NASA MRO HiRise Camera shows Comet C/2013 A1 Nucleus is Small

These images were taken of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Oct. 19, 2014, during the comet's close flyby of Mars and the spacecraft. 

Comet Siding Spring is on its first trip this close to the sun from the Oort Cloud at the outer fringe of the solar system.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured views of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring while that visitor sped past Mars on Sunday (Oct. 19), yielding information about its nucleus.

The images are the highest-resolution views ever acquired of a comet coming from the Oort Cloud at the fringes of the solar system.  Other spacecraft have approached and studied comets with shorter orbits.

This comet's flyby of Mars provided spacecraft at the Red Planet an opportunity to investigate from close range.

The highest-resolution of images of the comet's nucleus, taken from a distance of about 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers), have a scale of about 150 yards (138 meters) per pixel.

Telescopic observers had modeled the size of the nucleus as about half a mile, or one kilometer wide.

However, the best HiRISE images show only two to three pixels across the brightest feature, probably the nucleus, suggesting a size smaller than half that estimate.

Almahata Sitta meteorite study: Volcanic activity on early small asteroids

The Almahata Sitta meteorite number 15 in-situ on the desert floor during its find on 2008 December 8, much as it fell on October 7 earlier that year. Credit: P. Jenniskens, SETI Institute

Examination of one of the Almahata Sitta meteorites (aka, ALM-A, found in Sudan in 2008) by a team of space scientists working in Germany has revealed a volcanic past.

In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team describes how they dated the meteorite to just a few million years after our solar system was born and uncovered evidence that it suggests it was produced by volcanic activity.

The meteorite is but one of a collection that came from 2008 TC3, the first asteroid to ever have its collision with Earth tracked by scientists.

When it exploded over the Nubian Desert, debris was scattered over many kilometers, over 600 meteorites from it have been found thus far.

In this latest effort, the researchers focused on ALM-A, studying it using optical and electron microscopy, they found the rock contained minerals that were rich in a kind of silica that to date has been found to only be producible by certain types of explosions or volcanic action.

The rapid crystallization, the researchers claim, could only have come about due to an explosion (not the kind that happens when an asteroid enters an atmosphere) or because of the sort of rapid cooling that occurs when extremely hot lava seeps out of the ground.

Because it is unlikely that conditions would have ever existed on the asteroid that could have led to the type of explosion capable of producing such crystallized silica, the only option is that the asteroid from which the meteorite came, had at least one volcano on it, at some point.

If so, that would mean that volcanic activity existed in our solar system much earlier than scientists have thought.

But that's not the whole story, the researchers believe the asteroid that broke apart when it collided with Earth's atmosphere was part of a different asteroid that was nearly destroyed close to six and a half million years ago when it collided with another asteroid.

After that there were likely other collisions, some of which resulted in melding with other asteroids, which would explain the uniqueness of the Almahata Sitta meteorites, they host a variety of minerals not ordinarily found on just one specimen.

More information: Trachyandesitic volcanism in the early Solar System, Addi Bischoff, PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1404799111

Hubble Study in spiral Galaxy M83 reveals new super-powered small black hole, MQ1

Nearby spiral galaxy M83 and the MQ1 system with jets, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The blue circle marks the position of the MQ1 system in the galaxy (shown inset). 

Image courtesy M83 - NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (WFC3/UVIS, STScI-PRC14-04a).MQ1 inset - W. P. Blair (Johns Hopkins University) and R. Soria (ICRAR-Curtin).

A team of Australian and American astronomers have been studying nearby galaxy M83 and have found a new superpowered small black hole, named MQ1, the first object of its kind to be studied in this much detail.

Astronomers have found a few compact objects that are as powerful as MQ1, but have not been able to work out the size of the black hole contained within them until now.

The team observed the MQ1 system with multiple telescopes and discovered that it is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was theorised to account for all its power.

Curtin University senior research fellow Dr Roberto Soria, who is part of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and led the team investigating MQ1, said it was important to understand how stars were formed, how they evolved and how they died, within a spiral shaped galaxy like M83.

"MQ1 is classed as a microquasar - a black hole surrounded by a bubble of hot gas, which is heated by two jets just outside the black hole, powerfully shooting out energy in opposite directions, acting like cosmic sandblasters pushing out on the surrounding gas," Dr Soria said.

"The significance of the huge jet power measured for MQ1 goes beyond this particular galaxy: it helps astronomers understand and quantify the strong effect that black hole jets have on the surrounding gas, which gets heated and swept away.

"This must have been a significant factor in the early stages of galaxy evolution, 12 billion years ago, because we have evidence that powerful black holes like MQ1, which are rare today, were much more common at the time."

"By studying microquasars such as MQ1, we get a glimpse of how the early universe evolved, how fast quasars grew and how much energy black holes provided to their environment."

As a comparison, the most powerful microquasar in our galaxy, known as SS433, is about 10 times less powerful than MQ1.

Although the black hole in MQ1 is only about 100 kilometres wide, the MQ1 structure, as identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, is much bigger than our Solar System, as the jets around it extend about 20 light years from either side of the black hole.

Black holes vary in size and are classed as either stellar mass (less than about 70 times the mass of our Sun) or supermassive (millions of times the mass of our Sun, like the giant black hole that is located in the middle of the Milky Way).

MQ1 is a stellar mass black hole and was likely formed when a star died, collapsing to leave behind a compact mass.

Herschel: SMA unveils how small cosmic seeds in Snake nebula grow into big stars

These two panels show the Snake nebula as photographed by the Spitzer and Herschel space telescopes. 

At mid-infrared wavelengths (the upper panel taken by Spitzer), the thick nebular material blocks light from more distant stars. 

At far-infrared wavelengths, however (the lower panel taken by Herschel), the nebula glows due to emission from cold dust. 

The two boxed regions, P1 and P6, were examined in more detail by the Submillimeter Array. 

Credit: Spitzer /GLIMPSE /MIPS, Herschel /HiGal, Ke Wang, European Southern Observatory

New images from the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) telescope provide the most detailed view yet of stellar nurseries within the Snake nebula.

These images offer new insights into how cosmic seeds can grow into massive stars.

Stretching across almost 100 light-years of space, the Snake nebula is located about 11,700 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus.

In images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope it appears as a sinuous, dark tendril against the starry background. It was targeted because it shows the potential to form many massive stars (stars heavier than 8 times our Sun).

"To learn how stars form, we have to catch them in their earliest phases, while they're still deeply embedded in clouds of gas and dust, and the SMA is an excellent telescope to do so," explained lead author Ke Wang of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), who started the research as a predoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

The team studied two specific spots within the Snake nebula, designated P1 and P6. Within those two regions they detected a total of 23 cosmic "seeds" - faintly glowing spots that will eventually birth one or a few stars.

The seeds generally weigh between 5 and 25 times the mass of the Sun, and each spans only a few thousand astronomical units (the average Earth-Sun distance).

The sensitive, high-resolution SMA images not only unveil the small seeds, but also differentiate them in age.

Previous theories proposed that high-mass stars form within very massive, isolated "cores" weighing at least 100 times the mass of the Sun.

These new results show that that is not the case. The data also demonstrate that massive stars aren't born alone but in groups.

"High-mass stars form in villages," said co-author Qizhou Zhang of the CfA. "It's a family affair."

The team also was surprised to find that these two nebular patches had fragmented into individual star seeds so early in the star formation process.

They detected bipolar outflows and other signs of active, ongoing star formation. Eventually, the Snake nebula will dissolve and shine as a chain of several star clusters.

Ion Tiger sets New Endurance Record for Small Electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Fueled by liquid hydrogen (LH2), the Ion Tiger unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) completes a record flight time of 48 hours and 1 minute. 

The electric fuel cell propulsion system onboard the Ion Tiger has the low noise and signature of a battery-powered UAV, while taking advantage of high-energy hydrogen fuel and the high electric efficiency of fuel cells. 

Credit: Image courtesy of Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)

Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory flew their fuel cell powered Ion Tiger UAV for 48 hours and 1 minute on April 16-18 by using liquid hydrogen fuel in a new, NRL-developed, cryogenic fuel storage tank and delivery system.

This flight shatters their previous record of 26 hours and 2 minutes set in 2009 using the same vehicle, but with gaseous hydrogen stored at 5000 psi.

Liquid hydrogen is three times denser than 5000-psi compressed hydrogen. The cryogenic liquid is stored in a lightweight tank, allowing more hydrogen to be carried onboard to increase flight endurance.

Success in flight requires developing a high quality, lightweight insulated flight dewar for the cryogenic fuel, plus matching the boil off of the cryogenic hydrogen to the vehicle fuel consumption.

"Liquid hydrogen coupled with fuel-cell technology has the potential to expand the utility of small unmanned systems by greatly increasing endurance while still affording all the benefits of electric propulsion," said Dr. Karen Swider-Lyons, NRL principal investigator.

Although long endurance is possible with conventional, hydrocarbon-fueled systems, these are usually loud, inefficient, and unreliable in this aircraft class.

Similarly, small, electric, battery-powered systems are limited to endurances of only several hours.

To address the logistics of in-theater supply of liquid or gaseous hydrogen, NRL proposes in-situ manufacture of LH2 for use as fuel.

An electrolyzer-based system would require only water for feedstock, and electricity, possibly from solar or wind, to electrolyze, compress, and refrigerate the fuel.

The NRL LH2 flight capability is being developed by NRL's Tactical Electronic Warfare and Chemistry Divisions, and is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.

Clyde Space CubeSat: Scotland's 1st Spacecraft Is Tiny Satellite

An artist's illustration of UKube-1, Scotland's first satellite, in orbit. It launches in 2013. 

CREDIT: Clyde Space

cotland's first satellite will soon find a home in orbit around the Earth — a forerunner of things to come under a collaborative, national nanosatellite program in the UK.

Dubbed UKube-1, the small, novel CubeSat spacecraft has been constructed by Clyde Space in Glasgow and is completing final testing for launch later this year onboard a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The advanced UKube-1 nanosatellite has been designed and manufactured by Clyde Space at their high-tech facility at the West of Scotland Science Park.

The petite but powerful spacecraft is chock full of payloads that include the first GPS device aimed at measuring space weather in Earth's plasmasphere — the inner-most layer of the planet's magnetosphere.

The satellite also comes equipped with a camera that will take pictures of the Earth from space and test the effect of radiation on space hardware using a new generation of imaging sensor and an experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of using cosmic radiation to improve the security of communications satellites and to flight test lower cost electronic systems.

The UKube-1 satellite also totes a payload made up of five experiments that UK students and the public can interact with — a true "outreach" program into space.


A recent visitor to take a look at UKube-1 was Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland.

"It's one small satellite for Clyde and a giant leap for their extraterrestrial export business and a new hope for space science in Scotland," Salmond said.

UKube-1 is a UK Space Agency mission. The mission has been funded jointly by Clyde Space and a number of funding partners including the UK Space Agency, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Technology Strategy Board and Scottish Enterprise.

As well as the platform and payload elements of the mission, UKube-1 is being supported by three UK ground stations.

"We started designing our nanosatellite platform in 2008 as a means to stimulate some funding from the UK government as part of a national CubeSat program," Craig Clark, chief executive officer of Clyde Space said. Nanosatellites are the fasting growing space sub-sector, with the UK able to tap into both heritage and expertise that primes the pump in building future small satellites, Clark added.

Clark said that there are a number of new developments from Clyde Space on the mission including deployable solar panels — there are three on UKube-1 — as well as advanced attitude and control technology, a sophisticated miniature sun sensor and specialized software that other CubeSats can use.

NASA Seeks Proposal for Small Satellite Demonstrations

NASA seeking a proposal for flight demonstration of the Edison Small Satellite Demonstration Program's technology. The proposal for capability demonstration of the small satellites should be completed within three years, at a total cost of no more than $15 million. The proposal should be submitted by March 4.

Small satellites are secondary payloads on rockets carrying larger spacecraft; these weigh less than 400 pounds. As a result of their size, they are less expensive to build and launch. The major advantage with these satellites is that they should be able to accomplish mission goals deemed impossible until now.

"NASA's Edison SmallSat program helps to continue America's leadership in space through the further development of this class of satellites -- small, agile and relatively inexpensive spacecraft that could perform many tasks in space enabling new missions and providing unique educational opportunities," said Michael Gazarik, Director of NASA's Space Technology Program in Washington.

"These spacecraft represent a new opportunity among the many ways that NASA can approach its diverse goals in science, exploration and education," he added.

"Many of the technologies that enable small spacecraft come from the world of small business, where commercial practices provide innovative and cost-effective solutions. Those technologies will continue to advance as demand and competition drive companies to excel."

NASA Infra-Red: Small Magellanic Cloud

This new image shows the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light from the Herschel Space Observatory a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the two biggest satellite galaxies of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, though they are still considered dwarf galaxies compared to the big spiral of the Milky Way.

In combined data from Herschel and Spitzer, the irregular distribution of dust in the Small Magellanic Cloud becomes clear. A stream of dust extends to the left in this image, known as the galaxy's "wing," and a bar of star formation appears on the right.

The colours in this image indicate temperatures in the dust that permeates the Cloud. Colder regions show where star formation is at its earliest stages or is shut off, while warm expanses point to new stars heating surrounding dust.

The coolest areas and objects appear in red, corresponding to infrared light taken up by Herschel's Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver at 250 microns, or millionths of a meter.

Herschel's Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer fills out the mid-temperature bands, shown here in green, at 100 and 160 microns. The warmest spots appear in blue, courtesy of 24- and 70-micron data from Spitzer.

Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

ESA XMM-Newton: Strangely slow X-Ray pulsar discovered

The X-ray pulsar SXP 1062 embedded in the remnant of the supernova that created it. Credit: ESA/XMM-Newton/ L.Oskinova/ M.Guerrero; CTIO/R.Gruendl/Y.H.Chu.

Astronomers have discovered a very slowly rotating X-ray pulsar still embedded in the remnant of the supernova that created it.

This unusual object was detected on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, using data from a number of telescopes, including ESA's XMM-Newton.

A puzzling mismatch between the fairly young age of the supernova remnant and the slow rotation of the pulsar, which would normally indicate a much older object, raises interesting questions about the origin and evolution of pulsars.

The spectacular supernova explosion that marks the end of a massive star's life also has an intriguing aftermath.

On the one hand, the explosion sweeps up the surrounding interstellar material creating a supernova remnant that is often characterised by a distinctive bubble-like shape, on the other hand, the explosion also leaves behind a compact object - a neutron star or a black hole.

Since supernova remnants shine only for a few tens of thousands of years before dispersing into the interstellar medium, not many compact objects have been detected while still enclosed in their expanding shell.

An international team of astronomers has now discovered one of these rarely observed pairs, consisting of a strongly magnetised, rotating neutron star - a pulsar - surrounded by the remains of the explosion that generated it.

The newly found pulsar, named SXP 1062, is located at the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. SXP 1062 is an X-ray pulsar, part of a binary system in which the compact object is accreting mass from a companion star, resulting in the emission of copious amounts of X-rays.

The astronomers first detected the pulsar's X-ray emission using data from ESA's XMM-Newton as well as NASA's Chandra space-based observatories. A later study of optical images of the source and its surroundings revealed the bubble-shaped signature of the supernova remnant around the binary system.

"The most interesting aspect of this pulsar is possibly its extremely long period - 1062 seconds - which makes it one of the slowest pulsars on record," comments Lidia Oskinova from the Institute for Physics and Astronomy in Potsdam, Germany, coordinator of the team that analysed the X-ray data.

Pulsars rotate quite rapidly in their early stages, with periods of only a fraction of a second, and then slow down gradually with age. "Slowly spinning pulsars are particularly difficult to detect. Only a few with periods longer than a thousand seconds have been observed to date," she adds.

VW about to capture Small Car market?

Volkswagen is set to release its newest model, the diminutive up! - yes, the exclamation point is part of its name - in Europe in December.

With the up!, Volkswagen hopes to shake up the small car market. At 11.6 feet long, 5.4 feet wide, and 4.9 feet tall, the model will be one of the smallest 4-seat cars.

“If the goal is to maximise space, the ideal form for a small car would be a rectangular box,” said Klaus Bischoff, Head of Design for the Volkswagen Brand. “In the up! we were able to sculpt such a box with a clean and powerful design that does not lose sight of space utilisation.”

The car is intended for the urban driver and will sport high fuel efficiency and safety standards. It will be the first small car with optional City Emergency Braking - which employs a laser sensor at speeds under 30kph.

Depending on the situation, the car will brake automatically, reducing the risk of collisions.
The up! will be debuted at the Frankfurt auto show next month. It will feature three 1.0-liter three-cylinder gas BlueMotion engines, and an electric up! is expected to debut in 2013. The car will be available in three versions: the entry-level take up!, the comfort-oriented move up!, and the higher-end high up!

According to an emailed statement, a flexible financing plan called AutoCredit2 will “make the goal of driving a safe and economical new car more attainable than ever. Like the Beetle back in the 1950s, one could say that the up! is once again ‘democratising’ car driving.”


No word yet on when we can expect to see the up! in the U.S., but it will be interesting to see what effect the up! has on the European small car market.

Photos: Volkswagen

Small Near-Earth Object Probably A Rocket Part

Graphic depicting the trajectory of near-Earth object 2010 KQ. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

For a larger version of this image please go here.

Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have determined that a small object that safely passed Earth on May 21 is more than likely an upper-stage of a rocket that carried a spacecraft on an interplanetary trajectory.

"The orbit of this object is very similar to that of the Earth, and one would not expect an object to remain in this type of orbit for very long," said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Observations by astronomer S.J. Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.

2010 KQ was discovered by astronomer Richard Kowalski at the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey in the mountains just north of Tucson, Ariz., on May 16. Five days later, it made its closest approach to Earth at a distance just beyond the moon's orbit. The object is departing Earth's neighborhood but will be returning in 2036.

"At present, there is a 6 percent probability that 2010 KQ will enter our atmosphere over a 30-year period starting in 2036," said Chodas.