stanford said most of these ancient footprints belong to what we would consider small mammals — animals the size of squirrels or prairie dogs. Most Cretaceous mammals discovered to date have been the size of rodents, their size usually determined only from their teeth. “When you have only teeth, you have no idea what the animals looked like or how they behaved,” Lockley said.

Lockley and Stanford believe the wide diversity and number of tracks show many of the animals were in the area actively feeding at the same time. Perhaps the mammals were feeding on worms and grubs, the small carnivorous dinosaurs were after the mammals, and the pterosaurs could have been hunting both the mammals and the small dinosaurs.

The parallel trackway patterns made by four crow-sized carnivorous dinosaurs suggests they were hunting or foraging as a group. “It looks as if they were making a sweep across the area," Lockley said.

Several of the mammal tracks occur in pairs, representing hind feet. “It looks as if these squirrel-sized animals paused to sit on their haunches," Lockley said. The team gave the new formal scientific name of Sederipes goddardensis, meaning sitting traces from Goddard Space Flight Center, to this unusual configuration of tracks.

“We do not see overlapping tracks — overlapping tracks would occur if multiple tracks were made over a longer period while the sand was wet,” said Compton Tucker, a Goddard Earth scientist who helped with the excavation, coordinated bringing in multiple scientists to study the tracks, and has worked to create a display of the cast in Goddard's Earth science building. "People ask me, 'Why were all these tracks in Maryland?' I reply that Maryland has always been a desirable place to live.”

What is now Maryland would have been a much hotter, swampier place in the Cretaceous, when sea levels would have been hundreds of feet higher than today. As scientists continue to study the slab and compare the tracks to others found in the area and around the world, they will continue to discover more about prehistoric life that existed here.

“This could be the key to understanding some of the smaller finds from the area, so it brings everything together,” Lockley said. "This is the Cretaceous equivalent of the Rosetta stone."

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

International Space Station Transits the Full Moon

The International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, is seen in silhouette as it transits the moon at roughly five miles per second on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, from Alexandria, Va. Onboard are NASA astronauts Joe Acaba, Mark Vande Hei, and Scott Tingle; Russian Cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Anton Shkaplerov, and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai. Image Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Source: NASA Return to Contents