Space Exploration

with James Paradise

Sept 27, 2007

How many planets are there in our solar system? 

How many planets are there in our solar system? Currently: 8 planets

Why did Pluto lose status?

Why did Pluto lose planet status?

Planet definition

Definition of a PlanetRESOLUTION 5A, August 24, 2006:

The IAU therefore resolves that "planets" and other bodies in our Solar System be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A "planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.Note: The eight planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

(2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.Note: An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.

(3) All other objects except satellites orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar-System Bodies".Note: These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.

What is the smallest planet in our solar system?

4 terestrial planets, and pluto shown in correct scale

8 current planets, and pluto shown in correct scale

Sun, 8 current planets, and pluto shown in correct scale

Sun to Pluto

At a mere 93 million miles distant, it takes light from the Sun only eight minutes to arrive on Earth.

Fact: 1 Earth-Sun distance is defined as an AU. The next closest are three members of Alpha Centauri and are just over 4 light years from Earth.

There are 10 star systems located within 12 light years of Earth.

The Sun, the closest star to Earth?

Mercury

• Distance From Sun: 36 Million Miles

• Average Temp: 332oF

• Low: -270oF

• High: +800oF

• Diameter: 3,000 miles

• Orbital Period: 88 days

• Moons: 0

Venus

Venus

• Distance From Sun: 67 Million Miles

• Average Temp: 867oF

• Diameter: 7,500 miles

• Orbital Period: 225 days

• Moons: 0

under clouds

Under the clouds of Venus

earth moon

• Distance From Sun:93 Million Miles

• Average Temp: 59oF

• Diameter: 8,000 miles

• Orbital Period: 1 year

• Moons: 1

Earth

mars

Mars

• Distance From Sun:142 Million Miles

• Average Temp: -85oF

• Diameter: 4,200 miles

• Orbital Period: 1.9 years

• Moons: 2

rovers

Mars 2003 MER (twin Mars Exploration Rovers) Spirit: Launched: June 10, 2003 Landed: January 4, 2004Opportunity: Launched: July 7, 2003 Landed: January 24, 2004

The Mars 2003 mission consists of two identical rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which will be a large (~130 kg) vehicles based on the Athena Rover design that was originally considered for the Mars 2001 mission. The rovers will be landed using an airbag system similar to that used on Mars Pathfinder but without the stationary lander.

The rover, Spirit landed 4 January 2004 and the Opportunity will land 20 days later on 24 January. The landing sites have been selected, and are on opposite sides of Mars. The mission should last for at least 90 days each, until late April. The rovers are designed to cover roughly 100 meters each martian day, or sol (approximately 24 hours, 37 minutes).

They will carry a scientific packages which will include a panoramic camera (Pancam), a rock abrasion tool (RAT) to expose fresh surfaces of rock, a miniature thermal infrared spectrometer (MiniTES), a microscopic camera, a Mossbauer spectrometer, and an alpha-proton-X-ray spectrometer (APXS). A goal for the rover is to drive up to 40 meters (about 44 yards) in a single day, for a total of up to one 1 kilometer (about three-quarters of a mile).

Spirit photos of Mars

Spirit photo of hill on Mars (looking forward)

Looking back

Mars 1/25/2004 Oportunity photo of Mars

Oportunity photos on Mars

Hematite (proof of liquid water)

Meteorite

Oportunity climbing out of crater on Mars

Opportunity photo of sand dunes on Mars

MRO

Rocky outcrop

A crater in the distance?

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

Launched: August 12, 2005Arrived: March 10, 2006

Major Instruments:

• Context Camera (CTX)

• Mars Color Imager (MARCI)

• High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)

• Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM)

• Shallow Radar (SHARAD) (can see up to 1 km into ground)

Victoria from above

MRO

• 'Victoria Crater'

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)from 200 miles up

Crater edge

Opportunity at Victoria Crater

In crater

Opportunity in Victoria Crater

skylights

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached its science team's first destination for the rover inside Victoria Crater, information received from Mars late Tuesday confirms.

Opportunity has descended the inner slope of the 800-meter-wide crater (half a mile wide) to a band of relatively bright bedrock exposed partway down. The rover is in position to touch a selected slab of rock with tools at the end of its robotic arm, after safety checks being commanded because the rover is at a 25-degree tilt.

NASA Orbiter Finds Possible Cave Skylights on Mars

Phoenix

Sept 21, 2007 - PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has discovered entrances to seven possible caves on the slopes of a Martian volcano. The find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caverns elsewhere on the Red Planet.

Very dark, nearly circular features ranging in diameter from about 100 to 250 meters (328 to 820 feet) puzzled researchers who found them in images taken by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor orbiters. Using Mars Odyssey's infrared camera to check the daytime and nighttime temperatures of the circles, scientists concluded that the temperatures of the holes change only about one-third as much as the change in temperature of surrounding ground surface.

Mars Phoenix Lander 2007

Launched 8/4/2007

PHOENIX WILL LAND AT MARS' ICY NORTH POLE, 5/25/2008, and dig into the ice cap with a robotic arm.

Mars - A Feast For Your Eyes

QuickTime Movie of Mars from MRO Images

Package

Asteroid Belt (gold colored specs)

Our inner solar system

• Distance From Sun: 260 Million Miles to center

• over 166,000 asteroids

• Largest: Ceres 1/3 of all mass 600 miles in diamter

Ceres Vesta

dawn

Dwarf Planet 600 mi dia Largest Asteroid 350 mi dia

A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape , (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

gaspra

Launch 9/27/07

Asteroid Photos

Gaspra (12x7 miles)

1st ever closeup photo of an asteroid.

Ida

Asteroid Photos Ida (35 miles long)

Dactyl

Asteroid PhotosIda (35 miles long) and Dactyl (1 mile diameter)

impact?

Meteor Crater in New Mexico

Crater is about 1 mile in diameter and 570 feet deep.

Debris was found over 300 miles from the crater.

This was caused by a rock 50 – 100 feet in diamter. Imagine what a Gaspra or Ida sized boulder would do?

JupiterHalf way

Jupiter

• Distance From Sun:483 Million Miles

• Average Temp: -166oF

• Diameter: 88,000 miles

• Orbital Period: 12 years

• Moons: 63

saturn

Galileo

Mission to explore Jupiter and its 61 moons Launch: 10/18/1989 Orbit Jupiter: 12/7/1995Mission End: 9/21/2003 First two years focused on Jupiter.

Extended mission (6 years) focused on Jupiter's moons, with emphasis on Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, and Io. 

On it’s journey to Jupiter, Galileo did gravity sling shots around Venus, Earth, and Earth in a 2.5 year speed-building phase that achieved avelocity exceeding 100,000 miles per hour.

The Galileo mission ended September 21, 2003 when the remaining fuel was used to splash the spacecraft into Jupiter.

Gaspra and IDA

Galileo Jupiter Moons Images (4 of Jupiter’s 61 moons)

Callisto

Io

(with active volcanos)

Europa

Ganymede

Liquid Oceans?

Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter by 2011

This proposed mission would orbit three planet-sized moons of Jupiter --

Callisto, Ganymede and Europa -- to make extensive investigations of their makeup, their history and their potential for sustaining life.

Will use Prometheus Nuclear-Electric Propulsion.

Mission to Saturn and its largest moon Titan. Launch: 10/15/1997 Orbit Saturn: 7/1/2004 Huygens Release: 12/2004

Landed on Titan: 1/12/2005

Casini and Huygens

Saturn

• Distance From Sun:888 Million Miles

• Average Temp: -220oF

• Diameter: 75,000 miles

• Orbital Period: 29 years

• Moons: 47

Cassini Images of Saturn rings Moon in ring gap

Cassini Images of Saturn Moons

Hyperion Enceladus

Evidence of atmosphere and liquid ocean under ice.

Cassini images of Saturn’s moon Titan

Dense atmosphere

Continents visible?

Huygen’s Probe descent to surface of Jupiter’s moon Titan

Cassini images of Saturn’s moon Titan

Titan surface from under the clouds (during Huygens Probe descent)

River Channels showing evidence of liquid flow

Huygens Probe image fromthe Surface of Titan

Uranus

Uranus

• Distance From Sun: 1.8 Billion Miles

• Average Temp: -319oF

• Diameter: 32,000 miles

• Orbital Period: 84 years

• Moons: 27

Neptune

Neptune

• Distance From Sun: 2.8 Billion Miles

• Average Temp: -328

oF

• Diameter: 31,000 miles

• Orbital Period: 165 years

• Moons: 13Pluto

Pluto and Charon• Distance From Sun: 3.7 Billion Miles • Average Temp: -400

oF

• Diameter: 1,500 miles• Orbital Period: 248 years• Moons: 3

More recent Pluto news:

• 1978: Pluto’s moon Charon discovered• 2005: Two more Pluto moons? (Charon, Nix and

Hydra)• 2006: Pluto demoted from planet to Dwarf

Planet 

Quaoar

New Horizons (Pluto - Kuiper Belt Mission)

Mission at a Glance 

Launched: Jan 17, 2006 Pluto & Charon Flyby: 2015 Reach Kuiper Belt: 2026 

2000 - 2003: Varuna, Ixion, Quaoar, and Sedna discovered

Astronomers have discovered super-size balls of ice and rock — half the size of the planet Pluto — lurking roughly 4 billion miles from the Sun at the edge of our solar system.

A year on Quaoar takes 286 Earth years. It follows a circular orbit around the sun and has a temperature of minus 381 degrees Fahrenheit.

"If Pluto deserves to be a planet, then I would think that Quaoar does too," says astronomer Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C.

Orbit: 280 - 300 yearsOrbit Shape: CircularDistance from Sun: 4 billion miles

Pluto distance: 3 billion milesSedna

How do we find planets?

Telescope photo of a region in space.

There is a Dwarf Planet in this photo!!

Did any dots move?

Photo 1

Photo 2

(90 min later)

Photo 3

(90 min later yet)

Moving dot is circled in each image!

Now overlay

Photo 1

Photo 2

(90 min later)

Photo 3

(90 min later)

All 3 photos overlaid onto each other.

The new object, circled in white, moves across a field of stars on Oct. 21, 2003.

The three photos were taken about 90 minutes apart.

The object was discovered by the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory on Jan. 8, 2005.

January 8, 2005: Xena Eris

Orbit: 557 years Orbit Shape: Highly Eliptical Distance from Sun: 7.3 billion miles

comets

Comets (Dirty Snow Balls from the Oort Cloud)

Temple 1 Wild 2

In what galaxy is our solar system located?

In what galaxy is our solar system located?

The Milky Way is a thin disk containing an estimated 200 billion to 700 billion stars

We lie in a spiral band called the Orion-Cygnus arm which is made up of the collection of younger and middle-aged stars. Our Solar System is located about 27,000 light-years from galactic center and 20,000 light-years from the outer edge.

Milky Way Galaxy

 1st of 4 Great Observatories Launched 24 April 1990

HUBBLE Space Telescope

HUBBLE Photo of Cat’s Eye Nebula

So……….How good is Hubble?

So……How good is Hubble?

We had hubble look where the red square is.

Hubble Deep Field

This image was obtained by pointing the Hubble Telescope at a spot near the Big Dipper where no known stars existed.

Exposure: 11 days

Over 1,000 new galaxies were identified in this image.

CHANDRAX-ray Observatory

 

2nd of 4 Great Observatories 

Launched 23 July 1999

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date.

Chandra is designed to observe X-rays from high-energy regions of the universe, such as the remnants of exploded stars.

CHANDRA image of exploding supernova remnant

GALEXGalaxy Evolution Explorer

UV (Ultra-Violet) imaging and spectroscopic survey mission designed to map the global history and probe the causes of star formation and its evolution.

3rd of 4 Great Observatories

Launched: April 28, 2003

Mission Length: 29 months 

Science: 80% of history of star formation is in UV region.

Technical: 50 cm telescope

Galex

Galex photos:

Cartwheel Galaxy

Messier 83

 

Infrared Telescope Facility 

4th of 4 Great Observatories 

Launched: 25 August 2003

Flown from SSC Denver SSB 3rd Floor Mission Operations Center

First to use Earth trailing orbit

The Spitzer Space Telescope Facility - was launched into space by a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 25, 2003.

Most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground.

Consisting of a 0.85-meter telescope and three cryogenically-cooled science instruments, Spitzer will be the largest infrared telescope ever launched into space.

Spitzer Space Telescope

Spitzer photo of Galaxy: M81

Deep Impact The first look inside a Comet

Peering inside a comet could give us clues to the early formation of the Solar System, the Earth and human life.

Deep Impact's July 4, 2005 impact on Comet Tempel 1 by a 820 lb. impactor is expected to produce a football field-sized crater, seven to fourteen stories deep.

Launched 1/12/2005

Deep Impact 

 Launched: 2/6/99 Collected Dust: Mar-May/00

July-Dec/02

 Flew through dust of Comet Wild 2: Jan 2, 2004

Stardust

Package Landed in Utah 1/15/2006

Spacecraft now on mission to Tempel 1.

Mission to sample space dust and comet Wild 2

Stardust photos of comet Wild 2 taken Jan 2, 2004

Comet is 2.5 miles in diameter

Stardust Aerogel Collector catching particles traveling at 45,000 mph

Look what we caught!! Comet Particle Removal

Special 'needles' mounted on micro-manipulators controlled by computer to carefully and precisely cut out sections of aerogel that contain cometary samples.

Look what we caught!! Gem of a Comet Particle

This image shows a comet particle collected by the Stardust spacecraft. The particle is made up of the silicate mineral forsterite, which can found on Earth in gemstones called peridot. It is surrounded by a thin rim of melted aerogel, the substance used to collect the comet dust samples.

The particle is about 2 micrometers across.

NASA Study Finds New Kind of Organics in Stardust Mission

"A portion of the organic material in the samples is unlike anything seen before in extraterrestrial materials," said Scott Sandford, the study's lead author and a scientist from NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "Capturing the particles in aerogel was a little bit like collecting BBs by shooting them into Styrofoam."

The comet organics collected by the Stardust spacecraft are more "primitive" than those seen in meteorites and may have formed by processes in nebulae, either in space clouds between the stars, or in the disk-shaped cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system formed, the study's authors found.

Rosetta 

Mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov Gerasimenko

03.02.04:  Launch (07:17 UT) Aug 2014:  Comet Orbit Insertion Nov 2014:  Comet Landing Status:  En Route to Comet

Rosetta is on a 10-year mission to explore comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It will orbit Churyumov-Gerasimenko and make observations for about two years as the comet approaches the Sun.

Rosetta will also release a small lander packed with scientific instruments to make the first-ever landing on the surface of a comet.

New Horizons (Pluto - Kuiper Belt Mission)

Mission at a Glance 

Launched: Jan 17, 2006 Pluto & Charon Flyby: 2015 Reach Kuiper Belt: 2026 

Update on Manned Missions

Old: Space Shuttle to retire by 2010

New: Orion to be operational by 2014

Orion terra landing w air bags

International Space Station (ISS)NASA’s Top Priority:

Complete the International Space Station by 2010.

Future Missions

Future Mars MissionsPhoenix Mars Scout Lander: 2007Mars Science Lab: 2009Mars Sample Return 2011Mars Smart LanderMars Deep Drilling LabMars Network LandersSAR Recon OrbiterMan on MoonMoon BaseMan on Mars

Other Planned Missions:Herschel Space Observatory (far IR) 2008James Webb Space Telescope 2013Space Interferometry Mission 2015Terestrial Planet Finderand more

Space Interferometry Mission