A Dark Sand Dune on Mars

What is that dark sand dune doing on Mars? NASA's robotic rover Curiosity has been studying it to find out, making this the first-ever up-close investigation of an active sand dune on another world. Named Namib Dune, the dark sand mound stands about 4 meters tall and, along with the other Bagnold Dunes, is located on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp. The featured image was taken last month and horizontally compressed here for comprehensibility. Wind is causing the dune to advance about one meter a year across the light bedrock underneath, and wind-blown sand is visible on the left. Part of the Curiosity rover itself is visible on the lower right. Just in the past few days, Curiosity scooped up some of the dark sand for a detailed analysis. After further exploration of the Bagnold Dunes, Curiosity is scheduled to continue its trek up the 5-kilometer tall Mount Sharp, the central peak in the large crater where the car-sized rover landed.

A New Ninth Planet May Have Been Detected, Scientists Say

Sad that Pluto isn't a planet anymore? Don't worry, Caltech researchers may have discovered a new planet lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system.
They're calling it "Planet Nine" for now. The planet, if it exists, has a mass 10 times that of Earth and takes between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the sun.
 Planet Nine has not actually been observed. Instead, evidence of the planet was discovered through mathematical modeling and computer simulations. Kind of like planet Neptune was discover."Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there,"
 It all started in 2014 with the investigation of 13 objects in the Kuiper Belt — a region of the solar system beyond Neptune filled with comets and other icy bodies, as well as dwarf planets including Pluto.

Six of those objects had an orbit that suggested they were circling some distant object, which the researchers now believe is the ninth planet in our solar system. Although they believe they know the planet's orbit, they hope to actually locate it using a large telescope.
"This would be a real ninth planet," Brown said. "There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It's a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.
The new would be about the same size as Neptune.

 (How the planet might look like in the artist pic.)

Space stuff for the year 2016

Here's a brief rundown of the biggest spaceflight miletones to keep an eye out for in 2016, from a NASA probe's arrival at Jupiter to the highly anticipated maiden flight of SpaceX's huge new rocket.

Jan. 17: Launch of Jason-3 Earth-observing satellite

On Sunday (Jan. 17), the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Jason-3 satellite is scheduled to launch to Earth orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
If all goes according to plan, the Jason-3 mission — a collaboration involving NOAA, the European climate-satellite organization EUMETSAT, the French space agency CNES and NASA — will make precise measurements of sea-level variations around the planet.

Jason-3's measurements will add to a valuable climate-change dataset that has been accruing for more than two decades, thanks to the observations of three other satellites known as TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1 and OSTM/Jason-2 (which launched in 1992, 2001 and 2008, respectively), NASA officials have said.
SpaceX will also try to land the Falcon 9's first stage on an uncrewed ship off the coast of California during Sunday's launch — part of the company's efforts to develop fully and rapidly reusable rockets, which advocates say could slash the cost of spaceflight dramatically.

SpaceX has already succeeded in bringing a Falcon 9 back to Earth. On Dec. 21, during a satellite launch for Orbcomm, the rocket's first stage came down for a soft landing at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station — the first time this had ever been achieved during an orbital launch.
SpaceX doesn't plan to refly the Falcon 9 booster that touched down on Dec. 21, but company founder and CEO Elon Musk has said he hopes to do this with another landed rocket stage in the next year — so that's another milestone to watch for in 2016.

Feb. 7: SpaceX's return-to-flight cargo mission

SpaceX holds a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly at least 12 robotic resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) using the Falcon 9 and the company's uncrewed Dragon capsule. The first six such flights went perfectly, but the seventh ended just minutes after liftoff on June 28, 2015, when the Falcon 9 broke apart in the Florida skies.
 SpaceX will fly its first ISS cargo mission since the accident — which the company attributed to a faulty steel strut in the Falcon 9's upper stage — on Feb. 7, if current schedules hold. SpaceX has improved the rocket in the interim, modifying its stage-separation system and electronics, among other features, Musk has said. (The revamped Falcon 9 has already flown successfully, during the Dec. 21 launch for Orbcomm.)

March 14: Launch One for Europe's ExoMars mission

The European Space Agency (ESA) is scheduled to launch the first part of its ExoMars mission on March 14, blasting the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on a seventh-month journey toward the Red Planet along with a technology-demonstrating lander.
The TGO will circle Mars and hunt for sources of methane, which here on Earth is primarily produced by living organisms (though the gas also can be generated by abiotic processes). The lander will take a variety of data during its descent through the Martian atmosphere and on the surface, but the main goal of the touchdown probe is to help pave the way for the life-hunting ExoMars rover, which will launch in 2018.
ESA is collaborating with the Russian Federal Space Agency, which is known as Roscosmos, on the ExoMars mission. This is because NASA was to be with them until congress refuse to adds money to NASA budget forcing  NASA to cancel it part of the program.

March 18: Astronauts launch toward International Space Station

NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams and cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are slated to launch toward the ISS on March 18. The trio will blast off in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Other ISS crew launches are scheduled to blast off from Baikonur on June 21, Sept. 23 and Nov. 16.

April: Maiden launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket

At some point in April, SpaceX plans to launch its huge Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, with the liftoff taking place from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The 224-foot-tall (68 meters) Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful booster in the world when it's operational, capable of lofting 53 metric tons to low Earth orbit, SpaceX representatives say.
Elon Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help humanity colonize Mars. The Falcon Heavy is a big part of those plans.

Summer: End of NASA's Dawn mission?

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been orbiting Ceres since March 2015, studying the heavily cratered dwarf planet's mysterious bright spots and other intriguing features. Last month, Dawn finished spiraling down to its final science orbit, and is now taking pictures and making measurements from an altitude of just 230 miles (375 km).
The $466 million mission is scheduled to end in June, when Dawn runs out of hydrazine fuel for its attitude-control thrusters. But mission team members have said they might be able to squeeze some more life out of Dawn, so it's unclear exactly when operations will end.
Dawn also orbited the protoplanet Vesta from July 2011 through September 2012; it's the first probe ever to circle two different bodies beyond the Earth-moon system. (Ceres and Vesta are the two biggest objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.)

July 4: Juno arrives at Jupiter

NASA's Juno spacecraft is scheduled to enter orbit around Jupiter on July 4, nearly five years after the probe blasted off.
The solar-powered Juno will map out Jupiter's magnetic and gravitational fields precisely, revealing key details about the giant planet's evolution and structure — including whether or not it has a solid core, NASA officials have said.

Sept. 3: NASA asteroid-sampling probe blasts off

Another NASA spaceflight milestone comes on Sept. 3, with the scheduled launch of the agency's Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer mission, or OSIRIS-REx for short.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will head toward a 1,650-foot-wide (500 m) asteroid named Bennu, and, if everything goes according to plan, will arrive at the potentially hazardous space rock in 2018. OSIRIS-REx will snag at least 2.1 ounces (60 grams) of Bennu material and bring the sample back to Earth in 2023.
The mission should help researchers learn more about the origin and evolution of the solar system, and it should also reveal clues about how to nudge potentially dangerous asteroids away from Earth, NASA officials have said.

Sept. 30: Historic Rosetta comet mission ends

The first mission ever to orbit and land on a comet will wrap up on Sept. 30, when ESA's Rosetta spacecraft spirals down onto the surface of the 2.5 mile-wide (4 km) Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
The Rosetta mission launched in March 2004 and arrived at Comet 67P in August 2014. The Rosetta mothership then sent a lander called Philae down onto the icy object's surface in November of that year. The Rosetta orbiter will gather a variety data during its Sept. 30 slow-motion crash landing, adding to the detailed picture of 67P that mission scientists have already pieced together.

Pluto's 'Heart' Was Likely Broken by an Asteroid Long Ago

We've known since the Pluto flyby that Pluto had a heartshaped region, later named Tombaugh Regio. And we knew that the region was a study in contrasts. One side was old and cratered, while the otherside is so young many suspect it's still geologically active today. But New Horizons scientists are only now beginning to understand what might've formed the heart, and it points to a violent incident in the dwarf planet's past.

The likely agent that created the bizarre region known as Sputnik Planum was an ancient collision between Pluto and an asteroid the size of Manhattan. The 6.2 mile asteroid slammed into Pluto at some point, upending the region and possibly migrating it to its present location. 

The area itself likely has its strange, smooth appearance because it's still "warm" and thus prone to geological changes. "These blocks appear to have been removed from a subsurface layer, and they are now 'floating' in a large reservoir," New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern told Stone. In other words, Sputnik Planum may be icebergs floating on a nitrogen sea.

This scenario adds to the body of evidence that, rather than a frozen relic of the early solar system, Pluto is still a geologically active world with some interior heat source powering it despite its vast distance from the sun. 

There's still a lot to learn from Pluto, and the return of flyby data isn't anywhere near completed. But we might have an answer now to what happened to its most captivating region, even if that answer comes with dozens more questions. 

Pluto in color

Enough data was returned to start making true color photo!

One of the closest-ever views of Pluto

Going where no other spacecraft has gone before, New Horizons has sent back some pretty stunning images of Pluto--from endearing heart-shaped features to giant ice mountains. And the images just keep getting better.

On Friday, NASA released the first batch of the sharpest-ever images of the former planet. The view above shows the region where the flat Sputnik Planum meets the al-Idrisi mountains. It has a resolution of 250-280 miles per pixel, "revealing features less than half the size of a city block!
 The new details revealed here, particularly the crumpled ridges in the rubbly material surrounding several of the mountains, reinforce our earlier impression that the mountains are huge ice blocks that have been jostled and tumbled and somehow transported to their present locations
 More stuff ! Yes More!

A Japanese spacecraft should be orbiting Venus now, if all went according to plan Sunday (Dec. 6).
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Akatsuki probe fired its small attitude-control thrusters for 20 minutes Sunday evening in a second and final attempt to enter Venus orbit. Akatsuki's first try — which came exactly five years earlier, on Dec. 6, 2010 — failed when the probe's main engine conked out during the orbit-insertion burn, sending the spacecraft sailing off into deep space.
It's too early to know if Akatsuki is indeed  circling the second planet from the sun, the spacecraft's handlers said.
"The orbiter is now in good shape," Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) officials wrote in a mission update Sunday. "We are currently measuring and calculating its orbit after the operation. It will take a few days to estimate the orbit; thus we will announce the operation result once it is determined."
The $300 million Akatsuki mission, whose name means "Dawn" in Japanese, launched in May 2010 to study the clouds, weather and atmosphere of Venus, with the aim of helping scientists understand how the planet ended up so much hotter and less life-friendly than Earth. (Surface temperatures on Venus are hot enough to melt lead.)

A Force from Empty Space: The Casimir Effect

This tiny ball provides evidence that the universe will expand forever. Measuring slightly over one tenth of a millimeter, the ball moves toward a smooth plate in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space. The attraction is known as the Casimir Effect, named for its discoverer, who, 55 years ago, was trying to understand why fluids like mayonnaise move so slowly. Today, evidence indicates that most of the energy density in the universe is in an unknown form dubbed dark energy. The form and genesis of dark energy is almost completely unknown, but postulated as related to vacuum fluctuations similar to the Casimir Effect but generated somehow by space itself. This vast and mysterious dark energy appears to gravitationally repel all matter and hence will likely cause the universe to expand forever. Understanding vacuum energy is on the forefront of research not only to better understand our universe but also for stopping micro-mechanical machine parts from sticking together.