SPACE: The Final Frontier

[samhexum]

Beyond Pluto, New Horizons Gets a Reprieve from NASA

It’s lonely out there in the desolation that reigns where NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft now cruises on its one-way trip out of our solar system, with little to pass the time besides sniffing whiffs of plasma and stargazing. After nearly two decades of deep-space operations, the probe is currently more than eight billion kilometers from Earth…

Read in Scientific American: https://apple.news/AmkWL40nGQBe_-bWI0bfZdA

[ICTJOCK]

Have been a space buff since 4th grade,   love it!    The more research and investigation,  the more questions and solid facts we find on the our solar system and those outside our own.   Absolutely fascinating.    I've been reading about the belief that Saturn's rings are only a few million years old and are slowly disappearing.    I was reading about some 2,000 mile object that NASA seems to have spotted that doesn't look natural adjacent to the rings.     Also some of the amazing speculation of several of Saturn's moons.   We'll see!

[mike carey]

7 minutes ago, ICTJOCK said:

I've been reading about the belief that Saturn's rings are only a few million years old and are slowly disappearing.

And I also read that the rings (maybe 100m years old, not just a few) are being added to by ice from the water ice geysers from the moon Enceladus.

[ICTJOCK]

9 minutes ago, mike carey said:

And I also read that the rings (maybe 100m years old, not just a few) are being added to by ice from the water ice geysers from the moon Enceladus.

Very true,  Mike.   Imagine that the spewing of material from underground oceans could do something like that.     Sounds like some kind of fiction.    When I first heard all about that,  I couldn't believe it.     What about the oceans of methane and ethane on TItan.    Wow.

[mike carey]

10 minutes ago, ICTJOCK said:

Very true,  Mike.   Imagine that the spewing of material from underground oceans could do something like that.     Sounds like some kind of fiction.    When I first heard all about that,  I couldn't believe it.     What about the oceans of methane and ethane on TItan.    Wow.

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

[MikeBiDude]

1 hour ago, mike carey said:

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

 

[samhexum]

On 10/7/2023 at 9:52 AM, ICTJOCK said:

Have been a space buff since 4th grade,   love it!    The more research and investigation,  the more questions and solid facts we find on the our solar system and those outside our own.   Absolutely fascinating. 

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:03 AM, mike carey said:

And I also read that the rings (maybe 100m years old, not just a few) are being added to by ice from the water ice geysers from the moon Enceladus.

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:14 AM, ICTJOCK said:

Very true,  Mike.   Imagine that the spewing of material from underground oceans could do something like that.     Sounds like some kind of fiction.    When I first heard all about that,  I couldn't believe it.     What about the oceans of methane and ethane on TItan.    Wow.

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:35 AM, mike carey said:

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

 

On 10/7/2023 at 12:31 PM, MikeBiDude said:

 

NASA wants to fly this nuclear Dragonfly drone on Saturn's moon Titan.

https://www.space.com/nasa-dragonfly-drone-titan-wind-tunnel-test-video

Testing is now underway on NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft, a nuclear-powered, car-sized aerial drone that will look for potential precursors to life on Saturn's moon, Titan. But before Dragonfly can take to the sky, NASA has to make sure it can withstand the moon's unique environment.

Dragonfly's main goal is to study the complex chemistry on Titan that may give insights into the origins of life in our solar system. Equipped with cameras, sensors, and samplers, this vehicle will investigate areas of Titan known to contain organic materials, especially those regions where such materials might have encountered liquid water beneath the moon's icy surface in the past.

The lander will traverse Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere using four dual-coaxial rotors, but to ensure that these rotors can perform under such conditions, the Dragonfly team has conducted numerous tests at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, including operating the drone's rotors in an wind tunnel that can simulate the atmospheric conditions on Saturn's largest moon. 

"All of these tests feed into our Dragonfly Titan simulations and performance predictions," Ken Hibbard, Dragonfly mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), said in a NASA statement.

Four Dragonfly test campaigns have conducted: Two in a 14-by-22 foot subsonic tunnel, and another two at a 16-foot Transonic Dynamics Tunnel (TDT). The subsonic tunnel is used to validate fluid dynamic models developed by mission scientists, while the variable-density heavy gas capability of the TDT is used to validate computer models in simulated atmospheric conditions Dragonfly will likely encounter on Titan.

The most recent testing, held in June, involved a half-scale Dragonfly model with hundreds of test runs, said Bernadine Juliano, APL's test lead for the project. 

"We tested conditions across the expected flight envelope at a variety of wind speeds, rotor speeds, and flight angles to assess the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle," Juliano said. "We completed more than 700 total runs, encompassing over 4,000 individual data points. All test objectives were successfully accomplished and the data will help increase confidence in our simulation models on Earth before extrapolating to Titan conditions."

Analyzing this wealth of data involves a collaborative effort, with specialists from institutions ranging from the University of Central Florida to NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Rick Heisler from APL, who oversaw the TDT test campaigns, emphasized the value of these tests in understanding Dragonfly's rotor performance in Titan's unique atmosphere.

"The heavy gas environment in the TDT has a density three-and-a-half times higher than air while operating at sea level ambient pressure and temperature," Heisler said. "This allows the rotors to operate at near-Titan conditions and better replicate the lift and dynamic loading the actual lander will experience."

As the pieces of the mission come together, the enormity of the task and the historic nature of the mission is coming into focus for the team.

"With Dragonfly, we're turning science fiction into exploration fact," Hibbard said. "The mission is coming together piece by piece, and we're excited for every next step toward sending this revolutionary rotorcraft across the skies and surface of Titan."

[samhexum]

On 10/7/2023 at 9:52 AM, ICTJOCK said:

Have been a space buff since 4th grade,   love it!    The more research and investigation,  the more questions and solid facts we find on the our solar system and those outside our own.   Absolutely fascinating.

 

On 10/7/2023 at 10:35 AM, mike carey said:

Yes, Titan is possibly the most interesting world in the solar system! Although Europa (one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter) with its ice covered water ocean is not far behind!

 

On 10/7/2023 at 12:31 PM, MikeBiDude said:

NASA is set to launch a spacecraft to Jupiter's moon Europa, considered one of our solar system's most promising spots to search for life beyond Earth, to learn whether this ice-encased world believed to harbor a vast underground ocean is habitable.

The U.S. space agency's robotic solar-powered Europa Clipper spacecraft will be launched on a 
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, carrying nine scientific instruments. After traveling 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion km) in a trip lasting about 5-1/2 years, Europa Clipper is due to enter orbit around Jupiter in 2030.

After a delay caused by Hurricane Milton, NASA set a tentative launch time for 12:06 p.m. ET (1606 GMT) on Monday.

Scientists have a keen interest in the salty liquid water ocean that previous observations have indicated resides below Europa's icy shell.

"There is very strong evidence that the ingredients for life exist on Europa. But we have to go there to find out," said planetary scientist Bonnie Buratti of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the mission's deputy project scientist.

"Just to emphasize: we're not a life-detection mission. We're just looking for the conditions for life," Buratti added.

Europa Clipper is the biggest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission, measuring about 100 feet (30.5 meters) long, about 58 feet (17.6 meters) wide and weighing approximately 13,000 pounds (6,000 kg). It is larger than a basketball court because of its sizable solar arrays to gather sunlight for powering scientific instruments, electronics and its other subsystems.

The spacecraft is due to fly by Mars, then back by Earth, using the gravity of each planet to increase its momentum like a slingshot. It has three main science objectives: gauging the thickness of Europa's outer layer of ice and its interactions with the subsurface below, figuring out the moon's composition, and determining its geology.

NASA is planning for its spacecraft to conduct 49 close flybys of Europa over a span of three years.

Europa's diameter is about 1,940 miles (3,100 km) at its equator, roughly 90% that of our moon. Europa's icy shell is currently believed to be 10-15 miles (15-25 km) thick, floating atop an ocean 40-100 miles (60-150 km) deep.

This moon is considered an "ocean world." Even though Europa is just a quarter of Earth's diameter, its subsurface ocean may contain twice the water in Earth's oceans.

"As an ocean world, Europa is very intriguing. And this mission is going to help us to understand a complex piece of our solar system," said Gina DiBraccio, acting director of NASA's planetary science division.

Ocean worlds, DiBraccio said, might be a common type of body outside our solar system.

"Clipper is going to be the first in-depth mission that will allow us to characterize habitability on what could be the most common type of inhabited world in our universe," DiBraccio said.

Despite its hostile and frigid surface, scientists believe Europa could be capable of nurturing life. 

Buratti noted that there are three main requirements for life to form: liquid water, certain chemistry - specifically organic compounds that could serve as food for any primitive organisms - and an energy source.

Europa receives only about 4% of the solar radiation that Earth - five times closer to the sun - gets. 

But Buratti noted that Europa flexes as its orbit comes nearer and farther from Jupiter, thanks to the huge planet's strong gravitational pull - a process that produces heat on the moon.

"That's the source of energy we have," Buratti said.

At the bottom of Europa's ocean, where the water meets the rocky mantle, there may be thermal vents where heat releases chemical energy.

"They may be similar to thermal vents in the deep oceans of the Earth where primitive life exists and where life may have originated on the Earth," Buratti said.

The spacecraft's MASPEX instrument will sample gases to study Europa's ocean, surface and atmospheric chemistries. MASPEX will look for "sophisticated organic molecules that could provide the food, if there are any primitive organisms," Buratti added.

Jupiter is our solar system's largest planet. Among its 95 officially recognized moons, Europa is fourth largest, behind Ganymede, Callisto and Io. Europa orbits about 417,000 miles (671,000 km) from Jupiter.

Buratti said exploratory missions like this one always uncover something "that we could not have imagined."

"There is going to be something there - the unknown - that is going to be so wonderful that we can't conceive of it right now," Buratti said. "That's the thing that excites me most."